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A Way with Words: The Devious and Devastating Genius of Frank Luntz… and More

14 Tuesday Jan 2020

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I mentioned Frank Luntz in my article “Shared Values” , in which I willingly gave him credit for the clever term itself – I mean what could be more effective in garnering American support for rogue nation Israel than hearing about how similar it is to the United States? While my article made clear that these “shared values” are  fallacious, I do, however begrudgingly, give Luntz all the credit. His talking points for defense of Israeli aggression and human rights abuses have indeed been effective, as noted by Patrick Cockburn writing in British newspaper The Independent. He was masterful in his Israel Project handbook, for example after the Gaza slaughter of 2014, advising Israel supporters to always appear empathetic, “no Palestinian mother should have to bury her child” (even though that child was killed by Israel) and describing Palestinian negotiating points as “demands” because Americans dislike people who make “demands.”

Dr Luntz has always claimed, “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”. And he has masterfully put that knowledge to work on behalf of Republican conservative causes for  decades. He was responsible for all the clever Republican soundbites during the election of 1994 wrapped in Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”, the title of which was also Luntz’s idea. Here we find all kinds of examples of his ingenuity, from the use of such terms as “tax relief”, “job creation”, “personal responsibility” and “taking back our streets”, to the undeniably worthy goal of imposing term limits on “career politicians” so that they could be replaced by “citizen legislators”. In addition he advised Republicans to “talk like Newt” by describing Democrats in pejorative terms like “corrupt,” “devour,” “greed,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.” 

Luntz’s work for the Republican Party in the area of taxes has been particularly effective. It was he who suggested always using “death tax” instead of the perfectly reasonable and accurate terms “estate tax” or “inheritance tax”. In a memo to Republicans, he even recommended staging press conferences about opposing or reducing this tax “at your local mortuary” to dramatize the Issue, stating that “I believe this backdrop will clearly resonate with your constituents….death is something the American people understand”.

Dr Luntz’s term for reducing taxes, “tax relief” is brilliantly conceived, cloaking our very necessary contributions to common safety, order and the public good as nasty unfair burdens. Employing the phrase “tax relief” suggests that taxes are an affliction that Americans need to be rescued from and ensures that those proposing the taxes are portrayed as villains, while those fighting against them become heroes. Use of this term was employed by George W. Bush promoting his tax cuts, primarily benefitting the wealthy but advertised as something quite different, nicely illustrated in this incredibly deceptive photo-op. Right there in front of all these cute, struggling American families is Frank Luntz’s term and sitting down to sign the bill providing that “relief” is our hero, George W. Bush. 

Republican talking points about health care are also representative of the influence of Luntz. A favorite term used by Republicans to describe “Medicare for All” or any other government program covering all Americans is “government takeover”. Dr Luntz earned the 2010 Lie of the Year award from Politifact for his promotion of this phrase starting in the spring of 2009. “Takeovers are like coups,” Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. “They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.” Right, and added to this are always the buzzwords “choice”, where health care is concerned, and “competition”, as if anyone seriously ill or facing a medical emergency has the time and the information to properly “choose” the right doctor or hospital, or examine some kind of list and find the most cost effective providers. While I’m not sure of its origin, it certainly could be Luntz, another favorite term employed by those fighting single payer programs is “rationed care”, totally fallacious but quite effective, like the others mentioned above.

Luntz enjoys putting together his “lose” and “use” lists of words according to the topic at issue.  For example, about climate change and green technology, which he opposed, he suggests the following:

  • USE: Cleaner, safer, healthier. LOSE: Sustainable/sustainability.
  • USE: Solving climate change. LOSE: Ending global warming.
  • USE: Principles and priorities. LOSE: Values.
  • USE: Reliable technology/energy. LOSE: Ground-breaking/State of the art.
  • USE: New careers. LOSE: New jobs.
  • USE: Peace of mind. LOSE: Security.
  • USE: Consequences. LOSE: Threats/Problems.
  • USE: Working together. LOSE: One world.

Anyone can see how cleverly selected or rejected these words are. For example “peace of mind” instead of “security”. He’s right – the first suggests a threat of some kind and therefore has negative connotations, the second does not.

And here was his “lose and use” list for Republican before the 2006 midterm election: 

BI Graphics_Rhetoric 1

Other “use and lose” pairings that he has suggested more recently are rather than “undocumented worker”, use” illegal alien”, a much more negative and threatening term. And when discussing school vouchers, putting public money into corporate pockets, never use “school choice” – always say “parental choice”. And Luntz urged Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to move away from the dry phrase “funding the border wall” to the more evocative term “border security” — a language tweak the White House has obviously adopted.

As a very successful pollster, Dr Luntz has tested all kinds of political slogans and catchphrases. One of his most successful was used by now Senator Rick Scott in his last run for Florida governor and was likely responsible for his narrow victory – “let’s get to work”. In an oft-used commercial Scott was depicted heading down an alleyway while putting on his jacket, appearing like he was looking for a fight, with the words appearing – “Let’s get to work, let’s get it done”. Certainly much more effective than defining problems and suggesting solutions or plans. And clearly it worked. And presently billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloom has adopted Luntz’s phrase for his multi million dollar TV ad blitz – “Mike will get it done”.

I would like to add a few more examples of clever use of language in politics. Certainly the Democratic members of Congress took a page from Frank Luntz’s book with their extremely effective use of the term “kids in cages” to help describe the dreadful situation on our southern border. And although it cannot be attributed directly to Luntz, the Bush/Cheney administration’s deceptive use of the term “enhanced interrogation” to describe what was clearly and plainly torture, in dealing with captive suspected terrorists during the Iraq War. And just the other day I read a description of how corporations get away with paying little or no taxes on their billions in profits – it’s their use of ‘lawyers, lobbyists and loopholes”, a very definitive and resonant phrase to be sure.

Also I should add a few examples of political language employed today to cast doubt on much needed debate and embrace of tenets of dominant candidates vying for the Democratic nomination. In a brilliant article for Truthdig, R.J. Eskow dissects and defines some favorite phrases being bandied about by most of our “moderate” (read “corporate”) Democratic candidates. Several of the more striking are “free stuff” which Eskow defines as “A term of contemptuous dismissal for public services that are commonly available in other developed countries and which any decent society would make available to all human beings”; ‘I don’t think anyone has a monopoly on bold ideas” really means “I don’t have any bold ideas”; and “I know how to get things done”, (of course trumpeted constantly by Joe Biden) really means “I intend to use a political approach that hasn’t gotten anything done in years”.

