Iran: So What's the Big Deal?

It is interesting to compare the opinion pages of Aljazeera and Haaretz for non-American perspectives on major headlines.  This Op-Ed from Aljazeera mirrors a similar view from Haaretz - thus representing a convergence of views from two prominent news sources in the Mid-East, reprinted here in full:

There goes Netanyahu's Iran bogeyman

By Rachel Shabi

Long before a historic deal was finally agreed upon, we might have guessed what the Israeli government would make of it. Having warned about the perils of any rapprochement with Iran for some years - going to the US Congress, twice, and to the UN, with the same doom-laden messages - it was probably safe to assume that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reaction to any agreement would be: We hate it. 

Indeed, days before this ground-breaking framework agreement was reached, days before the marathon negotiations finally broke through and Iranians broke out onto the streets in celebration, Israeli officials loudly heckled from the sidelines, proclaiming that the imminent deal was set to be even worse than had previously been thought. 

Netanyahu warned of a "Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis" - referring to the war in Yemen and the Swiss city hosting negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries: the US, UK, France, China, Russia plus Germany. 

The looming deal, he said, was "dangerous for mankind and must be stopped", while Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, described Iran as "the greatest danger to world stability" and accused the country of "lying without blinking". 

And so, as others marvelled at the historic diplomatic achievement and a rare bit of positive news from the Middle East, the Israeli government issued its dismay. 

Officials described the freshly sealed preliminary agreement between Iran and those six world powers as a "bad framework that will lead to a bad and dangerous deal". 

The economy minister (now eyeing up a defence or foreign portfolio in the new coalition cabinet) said: "The world's most radical Islamic terrorist regime received today an official kosher stamp for its illicit nuclear programme." 

And according to Politico, Netanyahu swiftly "trashed" the deal, telling US President Barack Obama that the agreement would "threaten the survival" of Israel. 

The reality is that the depiction of Iran as a great existential threat hasn't terrified Israelis in the way that its right-wing government might have hoped. That might well be because Israel's security chiefs ... have repeatedly disagreed with Netanyahu's position on Iran. 

The agreement provides for limits on Iran's nuclear programme, with the country cutting its nuclear infrastructure while opening itself up to an unparalleled level of monitoring, in exchange for the removal of all sanctions. 

Obama has signalled to concerned allies in the region - Israel is top of that list, but it also includes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - that he will be consulting closely with them in the coming months ahead of a final agreement scheduled for June. Along with those Gulf States, Israel has voiced concerns not just over Iran's nuclear ambitions, but also its perceived ambitions in the region. 

But the reality is that the depiction of Iran as a great existential threat hasn't terrified Israelis in the way that its right-wing government might have hoped. That might well be because Israel's security chiefs - often perceived as more credible and trustworthy than the nation's politicians - have repeatedly disagreed with Netanyahu's position on Iran. 

'Messianic politicians' 

Back in 2012, when the prime minister and his then defence chief, Ehud Barak, were ramping up talk of unilateral military action against Iran, the former chief of Israel's security services described them both as "messianic" politicians who could not be trusted. 

The former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, meanwhile, described the government's mooted attack on Iran as "the stupidest idea" he had heard of. The view from the former security chiefs seemed to be that, while negotiations with Iran might be problematic, this diplomatic path was the most preferable. 

At that time, some Israelis responded to the ministerial war cries by love-bombing Iran on social media: "Israel hearts Iran" messages that flooded Facebook and were met with responses in kind from Iranians. 

And during the last election in March, only one in 10 Israelis said that Iran was a factor affecting their vote. The former chiefs came out in force again, with 180 retired generals and security officials warning that Netanyahu's speech to US Congress was a bad move, while tens of thousands rallied in Tel Aviv at a protest event headlined by ex-Mossad head Meir Dagan, who described the prime minister as "destructive to the future and security of Israel". 

Even commentators fearing Iran's nuclear intentions noted that negotiations in Lausanne, while perhaps worrisome and gappy, did not represent a "sword at the throat" for Israel. One writer for the right-wing Jerusalem Post last week pointed out that, even in the worst case scenario of Iran having nuclear capacity, Israel's far superior weaponry and deterrent power was the reason that: "There is no existential threat to the Jewish state. Not even from Iran." 

'Not a bad deal' 

Now, Israel's media still doesn't seem to be on-message with the government. In the liberal daily, Haaretz, diplomatic correspondent Barak Ravid says that the agreement with Iran is "not a bad deal". 

