As I’ve written several times previously, I was born in the Bronx and grew up in a lower middle class, Jewish family. I, like all of my friends, was bombarded with images, both verbal and graphic, of strong white men heroically saving the world from evil both here and abroad. We good guys rode the white horses and wore the white hats. WHITE WAS GOOD!!
Being young and naive, I had no means with which to see or understand otherwise.
I was a child of WW2 and was aware of the Nazis and their attempt to rid the world of Jews. At the end of the war, I was 10 years old, I rejoiced when I heard of the Jews being given their own homeland in Israel. I felt that Jews will finally be able to avoid the centuries old anti-Semitism that plagued Western societies.
I never thought of the consequences of a Jewish state, the need to remove peoples that were living there for centuries in order to make the Zionist dream come true.
But, as luck would have it, I grew up, became more aware and more sophisticated in my perception of the political, economic, and social ramifications Zionism brought to the Palestinian people. The fact that from 1948 to the present, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, lost their means of livelihood and have been displaced, losing their land and homes and being forced to live in resettlement camps or, as I like to think of them, concentration camps.
The more I learned, the angrier I became. Zionism, and its program of a Jewish state cannot be supported without also supporting racism and genocide. It’s an oxymoron to assume that one can successfully straddle both sides of the issue.
The U.S. has no trouble supporting Israel’s racist, genocidal policies. After all, they serve as the proxy nation to carry out actions and policies to which the U.S. does not wish to be attached. This is costing taxpayers at least $4.5 billion yearly.
The U.S., sponsors of the attack on Yemen through its proxy ally, Saudi Arabia, provides the Saudis with weapons and money to conduct their military bombings. Yemen is currently a humanitarian disaster.
The U.S. has intervened in Iraq to overturn the Hussein regime, in Libya to overturn the Gaddafi regime, and is currently preparing to go into Syria to rid the country of the Assad regime. Saddam became unreliable and the U.S. wanted him out. Gaddafi was never reliable where the U.S. agenda was concerned, so they definitely wanted him out. Assad, in Syria, is also not a friend of the U.S. So, the U.S. has been working very hard and spending billions of dollars to find a way to gather public support for a coup to overthrow Assad’s government. It should be noted that in 2014, Assad was elected to office. It was the first multi-party election held in Syria.
Currently, it should be noted that The U.S. is supplying Saudi Arabia with the weapons needed to massacre the Houthis, a revolutionary force attempting to overthrow the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. It is a civil war but the U.S. encouraged the Saudis to intervene and put down the Houthi rebellion.
One may argue that not all the above mentioned governments were democratically elected and, therefore, should not be in control of their countries. After all, what the U.S. wants is to promote democracy throughout the world.
Please continue reading.
Although it is not part of the Middle East, I do not want to neglect U.S. involvement in the Ukraine where it sponsored the overthrow of a democratically elected government, friendly to Russia, in order to install a government more friendly to NATO. This, despite the fact that the new government is controlled by neo-Nazi fascists.
In 1973, Salvador Allende, democratically elected president of Chile, was overthrown in a coup sponsored and supported by . . . guess. The United States government, which had worked to create the conditions for the coup, promptly recognized the junta government of Augusto Pinochet and supported it in consolidating power.
What was Allende’s sin? He was a socialist who wished to nationalize Chile’s assets to better improve the lives of Chileans.
In 2002, the U.S. again, supported a coup against the democratically elected Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela. What was his sin? Venezuela is an oil rich country. Chavez wanted to nationalize the oil reserves so that the people of Venezuela could reap the benefits of their resources. This was a problem for U.S. oil CEOs. By the way, the coup failed when the Venezuelan military stepped in to protect Chavez.
Some might say, “but that’s the past, surely, the U.S. ,under the leadership of Barack Obama, wouldn’t engage in that kind of despicable behavior.”
The above are policies and actions which demonstrate the U.S. desire to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world.
I also quickly realized that I did not have to travel outside the U.S. to find racism, genocide, and exploitation. I only had to look right here where it has been refined beyond expectations.
The United States has its own ugly domestic history. When the Europeans arrived on the shores of this country, they quickly saw the Native Americans as a population that could be exploited and eliminated in order to secure this land for the arriving white, European folks.
Part 2 of this episode was to bring enslaved Africans to our communities to provide free labor. The reality is, although few would admit to it, that this nation was developed on the backs and labor of non-white peoples.
It became clear to me that white folks must surrender their white horses and white hats. They are not the heroes I thought they were; they are instead, major villains in the history of mankind.
As the Israelis have learned from the WW2 experience, that when you have the power, you can kick ass, the U.S. continues their war on people of color. Why? Because they can. Not only is the U.S. supporting the violence and murders sponsored by our close allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom have committed many crimes against humanity, but we continue our assault on the African-American communities here on our own “homeland.”
