SAUDI LOBBY in Washington – NCUSAR

     

Unlike the Israelis the Saudis have no powerful grassroots lobby.  They do however have a considerable lobby made up of military-industrial corporations, high-priced behind-the-scenes agents, and for the general public a kind of rag-tag team of p.r. guys masquerading as think-tanks and academics as well as publications and journalists.

Many  of these are hired guns, a few are true-believers and die-hard Arabists who long-ago allowed personally beneficial self-deception to substitute for independent thought and principles. This little highly inbred group in Washington has very little following outside their own circles, but like the Wizard of Oz they continually keep projecting their voices in order to claim influence and receive their yearly allowances.

The incestuous groups include The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Council for the National Interest and associated IRmep, If Americans Knew, and something called the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations (NCUSAR).

This later group is headed up by a former academic who when denied tenure years ago at SAIS realized there was much money and glory in becoming a professional p.r. flack for the Saudis, and in more recent years for the Saudi-created Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Here for example are a few choice paragraphs from John Duke Anthony’s most recent faux-academic article in advance of President Obama’s upcoming visit to Riyadh (self-published and widely distributed by his own organization):

“On the negative side, many chafe at the continued unwillingness of the United States, in concert with Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries, to do whatever is necessary to bring down the Syrian regime. Only thus, many contend, could Iran’s ability to foment and sustain the civil strife in Iraq and the domestic dissension in Bahrain, other GCC countries, and beyond be weakened.”

“But in Arabia and the Gulf, the narrative of an America suspected of intending to pivot from the world’s most vital region to one of considerably less importance is cause for concern from one end of the GCC region to the other. The very idea that the GCC countries’ paramount protector for the past four decades might possibly divert its focus strikes many in the GCC region as incredulous, particularly in light of the fact that for the past 27 years the US has sent tens of thousands of armed forces to Arabia in support of regional security, defense, and stability but not once to Asia.”

BOYCOTT both Israel and Israeli/Jewish Lobby

East and West Ukraine – Russia has Vital Interests and History too!

With the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold cold war, President Gorbachev thought he had a deal with the U.S. and the West to restrain themselves!  But that wasn’t to be.  Instead the Western countries pushed into Eastern Europe and former Soviet-bloc areas and rather than suspending expanded the role of NATO and the EU…continually encroaching on Russian interests and connected areas.   Then the US using NATO pushed military forces and missiles eastward toward the borders of the new Russian Federation.

The Americans have their Monroe Doctrine as well as Manifest Destiny.   Now the “New Russia” is reasserting itself and understandably so.  Ukraine is even more critical for Russia than Syria, far more so in fact.

Just a few years ago the US and EU were pushing hard for the breakup of Sudan.  South Sudan was born as a result and is today in such agony.   Now the US and EU are insisting Ukraine, unlike Sudan, cannot break up and Russia must not assert it’s critical interests right in its own backyard.    Worse yet the US and EU have been pursuing policies, both overt and clandestine, to rip Ukraine away from Russia’s sphere of influence and push it into their own, further encircling Iran at the same time as further weakening, potentially in fact crippling, Russia in the critical Black Sea and Mediterranean areas.

As a result of US and EU policies, the likely result is now going to be a divide into East and West Ukraine.  And in this case, even if Russia should use troops and other means in East Ukraine it will have ample justification…despite all the screaming and threatening that can be expected from the West, especially the neocon supremacists.

SNOWDEN WANTS YOU!

F**king FRACKING! Gross injustice and Endangerment

The Fracking method for extracting oil and gas is making tons of money for the big vulture corporations while causing serious as-yet-uncertain long-term environmental problems and dangers.  We will all end up paying the price for this further desolation of mother earth…but that’s down the road along with global warming consequences, and thus the corporate execs don’t care!  By then they and their friends will have cashed in and unless the laws are changed be beyond reach.