Over at the popular Ynet news website, security correspondent Ron Ben Yishai describes the breakthrough as "a better deal that we expected", and urges Netanyahu to use the coming months to join the process, to help close any loopholes in a final agreement. 

So perhaps the emerging reality is that Netanyahu has lost his regional bogeymen-in-chief. The international community has moved to rehabilitate the country that the Israeli right insists should be kept firmly out in the cold. 

The threat posed to Israel - whether perceived or real - is thus defanged. And at the same time, those former security chiefs still assert that the real threat to Israel is in its continued occupation of Palestinian territories and the avoidance of a negotiated political solution. Now, it seems that the Iran issue can no longer be used as a distraction.

To the Flag. . .

Adam Crapser is an American, but like John McCain or Ted Cruze, he wasn't born within our borders. But he's had a rough life, unlike those men who consider themselves legal and potential Presidents.  An abandoned child, he was adopted from Korea by American parents who apparently were abusive and neglectful and failed to fill out the citizenship papers.

I pledge allegiance to the flag. . .

The reason I can't force myself to regurgitate that fulsome and illegal oath of allegiance I'm prompted to do at every turn these days isn't just the "God" bit but the Liberty and Justice for All. Today may be April Fools day, but we're a nation of fools all year. 

The damn government wants to send him back after 36 years of living here, marrying and trying to support a family -- to deport him  to a country he doesn't know or belong to or speak the language thereof because he's "illegal."  Because he's "illegal" he's found it very hard to find employment in the land of Freedom and Justice and when they send him back to an alien country, his wife and children will find out the hard way, what a sham American Liberty is.

Small minded, bigoted, petty, afraid -- perhaps. All too willing to hide behind walls and punish people who say a word in some language other than English or Starbucks. The free and brave have no compunctions about tossing anyone on the trash heap because of some paperwork he was too young to fill out.

And it's likely to stay this way because of the mean-spirited bastards who call themselves a political party, call themselves "Christian" and demand protection for morality and decency and humanity because of their "faith" and "family values."  By mean-spirited bastards I mean, for the most part, the Republican Party, but their opposition has to share some blame for the bickering, parochial, short-sighted behavior. We're against this or that, but only after you agree it's only our subset, our group who is the victim of this or that, that our particular problem is the one and only and most important, or that our most dire and pressing issue is this or that or the other thing to the exclusion of all else and we won't support candidates who don't agree, who aren't obsessed with our obsessions.

When someone comes here involuntarily as an infant, is educated here, speaks English as a first or only language and is part of our culture, what does it cost us to treat him better than a dog - to allow him to work, pay taxes, start a business, educate his kids and contribute to our society?  What do we gain by sending an American to Mexico or Korea to perish there?  Nothing at all is the answer and God might as well damn any country that acts this way, for we've damned ourselves.

Wacko Birds

Ted Cruz is now, by his own admission, a candidate for President. Can we safely say that the right wing of the right-wing party is still Conservative except in it's vague longing for something vaguely related to a mythologized and phantasmagoric past?

As he said in his announcement at Liberty University, which students were compelled to attend or be fined, he wants to restore the constitution that Obama, not the color of man we traditionally select, has "stolen" and restore that "shining city on the hill" our former President-in-dotage liked to dream of.  Whether or not you consider him to be a conservative, or a "Wacko Bird" as John McCain called him, the guiding light behind the delusional wing of the GOP is that old Will O' the Wisp, or Ignus Fatuus common to such diverse cultures as Sumerian Mythology, Judaic Mythology, and the Tea Party: the lost paradise we can only regain by abolishing liberty and the pursuit of happiness in favor of  authority and returning to the past. Freedom is Slavery?  We don't ask, our faith (meaning greed) is all we need. Of course, to the wackobird, the notion that we can abolish the IRS and yet receive tax payments voluntarily and honestly through the altruistic and enlightened grace of the public is never questioned. Faith.  They're people of Faith.


Of course the shining city was founded on a purloined hill rooted in genocide, slavery, corruption, conquest, despoilation and oppression, but none of the traditional Wackobird constituency will tolerate any measure of truth when looking at the past or the present. Evidence and anyone who points at it is the enemy.  The insurgent Bloggers are already shouting "NO - YOU'RE the wacko, McCain!"  Nolo Contendere.

