Global

My rewrite of the famous quote by Lord Palmerston regarding “interests” to have it reflect the reality of Israel and its powerful friends would go something like this: “I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that Israel is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual friend of the United States and of enlightened western values. By design, Israel has no eternal allies. Its interests are indeed perpetual but center on its own success at aggressively portraying itself always as the victim while also advancing its own tribal interests.” I admittedly tend to think often about the enemy we of the western Christian tradition have been nurturing at our breast for decades in a spirit of tolerance, a viper that is only setting out to corrupt and then destroy us, manifest particularly at this time of year, when the life and death of Jesus Christ ought to be rightly celebrated. Alas, in today’s Israel what is truly remarkable is the government’s open suppression of Christian identity and worship without any complaint coming from Washington or from the other nominally Christian nations of Europe.

An America dying in dictatorship is fraught with horror, denial, angst.

 Countless Americans now live in terror of the totalitarian state coming at us full bore.  

 As a people, we’ve flirted with homegrown fascism in our literature, arts and imagination.  But we’ve only briefly confronted it in real time.

 Obviously, it sucks.  

 But on a karmic level, based on what we have done to other peoples and nations, don’t we deserve it?  

 And won’t this Trumpian nightmare force us to confront the faults that have powered his rise?

 America’s core freedoms have been a long term assumption.

 Based on gender, sexual orientation, class, race, involuntary servitude, religion, national origin, etc, for millions that freedom has been a cruel illusion.

 But in the larger flow of human history, we inherited from Indigenous America a unique sense of liberty.  Few North American tribes were authoritarian in nature.  

From Gulf of America to mass expulsion of “illegals” (people of color) to continuing genocidal complicity in Gaza to whatever the daily news brings us , , , welcome to Trump America! Welcome to the small-minded, white nation so many long for, free once again from those large, inconvenient values – e.g., the Declaration of Independence – that keep disrupting the way things are supposed to be.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent visit to Washington was no ordinary trip. The consensus among Israeli analysts, barring a few remaining loyalists, is that Netanyahu was not invited but, rather, summoned by US President Donald Trump.

 All evidence supports this assertion. Netanyahu rarely travels to the US without extensive Israeli media fanfare, leveraging his touted relationships with various US administrations as a "hasbara" opportunity to reinforce his image as Israel's strongman.

Medical specialist DR. NANCY NIPARKO opens GREEP Zoom #220 with a direct quote from Donald Trump and a diagnostic prognosis.

Financial organizer JERRY ASHTON tells us his organizing has helped retire $45 billion in medical debt for more than 5 million people, including thousands of veterans, many of whom have thus avoided suicide.

Poet Laureate MIMI GERMAN tells us of HEIDI STRANGE-SKY LAMBERT,  who was duly elected mayor of Waldport, Oregon, only to be forcefully removed by the bad bully she was duly elected to remove as mayor.  Heidi’s amazing story of being bullied out of the mayor’s office is going global.

The story of Elon Musk’s pro-apartheid parents follows in sequence with our discussion of the rise of Trumpian fascism.

Long-time activist DOROTHY REIK expresses her intense dismay that the LA Dodgers went to see Trump in the White House, and calls for a general strike.

Having attended the Bernie/AOC rally in Los Angeles, MYLA RESON also references Trump’s desire to have “home growns” shipped to death camps in El Salvador.