Despite the overwhelming publicity and the Black Lives Matter movement, we continue to see, on a daily basis, the murder of unarmed black men and women by the police. Although we attribute these occurrences to “bad apples” in the police departments, it is too widespread and frequent to merely be a result of “bad apples.” Instead, let’s see it for what it really is, a society that is rotten to the core.
Black lives are expendable and that goes beyond the cop on the beat. It is no accident that black and brown folks make up a large majority of those incarcerated for many years. Our political system, in conjunction with our judicial system has structured the legal process to ensure that prisons remain filled to capacity and filled with overwhelming numbers of non-white prisoners.
Economically, we find that capitalism works. Maybe not for everyone but for enough people to form an army, military and police, who will sacrifice you and your children’s lives to maintain the system.
Environmentally, we can only hope that science can come up with air and water purifiers that will save mankind from either poisoning himself by breathing or by drinking nature’s water. Certainly, the capitalist only looks at short term goals and the desire for as much profit as possible. Therefore, long term consequences such as climate change, rising ocean waters, increased life threatening storms are of no consequence.
Capitalism is not only threatening the continued existence of mankind, it is sanctioning the rape of the world we all live in. In this respect, the U.S. is the major villain with our predatory capitalism. We live in the “belly of the beast.” Yet, our main concerns are whether or not Barack Obama is a socialist or an alien from Kenya.
Why are we not asking instead, why, this “socialist” president is pushing Congress and the American people to support TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership)? While many economists are predicting that this trade agreement would create further damage to U.S. workers by loss of jobs to countries that pay their workers starvation wages, Obama continues to pressure Congress for support.
Why did he spend over $700 hundred billion to bail out criminal corporations and remain relatively quiet while thousands of working Americans were losing their homes due to foreclosures? That doesn’t sound like socialism. It is capitalism at its worst.
While there is no money to improve our schools, or provide universal health care for all citizens, or improve and repair the infrastructure, or provide food stamps for those in need. or provide affordable housing for those in need, this government has found the funds, our taxes, to use over 50% of the budget to travel the globe ravaging other countries.
Which countries that we have destroyed have presented a threat to U.S. security? And, that includes Iran with whom the U.S. and their cronies expressed concern regarding their nuclear program. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S. was instrumental in providing aid to Israel as it developed its own nuclear arsenal. Go figure.
Thank you for listening to my State of the Union.
GOD BLESS AMERIKA!!!
Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.
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My State of the Union—2015
Posted on August 14, 2015 by Dave Alpert
As I’ve written several times previously, I was born in the Bronx and grew up in a lower middle class, Jewish family. I, like all of my friends, was bombarded with images, both verbal and graphic, of strong white men heroically saving the world from evil both here and abroad. We good guys rode the white horses and wore the white hats. WHITE WAS GOOD!!
Being young and naive, I had no means with which to see or understand otherwise.
I was a child of WW2 and was aware of the Nazis and their attempt to rid the world of Jews. At the end of the war, I was 10 years old, I rejoiced when I heard of the Jews being given their own homeland in Israel. I felt that Jews will finally be able to avoid the centuries old anti-Semitism that plagued Western societies.
I never thought of the consequences of a Jewish state, the need to remove peoples that were living there for centuries in order to make the Zionist dream come true.
But, as luck would have it, I grew up, became more aware and more sophisticated in my perception of the political, economic, and social ramifications Zionism brought to the Palestinian people. The fact that from 1948 to the present, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, lost their means of livelihood and have been displaced, losing their land and homes and being forced to live in resettlement camps or, as I like to think of them, concentration camps.
The more I learned, the angrier I became. Zionism, and its program of a Jewish state cannot be supported without also supporting racism and genocide. It’s an oxymoron to assume that one can successfully straddle both sides of the issue.
The U.S. has no trouble supporting Israel’s racist, genocidal policies. After all, they serve as the proxy nation to carry out actions and policies to which the U.S. does not wish to be attached. This is costing taxpayers at least $4.5 billion yearly.
The U.S., sponsors of the attack on Yemen through its proxy ally, Saudi Arabia, provides the Saudis with weapons and money to conduct their military bombings. Yemen is currently a humanitarian disaster.
The U.S. has intervened in Iraq to overturn the Hussein regime, in Libya to overturn the Gaddafi regime, and is currently preparing to go into Syria to rid the country of the Assad regime. Saddam became unreliable and the U.S. wanted him out. Gaddafi was never reliable where the U.S. agenda was concerned, so they definitely wanted him out. Assad, in Syria, is also not a friend of the U.S. So, the U.S. has been working very hard and spending billions of dollars to find a way to gather public support for a coup to overthrow Assad’s government. It should be noted that in 2014, Assad was elected to office. It was the first multi-party election held in Syria.
Currently, it should be noted that The U.S. is supplying Saudi Arabia with the weapons needed to massacre the Houthis, a revolutionary force attempting to overthrow the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. It is a civil war but the U.S. encouraged the Saudis to intervene and put down the Houthi rebellion.
