February 2015

Op-Ed: The Inherent Corruption of US-Israel Relations

A complete political perversion of diplomacy is upon us that further illustrates the underlying illogic that cements US-Israel relations.

Photo by Michael Loadenthal Flickr/creative commons

Photo by Michael Loadenthal
Flickr/creative commons

Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and the Israeli Ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer, conspired to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address both houses of Congress on March 3, just two weeks before the Israeli leader stands for re-election.

An invitation of this magnitude never goes, shouldn’t go, to a foreign leader hoping to make his bona fides for an upcoming election at home by addressing our Congress, in this case, allowing Netanyahu to undermine US leadership in nuclear disarmament talks with Iran, something Israel has objected to. Rightwing Israelis don’t want any talks about any subject between America and Iran which they view as threats to Israel’s security. And, Netanyahu at least doesn’t see the perversity of taking America’s chief podium to criticize a country where he is a guest.

House Speaker Boehner is knowingly usurping important presidential prerogatives and weakening the presidency (whomever that may be, now and the future) because foreign relations decisions (and invitations) are the exclusive purview of the executive branch, not the legislative branch, of our government. This makes Boehner (who you will remember is third in line for the presidency should anything happen to the current president and vice-president) particularly unsuited to serve our country. Boehner gives us so many self-repudiating examples of his sheer stupidity it’s hard to keep up, I know.

Jewish organizations and politicians and activists in this country have weighed in on Netanyahu’s planned address to Congress, some lobbying for a postponement to March 17, after Israeli elections, others mounting petitions to cancel it. Both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have refused to meet with Netanyahu during his US visit. Netanyahu’s opposing candidates back home in Israel have questioned even the legality of Netanyahu’s American address this close to the election, which is not guaranteed to go his way. A boycott by some or all members of Congress is being planned. No doubt plans are underway for March 3 street protests and other campaigns objecting to this ugly expression of the congenital dysfunction of US-Israel relations.

We have to understand history to fully comprehend how we’ve arrived at this awful point.

Once Israel and the US (and England) were able to finesse this blatant land grab based on questionable ancient principles of imminent domain and general guilt-tripping after World War II, the only hope, the only hope, for success in this region would have been the emergence of a western state that was totally dedicated to fostering regional and world peace, including the integration and uplifting of the existing population in Palestine. We all know that never happened. Instead, the superiority complex of early and current zionists has done nothing but challenge, irritate, and disappear anyone in the way of their complete domination of the region. With America and Britain’s blessing, Israel conquered Palestine, and the massacres and ethnic cleansing persist to this day.

We can’t fail to mention here that christian fundamentalists in and out of political power blindly call for the supremacy of Israel at all costs to preserve the landing strip for Jesus’s return to earth. This zealotry, on a par with zionist zealotry, undergirds America’s unquestioned love of Israel and support for its actions, no matter how heinous. The reality of the here and now and what’s best for the future are superseded by the politicization and prioritizing of these highly personal religious beliefs on the part of our elected leaders.

As we have written before, the jewish people worldwide, including Israel, and the American people, must take a step back and consider the roots of the Israel disaster and the hatred of Americans throughout Middle East it has engendered.

Yesterday, L. Michael Hager at Truthout, offered a thoughtful review of Alison Weir‘s new book, Against Our Better Judgment: The hidden history of how the US was used to create Israel (CreateSpace Publishing), shedding more light on just how deep this US-Israeli conspiracy to defraud the world goes. The full review and the book are both worth a full read, as is Ms. Weir’s website, If America Knew.

Zionist organizations established in the 1930s and ’40s lobbied President Harry Truman to recognize the state of Israel despite strong objections by Middle East experts. Loy Henderson of the State Department warned that the UN partition plan would “guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future.” Both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA echoed that view. (Hager on Weir, Truthout)

Did you know that Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, two US Supreme Court Justices at the time of the formation of modern Israel after World War II, were secret zionist supporters who led the manipulation of American and British lawmakers to support their efforts? As activists and members of the public there can be no end to our excavation of US-Israel relations because they have upended and are upending half the world, presenting one of the greatest obstacles to world peace.

Today, the US funds the Israeli military with over $3 billion aimed at oppressing Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is your tax dollars that support this aggression and the deaths of thousands. That’s on you. What are you going to do about it?

As citizens of our war-torn world we must reckon with how and why the world has been hurt by Israel’s actions and the continued culpability of America in destabilizing the region through its unwavering, and chronically unquestioning, support of Israel’s 60-year reign of terror.

When will we break this insane and self-destructive love affair with Israel, and stand up for the rights of Palestinians? Seek out websites and read books like Weir’s to educate yourself. Talk to your friends and families about this pressing issue. Join or otherwise support organizations who are working each day to accomplish this goal. Get the blood off your hands.

Related:
Israel’s Messy Package, Part 1 and Part 2
Professor Walt Helps Explain America’s Bankrupt Israeli Policy

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

 

 

The Sexual Freedom Project: You Need To Explore

Scheyla knows about healthy sexual relationships. No rules. America differs from the rest of the world when it comes to views on sexual freedom. Too judgmental.

Are you burdened by too many rules when it comes to sex? Are Americans more uptight and behind the times?