Of course If you're reading this you're probably all too aware of his pandering to the werewolves, zombies, ogres and other things that bump around the crepuscular forests of the night. I see it as pandering because Cruz after all, went to schools I couldn't get into with a battering ram and presumably graduated.  So I have to suspect that he wears his prophet's robes like sheep's clothing ( or Halloween lunatic costume if you prefer.)  But what strikes, and scares and disgusts me for that matter is the crazy credo that  "Little Black Barack" is tyrannically ignoring the constitution, assuming illegal powers, spending and taxing and all that nonsense that so adequately describes his predecessor.  We've had a 6 year bull market, deficit spending has been strongly reduced, energy independence is at record highs and unemployment is at near Clinton levels.  There couldn't be a more striking reversal of Bush's disastrous results.

Religious leaders have never had a problem with telling us that things are worse and worse and only a "return" to the past can save us and neither do Cruze or Rand Paul or other birds of that flightless feather throughout the red end of the political spectrum.  They get away with it because so many Americans are simply oblivious and unwilling to be otherwise. They go on howling about Obama not being eligible for the presidency, but not about how Cruze was born in Canada with only one American parent. Making foreign policy and negotiating with foreign countries is only "tyranny" when Obama does it and only a short time ago the loudly stated position was that "if the president does it, it's ipso facto constitutional and if some of us complained, we "hated America" and were collaborating with the enemy. 

Double standard?  Not so much as a totally ad hoc and shifting standard that can contradict itself without contradiction.  Is this the stuff of  all the tyrants of the past, real and fictional? Of course! A style that enlists the disgruntled, delusional, angry and yes the wacko into the battle against their liberty and prosperity and health.  I don't think you can reach them and our future as a free and influential country depends entirely on our ability to get off our asses, stop squabbling, having national "conversations" and staying away from the polls.

Christian Nation in Indiana.

It's another token of our "changing" language. I put the word in quotes because it's so strange to see things like the weaponizing of words described in such benign terms, but "religious freedom" simply hasn't meant the right to perform rituals, say prayers or build places of religious exercise without restraint except to a few for a long while. 

In Indiana, or to the Indiana chapter of the Christian Caliphate in America it means the right to do any damned thing you want as long as "Christians" like the Robertsons: Phil and Pat or Reverend Phelps or a majority of the Indiana General Assembly approve. No one really, no one at all is in any doubt that, as it has in other religions, the militant wing of American Christianity is rising in power and rising in the lust for control and domination and the ability to punish people of other beliefs or thoughts or perspectives. No one fails to see how such assaults on liberty tend to thrive in places of ignorance and religious passion (you may find some correlation if you like:) places like Indiana.

No one has any doubt that if the shoe were on the other foot, and there were significant numbers of people who would refuse to service cars with those chrome fish, or religious bumper stickers or serve them at drive-through restaurants,  the Christian Nation  folks would hesitate to stand up for that kind of religious freedom and certainly they would be raising hell if "Muslims only" signs were to appear in Indiana.  No Yarmulkes inside, no cross, no service, no Irish need apply, only church goers in this neighborhood. We do not serve people with tattoos. We've been there before. We've had those tradinal values before.  Perhaps those who keep telling me we've made little progress aren't entirely wrong.  Certainly the spirit of hate and exclusivity thrives, along with talk of beheadings and rape and castration, damnation and brimstone by bearded zealots, to the cheering of the mob.

So yes, freedom of religion now means something close to its opposite and to be evil, nasty and mean --  contemptuous of  truth and justice is to have Christian values, to have "faith."   None of the claims made about life liberty, the pursuit of happiness, about freedom and justice for all are in any way compatible with the goals of the Christian Nation in America people any more than they are with the Islamic State people and yet the damnation is so faint and public discourse so filled with pop culture, celebrity surgery, the latest product from Apple, transportation calamities and the angelic innocence of Michael Brown.  Not only the language has been prostituted, but so have our thoughts and concerns, at least that's the goal. Denialism, lack of definable terms, amorphous logic, conspiracy theories and fear are the means, tyranny is the end.

It's a Conspiracy!

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you or me
Says I, "But Joe, you're ten years dead,"
"I never died," says he.
"I never died," says he.

No sooner does something happen in this world, but that it didn't and in a strange quantum physical way, nothing itself is reason to believe something. The bomb wasn't a bomb, the flight never flew, Saudi terrorists didn't hijack those airplanes and neither Jesus nor Mohammad's nephew nor Elvis nor Joe Hill actually died.  There are many reasons for it, but Humans being creatures for whom faith is always tempting, need something to anchor it, a substrate to mount it upon like a plaque on the wall. Every article of faith, every statement of belief requires a denial.