And finally I would like to add a few oxymorons to this discussion of clever use of words. A favorite of mine that I use as a definitive example of an oxymoron is “military intelligence”. Others that are used in political discussions are “fighting for peace”, “bureaucratic efficiency” and “congressional ethics”. And George W. Bush enjoyed describing himself with the fallacious term “compassionate conservative”. Certainly, in this time of striking divisions in politics, it might be illustrative to suggest several that define our times. “Moderate Republican”  and “billionaire Democrat” are certainly oxymorons today. Obviously there is no such thing as a moderate Republican presently and the very existence of billionaire Democrats like presidential candidates Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, are contradictions in terms as repudiations of what a Democrat is expected to embrace. And I will add my own original contribution to the lexicon of  political oxymorons, one which circles back to my first paragraph and Frank Luntz’s work for the Israel Project – “Israeli justice”.

And one more thing, after his house was narrowly saved by valiant Los Angeles firefighters from being burned in the Skirball fire, Frank Luntz has seen the light (and felt the heat) and has joined the ranks of climate change believers, offering passionate and personal testimony recently to Congress on the urgency of dealing with its effects. Also, observing that “It’s hard to be partisan when you see the damage being done”, he has abandoned his long standing association with the Republican Party. Who knows, he may decide to share his devious and devastating talent with all political parties.

The United States of Incrementalism

27 Saturday Nov 2021

Posted by ralphfriedly in Uncategorized

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Why is it that in the United States of America we can’t ever seem to get anything completely done? We look at this problem or that problem and wrangle about how to “make it better” – like maybe “cut child poverty” or “increase the number of people who have ‘access’ to healthcare” but never decide to wipe out child poverty completely or cover all of our citizens with health insurance as so many other nations have succeeded in doing.

Not long ago, before he went on leave, in the New York Times was a column by likely the most caring of their stable of mostly great columnists, Nick Kristoff, who eloquently and sensitively describes the problem of child poverty in the United States and how President Joe Biden’s 1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan will “cut child poverty in half”. Kristoff went on to quote Jason Furman, Harvard economist, asserting that  Biden’s bill is the the “most ambitious proposal to reduce child poverty ever proposed by an American president”. He further goes on to speculate about whether we’re able to “shrink” child poverty.

So what’s wrong with all this? While the intention is truly honorable and greatly needed, it’s the use of words and phrases like “cut in half”, “reduce” and “shrink” that concern me. We never seem to come up with a plan to get rid of child poverty once and for all. Isn’t it possible to do this in the world’s richest country? I would certainly think so. Do Democrats and Republicans both deem child poverty unacceptable? I would think that they do and therefore we need to stop beating around the edges of this problem and attack it head on.

So perhaps we should ask why child poverty exists here in the richest nation in the world? And why do we insist on referring to “child poverty”rather than “poverty”? Does child poverty exist in well-to-do or middle class families. Or can children be well off in poor families? Of course not, so let’s stop separating “child poverty” from the larger and more real problem of family poverty. Why we have poor families, why we have poverty in the first place, is that simply we do not ensure that families have enough money to live honorably and securely. It’s the never-ending curse of “low wage jobs”, where the head of a family can work full time and still be poor, or that the head of a family can work multiple jobs or both parents can work and still not earn enough to keep a roof over the family and keep food on the table, much less take care of health and education needs.

I mean, how long can we continue to kick the poverty can down the road? President Johnson waged his “War on Poverty” well over 50 years ago and so many aspects of his program certainly did “reduce” poverty. But did it rid this wealthy country of the disgrace and shame of harboring minions of poor people, homeless people and sick people? No it did not. And direct efforts to “reduce” poverty ever since them have been cumbersome and incremental efforts limited by work requirements, means testing and the like rather than direst direct financial support. Even President Biden’s much ballyhooed antipoverty efforts lately have been defined by “tax credits”, providing help for those with jobs who actually file tax returns, but little or nothing for the extremely poor who do not have any regular income and thus cannot access tax credits.

If we are serious about taking care of our children and their families, we would attack the problem of “low wage jobs” directly so that anyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford decent housing and all the other advantages that enable one to live an honorable and hopeful life. And let’s stop listening to the excuses of business owners who say that increasing employee pay would “drive them out of business”. I say too bad. Any business that cannot pay a living wage to its workers should not be in business and should relinquish its role to other entities that can provide the same service while paying its employees  reasonably.

For example, fast food companies have long protested increasing wages to a living level because they would have to raise prices of menu items. This is simply not true. In other developed countries fast food workers are paid a living wage and menu items have not skyrocketed. Apparently the fast food owner, franchisee, or corporation would simply have to be satisfied with less profit. 

This is further illustrated in another very entertaining and informative article by Nick Kristoff focusing on Denmark. 

And unfortunately we have chosen yet another incremental program to “reduce hunger” in poor families – the food stamp program or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as it is now called. So rather than ensuring that families receive enough money to live properly, we accept their poverty but lend a hand to enhance their ability to purchase food for their families. Again, why the beating around the bush, helping people to live better while staying in poverty but never really getting  ahead. SNAP’s official description underscores its incrementalist approach: “SNAPprovides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food and move towards self-sufficiency”. Oh sure, how generous.

The same incremental principle has been applied when we try to even up the playing field in terms of internet access. Since poor families often cannot afford broadband connections, rather than make sure they have enough money to purchase this essential benefit, we instead provide yet another program to assist them. This proposed $50 per month subsidy for broadband connection for poor is merely one more source of assistance for poor families that can end or be withdrawn when the other political party is in power. This is no way to end poverty or end the curse of “low wage jobs”, the main cause of poverty.

And then there is the issue of healthcare incrementalism. President Obama’s signature major legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, despite its accolades, simply increases the number of people who could afford to buy medical insurance. It has expands coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010. It did so by expanding Medicaid to cover those with low incomes, and by subsidizing private insurance for people with higher earnings. There’s those words again – “increases”, “expands” and “subsidizes”.

And since it functions through the existing jungle of corporate control of healthcare, it does so through funneling more money to healthcare corporations, either directly, in order to “cover preexisting conditions” or something similar, or indirectly, by subsidizing purchasers of healthcare insurance. And, most significant of all, it does not, will not and will never cover everyone.  As I noted in my article about Obamacare, it contains the seeds of its own destruction and ultimate demise, in that the only way it can “extend coverage” is by shelling out ever more money to insurance companies, which has to be definitely limited. There will always be “holes” in the Affordable Care Act, always be groups of people that will remain outside its coverage. Truly the only way to provide medical care to all US citizens without exception and from birth to death is through a single payer program like “Medicare for All” as so many other nations successfully provide.

And yet, despite Biden’s promise to provide a “public option” for those seeking health insurance, this effort has come to nothing. He insists that any effort to extend healthcare to more people will be done through “building on Obamacare”(there’s those incremental terms again – “extend”, “more” and “building”) This will never work since the whole objective of health insurance corporations is to increase profit, not cover all Americans. They will always be trying to limit coverage in some way or increase deductibles or maximums or copays.