The corporations are spending a fortune promoting the virtues of fracking and buying up politicians who will safeguard it.   Yet when it comes to their own personal fortunes the CEO of ExxonMoile, Rex Tillerson, now has a lawsuit pending where he cites fracking’s negative consequences in order to block  construction near his $5 million home!

Once again we are witness to gross unjust enrichment and endangerment at the hands of super corporations and their bribery intersection with the political class and big media.  It’s time to force them to cease and desist, as well as pay up!

It’s Israeli Apartheid Week 2014

This week around the world it’s the Tenth now annual ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK.

COLD WARS…

   

US v China: is this the new cold war?
Tensions...
Warnings...

Such were the headlines yesterday on the popular right-wing Drudge Report…

Syria, Ukraine, Tibet, Iran, Korea…Asia Pivot, Arms Race, Cyber Warfare, NSA/CIA…it’s a new world now of undeclared COLD WARS even while international trade and economic globilization remain vibrant.

The long-term result of American invasions, drone warfare, global spying, and American military bases throughout the world, is a determination by others — most especially Russia and China — to build up their own military forces to deter and eventually check the Americans.

We’re now on a slippery slope to future conflicts…proxy for sure, maybe more direct in the years ahead…especially if there should be an even greater economic crisis.

EGYPT’S JUNTA and AMERICAN HYPOCRISY

Egypt is now fully, even more than before, a brutal police state run by the military

The Egyptian Junta Generals thinks they are on a roll.  They seized power, gave a bunch of Mubarak-era cronies titles, changed the Constitution to further empower and enrich themselves, got the Saudis to give them billions, went to Moscow to to get more arms, and maybe most of all have further empowered the Murabak police, judges, and jailors.  The Generals, who spent a generation lavishing in rewards but trying to stay behind-the-scenes, are now fully visible and making a show of it!

The Generals have as well created more fear and repression than was even the case during the brutal Mubarak years (remember now he too was a General, we just got use to seeing him in a suit).   This reality is symbolized by not only imprisoning toppled President Morsi but putting him in a sound-proof cage so he can’t even be heard.   And this reality is further symbolized today as many journalists are being put on trial for doing their job.  Egypt is now fully, even more than before, a police state run by the military.

As for the Americans, further hypocrisy.   A bit of criticism in public now and then, but behind the scenes no serious efforts to stop the Junta, which is itself composed, by the way, of Generals all trained, schooled, vetted, and co-opted by the Americans for a generation.  As usual the Americans make a loud pretense about democracy and freedom but when it comes to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Israel of course, the Americans in the Middle East (and beyond) are backers and supporters of some of the worst dictators and repressive military regimes.

Think Differently, Dig Deeper, Question More! RT

Putin’s new Russia is having a kind of coming out party in Sochi.

Russia does have a great history, a talented people, a huge vast giant country, and a legacy of social and political problems now represented, to a considerable extent, by the challenges coming from the Pussy Riot women among other protestors.

Another of Putin’s successes is his growing RT international network — which broadcasts in Spanish and Arabic in addition to English.   The motto of RT, Russia Today, is “Think Differently, Dig Deeper, Question More”.   And indeed, not only at home but also in Europe, the Middle East, and America, RT has hired many bright, interesting, attractive, and unusually charismatic  youngish journalists who are doing just that!   As for recently adding to this mix Larry King….well…that’s another story!

Here in the U.S. in fact RT as well AlJazeera have changed the international news landscape in recent years.   This is especially the case for the best educated American elite who are indeed seeking a respite from the humdrum more-of-the same sophistry and entertainment-style quasi-news programs put on by their own commercial networks as well as PBS.

Indeed RT is able to use this slogan with such effect precisely because many Americans are fed up with the conformist, shallow, and often mindless stuff they get from their own networks, so much infiltrated by corporate sponsors and government-sponsored propaganda talking-heads.

 

 

Little Netherlands and Norway?

