The Mask Of Imperial Power Is Dying

The charade is over in Palestine. The farce that tried to pass itself off as a pathway to peace has clearly ended. The ‘West’ led by Israel and the US has finally begun to show the world the duplicity of their joint criminality as that has most recently been underscored in “Gaza vs. The West Bank.”
After Israel illegally seized the Palestinian taxes raised, from the starving and beleaguered Palestinians, to deny those people the means to achieve a functioning state: now in light of the rebellion in Gaza, Israel intends to use that money to blackmail The West Bank, and starve survivors in Gaza. This surpasses what the Nazis did to those they occupied by a factor of at least ten-fold: Given that the Nazi reign lasted only twelve years – while Israel and the US have controlled the people of Palestine for over fifty years.
Israel’s claims that Hamas wants to destroy the State of Israel are true: yet it is equally true that Israel wants to exterminate the Palestinian people. Unfortunately Americans seldom hear both sides of these charges: only Israel’s claims are routinely reported, each and every time the name of Hamas is mentioned.
Neither is it mentioned here, that Israel had its military severely beaten in Lebanon, which was not supposed to happen. Israel was behind the bombing that killed the very popular pro-Lebanese leader that was then blamed on Syria—in order to pave the way for an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. This is the same murder that the UN has now been coerced into holding an international trial for. The bomb signature was the same as the bomb used on the 241 US Marines, in Beirut, during Ronnie’s reign, and the only nation capable of making such bombs was and is Israel.
In instance after instance the corruption that passes for the military dictatorship of Israel today is the only group that directly profits from the escalation and destabilizations of so many different countries in the Middle East now.
Israel is not a traditional nation in the sense that she was not organically conceived, or home grown, but rather ‘it’ was created out of Palestine, and has yet to complete that process – over fifty years after her presence was inserted into Palestine. If the headlines offer any clues, her major exports seem to be ‘hatred & war’: which does not seem to be reason enough for that tiny place to exist upon the world map.
Her most powerful citizens are mostly found living abroad, where many enjoy very good lives. There is also no question that many Israeli’s are immensely powerful in many of the world’s pivotal institutions and industries, as well as throughout the world, in arts and entertainment, in politics and power, and in virtually all the major fields of endeavor: No small accomplishment given their very small overall numbers. But Israeli’s are not of a single mind, or even a single religion: and their country has been infected by an extremism that is very similar to the one that won the coup that toppled the United States in 2000. Both systems are as virulent as they are hated around the world.
The map of the Middle East is far from clear even to seasoned veteran players in the region. In fact to get an idea of just how difficult this puzzle is one would have to somehow envision a chess board where eight players could simultaneously oppose one another. Motives, outcomes, and movements are each composed of several different minds, within each group that represents a single theoretical ‘state.’ Nothing is simple. Sophistication, in-depth intelligence and an intense knowledge of the various histories and multiple factions are all basic to even beginning to understand what goes on there.
Overlay upon this immensely difficult region the fact of their resources and the importance of their resources to the rest of the planet and you can easily see that no nation that seeks to dominate that region can afford to be involved there, without a great deal of diplomatic and real understanding about events in that war-ravaged region. The military components at play are only one arm of a vast network of seething and competing goals that are never far from any surface; including the day-to-day realities. Add to this the arrogance and the self-imposed blinders, of the Western would-be rulers of that region—and it is clear that several different boogey-men needed to be created to keep all the various factions at bay. Enter the one-size fits all “terrorists,” many of whom are freedom fighters, some that are just mercenaries, and a huge number of extremists of all stripes. In this situation “Chaos” is the one logical outcome, but it is not the only consequence.
Suffice it to say that this region is and was the grand prize being sought by the world’s bankers and the global corporatocracy, not to mention the puppets in several nations that each has more than a small stake in the outcomes from this Privateer’s Dream of global conquest. This has been the Cheney-Bush target of our foreign policies since long before they ascended into office.