And then there are other incremental programs that cover additional individuals but never everyone. One is the Children’s Health Insurance Program” or CHIP,, which was started during the Clinton administration as a halfway step to obscure the fact that Hillary Clinton’s proposed program for health insurance had miserably and spectacularly failed. Ostensibly, CHIP provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid. In most states, thus, it constitutes only yet just another incremental approach to healthcare – covering only “some” children, but not their entire families.

Okay, right now people fortunate enough to have health insurance obtain it in myriad ways – Medicaid for the indigent, Medicare for the elderly, CHIP for children who qualify, medical insurance from employers for those who have jobs and whose employers provide it. Ah, but another problem – the apparently infinite variety of programs, higher or lower copays, higher or lower maximum reimbursements, limiting who or what can provide the care, and on and on – all are related to our profit based system and incremental approach. Why can’t all Americans be covered from birth to death, like Canada does, or Norway, or Finland, or every other developed country in the world – and at a much lower cost? How amazing it would be to simply go to the doctor or hospital, present your identification, get treated and go home, knowing that all providers were fairly compensated but that profit was not part of the system. And of course, Medicare itself is an incremental program, in that it does not provide for all of the health needs of our elderly population, containing the glaring holes of no coverage for hearing, vision or dental needs. This lack is now ostensibly being addressed by a dizzying array of “Medicare Advantage” programs, all provided by for profit corporations who reap those profits from overly generous reimbursements from the government. And their vaunted coverage of hearing, vision and dental needs is woefully insufficient.

And now there is childcare incrementalism – even if the “Reconciliation Bill” goes through entirely, it will only be “narrowing the gap” between what European countries pay for childcare and what the US pays. Reliable childcare is absolutely essential in an advanced nation like ours. Yet people struggle every day, just as my wife and I did when our children were young, to find reliable and reasonably priced childcare, when both parents choose to or must work. Rather than having to seek out childcare among neighbors, friends and relatives, Europeans are able to send their children to professionally run and staffed facilities provided by the state – what a difference from the risky, varying quality here in the “richest country in the world”. And that cost to a family is heavily subsidized by the state as well. But here, even with the long shot effort of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation, which may never pass anyhow, we will only be partially crossing the chasm between what we have and should have. Again, an incrementalist approach to a serious social need.

And also consider our feeble efforts to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, even itself, though a big step, wholly insufficient to provide a decent life for its recipients. Our feckless Congress has steadily refused to raise the minimum wage and every single bill proposed or passed at the state level to do so raises it so gradually to that by the time anyone reaches $15, the effects of inflation will have rendered it already inadequate. Fifteen dollars an hour is in itself merely an incremental goal. If the present federal minimum wage of $7.25 was adjusted for inflation since its inception it would be $22 per hour now. 

And I suppose that the most important example of the curse of incrementalism is our scattershot effort to fight the existential threat of a steadily and inexorably warming climate. Yes, we have some electric cars on the road, many more solar installations than ten years ago, and a steadily increasing number of “wind farms” on the plains, mountaintops and coasts of our country, but not nearly enough to make an impact on our shameful position as the number two carbon polluter in the world. And the country that is number one, China, has rapidly become our “rival” or our “enemy”, making necessary cooperation between the two to combat climate change all but impossible. And fossil fuel companies still enjoy privileged status among the “lawmakers” that inhabit our useless Congress and thus are still largely unregulated and still, would you believe it, subsidized by the US government. And President Biden’s “Build Back Better” program contains revolutionary legislation for the climate promising to “reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2030” so is accordingly incrementalist at best. And even this incremental approach is apposed by “King Coal” Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. So unfortunately, this is the best that the world’s number two carbon emitter, the United States, can do. Michael T. Klare in a brilliant article for Tom Dispatch makes it crystal clear that for the world to save itself, China and the U.S. must unite as climate partners and lead the way for other nations to follow. If they do not, climate catastrophe is inevitable. We cannot any longer be incremental in this most important fight. 

And then of course as a nation we have to contend with covid incrementalism. Certain elements of our society cannot seem to get it through their heads that we have required vaccination for serious diseases for decades, with nary a peep from anyone save the few rabid antivaxxers who are prepared to sacrifice the health of their children on the altar of misinformation and obstinance. When I was a child and the Salk polio vaccine and later the Sabin version became  available, millions of thankful parents and children lined up to get immunized, with little concern  about its origin or manufacturer or concerns about its efficacy. And I do not remember any of the corporate Pfizer – Moderna – Johnson & Johnson wrangling and profit seeking nor any politicization of vaccines that characterize the US struggle and dysfunction with covid 19 vaccines today. And, likely most important, there were successful efforts to immunize the entire world against this dreadful crippling disease so that today isolated cases of the disease lurk in but three countries – Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Covid 19 cannot be controlled until the entire world is vaccinated. But this effort is incremental at best since our government has chosen to protect the patents and formulae of the corporations who have developed the vaccines, despite their development being financed by billions in government subsidies. Many US citizens, including myself, have longed for this “richest country in the world” to lead in immunizing everyone everywhere, just as we did with polio vaccines. But instead we have decided to allow pharmaceutical corporations to selfishly maximize profits. Pfizer has in fact become a quasi government entity all by itself – negotiating sales of its vaccines directly with governments across the world independent of any US government role.

And finally, historically we’ve used incremental means to resolve racial segregation issues – school busing to integrate schools was really beating around the edges of the issue, rather than facing it head on and resolving issues like income disparity and racism that created segregated housing in the first place. We very badly need to address racial segregation head on which would include properly educating our population about slavery, Jim Crow and lynching in this country as well as our country’s and our hemisphere’s disgraceful genocide of its native population. Correction of our nation’s terrible inequality, especially evident in its black and other minority populations, would help too. And what about reparations? This whole issue is far to large to address here in one paragraph but we need to face it and solve it as a nation. Get it done once and for all.

And one more thing. The Democrats need to hire someone like Frank Luntz to help with their messaging. Why on earth have they always called this latest bill the “Build Back Better” bill, which has all the oomph of Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together” or even more maddening and obfuscating, the “$3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Bill”. This bill contains hugely important and popular legislation that will help all Americans – like making Medicare covering vision, hearing and dental needs, establishing a universal pre-K program and a childcare program for all families, making community college free, a substantial push against climate change and much more. While some very popular provisions have already been cut, to garner more Congressional support, some better messaging would have likely had a very positive effect and the entire bill would have had a much better chance at surviving and becoming law.

Elder Statesmen

20 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by ralphfriedly in Uncategorized

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I was disturbed by the worshipful reverence implied in the smaller news item inserted into the story of President Biden’s inauguration on January 20 of this year.