 

Can someone please explain?  The Netherlands is a country of dikes holding back the sea and 17 million.  Norway is a vast country with oil and just 5 million.  And yet these countries are at the top of the Olympics medals countries.

Yes Norway is way up north and cold with lots of snow, but with just half the population of New York City!  The Netherlands not even so.   Can someone please explain?

Meanwhile the Russians are putting on quite a show.  True at great cost, so much corruption, still growing Putin-era repression, and quite excessive capitalist-style gross wealth for a few while the majority struggle to get by.

The Pussy Riot women are right to be protesting, as are so many others.  So after the sure to be grand Olympics closing next week Putin should concentrate much more on improving life and freedoms for the great majority of Russians.  But then, truth be told,  the same needs to be said for those in power in Beijing and Washington and Brussels as well, the other “great powers” of our era.

DAMN THE NEW EGYPT-MOSCOW ALLIANCE!

  

Egypt’s now-Field Marshall soon President has just made his first foreign visit since his de jure military Junta takeover — to Putin’s Russia.

But that’s not what my damnation is about.

Had the Field Marshall made the visit to benefit the struggling and impoverished people of Egypt I’d be applauding that part of things even while still condemning the Junta for what it has done.

But No, the Field Marshall went to Moscow to finalize a major $2 billion arms purchase, financed mostly by the Saudis, and to get strong-man Putin’s endorsement.

So the damnation here is widespread – Egypt, Saudi, Russia all!

And just what is the Army that rules Egypt going to do with these weapons on top of the vast arsenal it already has?

Clearly the arm-chair Generals have no intention of fighting the Israelis who they are actually cooperating with more than ever to further imprison the Gazans.  You can bet much of the weapons will be used to further repress and suppress their own people; and much of the money coming from the Saudis will go into the pockets and foreign bank-accounts of the Generals who have made sure they are accountable to no one.

As for Putin, he’s boldly playing the Great Power cynical game he knows so well.

But even so Putin may not be quite as smart as he may think.  He’s just missed a major opportunity to use the Sisi/Fahmy visit to seize the initiative himself by announcing Russian help for the real well-being of the country with investments in the Egyptian economy that could at least be said to be helping the Egyptian people rather than the Junta Generals.

Kings Abdullah – Hashemite and Saud

The Jr. King Abdullah had dinner with POTUS Obama Friday at Sunnyland near Palm Spings…and more cavorting this weekend.

Obama will be going to visit and scheme again with the Sr. King Abdullah next month in Riyadh.

Remember now, these royal dictatorships go back to the post-Ottoman post-World War I era when the Brits created the key “client states” of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to help them rule over the Middle East.  Post-World War II, the Americans have increasingly taken charge.

Both Kings Abdullah work closely with the Israelis, as well as the U.S., in an increasingly desperate effort to keep the region under their joint control.   Without the Hashemite Abdullah’s great-grandfather’s scheming with Great Britain and the Jews, Israel might not have come to be.   Without the Saudi Abdullah there would not be today the military junta ruling in Egypt, the civil war raging in Syria, the jailing and repression of those seeking freedom in Bahrain, the neocon plotting to take down Iran, and so much else that is wrong with today’s Middle East.

Until the people of the Middle East region liberate themselves from these “royal”, “client regime”, quisling dictatorships, the winds of the Arab Spring will continue to be suppressed and the peoples of the Middle East will continue to greatly suffer time and time again.

TALIBAN, TALIBAN, TALIBAN

TERRIBLE AMERICAN POLICIES, TERRIBLE RESULTS

American’s longest war, Afghanistan!  And after all, talks with the same Taliban under the same leader, Mullah Omar,  are now underway.   The cost in lives has been tremendous.  The cost in treasure approaching $1 Trillion.  The cost in American credible, immeasurable great.

And Iraq!  The American military left Iraq exploding and disintegrating with an orgy of street bombs and Shia-Sunni warfare.  The overall cost in lives in the millions; in Refugees and lives destroyed even greater.  The cost in treasure, overall $2+ Trillion.  The cost in American credible, immeasurably great.