The anguish of grief, the horror of circumstances, the shock of sudden change; these things cause us to deny, at least for a time that the beloved leader and voice of God has been murdered and his mission has come to nothing. We see them in our dreams, even when we're awake. But as with any human weakness, the inability to accept invites explanations of why reality isn't real for the purposes of exploitation. We want your support so Joe hill lives on in spirit.  Jesus came to Jerusalem to restore the divine dynasty and throw  out Rome, he was about mystical forgiveness of sin. The Hidden Imam is just around the corner and will come back to bring justice, or was that Jesus or was that Tammuz?  Denial is power, but power over us by someone else.

Why are conspiracy theories cropping up like mold stains after a flood -- even with a level of evidence never before possible?  Perhaps simply because of the entertainment factor now that everyone knows everything instantly. It's fun to be the one who knows differently, even though that same thought has caught on with billions of others. Perhaps that's not all.  It's easy to postulate that our refusal to see what we saw and heard and experienced as reality is more than some artifact of our human nature and the result of someone elses will to power. Has there been a cult leader, religious or secular who has not suggested that outside influences and conspiracies are trying to delude them?  Jim Jones, David Koresh, Kim Jong-Un?  But other popular, less dangerous theories, tales of cover-ups from the petty to the gigantic are harder to explain.

That the real cause of Weimar Germany's woes may have been the very patriotism and nationalism and sense of duty that so much pride was taken it rather than some nefarious international conspiracy is an easy explanation for the deadly scapegoating that ensued, but it's hard to see why the US had no sooner landed on the moon but that it never did or why the US got all this interstellar technology from the strangely humanoid aliens but never found a use for it: why the Incas and the Egyptians got help from flying saucers who never left a single artifact behind. yet we believe and passionately.

Is there some vast evolutionary cultural movement toward a neo-Platonic metaphysics wherein reality is unknowable? Is the only reality what we read on the web, on the TV, on the blogs and Twitter?  The incessant roar of advertising hype and misrepresentation? Is there some Über-conspiracy universe in which smaller conspiracies bud off without end?  If so can we write it off to that pesky human love of  being esoteric, hip and just a bit holier than thou or is it a conspiracy by those who benefit greatly from making everything plausibly deniable in their lust for wealth and influence?

George Bush and the Neocons didn't destroy any chance for peace in the middle east. Republican economics didn't cause a worldwide recession, The innocent are to blame, the guilty are not.  And We the Believers?  Step this way.  Work will make us free. Who stands to gain the most from our refusal to consider that what is might actually be what is?  Yes, that's rhetorical. World commerce and politics depend on being able to make us unable to tell real from imaginary, freedom from slavery, war from peace, proof from fallacy, science from fable.

• Obama didn't reduce deficit spending, didn't kill Osama bin Laden, wasn't actually elected and   wasn't even eligible. 
•  Americans blew up the WTC -- the kind of Americans we don't like and don't want you to like.  
• Obama went over there and apologized to them.
• The Jews screwed Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, not the Germans. 
• The Americans forced Japan to kill tens of millions of civilians, they're not to blame.  
• Capitalist Roaders were behind the monstrous failures of Mao's revolution and how better to sell it than to attack the notion of truth and the ability to determine it.

The climate isn't heating up, crime isn't on the increase, vaccinations don't work, cell phones are killing the bees. There's a conspiracy to poison Wheat. A 4 door Nissan sedan is really a race car.

We can't know the truth so anything I propose is as true as anything the evidence shows or doesn't show. Cast doubt on reality and the lie becomes credible.  It's the old argument from ignorance and as the man said: Ignorance is Strength.


Nothing is true and all things are possible, said Hassan, or so they say.  It's the kind of metaphysics in which facts become fungible; wherein is and isn't  and might be are the same thing and the transgressors of the world can wash their hands of any kind of causation or blame and smile -- after all, they ask us:  what is truth?  Listen and Big Brother will tell you.

The Devil wears Camouflage

Phil Robertson -- you know the formerly beardless frat boy / football player who learned to cash in on American savagery to the tune of at least $15 million, simply hates everything a free country is based on.  Sure he squeals like a pig when called to task for hating other people's freedom but somehow finds those who don't share his horrifyingly sexually perverted ideas about religious tyranny something to be mocked.