Sure, most Americans were happy to see the end of the chaotic, disastrous and disgraceful presidency of Donald Trump and happy to usher in what we all hoped would be a much more deliberate, thoughtful, honest and transparent presidency. Although Joe Biden’s tenure has yet to be judged, the end of Trump’s certainly has caused a national sigh of relief.

And I assume to help make that point we were treated to a dramatically posed and videoed meeting among three of our ex-presidents: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, where we could hear them reminisce and ruminate about the “peaceful transfer of power” in which they all participated and position themselves as contrasts to the last four years. For many viewers and observers perhaps it worked. I mean, who wouldn’t look good next to Donald Trump. Whose administration would not shine when compared to the destructive wrecking crew of ne’er-do-wells who populated Trump’s cabinet – from Betsy DeVos to Scott Pruitt – all bent on destroying that which they were appointed to protect. 

But I had a problem with this video – not with the sentiment expressed by these ex presidents about the peaceful transition of power, which was quite appropriate, but with being reminded as I looked at each one and remembered their respective eight-year presidencies, of how flawed our recent presidents and their legacies have been. The reflective gathering of these three should have been not a celebration but a commiseration. All three have huge black marks on their respective administrations that will define them forever and that history will not erase.

In order – Bill Clinton and his “triangulation” strategy caused no end of misfortune for America. His “middle ground” abandonment of principles of the Democratic Party that got him elected and embrace of right wing policies to ingratiate him with the Republican Party resulted in some disastrous legislation. His crime bill, in the words of NYTimes columnist Charles Blow, “…flooded the streets with police officers and contributed to the rise of mass incarceration, which disproportionately impacts Black men and their families. It helped to drain Black communities of fathers, uncles, husbands, partners and sons….”. 

And then there was Clinton’s welfare reform bill which would “end welfare as we know it”, when he took another page from the Republican playbook by changing welfare to a block grant program for each state, inadequate to begin with, and which assured significant disparity among more and less generous states. His program also dictated onerous work requirements which presented impossible transportation burdens for poor families and, worst of all, ran out at an established point, depositing many one parent and struggling families right back into the gutter of despair and hopelessness from which they were trying to escape and where they remained. 

Then there were Clinton’s clumsy foreign policy forays, which included “Operation Infinite Reach” – the bombing of purported terrorist havens in Afghanistan and a western built pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, claimed to be manufacturing nerve gas. These attacks were violations of international law and failed to achieve anything except enhancing Osama bin Laden’s reputation and strengthening the terrorist resolve that resulted in the disaster of 9/11. Along with his ill-conceived assault in Somalia culminating in the infamous Mogadishu firefight of October 1993, our friend Bill should be forever contrite and repentant.

Another signature bill of Clinton’s presidency was the oft-touted North American Free Trade Agreement, known better as NAFTA, which accelerated the departure of  manufacturing from America to low wage countries like Mexico. Why the hollowed-out cities of Michigan and Ohio with boarded up factory buildings? NAFTA is the reason. The loss of well paid, unionized manufacturing jobs was a huge contributor to destroying the middle class and making the United States the most unequal country among OECD nations. With NAFTA the corporations, their CEO’s and their stockholders got richer and their former employees got poorer.

The corporate takeover of Medicare also began with Bill Clinton. It was during his administration that private healthcare corporations were first allowed to administer Medicare programs to seniors. First called Medicare “Choice” programs, they eventually morphed into the myriad “Medicare Advantage” programs of today, which offer “enhanced” medicare providing additional benefits like dental care, hearing and drug coverage and so on at great taxpayer cost through requiring Medicare to pay a hefty annual coverage cost to private companies, who then profit by limiting coverage (See my upcoming article on this subject).

And then, of course, Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern forever blemished the US presidency. Yes, one might argue that other presidents had their weak moments too, certainly FDR, Eisenhower and Kennedy come to mind. But Clinton’s were not tastefully hidden but blazoned in the headlines for all of us to see and feel. 

So perhaps President Clinton, standing so dramatically with those two other ex presidents, should have been apologizing to his colleagues and to the American people instead of discussing the “peaceful transition of power”.

Then there was George W. Bush, the biggest failure of all, standing in the twilight with Bill and Barack. He manipulated intelligence and initiated a catastrophic war of choice with Iraq which should be described with terms like “illegal. war crime, deception, lies, immoral, mass murder” that cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives while making the world a more dangerous place. In addition to the money, now calculated by Brown University’s Cost of War project at $1.922 trillion (averaging about $8000 for every US taxpayer) and the lives lost, estimated to be more than 300,000, we left a dreadfully unstable and still struggling Iraq. Plus our friend Mr. Bush gave the ok for “black sites” and legalization of torture, leaving a most shameful and permanent blemish on the character of our nation. Actually, the costs of Bush’s entire “War on Terror”, which would include not only Iraq, but also Afghanistan and military actions in more than 80 other countries all over the globe, and which accomplished little but further deterioration of our reputation, have tallied an astonishing cost of $6.4 trillion and 601,000 precious lives lost. Thank you, George W. Bush.

 And of course, we remember “W”’s disastrous reaction to Hurricane Katrina. It’s really hard to imagine a more detached, uncaring posture in the face of such a huge disaster, but there he was, after interrupting an already disgracefully long 27 day vacation on his Texas ranch, disdainfully viewing the deadly catastrophe from the distance and safety of Air Force One. Then, eventually on the ground and finally trying to lead, he comes out with his immortal statement to inept FEMA director Michael Brown, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”. This dismal performance as president in the face of terrible disaster will long be remembered.

And guess who privatized and deregulated the Texas power grid, severed it from those in adjacent states to prevent any federal oversight, and placed it under the control of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)? Yes, George W. Bush did all this while serving as governor of Texas, calling it “The nation’s most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation” – an extraordinarily expensive and deadly experiment, with Texas residential consumers paying ten of billions more for their power than state’s traditional utilities, most of it going into the pockets of investors, power company CEOs, and the campaign coffers of Texas Republican politicians. And we all know what happened when the changing climate sent a huge cold wave to Texas this past winter – approximately 800 people died and the the state sustained billions in property damage. Thank you for that too, George W. Bush.

So Bush, as detailed in a superb New York Magazine article the “painter”, the “artist”, is trying to launder his reputation and sanitize his legacy with his vapid portraiture. Oh yes, “inspired by Churchill”, he is painting portraits of immigrants, including fellow war criminal Henry Kissinger and marketing a  book celebrating his “artistry” with all the power he can. Why? Does he need the money? Hardly – he’s been a multimillionaire for decades for whom politics and now art have been a hobby. He’s just doing everything he can to make us forget his disastrous presidency and unfortunately we’re mostly going along with him. And George W. Bush, war criminal, had the gall to appear on BookTV being interviewed by none other than his own daughter and expounding  on his new career and book. 