Pakistan!    Now more radicalized against America and further arming with more nukes of its own.   And after years of drone bombings and the latest high-tech killings, talks with the Pakistani branch of the Taliban are underway.

And that’s just to mention the countries the U.S. has directly invaded with brute military force.     Then there’s Syria and Libya, Egypt, Bahrain.  And of course occupied Palestine.    Terrible American policies, terrible results.

Egypt’s top leaders in Russia

Egypt’s new strong man, Field Marshall President-to-be Sisi, along with the Junta regime’s Foreign Minister Fahmy, is in Russia.  They’re not there for the Olympics.  They are there in Moscow for arms, political cover, and regional alignment shuffling.  Furthermore, at the behest of the Saudis, their primary money patron now, they will also be pressuring and enticing the Russians to back-off support for the Assad Regime in Damascus in return for help repositioning Russia as a Great Power in the Middle East region once again.   It’s an offer Putin will no doubt find interesting, fitting, and enticing.

Then, after the upcoming shame election being arranged to put General Sisi in a Presidential suit — like predecessor Generals Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak before him — may be expect the same delegation to be heading to Beijing, maybe this very Year of the Horse in fact.

FlashBack 1988! The Beginnings of Israel BDS Movement

BACK IN 1988 JEWISH PROFESSIONALS CALLED FOR ENDING THE “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” WITH ISRAEL AND LAID THE GROUNDWORK FOR TODAY’S BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS (BDS) MOVEMENT

During the years of the first Intifada in Occupied Palestine – 1987 to 1993 – a group of Jewish professionals organized as The Jewish Committee on the Middle East (JCOME) published numerous full-page magazine ads in many publications including The New York Review of Books, The Nation, LAWeekly, The Progressive, Roll Call, The Village Voice and many other publications.    Three unique video documentaries were also made and broadcast on cable TV throughout the United States – PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD, WE DARE TO SPEAK, and CHOMSKY: THE NEW WORLD ORDER).   And JCOME published a unique pamphlet by Yale University Law School Professor Charles Black titled “Let Us Rethink Our ‘Special Relationship’ With Israel”.  Lacking financial support JCOME had to suspend efforts in 1994 but the founder, Mark Bruzonsky, can be reached at (202) 495-1235 and email   JCOME@jcome.org.  The JCOME Statement of Principles (reproduced below) and copies of advertisements are available at JCOME.Org. 

TIME TO DISSOCIATE FROM ISRAEL

February 1988:    We are Americans and Jews and we come together at this time publicly to express our strong desire to see the United States take meaningful steps to dissociate our country from the policies of Israel.

For some years we have witnessed Israel increasingly deviating from political policies that we find acceptable and from moral values that we hold dear.  These developments are not the responsibility of any particular political party in Israel but rather stem in our judgment, from a tragically misguided approach toward the Arab world in which Israel is located, a racialist ideology and a growing militancy.  We can no longer condone or be associated with such Israeli behavior, nor, do we believe, should our country.

In recent years Israel has twisted away from basic commitments made at Camp David in 1978, annexed further territories, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, while continuing to expand settlements in all the occupied territories, and grotesquely invaded Lebanon, resulting in the death of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians as well as hundreds of Israelis and Americans, and the taking as hostages of many others.

Furthermore, Israeli policies and attitudes toward the Palestinian people have made it evident that only major changes in Israel’s basic posture will allow for a peaceful political settlement with the Palestinians.

Israeli complicity in Irangate and Contragate coupled with Israel’s employment of American Jews as spies against our country further underscore the growing dangers inherent in the current U.S.-Israeli relationship.  The close identification in the public mind between Israel and Jews — an equation vigorously fostered by both the Zionist movement and the American Jewish lobby which has come under its control — threatens to stigmatize Jews everywhere.

