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Wouldn’t it be nice if this is what Obama actually said? Quotes taken from the Counterpunch article by Uri Avnery
“No nation, great or small, can prosper for long without peace. War is the curse of mankind. It coarsens our spirit, consumes our resources, spreads death and destruction. In our time, with the development of ever more deadly means of mass destruction, war threatens our very existence.
Yet there seems to be among you a curious aversion to peace. Peacemakers are denounced as traitors or enemies. Even I have been termed a “Destroyer of Israel” because of my efforts at the beginning of my first term, to bring about peace between you and your neighbors.
I am told that in your recent election campaign, all parties studiously avoided the word “peace”. That sounds incredible to me. You need peace, perhaps more than any other people on earth.
I am also told that most Israelis, while longing for peace, strongly believe that “Peace is Impossible”. Peace is never impossible, if good men and women earnestly strive for it.
[…]
I did not come here to try and impose a peace plan on you.
Peace should not be imposed. It must flow from the heart. It must be approved by the mind.
Let me share with you, however, a few things that seem to me self-evident:
Peace must be based on what is commonly called the “two-state solution”. Two states for two peoples, for the Israelis and for the Palestinians.
It is not only the best solution – it is the only solution.
Those who bandy about other “solutions” are deluding themselves. There is no other solution.
There must be a Palestinian state, side by side with Israel. Your fathers and mothers were content with nothing less than a state of their own, and the Palestinians will not settle for anything less either. Freedom and independence under their own flag is the right of all human beings. You should be the first to understand that.
The State of Palestine must include all the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Any changes to the borders must be agreed between the two sides, and be of equal extent.
Jerusalem, this wonderful old city where we are meeting now, and which fills me with excitement, must be shared by the two peoples. What is Arab should be the capital of Palestine, what is Jewish should be the capital of Israel, recognized at long last by all.
The security of Israel must be safeguarded and guaranteed by the world, especially by the United States of America. And so should the security of Palestine.
Obviously, the millions of Palestinian refugees cannot return to Israel. Justice cannot be restored by imposing a new injustice on the present inhabitants. But we must make a great international effort to compensate the refugees generously, and at least a symbolic number should be allowed to exercise their Right of Return.
These peace terms have been lying on the table for a long time. The time has come – indeed, the time is long overdue – to turn them into a permanent peace treaty. The other Arab nations, whose commendable peace plan has also been lying on the table for many years, should be welcomed as partners in this effort.”
[…]
The Western press is/was conspicuously quiet when Hugo Chavez died. Our press is always mute when it comes to giving attention to official enemies or other successful political systems. Here is an excerpt from Alter.net about Chavez and some of his achievements.
“The regional blocs he worked to create fostered south-to-south economic and political alliances, provided a check to US military power in the region, and encouraged the leftist politics and economic policies of presidents across Latin America.
Beyond this regional influence, some of Chávez’s greatest legacies are not in the presidential palace, but in the streets, factories and neighborhoods of Venezuela, among the activists, workers and neighbors who have built the Bolivarian Revolution from the bottom up.
From communal councils to worker-run factories, Venezuela is the site of the some of the most sophisticated and successful experiments in direct democracy, socialism and worker-control in the world. While Chávez was a key figure in the development of many of these projects and initiatives, it is the Venezuelan people that brought them to life and will keep them alive after his death. Many of these programs are characterized not by top-down, bureaucratic state policies, or government funding handed out to create electoral support. They are the projects of people using the Bolivarian Revolution as a grassroots tool.
Since taking office in 1999 Chávez used his mandate as a leader, and the nation’s oil wealth, to create programs that provide free education, dental and health clinics, land and housing reform, government-subsidized supermarkets, and hundreds of thousands of business cooperatives. In Venezuela, where much of the population lives below the poverty line, these programs have had an enormous impact. Other government initiatives have helped spur on activism from below, self-governance at a local level, and direct democracy in political decision-making and funding.”
I recommend reading the full article.