Oh, and let’s not forget that like every good Republican president, “W” also cut taxes for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003 under the guise of “tax relief”, a Frank Luntz term that I illustrated in another article. So George W., paint and pontificate all you want. You will never live down the legacy of being one of the worst, most disastrous of all US presidents.

And good old President Barack Obama, now basking in the riches obtained by he and Michelle’s movie production deal with Netflix and the considerable royalties from the first volume of his presidential memoirs, should be sadly looking back at a failed presidency. Oh sure, he was a distinguished leader on the world stage, might be the most eloquent of all of our presidents, and indisputably was our first black president, but he could have done so much more, were he not locked in the embrace of neoliberal orthodoxy. His vaunted “hope and change” never materialized – we all hoped but nothing much changed. 

Surrounded by advisors recruited from the ranks of Goldman Sachs he chose Wall Street over Main Street, bailing out the very same big banks that caused the financial crisis of 2008 instead of prosecuting them and failed to help the millions who lost their sole store of wealth – their homes. Yes, President Obama refused to prosecute those who caused the crash of 2008, in contrast to the thousands of prosecutions following the savings and loan debacle of the ’80’s and ’90’s and chose instead to bail out the big banks, the real culprits, instead of common people who were losing their homes. And the stimulus finally passed to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs and livelihoods was far too small, causing the recovery to drag on for much too long. Furthermore and very important, this choice fueled an era of populist rage and resentment that infected the country and paved the way for  the election of Donald Trump.

And while all of us hoped for something better, President Obama forever doomed American medical care to be a for-profit corporate “product” by allowing the Affordable Care Act to be virtually written by the health care and pharmaceutical industries. True, it extended “affordable” healthcare to additional millions of people but at the huge cost of government subsidies to healthcare corporations. “Obamacare” – ostensibly a compromise between liberals and moderates, was in reality a giveaway to the already corporatized healthcare industry. And Biden’s much touted “enhancement” of Obamacare and the aforementioned Medicare Advantage programs have tightened corporate America’s grip on American healthcare and have made transition to a much less expensive and far more efficient single payer government run program which would cover every single person in the country from birth to death increasingly difficult and now maybe impossible.

Also, it was President Obama who, perhaps unwittingly, signed the deceptively named Ensuring Patient Access and Drug Enforcement Act, which stripped the DEA of power to staunch the flow of opioid pills outside of normal avenues of prescription and distribution, protecting drug manufacturers and their distributors and making it easier for them to get away with exacerbating the epidemic of overdoses and death. And it’s interesting to note that the bill’s most passionate advocate, Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania, was later nominated by Donald Trump to be his “drug czar”.

Plus while president our friend Barack Obama embarked on a series of ill advised and illegal executions, an example of which certainly was the much ballyhooed “capture” of Osama bin Laden, who actually was murdered extrajudicially instead of being brought back to the US to face justice. Yes, our “constitutional scholar and professor” president who campaigned against the death penalty, actually kept a “kill list” and was only too happy to execute any number of Muslims without charges or trials, some of whom were US citizens, along with dozens of innocent bystanders, who likely were deemed mere “collateral damage”.

Another shameful feature of the Obama presidency was his treatment of whistleblowers. Of course, Mr. Obama, boasted of his administration’s “transparency”, promising “a new era of open government”, but betrayed that pledge time and time again, spearheading eight Espionage Act prosecutions, more than all US administrations combined. The Obama administration’s treatment of Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, James Risen, John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling, Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Donald Sachtleben, Stephen Kim and the very latest, Daniel Hale, whose prosecution began under Obama, continued through Trump and will conclude under Biden, was shameful and contrasts shockingly with the preferential treatment of David Petraeus, guilty of the same sharing of government secrets.

When considering the aforementioned, why President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize remains a mystery. Conjecture suggests that this award was perhaps a veiled repudiation of the previous administration, or perhaps some “hope” based on Obama’s overtures to Muslim countries. But it is amazing that so many of his administration’s actions violated the honor of this recognition. Quite contradictory also, especially in view of his promises to work toward a “nuclear-free world”, which probably helped him win the Prize, was his authorization of a trillion dollar program to “modernize” the US atomic arsenal with its 5800 warheads already capable of destroying the world and everyone in it several times over. And, like presidents before him, he continued the coverup of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. In 2009, when a journalist asked him if he knew of “any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons,” Mr. Obama responded, “I don’t want to speculate”, making his efforts to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons to maintain a “nuclear free middle east” disingenuous at best.

I should add that President Obama and his pompous blowhard Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, repeatedly betrayed and damaged my precious chosen profession, public education. Obama and Duncan, both private school products, demonstrated little knowledge of public education and its important role in American democracy and displayed little awareness of the causes of its problems. They continued the detached and useless tenets of George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” involving standards, test scores, competition, and school reward and punishment, simply using different names – “School Improvement Grants” and “Race to the Top”. And both presented charter schools and “choice” as solutions to public school struggles, sucking away precious public school resources and depositing them in private pockets. 

And one more thing – as a dedicated Democrat, I was terribly upset to see President Obama, the leader of my Party, and his dedicated supporters, throw virtually all of their effort and resources into his 2012 reelection, to the detriment of national Democratic concerns. During President Obama’s eight years in office, when Democrats like me could feel some pride in a Democratic presidency, the Party lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governor seats, a net total of 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats than under any other president. Among the states lost by Democrats were Wisconsin, North Carolina, Iowa and West Virginia, all key to the victory of Donald Trump in 2016. 

And finally, the great humanitarian, President Obama, who so sensitively and eloquently reflected the grief and concern of the nation at at mass shootings in schools and churches, even singing “Amazing Grace” when he “ran out of words”, did absolutely nothing to impede Israeli land theft, settlement expansion and human rights abuses, all violations of international law, during his presidency and worse, sat by while the US funded Israeli war machine killed thousands of Palestinians during the Gaza “war” in 2014 including 551 children and 299 women, while injuring over ten thousand and orphaning more than fifteen hundred children, all the while mouthing the same tired platitude, “Israel has the right to defend itself”. Instead Mr. Obama rewarded this criminal nation by signing a 10 year, $38 billion aid MOU with Israel. This $11 million per day “tribute” to Israel has recently ballooned to $20 million per day as our politicians stumble over each other in their eagerness to “help Israel”. “

So President Obama, enough with your well honed speeches and sanctimonious and thoughtful demeanor and enough with your “presidential memoirs” which gloss over your mistakes and failures. If you really want us to forget, why not impress us by trying your hand at building homes for the poor with Habitat for Humanity like President Carter did, or maybe join Stacey Abrams knocking on doors to expand voting opportunities for poor people of color. Oh, and one more thing –  it was Obama’s EPA that approved toxic chemicals for the fracking industry, that break down into deadly “forever” poisonous compounds called PFAS which threaten people and wildlife through soil and water contamination.