Ironically, these Outlaws approached this situation just as they have always approached everything else – they chose to begin with intimidation and what they thought of as overwhelming force: and they failed repeatedly. Did they learn anything at all – no! Instead they have chosen to compound their initial blunders with the threat of even more wars, and an expanded presence by both US military personnel and a sharp new spike in the accompanying mercenary forces as well. Death, death and lots more death, all to maintain the false air of some faint idea of a ‘victory’ in the war over the oil field contracts. How pathetically lame this so-called “leadership” has been!
In addition to that folly the Israeli’s have taken pages from our own bloody past, and began to treat the Palestinians much like we treated our native population when they still stood between the American colonies and the Western shore of what finally became the United States.
In addition to partitioning Palestine and stealing the lands of the inhabitants, Israel went further establishing camps and policies that made a horror out of daily life for any Palestinian caught up in that nightmare. The goal was to get the Palestinians to leave. This did not succeed, as for the most part the Palestinians have stayed and they continue to fight to this day, just as almost any people will fight tenaciously for their own lands and countries.
However, the Empire has no use for other people’s patriots, we call them terrorists. In fact the still unfinished state of Israel initially used the Irgun, (their own terrorists when they were seeking independence from the Brits). Many of their early leaders were drawn directly from the ranks of their own former “terrorists.” This is probably why the current Israeli leadership is so incensed by Hamas, and what their leadership of the Palestinians might be able to accomplish, should Hamas ever succeed in uniting a real Palestinian state.
This brings us to the current tactics being employed by both the US and Israel inside Iraq and elsewhere today, and indeed throughout these long and ugly years of a war that is not a war but an illegal slaughter of helpless people. Rumsfeld and Cheney and Gonzalez and Bush came up with the idea that torture could both justify their wars and keep the fear alive in so many millions of people everywhere – and who knew – maybe they might actually gain some information from the exercise. So we created Gitmo and revoked Habeas Corpus for all Americans, if the Decider decided that whoever it was might just possibly be involved in something anti-American, at least according to his interpretation of that definition. But now—years after this obscenity was put in place—the truth is beginning to leak out as it always will. And Seymour Hersh has written about it in a major article in The New Yorker Magazine entitled: The General’s Report. (1)
This series of crimes and cover-ups could lead to major destruction within those at the top of this extremely vicious treachery against all that the world had outlawed so very long ago.
Cheney-Bush has created so many ways by-pass the once sovereign laws of this country: Like the 1100 signing statements, the spying on American citizens at will, the upending of everything needed to run even a third class country, much less the United States of America. We have become a country without an infrastructure, without real jobs, with no real say about our own defense, or even how our borders should be maintained. We have no culture unless one counts consumerism (our major disease – without which we’d already be in the worst depression the world has ever known). Most of our industries are run from overseas, our goods and services are outsourced and then imported and now we’ve been reduced to selling off our national highways and public lands to satisfy our government’s addiction to unsubstantiated loans to fight the wars we’re already lost in the name of major corporations like Halliburton that fled this country to avoid taxes and the legal responsibilities that their contracts will entangle them in—once the investigations finally get underway. (2)
So much criminality, so much treason, and so few outcomes that stand even a chance of making a real difference: It’s obvious that Americans need a new mantra!
"NO" is the only thing this government should hear, to everything they are proposing, from the majority of the people they want to rule. If all of us just did this in both thought and deed, then this government could not continue, and we could begin again.
The entire fabric of what was 'government' is rotten to the core, because each one of almost all of the elected members continues to make decisions based solely on their own personal gains that have nothing to do with their offices, or with the public's welfare. They have in essence "sold their reputations for a song" and in that bargain condemned us all to an inferno of slavery, death and taxes that will crush us into oblivion - NO - is the only cry that we can still make.
If that battle-cry is loud enough and often enough it would begin to take hold - to the point that things would have to change. Imagine 100,000 people in front of the Tarnished House, the Congress & the Supreme Court - in three demonstrations ALL chanting that one simple word, simultaneously - if that reached the airwaves maybe we could find a new beginning?
Remember - They need us far more than we "need" them.

By Jim Kirwan