The recent acts of killings, beatings, curfews, expulsions and house arrests — all against unarmed Palestinians living in areas Israel has occupied for 20 years — further demonstrate that Israel has become a badly divided country with many unfortunate similarities to the situation that prevails in South Africa.

Our ancestors came to the United States because, as a result of their Jewishness, they were discriminated against and abused.  The European experience culminated in the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.  How tragic that in our own time the very State established by Jews in the aftermath of this evil has become a place where racialism, religious discrimination, militarism, and injustice prevail; and that Israel itself has become a pariah state within the world community.  Events taking place today are all too reminiscent of the pogroms from which our own forefathers fled two and three generations ago — but this time those in authority are Jews and the victims are Moslem and Christian Palestinians.

We believe that Israel’s course could not be maintained but for the continuing financial, political, military, and covert support of the U.S. government.  And we fear that unless firm steps of disengagement from Israel are taken now our country might get dragged into a major war for which preparations are under way.

In addition, we believe that unless the United States takes serious steps to distance itself from Israel the Israelis will mistakenly continue to think that the course they are on is one acceptable to the American people.

For all these reasons we believe the time has come to normalize the U.S. relationship with Israel.  A complete re-evaluation of what has become since 1967 the American sponsorship of Israel is required.  The unprecedented amounts of economic aid should be cut back over the next two to three years to much small levels.  Furthermore, the considerable military and intelligence assistance should also be radically reduced.

Unfortunately, during the years of the Reagan Administration much the opposite course has been followed and Israel has practically become a ward of the United States.  In this election year we urge an open debate about the serious problems and dangers which have resulted from the current structure of U.S.-Israeli relations.  Few foreign policy issues are of such importance to our country.

Consequently we urge our leading politicians to resist the widespread inhibitions from speaking up about Israel, inhibitions which result from the severe financial, political and ideological pressures often brought to bear against those who do.

We further believe that the time is overdue for negotiations between the Israeli government and the PLO, which is quite clearly the chosen representative for the great majority of Palestinians — negotiations that should quickly lead to a Palestinian State in all the occupied territories and reasonable security guarantees for all parties.  In the security guarantees we think our country should participate; but no longer in the financing and supporting of the kinds of policies Israel has been pursuing.  The continual oppression and denial of the Palestinians of their right to self-determination is an injustice which has become intolerable not only to those demonstrating for their freedom in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and throughout Israel itself.

 The citizens of Israel, of course, will ultimately choose their own country’s destiny.  But at the very least the citizens of the United States should stop financing and supporting policies that are contrary to the principles and values we hold precious as Americans and as Jews.

(Initial 18 signers of first publication on back page of THE NATION Magazine)

Professor Yigal Arens –  Computer Science Department USC – Santa Monica, CA

Mark Bruzonsky – Former Washington Associate World Jewish Congress – Washington, DC

Noam Chomsky – Institute Professor MIT – Cambridge, MA

Rabbi Susan Einbinder –  Colgate University – Hamilton, NY

Professor Herbert Hill – University of Wisconsin, Madison – Former Labor Director, NAACP – Madison, WI

Jane Hunter – Publisher, Israeli Foreign Affairs – Berkeley, CA

Jeremy Levin – Former CNN Bureau Chief and Former Hostage in Lebanon – Washington, DC

Professor John Mack – Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School – Cambridge, MA

Professor Seymour Melman – Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering, Columbia University – New York, NY

Eileen Newmark – Ph.D., Intercultural Communications – Boston, MA

Professor Don Peretz – Professor of Political Science, SUNY – Binghamton, NY

Henry Schwarzschild – American Civil Liberties Union – New York, NY

Professor Steve Schwarzschild – Professor of Philosophy and Judaic Studies, Washington University – St. Louis, MO

Saul Wechter – Retired, General Motors – San Jose, CA

Gertrude M. Welch – Interfaith Peace Coalition – San Jose, CA

Richard Walden – President, Operation California – Los Angeles, CA

Danielle Yariv – Computer Analyst – Pasadena, CA

Solomon Zeltzer – Attorney – San Jose, CA

CHINA on the March! Congratulations!