Before publishing this bleak assessment of our last three presidents’ legacies, it might be only fair to consider a few of the best things to emerge from their respective administrations. Hey, it wasn’t all bad.  However, what most consider to be Bill Clinton’s major achievements – NAFTA, his crime bill and welfare reform, I have asserted to be major failures. Yet he can be proud of the first balanced Federal budget in many years. George W. Bush has been lauded for PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDs relief),  a successful humanitarian effort to combat AIDS in twelve African countries. And ironically, what’s commonly viewed as Barack Obama’s greatest achievement, the Affordable Care Act, I include above as a major failure. But he should be recognized for the DACA program, his Consumer Protection Bureau, joining the Paris Climate Accords, the Iran Nuclear deal, reaching out to Cuba and for his active support for LGBTQ rights. But, all considered, in my view the achievements of these three remarkably flawed presidents were far outweighed by their errors, mistakes and failures.

“Shared Values”

25 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by ralphfriedly in Uncategorized

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administrative detainees, AIPAC, America's staunchest ally, Camp 1391, Gideon Levy, Israelification, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian chair, Rachael Corrie, shared values, targeted killings, Tariq Abukhdeir, The Israel Project

After reading a really flimsy fluff piece in a recent New York Times by former Jerusalem Bureau chief Jodi Rudoren about Israeli-American “shared values” vis-a-vis the “cribbing” (aka “plagiarizing”) of sentences and phrases of the American Declaration of Independence to insert into Israel’s 1947 declaration, and having recently heard more nonsense from Netanyahu and Trump about “shared values”, I began thinking about those values shared between Israel and the United States. Yes, we all know them, don’t we, because they have been trumpeted for decades, in order to cultivate support for Israel. In case you’ve forgotten, here they are, directly from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) website:

“Commitment to democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion and speech and human rights are all core values shared between the United States and Israel. Both nations were founded by refugees seeking political and religious freedom. Both were forced to fight for independence against foreign powers. Both have absorbed waves of immigrants seeking political freedom and economic well-being. And both have evolved into democracies that respect the rule of law, the will of voters and the rights of minorities….Israel has an independent judicial system, which protects the rights of individuals and operates under the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Israel also features regularly scheduled elections that are free and fair and open to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race or sex.”

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Let’s think again – “rule of law” in Israel is a bit shaky and certainly depends on whether you are Israeli or Palestinian. Also, what law? Israel routinely flouts international law and thumbs its nose at United Nations resolutions. Contrary to international norms, Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its atomic program to IAEA inspections. “Freedom of religion” in a “Jewish and democratic state”? I don’t think Muslims feel all that comfortable. “Independent judicial system”? Yes, it works well for Jewish Israelis, not so well for Palestinian Israelis. “Waves of immigrants”? Not so much a “shared value” – you are welcomed to Israel if you are Jewish. So all this is tripe, nonsense, mere propaganda to garner support for Israel.

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“America’s staunchest ally” and the “only democracy in the Middle East” are cliches used constantly by the pro-Israel media to characterize this rogue nation. Frankly I don’t see much value for the US here. How has “America’s staunchest ally” supported US efforts in its ill-advised wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in fighting the Islamic State? And how democratic really is this “only democracy in the Middle East”, a state that is more an “ethnocracy” or “theocracy” than a democracy; a state that relegates its Palestinian citizens to second class status; a state that has been a serial violator of international law and human rights, and a state that has imposed apartheid on the people and the land it has occupied for fifty years. And “America’s staunchest ally” has spied upon America and stolen its secrets, has tried to influence American elections and to undermine American foreign policy, inserting its paranoid and myopic worldview into US foreign affairs. Interesting that before Israel, America had few if any enemies in the Middle East. And this “democracy” that touts freedom, has deprived the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank of their freedom for fifty years. And Israel, always crying about the “existential threat” of Hezbollah, Hamas or Iran, strives every day to obliterate what little still exists of Palestine.

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This whole concept of “shared values” between the US and Israel is a clever bit of propaganda, or “hasbara” promoted by Zionists and, interestingly, carefully laid out in a book published by the Israel Project some years ago. This book, written by star Republican marketer, Frank Luntz, contains instructions like, “Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism” and, “the language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ’freedom’, ‘security’ and ‘peace’. These four words are at the core of the American political, economic, social and cultural systems, and they should be repeated as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American”. The AIPAC statement quoted above follows these instructions quite well.

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But are there other shared values between the United States and Israel? You bet there are, but these are not often discussed because they don’t exactly place us and our “staunchest ally” in the best light. Let’s take a look at a few of the salient but rarely discussed shared values.

One of the most glaring examples of “shared values” has to be the historical removal of indigenous populations and taking their land. Appropriating the land of American Indians is a time-honored historical tradition in the United States. Along with broken treaties and systematized slaughter, was the reduction of Native Americans to uncivilized “savages” and “animals” who did not use land appropriately, i.e. for hunting and gathering instead of for agriculture like the interloping Europeans.

The parallels in the founding of Israel  are obvious. First was the propagation of the myth of “a land with no people for a people with no land” to justify the relentless theft of Palestinian land. And in a similar way, the Israeli thieves “making the desert bloom” was superior to Palestinians’ natural use of the land. Also in a similar way, Palestinians have been dehumanized and devalued. Much has been made in the media about an Israeli life being worth much more than a Palestinian life, highlighted by “prisoner swaps” like the 2011 swap of 1000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit.

Another “shared value” is “might makes right”, the reliance of both the US and Israel on militarism and brute force to resolve conflict or impose control instead of diplomacy and negotiation. When has Israel tried to negotiate with the enemies it talks about all the time? And did we ever try to negotiate with Iraq when we claimed that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction”? Did we negotiate with the Taliban when it became known that they had sheltered the terrorists responsible for 9/11? Of course not, American reliance on military action instead of negotiation has deep historic roots. Our “peace-loving” nation has a history of useless bloodshed, from the Mexican War to the Spanish-American War to Vietnam to the endless “war on terror”. And related to this, both the US and Israel share a mutual love affair with “air strikes” – cruel killing and destruction that is far removed from the eyes of the perpetrators, and quite sanitized since the devastation and loss of life is almost always limited to the victims.

Yet another related “shared value” is the fact that the US and Israel always seem to need an “enemy” against whom to fight. The crumbled Soviet Union was quickly replaced by Iraq, Iran, and now the shadowy ill-defined multiple enemies in the US’s “war on terror”. And Israel has thrived on the enmity of its Arab neighbors. But since the peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan, Iran is the focus, in spite of the fact that this country, unlike Israel, has never had expansionist ambitions and still occupies the same land area it has occupied for centuries.

