Re: Israeli Attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Voices Raised in Protest at White House Rally,
Re: Israeli Attack on Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Compassionate people are rightly concerned about rocket attacks on the people of southern Israel. It is a valid fear that the Israeli government plays upon just as our government played on our fears after the attacks of 9-11. On the matter of this humanitarian aid flotilla, if Israel wanted to verify that no weapons were headed to Gaza they could have relied on cooperation with their ally Turkey instead of aggression on unarmed people.

The government of Israel needs the conflict with Gaza. Rockets from Gaza validate settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Just so the actions of a few Saudis were used to justify an attack on the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. These confrontations promote the increasingly unsustainable war budgets that are required by capital’s profit driven need to exploit human and natural resources. Israelis have their ‘Greater Israel’ and Americans have our ‘Capitalism,’ now perversely called ‘Freedom’ and or ‘Democracy.’

These rallying cries justify war and divert us from our humanity. Our goal as proponents of peace is to define peace as sustainable co-existence that recognizes rights of others to lives of fulfillment and recognizes that collectively we are dependent upon the natural world.

There is no difference between the overthrow of the democratic governments of Haiti and Honduras, the subjugation of the Palestinian people, and of capital’s savaging of human culture and the natural world.

[http://blog.pdamerica.org/2010/06/voices-raised-in-protest-at-white-house-rally-re-israeli-attack-on-gaza-freedom-flotilla/ ]

Regarding the recently passed Prop 14 in California

Our California legislators are because of term limits merely placeholders waiting for the next political gig. Mostly in Marin and Sonoma counties they are compassionate and liberal yet they are unwilling to do anything that will spoil their chances for another job. And that is why we will never get the budget and the revenue to support it that is necessary for working individuals and families. Our limited democracy is set up to sell commodities and support the corporations that profit from these transactions. It is not organized to support a sustainable and fulfilling life for the citizens. There is no other way to view this state, that would be the 35th most populous with the 7th or 8th largest economy, other than that the fruits of this our collective effort are unfairly distributed.

Regarding Proposition 14-the open primary ballot measure, I have heard our budget process called compromise under duress and a gun held to their heads, but the fact remains that the California Democratic Party reached out and pulled the trigger. I believe they wanted to do this for a very long time. It must be extremely frustrating not be able to fix the financial situation in this state. And any of these legislators that grew up in California must remember when college was tuition free and we had the best schools in the nation and we were rich, not perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. Or a cynic could say that the CDP was concerned by the growing progressive movement in the party combined with the deteriorating financial conditions of the majority of Californians that they needed a means of preventing the dirty hippies from spoiling the profit feast.

Regardless of their motivation the CDP choose to sell out the likes of Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee and all of the minor parties for the possibility of more moderate Republicans coming to Sacramento.