Most disgusting to me is the support he gets from Southern Country Folk who don't see past the camo shirt uniform of  Bible based solidarity to the seething sulfurous evil of his bigotry camouflaged as that old time religion.  Speaking in Vero Beach, Florida yesterday he erupted like Satan's pustulant anus with a story about how atheists could see their wives and daughters raped and beheaded and their penises cut off and not know whether it was right or wrong because, apparently, they don't believe the stupidest, most absurd lie ever told.

Sadly I have to support his "right" to sell evil, to promote evil, to incite to evil, but sadder is that all you "good" Christians out there are silent -- if not praising, yet still supporting him by such faint damnation as he gets. No one has the right to talk about evil without mentioning Phil and the millions of demons who admire him overtly or covertly. We get outrage when a cosmologist suggests that we can understand the universe as well without mythology, when we offer proof of the age of the planet or of the origin of species.  A silence falls over the voices of the Saved as evil rings out like a church bell.

Saddest of all is that those like me who hate him enough to see him drawn and quartered and disemboweled like Babington in the public square -- and all those good and moral and kind and decent people his kind have murdered since the beginning of time -- of all of them, among those least likely to shove hot pokers up his ass, put his balls in a wringer and immerse him in a tub of red, fuming Nitric Acid as he truly deserves, are Atheists.  Yeah, Phil, I know it's wrong.

But it's so tempting.

The Bibi-Boeher Connection - Seditious Acts

Less than 24 hours after my last post on the Bibi-Boehner connection, a Wall Street Journal report reveals the hidden devil in the details: It appears Netanyahu used Israeli intelligence resources to spy on P5+1 negotiations (full text here):

“The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said … The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program …

“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.”

Spy versus Spy: It is not uncommon for one ally to collect intelligence on another; but what makes this revelation unprecedented is that Israel fed this information to Congressional Republicans in an effort to alter the course of U.S. foreign policy. If intelligence gathering is considered standard operating procedure – even among allies – direct interference in the internal affairs of governments raises the stakes.

Double Trouble. More troublesome is the fact that Congressional Republicans acted as co-conspirators to gain partisan advantage. Never before in the history of the United States has an opposition party colluded with a foreign power - in direct violation of constitutional norms and protocols. The time has come to put teeth into the Logan Act: Mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief is an act of sedition. If ‘sedition’ is one operant word, the other is …

Impeachment. Unfortunately, impeachment is a political process requiring passage by vote in the House of Representatives and a trial by vote in the Senate. Since accused criminals rarely admit to their crimes and never sit on their own juries, the prospect of 47 Senators impeaching themselves is highly unlikely.

The only other option is to weigh the evidence in the court of public opinion. Bring it on, I say!

GOP Shadow Government and the Bibi-Boehner Connection

by (O)CT(O)PUS

In a last minute blitz of opportunistic electioneering, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrestled ignominious victory from the jaws of defeat.  Invoking fear and xenophobia, Netanyahu nullified decades of diplomacy, antagonized allies, and inflamed regional tensions.  His last minute retractions and recalibrations were so stunningly cynical, it leaves us wondering:  Are Israeli voters now having buyers’ remorse?  For many, the answer is yes:

The day after elections, columnist Ben Caspit wrote an article in the Maariv daily newspaper titled "Two States." He was not referring to the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to Israel's own cultural divide (source: Associated Press).

In America, Europe, and the Middle East, the election outcome in Israel will have profound consequences; and the American public is well advised to pay attention.

Ides of March.  Earlier this month, House Speaker John Boehner breached constitutional protocol when he invited Netanyahu to address both chambers of Congress without notifying the White House.  Weeks later, forty-seven GOP Senators breached protocol again with an infamous letter that challenged the foreign policy prerogatives of a sitting president in the midst of sensitive negotiations. Last week, an aid to House Speaker Boehner announced a two-week trip to Israel starting in April. This sequence of events is no mere coincidence.

In victory, Netanyahu proved his mettle as a triumphant demagogue, and Speaker Boehner would like some of Bibi’s success to rub off.  His trip to Israel will be more than a mere courtship ritual between far rightwing allies. Hardly a state visit, this trip has the appearances of a political strategy session.  After all, next year is an election year in America; and the rightwing parties of Israel and the U.S. have a mutual stake in the outcome. Will the GOP and Likud join forces?  Follow the trail of sound bites for clues:

Representative Steve King (R-IA):  “I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their President" (source).