Another contemporary “shared value” that goes unacknowledged is the eerie similarity of US and Israel’s practice of “targeted killings”—extrajudicial executions of “terrorist” suspects and bystanders. Once condemned by the United States— it became the signature policy of President Obama, the only president in history known to keep a “kill list”, which included some US citizens. Israel has been conducting these kinds of killings for decades and, appropriately, is now the world’s leading manufacturer of military drones. I have always thought that the “bad guys” should be captured and tried but both Israel and the US remain two of the world leaders in state sponsored murder. It is commonly acknowledged that Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet have murdered dozens of people since the 1950’s. The list is incredible and can be seen in the Wikipedia entry “List of Israeli assassinations”. The authors of “How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower” boast that Israel has earned the distinction of “the first country to master the art of targeted killings”. Some art…congratulations, Israel.

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Yet another element of the shared value of “might makes right” is a belief and practice in unprovoked aggression. The US is now conducting unilateral air strikes, acts of war really, in seven locations around the world, without actual provocation from an “enemy”. For decades Israel has routinely violated international borders and airspace with its own air strikes, whenever and for whatever reason it deems appropriate. Its 1982 invasion of Lebanon was one such act of aggression, as was its unprovoked surprise attack on Egypt and Syria which started the “Six Day War” of 1967. Of course the most egregious example of the US’s unprovoked aggression was the Iraq War. So the US and Israel are forever intertwined as partners in gross acts of aggression against other nations, all direct violations of international law.

This shared value is further reflected in the US and Israel’s military “defense” budgets. The U.S. outpaces all other nations in military expenditures. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015 and the U.S. accounted for 37 percent of this total. U.S. military expenditures are roughly the size of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. As a percentage of GDP the US military budget is fourth in the world while Israel is second, right after number one Saudi Arabia. And, both the US and Israel do their best to spread military weaponry around the world. Of course, the United States occupies the shameful position of being the world’s largest arms exporter. But Israel is swiftly catching up, earning billions each year as the world’s sixth largest arms exporter through the sale of military equipment to buyers from China and India to Colombia and Russia. And remember, the United States supports Israel’s military with 11 million dollars a day from American taxpayers. What in heaven’s name do we obtain in return for this massive investment? And how has Israel and its supporters managed to convince our government to do this?

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And of course the US and Israel share a common disdain for human rights. Just as we have populated prisons, most obviously at Guantanamo with “detainees” who are held for months and years without being charged or tried for a crime, Israel commits the same violations, holding hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as “detainees” without charge or trial. Both countries talk a good game about “human rights”, with the US constantly judging other countries’ human rights records without examining its own or that of its “staunchest ally”. There are over 7000 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, with 10 percent of these declared “administrative detainees”, held indefinitely without trial. And some American practices at the prison at Guantanamo Bay have been adopted by Israeli prisons – Israel has now authorized the force feeding of hunger-striking prisoners, really just another form of torture, not the humanitarian practice it is advertised to be.

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These two “staunch allies” also share the value of selective application of law. Both share disdain for international law. Remarkably, both Israel and the United States stand out from the rest of the world in their shared refusal to support the International Criminal Court. The ICC was established as an international court that has jurisdiction over certain international crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that are “committed by nationals of states parties or within the territory of states parties”. Member states are legally obligated to co-operate with the Court when it requires, such as in arresting and transferring indicted persons or providing access to evidence and witnesses. One might wonder what “shared values” have caused this non-support. Could it be the fact that both the US and Israel have committed war crimes and therefore have much to fear from the Court? Among other examples of this shared disregard for international law is our continuing to market outlawed “cluster” munitions for Israel to use in their periodic slaughter of civilians in Gaza, heartlessly called “mowing the lawn” by Israeli politicians.

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Israel and the United States also share an interest in torture and the various means to dehumanize and terrorize captives. The notorious “Palestinian chair” is one horrible method of torture, exposed and described in Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, “Palestine”, published in 2001, and more recently in Eric Fair’s confessional, “Consequence: A Memoir”, about his time as an interrogator during the Iraq War, especially at Abu Graib. Israeli authorities trained the US military and US contractors in how to use the “Palestinian chair” and other methods of torture including ‘hooding” prisoners. In 1997, the United Nations Committee Against Torture had concluded that hooding constitutes torture, a position it reiterated in 2004. Interesting how hooding, now forbidden by the US Army Field Manual, is still being practiced by our proxy militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are probably still using the “Palestinian chair” as well.

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There’s an additional dimension to these shared values regarding torture. Similar to the US practice of maintaining secret prisons across the world in which it tortured detainees, Israel maintains the notorious “Camp 1391” for exactly the same purposes. Inspectors from the from the Red Cross or other international organizations have never been allowed into this secret facility, not to mention the press or even members of the Knesset. But it’s there, it’s real and it employs torture. Just ask the Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab prisoners who have been incarcerated there.

Systemitized institutional and national impunity is another shared value. Both nations routinely break international law and place themselves above any responsibility. The US invades other countries, destroys and kills at will and declares itself immune to rebuke, sanction or prosecution. So does Israel. Israel routinely “investigates” the many crimes committed by the IDF (really should be called the IOF, Israel Occupation Forces) and security forces but rarely punishes with more than a slap on the wrist. Israel itself is not held accountable by the rest of the world for war crimes and violations of international law. The 2014 Israeli high tech destruction of 20,000 homes and the slaughter of over 2000 people, including 490 children in Gaza elicited but mild opprobrium from the world community.

Nobody was held accountable for the killing of 23 year old American peace activist Rachael Corrie  by an IDF bulldozer. The Israeli police officer responsible for the videotaped beating of Tariq Abukhdeir , a 16 year old Palestinian US citizen was punished with 45 days of community service. An Israeli court recently sentenced Elor Azaria, appallingly a national hero for the cold-blooded execution of Abd al-Fattah al Sharif in March after al-Sharif had already been rendered helpless by being shot and injured following an alleged attempted stabbing attack in Hebron. The murderer received 18 months in prison, one-year probation and a demotion of his military rank – “a sentence fit for a bicycle thief”, in the words of Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy – yet another instance of the systematic impunity Israel affords its personnel who kill or injure Palestinians. The United States has held no one accountable for the sadistic horrors of Abu Graib save a few lowly ranked guards, or for torture, or for lying to the country before the Iraq war. Nor, incidentally,  has our country held anyone accountable for the crimes leading up to the financial collapse of 2008.b82a81cdfd1cef748d430653c728a226