Congratulations are in order to those running the show in Beijing…and also Taipei.  For the first time since the 1949 Revolution the two Chinese countries (well…one isn’t quite a country) have just sat down together in public in a most cordial and dignified way to talk about their future together.   It’s a bold stroke by the still new Chinese President…as well as for the leaders in Taiwan.   The time has come for them to stop talking about conflict, for Taiwan to stop buying all the weapons the Americans want to sell them, and for Beijing to do more formally what it has already done in accepting a kind of a sui generis super autonomous almost-country known as Taiwan.

The Chinese have come a long way in a short time.  Their dealings with Hong Kong are different but nevertheless a successful example.   Now with such positive steps with Taiwan it’s time for a Beijing initiative with Tibet providing more autonomy and much greater cultural quasi-independence while keeping Tibet under Chinese sovereignty.  Difficult as it will be, rapprochement with the Dalai Lama, unthinkable in the past, need be so no more now that China is so strong and mature.

China has giant social and economic problems…most especially:

*  the environment which they have allowed to get out of control in their race to propel themselves forward,

*  reigning in quite excessive capitalist-style materialism, wealth-divide, and official corruption,

* taking seriously individual human rights and press freedoms, especially as their young population ventures out into the world.

At their joint meeting Beijing and Taipei did not fly any flags and certainly the cartoon below would not be put forth by either party.  But in a sense that’s just the point.  While the flags are actually flying and the great big China is dealing with the rather small once-province Island whose population is so slight in comparison, the two parties are now finding ways to go forward together, peacefully and cooperatively, one way or another.  Once again it should be said – Congratulations are in order!

Middle East Crunch time for Obama

Shortly after Obama let it be known he’s going to Saudi Arabia next month, Netanyahu let it be known he’s coming first to the U.S.  Bibi will corner Obama as Israel has done so many times before and prepare the Congress to twist Obama to their ways or block Obama if needed when the time is right.

Obama may appear in charge but that’s just illusion.   His time to deliver on Syria and Iran is fast approaching and his ability to do so is limited at best.  Furthermore those looking to trip him up are lying in wait and preparing to strike.

Then there’s Egypt, Iraq, and Bahrain — all places in turmoil with long-term thanks to the Americans.

Add to the mix Afghanistan and Pakistan, were the Taliban is riding higher than before the Americans invaded and unleashed their Drones.

So prepare for lots of political fireworks in the months ahead…and don’t be surprised if it comes to more than that!
And oh yes the “Peace Process”, one actually controlled by the Israelis through their Jewish Lobby negotiating team honchos empowered by Kerry/Obama.  Here Obama via Kerry are really doing what the Israelis and the Lobby want them to, don’t be mislead by the intensity of the political theatrics otherwise.

FREE SPEECH and TRUTHTELLING when it comes to Israel…

Get it?

OBAMA BLOWS IT AGAIN!

Obama should have been there in Sochi for the grand spectacular opening yesterday.   He should have risen to the occasion.  He should have been there smiling with the Chinese President, the U.N. Secretary-General, and Putin.  He should have shown his own people he is a Statesman as well as a President.  He should have shown the world he understands the Olympic Spirit.

Instead Obama was in the White House being interviewed by NBC and planning another trip next month to Saudi Arabia, that bastion of human rights and democracy long allied with the U.S. in the Middle East…along with Israel!   Russia is another big failure for Obama — remember all the hoopla about the “reset”?   Indeed relations with the other almost great powers — China as well as Russia — have actually considerable worsened with Obama leading to a major arms buildup with both.

We’ve reached a point in world affairs where the President of China seems more astute than that of the United States, and when the Foreign Minister of Russia speaks with more credibility and consistency than the American Secretary of State.