Send us opinions, comment or send us your own video, essay, poem, a favorite visual image or even to put your original artwork on our platform. You’ll get a free VenusPlusX t-shirt as a thank you.

More videos.

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What Do Sex and Gender have to do with Net Neutrality and Climate Change?

Garry Knight Climate March in London September 21, 2014 Flickr/creative commons

Garry Knight
Climate March in London
September 21, 2014
Flickr/creative commons

I have often been asked why VenusPlusX, and its mission to help bring about to the coming New Age of Sexual Freedom, has been so concerned in the last couple of years with the two issues of Climate Change and Net Neutrality. Some of my friends asked me to explain what these issues have to do sex, after all.

Dan and I set out to help change the world. Maybe you did or will, also. Each of us can envision a better future world, free from racism, poverty, and militarism and the constant interference by the overreach of governments and religious hierarchies and the greedy exploitation by corporate elitists. We chose the New Age of Sexual Freedom to connote that lofty goal, the day when respect for personal autonomy and bodily integrity will at last realized. That future we are co-envisioning is real: what is old and useless will be gone; what was old but useful will persist because it has value; and, new and humane ways of doing things emerge to replace all of the inhumane and coercive systems that enslave all of us but a few.

The work of rescuing civilization from those who would corrupt it proceeds by setting priorities. A long time ago, I appealed to my fellow social and economic justice activists to reserve at lease some of their time to advocate for a strong worldwide response to climate change. But will that be enough?

Climate change deniers like to call themselves climate change skeptics to make you think they are capable of absorbing new information when they have made themselves mentally unable to do that. These annoying deniers are trying to get in the way of taking immediate and historic action. The number of deniers in power to interfere may be high or low but that doesn’t change the fact that the effects of climate change are already upon us, and the urgency is increasing expodentially.

The ravages of climate change and our ability through a free and open Internet to respond to this crisis, are inexorably linked. Climate change is not just threatening our very existence, the very ground on which you now stand, it is rising quickly with some dramatic outcomes (mass migrations, violent weather, rising sea levels and salinization destroying water sources, etc.). When will these outcomes get the attention of those  going through each day blissfully unaware of this world emergency? When will these outcomes directly affect you and your family? Or have they already?

Improvement in all other areas of social and economic justice will depend on our success in responding to climate change, starting with fostering new ways of getting energy without using fossil fuels. In short, we need the Internet to accomplish everything.

You can see more about Net Neutrality and Climate Change, here and here. Also, here is a good summary of the issues, just out today.

BREAKING: According to tonight’s Wall Street Journal, the Federal Trade Commission that protects and regulates utilities like the Internet seem poised to do the right thing. We may be able to celebrate a huge victory after fighting so hard for Net Neutrality.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to fundamentally change the way it oversees high-speed Internet service, proposing to regulate it as a public utility.

Chairman Tom Wheeler is reaching for a significant expansion of the agency’s authority to regulate broadband providers, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The move would fully embrace the principle known as net neutrality, and if enacted, would bring a new definition to the economics of the Internet industry: Rather than regulating broadband firms lightly, as has been its practice so far, the FCC would treat them like telecommunications companies and subject them to more intrusive regulation, especially in areas relating to how they manage traffic on their networks.

A central element would be a ban on broadband providers blocking, slowing down or speeding up specific websites in exchange for payment, these people say. Supporters of the FCC’s position say allowing some websites to pay for faster access to consumers would put startups and smaller companies at a disadvantage.

The proposal, expected to be unveiled by the FCC on Thursday, is a victory for a host of Silicon Valley firms and liberal activists who have championed it. Many of these companies lobbied the White House seeking such an outcome, and were rewarded in November when President Barack Obama announced his support for “the strongest possible” rules for net neutrality, the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

If we have the Internet and the ability to communicate rapidly across all sectors in the world, we will have a fighting chance in meeting the tremendous security challenges presented by climate change, and change the world in the process.

 

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One Word To Legalize Prostitution

The desire for love, for touch, for compassion, and for companionship and the improvement of physical health doesn’t have and shouldn’t have any boundaries or interference by governments or religions because our erotic senses are foundational to our connection with others and the cosmic technology around us.

The above is an excerpt of a post I wrote in June, entitled, “Voluntary sex work is destined to evolve into a legitimate Sexual Healing Industry.”

flickr/creative commons

flickr/creative commons

As organizations make way for this discussion, some having worked on legalizing prostitution for more than a decade, I offer the words, “sexual healing” to substitute for the words, “prostitution” and “sex work.” It’s a business like any other business. As long as it’s entirely voluntary, it can provide revenue to people who choose it as one would choose any other job, and healing for so many people in need.

Sexual healing more aptly describes what these exchanges are about, paying for something we might have wished we got for free but otherwise need as much as the next person. By focusing on the value inherent in the exchange in recognition of the fact that this is a matter of healing as much as anything else, we change the dynamics of the discussion, and bring this activity out of the shadows, and help focus more on the unnecessary criminalization of it.

“Hey, I’ll be home late tonight because I am going to my sexual healing therapist after yoga” should be the norm. The sexual healing industry shall become just as benign as any other therapy or activity. As previously asserted, “Crime, sex trafficking, and financial exploitation accompany sex work only because it has always been criminalized.

A realignment of this entire discussion is long overdue. What do you think?