Another value shared by both the United States and Israel is hypocrisy. The US has always pontificated about its support of democracy, and Israel boasts about its “Jewish and democratic” state, yet the US has been responsible for the removal of many democratically elected heads of government, among them Salvador Allende in Chile and Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran and replacing them with dictators. And the US sides with Israel in condemnation of Hamas, the democratically elected government in Gaza, and supports Israel’s denial of any semblance of self-determination by the Palestinians in the West Bank. Big talk about human dignity and personal safety become outright lies as the US supports Israel’s blatant violation of the personal safety and dignity of Palestinians, humiliating them with hundreds of checkpoints and threatening their lives and safety with roving bands of violent armed settlers destroying crops and threatening lives. And interestingly, the US made a huge deal about Iraq violating a UN Resolution or two and proceeded to invade and wreck death and destruction in a trillion dollar war. Israel has violated dozens UN Resolutions, yet we have done nothing. Oh yes, and the Israeli Air Force just shot down some kind of drone from Gaza, trumpeting that Israeli airspace will not be violated, while, as noted above, Israel routinely violates the airspace of other nations – Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, to name just a few. And Israel, justifying its behavior to combat terrorism, hypocritically forgets its own convenient use of terrorism during its founding and blatant use of terrorism today. It might be useful to take a look at the definition of terrorism – “unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. And finally, Israel and its enablers insist that it has to “defend itself”, never defining Palestinian resistance to the occupation as Palestinians “defending themselves”.

Another shared value between Israel and the United States is a commitment to employing militarized police forces. We have witnessed this repeatedly in the US, especially obvious in the police actions in Ferguson, Missouri. How did this come about – why do our police forces more resemble the military, equipped to kill and maim, than the neighborhood police dedicated to “serve and protect” communities? This trend began during the tenure of George W. Bush’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff (also an Israeli citizen), who mandated that American police forces be trained by Israeli police teams in crowd control, counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering. Since that time, thousands of American law enforcement personnel have been trained in Israeli tactics courtesy of JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) and the ADL (Anti Defamation League).

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Also since that time, shootings of unarmed civilians have gone up 500 percent, attacks by police on legal political protests have become a scandal and huge stockpiles of ammunition and military heavy weaponry have been distributed to law enforcement groups all across America. Journalist Max Blumenthal has called this the “Israelification” of American police forces and cites violent police suppression of peaceful protests like the “Occupy…. “ movements as examples, blurring the lines among protesters, common criminals and terrorists. It is important to note that these Israeli experts have long functioned in an environment where killing civilians under cover of a rigged racist system of government has been official policy for over six decades and are trained to violate human rights on a daily basis.

Yet another shared value between Israel and the United States is the privatization of state functions, especially security and incarceration. US privatization of military and security functions has been occurring for a long time, from protection of US Embassies abroad, which used to be solely a US Marine function to the contracting with multiple private companies assisting in the Iraq War, including the notorious Blackwater. Eric Fair, whose recent book is mentioned above, conducted his activities as an employee of the private security company CACI. Privatization of government functions is conducted under the guise of saving money, usually ephemeral, but privatization does allow a government to conveniently shift blame for abuses and absolve itself from violations of international law – “a contractor did it, not the government”.

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In a similar way, the state of Israel is now privatizing many of its security functions that involve abuse of Palestinian human rights and violation of international law. Private Israeli companies like Modi’in Ezrachi and Magal Security Systems are building the barriers and running the checkpoints for much the same reason they have been employed in the US. They conduct the same repressive and cruel activities and enrich their owners. And they also participate in administering Israeli justice to “suspected terrorists” – killing them on the spot.

Another shared value between the US and Israel is a national arrogance manifested in the US in such notions as an “American exceptionalism” and Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” and in Israel as “God’s chosen people” and “God gave this land to us” (and of course, “the only democracy in the Middle East”..etc, etc). This national hubris has, especially in recent years, been readily translated into the nativism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim bigotry and racism so prevalent now in both countries, exemplified in protectionism, the construction of barriers and walls and also in strong anti-immigration and pro-deportation policies as well as, shamefully, a cruel anti-refugee bias. Regarding Israel, I have always found it quite interesting that in an age where a state’s maturity can often be measured in the quantity and quality of its pluralism, Israel is a throwback to “racial and ethnic purity”, à la Nazi Germany. Please note – Israel does not accept refugees, period….unless they’re Jewish. In 1950, Israel enacted the Law of Return, giving Jewish people the right to freely immigrate to Israel and receive Israeli citizenship while simultaneously denying indigenous Palestinians their right of return to the homes and lands from which they were exiled.

This shared value has been amplified by the ascendance of Donald Trump as the US president and his railing against immigrants and illegal “aliens” and massive push for deportation. This is quite similar to Israel’s prejudice and discrimination against “dark-skinned people” and the other non-Jewish people in their midst. Netanyahu has proposed a “Jewish Nation-State Law”, temporarily shelved, but now passed, that has officially enshrined group rights for the Jewish majority as superior to the the individual rights of minorities, making privileges for Jews and discrimination against non-Jews explicit in the country’s legal code.

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And finally, another shared value between the United States and Israel is making the rich richer and the poor poorer – income inequality. According to the 2015 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US and Israel have the worst inequality in the developed world. While the gap between rich and poor is at record levels in many of OECD’s 34 member countries, numbers one and two, the US and Israel, stood out from the rest. In the US the richest 10 percent of the population earn 16.5 times the income of the poorest 10 percent. In Israel, the richest 10 percent earn 15 times that of the poorest.

So, AIPAC and the rest of you organizations, individuals and other entities peddling this “shared values” stuff between the United States and Israel, please drop the false cliches about democracy, freedom, rule of law, peace, human rights and refugees and tell the truth about what these two countries really hold in common.

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Thank you, Jewish Voice for Peace

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  • A To-Do List for our Broken Congress January 20, 2015
  • Quitting Smoking: A Mindful Experience December 6, 2014
  • My World of Work November 8, 2014
  • Golden Rules for Living November 7, 2014
  • Tennis Anyone? September 10, 2014
  • Mirror, Mirror, on the Car August 30, 2014
  • Making Time July 23, 2014
  • Massachusetts Driving Rules July 23, 2014
  • Retirement July 18, 2014
  • Mount Evans by Motorcycle July 18, 2014
  • The Kite Contest July 14, 2014
  • More than Transportation July 7, 2014
  • Books that Influenced My Life July 1, 2014
  • The Death Penalty June 25, 2014
  • Dear Dad, June 14, 2014
  • Is There a Right Wing Conspiracy? June 10, 2014
  • Living in Vermont June 10, 2014
  • What Is a Billion? June 9, 2014
  • How to Become a Liberal May 29, 2014
  • Barbara My Sweet Sister May 29, 2014
  • A Winter Drive May 13, 2014
  • Dear President Obama, May 12, 2014
  • Ida Marie Friedly May 11, 2014
  • My Son and I May 8, 2014
  • Miracle on Monomoy May 6, 2014
  • Nicknames May 5, 2014

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