One may argue that not all the above mentioned governments were democratically elected and, therefore, should not be in control of their countries. After all, what the U.S. wants is to promote democracy throughout the world.
Please continue reading.
Although it is not part of the Middle East, I do not want to neglect U.S. involvement in the Ukraine where it sponsored the overthrow of a democratically elected government, friendly to Russia, in order to install a government more friendly to NATO. This, despite the fact that the new government is controlled by neo-Nazi fascists.
In 1973, Salvador Allende, democratically elected president of Chile, was overthrown in a coup sponsored and supported by . . . guess. The United States government, which had worked to create the conditions for the coup, promptly recognized the junta government of Augusto Pinochet and supported it in consolidating power.
What was Allende’s sin? He was a socialist who wished to nationalize Chile’s assets to better improve the lives of Chileans.
In 2002, the U.S. again, supported a coup against the democratically elected Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela. What was his sin? Venezuela is an oil rich country. Chavez wanted to nationalize the oil reserves so that the people of Venezuela could reap the benefits of their resources. This was a problem for U.S. oil CEOs. By the way, the coup failed when the Venezuelan military stepped in to protect Chavez.
Some might say, “but that’s the past, surely, the U.S. ,under the leadership of Barack Obama, wouldn’t engage in that kind of despicable behavior.”
The above are policies and actions which demonstrate the U.S. desire to spread freedom and democracy throughout the world.
I also quickly realized that I did not have to travel outside the U.S. to find racism, genocide, and exploitation. I only had to look right here where it has been refined beyond expectations.
The United States has its own ugly domestic history. When the Europeans arrived on the shores of this country, they quickly saw the Native Americans as a population that could be exploited and eliminated in order to secure this land for the arriving white, European folks.
Part 2 of this episode was to bring enslaved Africans to our communities to provide free labor. The reality is, although few would admit to it, that this nation was developed on the backs and labor of non-white peoples.
It became clear to me that white folks must surrender their white horses and white hats. They are not the heroes I thought they were; they are instead, major villains in the history of mankind.
As the Israelis have learned from the WW2 experience, that when you have the power, you can kick ass, the U.S. continues their war on people of color. Why? Because they can. Not only is the U.S. supporting the violence and murders sponsored by our close allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom have committed many crimes against humanity, but we continue our assault on the African-American communities here on our own “homeland.”
Despite the overwhelming publicity and the Black Lives Matter movement, we continue to see, on a daily basis, the murder of unarmed black men and women by the police. Although we attribute these occurrences to “bad apples” in the police departments, it is too widespread and frequent to merely be a result of “bad apples.” Instead, let’s see it for what it really is, a society that is rotten to the core.
Black lives are expendable and that goes beyond the cop on the beat. It is no accident that black and brown folks make up a large majority of those incarcerated for many years. Our political system, in conjunction with our judicial system has structured the legal process to ensure that prisons remain filled to capacity and filled with overwhelming numbers of non-white prisoners.
Economically, we find that capitalism works. Maybe not for everyone but for enough people to form an army, military and police, who will sacrifice you and your children’s lives to maintain the system.
Environmentally, we can only hope that science can come up with air and water purifiers that will save mankind from either poisoning himself by breathing or by drinking nature’s water. Certainly, the capitalist only looks at short term goals and the desire for as much profit as possible. Therefore, long term consequences such as climate change, rising ocean waters, increased life threatening storms are of no consequence.
Capitalism is not only threatening the continued existence of mankind, it is sanctioning the rape of the world we all live in. In this respect, the U.S. is the major villain with our predatory capitalism. We live in the “belly of the beast.” Yet, our main concerns are whether or not Barack Obama is a socialist or an alien from Kenya.
Why are we not asking instead, why, this “socialist” president is pushing Congress and the American people to support TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership)? While many economists are predicting that this trade agreement would create further damage to U.S. workers by loss of jobs to countries that pay their workers starvation wages, Obama continues to pressure Congress for support.
Why did he spend over $700 hundred billion to bail out criminal corporations and remain relatively quiet while thousands of working Americans were losing their homes due to foreclosures? That doesn’t sound like socialism. It is capitalism at its worst.
While there is no money to improve our schools, or provide universal health care for all citizens, or improve and repair the infrastructure, or provide food stamps for those in need. or provide affordable housing for those in need, this government has found the funds, our taxes, to use over 50% of the budget to travel the globe ravaging other countries.
Which countries that we have destroyed have presented a threat to U.S. security? And, that includes Iran with whom the U.S. and their cronies expressed concern regarding their nuclear program. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the U.S. was instrumental in providing aid to Israel as it developed its own nuclear arsenal. Go figure.
Thank you for listening to my State of the Union.
GOD BLESS AMERIKA!!!
Dave Alpert has masters degrees in social work, educational administration, and psychology. He spent his career working with troubled inner city adolescents.