I’m starting to like CounterPunch more and more. Go read the full article at their site as it is insightful and though provoking.
[…]
“As part of the national mythology many Americans, and likely nearly all liberals and progressives, accept the premise that policies designed to boost the fortunes of the already wealthy might be misdirected, but not outright destructive to their interests. After four years of unwavering support for America’s plutocrats and malignant acts toward their economic victims in every actual administration policy—witness his continuing call to cut social insurance programs while 20 million people remain un and under-employed as corporate profits and financial markets soar, Mr. Obama’s faithful retain the belief he is working in ‘their’ interest. In contrast, Mr. Chavez faced a ruling elite in Venezuela with a long history of taking all of the social resources they could get away with taking and there was never the pretense that allowing oligarchs (and / or the U.S.) to put social wealth in their own pockets benefited ‘everyone.’ Put another way, Mr. Chavez effectively articulated this point to those to whom it wasn’t already clear.
Venezuela’s oil wealth may have made this point more clearly visible, but no more true than it is in the U.S. today. Nature didn’t give Barack Obama the ‘right’ to murder U.S. citizens (or anyone else) without trial or evidence—a policy conspicuously against the interests of all who lack the social power to resist it. This point is likely well understood by those who have historically been on the receiving end of coercive (captive) state power—people of color and various permutations of the poor and dispossessed. The economic elite who have so benefited from Mr. Obama’s policies clearly don’t see themselves and their families as potential targets of the state’s newly ‘legitimated’ right to murder. To the extent economic class provides the dividing line between the giving and receiving ends of this power, the relation between it and wealth concentration is made visible. And it is this very line Mr. Obama has helped to so clearly demarcate.”
[…]
Horizontal hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” is fighting with coal mining for the title of worst possible method of resource extraction. Fracking ruins the environment and kills people. It is profitable at the moment though, so you can guess why it is so darned popular. Plus, in the US, people are desperate to feed their families and will take the dangerous jobs to make ends meet. Walter Brasch from Counterpunch writes about the consequences of fracking in his article titled “Life and Death in the Frack Zone”.
“José Lara just wanted a job.
A company working in the natural gas fields needed a man to power wash wastewater tanks.
Clean off the debris. Make them shining again.
And so José Lara became a power washer for the Rain for Rent Co.
“The chemicals, the smell was so bad. Once I got out, I couldn’t stop throwing up. I couldn’t even talk,” Lara said in his deposition, translated from Spanish.
The company that had hired him didn’t provide him a respirator or protective clothing. That’s not unusual in the natural gas fields.
José Lara did his job until he no longer could work.
At the age of 42, he died from pancreatic and liver cancer.”
For capitalism to work, a desperate exploitable class of people is needed. The fracking industry and exploitation were made for each other. But more on exploitation later, as the terribly toxic teat of fracking has much more to offer in the form of damage to human beings and the environment.
“Of the 750 chemicals that can be used in the fracking process, more than 650 of them are toxic or carcinogens, according to a report filed with the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2011. Several public health studies reveal that homeowners living near fracked wells show higher levels of acute illnesses than homeowners living outside the “Sacrifice Zone,” as the energy industry calls it.”
Here is a hint, when your industry’s nomenclature includes terminology like “Sacrifice Zone” its probably not a good industry. And what makes a bad industry worse? No unions. Unions are major drags on profitability, and thus unsurprisingly have little to no representation in the Fracking industry.
“The drivers, and most of the industry, are non-union or are hired as independent contractors with no benefits. The billion dollar corporations like it that way. It means there are no worker safety committees. No workplace regulations monitored by the workers. And if a worker complains about a safety or health violation, there’s no grievance procedure. Hire them fast. Fire them faster.
No matter how much propaganda the industry spills out about its safety record and how it cares about its workers, the reality is that working for a company that fracks the earth is about as risky as it gets for worker health and safety.”
But hey, its all okay, because the right class of people are getting richer and the right class of people are getting cancer and dying young.
“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice … you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.” — George Carlin
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