More Jewish than American Jews, more Catholic than the Pope, with a mouth the size of cantaloupe, Steve King never speaks alone.  He serves as an ugly mouthpiece for the GOP, and his outrageous remarks often presage the drift of GOP tactics and taking points.

Wedge politics is the dark art of stoking fear, suspicion, and resentment with appeals to bigotry and xenophobia in order to break apart coalitions and strip away votes. For decades, Jewish voters have consistently returned outsized majorities on behalf of Democrats:  78% for Clinton in 1996, 79% for Gore in 2000, 76% for Kerry in 2004, and 78% for Obama in 2008.  Clearly, the GOP sniffs an opportunity to bring these voters into the Republican fold … along with Sheldon Adelson's money.  Where demagoguery and diplomacy converge, the Bibi-Boehner connection represents a new low in American politics.  Will this unholy alliance bear fruit for Republicans?  Not according to Jon Stewart who lampooned Netanyahu for having the audacity to speak for all Jews (and for stealing a favorite GOP campaign tactic).  Not according to this commentary across Cyberspace (representative sampling):

“That's why more than 2/3 of American Jews are Democrats - because we know what happens when dangerous demagogues like you preaching hatred and exclusion are allowed to take power."

"They conveniently forget that Obama was awarded Israel's highest honor, the Medal of Distinction, by Shimon Peres, Israel's president."

"It's the Dolchstoßlegende.  Any Jew can recognize it instantly."

Meanwhile, where is Cyanide News Network?  Is CNN MIA ... again!  Are there any savvy reporters bold enough to ask these questions: Is the Speaker’s trip to Israel an official state visit, a vacation, or a partisan junket? Who pays the tab? Will American taxpayers, or the Republican National Committee?  Pay attention, damnit!

Big Brother and the Targets of Public Outrage

Idiotic and often disgusting stunts by college students and at college fraternities and sororities seem as regular and inevitable as stupid statements by politicians and questionable actions by police officers and if we were so inclined, we might spend our days ranting and raging about it.  Sometimes we do that, but what we choose to obsess about seems chosen for us rather than a spontaneous reaction to circumstances. The American public is an orchestra, a chorus, a marching band and those things have their conductors, their choir leaders and drum majors to produce and direct passion on demand, outrage on cue.

So the University of Houston suspends Sigma Chi for hazing practices so dangerous as to be criminal whether or not the pledges voluntarily submit. The District Attorney may press criminal charges.  You didn't hear about it through the week long din of  gnashing and wailing and rending of clothes over rude comments made on a bus at another university. Boys will be boys and at least they're not racists. We're only accepting racism outrage this month and next month will be reserved for Hillary's e-mail.

So two cops walk into a house in Dallas.  There's a man standing there with a screwdriver.  His mother tells the cops he's mentally ill and wants help getting him to the hospital. "we don't have time for this" says one of them.  They shoot him repeatedly until he's dead.  That's right, CNN is not covering this round the clock, there are no nationwide demonstrations reminding us that bipolar lives matter. Call me a racist, and some have, but the struggle for justice and equality for all isn't well served by ignoring anyone's liberty and civil rights. Human life matters.

So a guy gets a phone call from a neighbor.  His house is surrounded by 40 police cars, SWAT team with rifles and battering rams. There's a remote control bomb disposal robot, there are armored assault vehicles.  Returning home, the parents of the teenager inside are told not to enter "the kill zone."  Later they're told the kid "is deceased."  They could only get details from the TV news the following day.  It was claimed the kid had a long police record.  He didn't.  A neighbor saw the plainclothes officers approaching the young man and thought they were robbers. It's likely the victim did too.  They jumped the fence, tackled him and when he defended himself, they killed him.  Happens in Phoenix all the time: the mentally ill, the poor, the Hispanic, the innocent, the harmless. We tend not to demonstrate round the clock, not to burn cars, rob liquor stores, loot businesses. We tend not to notice. The conductor's baton is pointing elsewhere. This is what it means, all that it means and nothing else is pertinent, anything else is out of line and racist.

 Last year the police story about the homeless New Mexico man who pulled a small knife when ordered to move along and had to be killed, was contradicted by video that shows he was complying, not resisting. His life mattered and his "white privilege" availed him not.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a report last year documenting that the Albuquerque Police Department  has for years engaged in a pattern of excessive force that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The mentally ill, ethnic minorities, the homeless, the poor, the helpless: 

     officers too frequently use deadly force against people who pose a minimal threat, said the report.