BEWARE J Street, Peace Now, and the Two-State Solution!

BEWARE J Street, Peace Now, and the Two-State Solution!.

OBAMA and the MIDDLE EAST

Giving Obama credit is difficult these days.  He has squandered so much of his credibility and authority with often unprincipled and contradictory policies.  He has made grand speeches but then waffled so much on following through.  He claims to have ended the Iraq war and to be ending the Afghanistan war but the reality is he has left both countries bleeding and fractured at huge cost in lives and treasure.   Furthermore he has acquiesced in the Egyptian Junta takeover and in fomenting the Syian civil war.

So far however Obama has managed not to allow hot war ignition with Syria and Iran and for that he does deserve credit — but maybe temporary.  For he has done so while greatly escalating the covert and economic wars, fueling militarism in response in Russia and China, and boxing himself down the road now when his hard-line assurances and promises will again be coming back to haunt him.

And oh yes, the so-called “Middle East Peace Process”…what a grand deception by Obama and Kerry!   They are actually the front men for the Israelis and Jewish financiers who are more desperate than ever to force the quisling regime known as the Palestinian Authority into giving away basic Palestinian rights and saving Israel from the result of its long-term policies.  In the process Obama has armed Israel more than ever — as well as the Saudis, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain…but they pay for their weapsons — and thus helped prepare the region for still more divisions, chaos, and destruction.

The Big Corporations Want to Hijack the Internet!

(From a recent article – full article and more at WashReport.com)   The battle to preserve Internet freedom got a shot in the arm this week with a dramatic demonstration by activists in front of the Federal Communications Commission.

The move sent a strong signal that the uproar over a recent federal court ruling striking down net neutrality, or the policy that Internet service providers must treat all online content equally, is far from over.

On Thursday, activists dropped over 1 million signed petitions off at an FCC meeting, demanding the agency bring back net neutrality. The petitioners were joined by a coalition of 86 companies and organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Reporters Without Borders and Reddit. The group of 86 also sent a letter to the FCC asking for a change.

“People are rightly outraged at the loss of net neutrality protections, and they’re hungry for ways to take action,” said Josh Levy, the Internet campaign director for media advocacy organization Free Press, one of the main groups that helped collect the signatures. “That’s why the coalition of groups that got a million signatures — Free Press, CREDO, ColorofChange, Avaaz, Demand Progress and many others — was able to gather them so quickly.”

Levy said that the group was able to collect the signatures in just two weeks.

GROSS CORRUPTION in EU and US

“The extent of corruption in Europe is “breathtaking” and it costs the EU economy at least 120bn euros.  The true cost of corruption was “probably much higher” than 120bn.”

Finally the Europeans are attempting to tell some of the truths about their own governments and systems.  Today’s official report about “corruption” is the first ever; and it no doubt greatly understates the already “breathtaking” findings.

But it is the Americans who have even greater forms and amounts of hidden and “legalized corruption” that tremendously distorts the will of the people and the very underpinnings of democracy.

At the heart of American corruption is the military industrial complex; the “revolving door” between Wall Street, lobbyists, and government; the corporate take-over of mass media; and the essential prostitution of the political class to big money and power.  An entire construct of corrupt means and methods has been created by the super-rich in the U.S. who use their money to elect, to buy, and to control political officials as well as the intersecting media class.

But the Americans, unlike the Europeans, have never ever officially investigated and reported on the corruptions that are so rampant in their social/political/economic system.  Meanwhile more and more this American corruption is weakening not only the very fabric of  democracy in the U.S. but the very strength and cohesion of American society.

“A time comes when silence is betrayal”

“A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

That was Martin Luther King in 1967 when he was being hounded, investigated, intimidated, and unsuccessfully discredited by the F.B.I.

Now this is the mantra of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and other courageous persons in our own time forced into exile and imprisonment and relentlessly the subjects of government defamation in our own time.

Food for thought, and recipe for action, for the rest of us!