Palestine Think Tank

Two guest posts by George Thompson, one of the most refreshing new voices I’ve encountered recently. His blog Race Rules http://racerules.wordpress.com/ has some thought-provoking posts, two of which I reprint here. Check out the site!

What is real change?

October 26, 2008

Obama has been largely successful at painting himself as the change figure in this election and the opposition as more of the same. I propose they are both more of the same but Obama slightly less of more of the same. Bush and Cheney have so mentally damaged Americans over the past eight years that Americans don’t even want real change anymore. They just want to go back to the Clinton days and start over from there. You can’t go back though. Obama may provide some relief to the middle class but he has never agreed with decreasing military spending. He is another imperialist president like the forty-three white men that came before him. So I guess he’s the forty-third and a half white man to do this and the first half of a black man. Here is what real change means to me.

1) Real change means slashing the defense budget in half or more. Obama will not do it. He wants to expand it.

2) Real changes means dismantling our over 500 military bases worldwide. Obama won’t do it.

3) Real change means mandating a federal “living” wage. Obama won’t do it.

4) Real change means a single payer universal healthcare. Obama won’t do it.

5) Real change means ending the occupation of Iraq. Obama won’t do it.

6) Real change means ending support for Israeli apartheid and genocide. Obama won’t do it.

7) Real change means getting the US off foreign oil and investing in renewable energy. Obama won’t do it.

8 ) Real change means penalizing companies that send jobs overseas. Obama won’t do it.

9) Real change means stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the country by enforcing existing laws. Obama won’t do it.

10) Real change means ending influence of lobbyists and special interest groups in Washington. Guess what? Obama won’t do it.

11) Real change means rolling back all of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Obama won’t do it.

12) Real change means decriminalizing marijuana possession. Obama won’t do it.

13) Real change means opening a real investigation into the events of 9/11. Obama definitely won’t do it.

You can’t turn to the Republicans for the answers. They won’t do any of this either. Only Ralph Nader as an independent or McKinney/Clemente running with the Green Party can and will bring the change Americans need. In other words get ready for another four years of corporate malfeasance at our expense. We fell for the okeydoke once again. I just hope Nader and McKinney have the good sense to run together on the Green Party ticket in 2012.

Obama and Israel: Joined at the hip

November 8, 2008

Obama sure didn’t waste any time turning his back on his base. He has already selected Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff designate. Who is Rahm Emanuel? Well he’s the Congressman from 5th district of Illinois which covers most of the north side of Chicago. He’s Jewish. He’s a neoliberal. He’s a Zionist. He’s a member of the conservative Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and he was part of the board at the time of the Freddie Mac debacle. He is also, not surprisingly, a huge proponent and supporter of AIPAC and the Jewish lobby. Now I knew Obama was pro-Israel but he hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and is already shilling for Israel on bended knee. This is a terrible and definitive signal. War with Iran and Pakistan are inevitable now, not as if they weren’t before.

Black people helped to elect a man who supports genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people. Their struggle is our struggle. It is the struggle of people of color against the white power structure all over the world and we have turned a deaf ear to their pleas. Why? Because the Bible, a brainwashing book of lies and myths, says that Jews are God’s chosen people. Nothing could be further from the truth. What God of righteousness would choose one people over another? The very suggestion is asinine. Neither is it any indication that God chose to deliver his message through the Jewish people. It is simply a lie but blacks believe it because it’s in the Bible, which most of us consider the word of God. Hence we question nothing done by Israel for fear of heavenly backlash. The rest of us fear being labeled an anti-Semite, a term that literally doesn’t even make sense. Obama’s win was not a victory for change. It was a victory for more of the same. Don’t believe me? Sit back and watch for four years while blacks make excuses for him.

Obama, with his selection of Emanuel, has already demonstrated that he has no intention of changing anything. If he did he would have chosen someone else. Military expansionism and US imperialism will continue unabated but Americans don’t care as long as it benefits our standard of living and reinforces our nativist, exceptionalist outlook on the rest of the world. Americans need enemies so that we can feel like our government is protecting us when in fact it’s been nothing but false flag after false flag by our government to keep us in fear of the dark. Our enemies are invented so that the military industrial complex can make a profit. There is nothing complex about that. And don’t count on an independent investigation into 9/11 either since Israel was at the helm of that. The media blackout will continue, even though most of us already know the sordid truth.