     Albuquerque officers use “less lethal” force, including Tasers, on people who are non-threatening   or unable to comply with orders. 

     Encounters between APD officers and persons with mental illness and in crisis too frequently result in a use of force or a higher level of force than necessary. 

Police brutality, excessive force -- it seems to correlate more with helplessness than with anything else, but that observation departs from the official line, deflects anger from the target we're given. It flirts with racist thoughts. It admits shades and colors into our prescribed, black and white arguments.  In fact we have a problem with the way the police sometimes treat people in general. and for those without such effective advocates and agitators, their plight is worse. Black, Brown, Indigenous and indigent people all suffer from  official brutality as well as from official lack of concern and it's time to step out of line and take a stand against the incompetence, the bias, the anger and increasing militarism of our police. But for the love of justice, let's stop forcing our force-fed examples to monopolize the news while ignoring the real problem.  All lives matter!

The Next American Civil War

Earlier this week, I called the office of Senator Marco Rubio – one of two senate representatives from my home state of Florida - to express concerns over the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter signed by 47 ‘unguided’ missiles of the GOP.

An aid to Senator Rubio took my call.  When I mentioned the Logan Act and the word “sedition” in due course, the conversation ended - with an abrupt disconnect.  Apparently, the aid did not like my drift and hung up the phone. How rude!  Do we wonder why citizens no longer believe their so-called “elected” representatives represent them!

Let's face facts:  The GOP is now an insurgency that no longer knows how to participate in a two-party system of government.  Republicans have crossed constitutional boundaries - with reckless disregard for centuries of tradition and protocol.  They disdain the free exchange of ideas and information in a democracy.  They are openly intolerant of any viewpoint and utterly contemptuous of any opposition.  They disrespect the parliamentary art of compromise and consensus and choose legislative hostage taking over governance.  In short, the GOP has morphed into a sovereign entity hell-bent on domination and suppression.

Between 2003 and 2005, three European allies negotiated a deal that would have frozen Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity at a very early stage.  At the time, Iran operated 164 centrifuges with a nuclear breakout capability at least ten years away.  Acting through the British government, the Bush/Cheney administration scuttled the deal.

Unbound from treaty obligations and a regimen of inspections, Iran has expanded its nuclear program to 19,000 centrifuges with a breakout capability of less than a year away – no thanks to a neoconservative administration that failed to seize an opportunity under far more favorable conditions. Right now, P5+1 negotiators have one more chance to freeze Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  Yet again, GOP neoconservatives are hell-bent on sabotaging this last and final opportunity (source).

In this debate, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.  In a single ‘Dear Tehran’ letter, the GOP shredded the Constitution and upended American diplomacy.  From this day forward, our nation will no longer be considered a trustworthy partner in world affairs.  Every international accord may be held in doubt – held hostage to the whims and caprices of partisan politics.  Shall we dismantle NATO?  Nullify the non-nuclear proliferation treaty?  Scuttle all trade agreements?  The fallout is already clear:  Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany described the letter as “not very helpful.”  Having been burned by American duplicity in the past, the Supreme Leader of our implacable adversary has concerns: "Of course I am worried, because the other side is known for … backstabbing" (source). 

Backstabbing, indeed!  Republicans have been backstabbing the American public for a very long time - holding us hostage to partisan ambitions with deception, defamation, demagoguery, legislative trickery and treachery, and blackmail.  The government shutdown of 2013 compromised the creditworthiness of the nation.  In failing to fully fund Homeland Security, the GOP left us vulnerable to terrorism.  In states across the land, GOP legislators have sponsored bills to:

• Suppress voting rights and disenfranchise citizens along partisan lines;
• Enlist the powers of government to serve as Enforcer of religious doctrine;
• Impose religious teachings and taboos upon the general population;
• Legalize discrimination and deny citizens their full rights under law;
• Assert the sovereign right of states to violate human rights.

Of all enemies, foreign or domestic, today’s Republican Party is by far the more dangerous of the two.  As a result, we are less safe and less free.  In a landmark essay originally published in 2011, former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren exposes the hidden agenda of his party:

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe …

If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America’s status as the world’s leading power.”

I consider the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter our Fort Sumter moment – the first shots fired in a second American Civil War. Consider this post a wakeup call.