Columnist

Seven million jobs vanish from the economy in two years, most never to return without a multi-trillion dollar public works program. American leadership stresses  market profiteering as a solution to climate change, while more scientists see it as the source of a problem so critical it needs immediate action.

The slaughter in Iraq and Afghanistan has lasted longer than the 20th century world wars and now spreads to Pakistan, destroying more lives and draining more trillions from a nearly bankrupt United States. Tensions grow among stressed-out citizens, including some of what passes for their political leadership. So what should most concern us?

Iran?

We are continuously warned of the ominous threat represented by this nation said to be secretly preparing to annihilate all life on earth, or at least its most perennially menaced tribe. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is supposedly out to exterminate Jews with nuclear weapons that do not exist. They certainly exist in Israel, but are never mentioned in our “don’t ask don’t tell” policy towards the Jewish apartheid  state.

With 70 million people, Iran spends some $7 billion annually on its military. Israel spends double that amount, with one-tenth that population. The United States spends $600 billion, or 85 times more than Iran. Obviously, Israel and the United States are pacifist nations while Iran is a military monster. Also, atheists wrote the Bible and pimps believe in free love.

Given the hysterical ravings of corporate puppets posing as our government and then repeated by their media stenographers, we can be forgiven for consuming intellectual garbage and believing it is informational health food.

America’s Israeli lobby has been hysterically demonizing Ahmadinejad and Iran for years now. Most recently, after thousands of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) minions lobbied for it, Congress (America’s, not Israel’s) approved action authorizing government divestiture from companies invested in Iran’s petroleum and gas sectors.

Then the Secretary of State (America’s not Israel’s) argued for a “diplomatic” approach so “we gain credibility and influence … to make a sanctions regime as tight and crippling as we would want it to be.”

Why should we  “cripple” Iran, which has done nothing to us while suffering American meddling in its political process for generations? It dates back to the assumption of power by the Islamic revolution which overthrew an American-created despot. 

It became worse when Ahmadinejad hosted an international conference on the Holocaust with some participants who would be imprisoned in their own nations for merely suggesting a critical view of a historic event. Since then the hatred for him, the distortions of his public comments and the charge he was embarked upon the annihilation of the Jewish people has become a dementia with the potential of plunging  the entire world into unimaginable horror. This terrible threat needs to be dealt with by rational leadership, if any still exists. There is reason for doubt.

The president who supposedly represents change speaks out of both sides of his mouth, making occasional statements of reason to attempt balance with the usually irrational, but the possibility of lunatic action by other leaders still looms.

Most of the world can see through the blatant lies and hysterical suppositions of those who claim imminent extermination if Iran is not destroyed, but it is more difficult to overcome conscious control exercised here by the lobby and its employees in United States government and media.

While some confused and disoriented Americans are screaming over alleged socialist policies taking their hard-earned money, a minority-ruled government is moving  toward stealing far more than some angry family’s Christmas club fund.

As more of our people suffer joblessness, unpayable debt, unaffordable healthcare and sink into poverty, our heads are filled with gibberish about a threat from nonexistent Iranian weapons.

We should remember the charges lodged against Iraq by the same political forces that are trying to get us into another murderous fiasco. They clamor for more blood to avoid what they devoutly believe is an eternal assault on Jews which seems to date back to a time even before there were Jews.

Some compare the situation to Vietnam in that we get more deeply into a war that is impossible to win, as though its immorality doesn’t matter and only victory assumes importance. But even without moral consideration essential in our immoral system, the wastefully brutal madness of conducting war while our nation suffers crippling social problems shows deteriorating ability of leaders to understand material reality. It calls for a genuine democratic intervention, something that presently seems beyond American capacity.

What is to be done when a war-making president receives a Nobel Peace Prize,  and this after condemning a report which called Israel’s atrocity in Gaza exactly what it was? When media outlets purvey such disinformation that much of the public is reduced to believing socialists rule the United States? 

An individual in our condition would be sedated and put in a padded cell but our problem is social. Despite our cultural shaping as isolated individuals, we need to create democratic social action to reverse the process by which we live, but will not be able to survive if it continues.

A spineless president who bends to minority power is a problem but could become a solution if democracy creates real majority control. Obama will follow orders given by power, which is why he obeys the war making class. If there is to be peace and a better world, real democracy needs a wake up call among the people. 

An aroused public needs to provide a choice that reflects majority values and interests or minorities will not only continue ruling Obama, but make things much worse than they are now. Is that possible? Don’t ask, just make it impossible.

Published in The Independent Monitor November 2009 issue.

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 President Barack Obama’s first call in coming to office was to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He then made an epoch speech to the Arab and Muslim world to repair the damage caused by his right-wing and narrow-minded predecessor President George W. Bush.

Obama has pushed the Israelis to force them to accept peace based on returning Arab lands, even though the Israelis have surrounded the wagons and have allowed Israel’s most racist elected official, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to become their spokesman. In fact, Israel’s Lieberman is the new face of hate in the world.

He is shifting from the illegal American war and occupation in Iraq to the genuine fight against terrorism and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Obama has vowed to the American people that despite this country having wasted hundreds of billions on politically-motivated wars driven by oil money greed, he will fight to make their own country a place where every American will be guaranteed the right to adequate healthcare, something most Americans now lack.

You don’t even need to read the announcement from the Nobel Committee explaining why they have given this year’s Peace Prize to President Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama is more than just a president seeking justice. His name has come to symbolize a movement of change. Change from a past driven by racist bigotry and hatred to a future of justice where the Rule of Law actually has relevance, and justice is based on issues of principle and fairness, not on partisan political influence.

Israel is not just a “Jewish state” in Obama’s eyes, but a nation that must also abide by the rule of law. Hypocrisy has no place in Obama’s administration, which is why his words have placed special notice on Israel which has more nuclear weapons than any other power outside of the United States and Russia. And yet Israel refuses, like Iran, to abide by the international rules seeking to limit and monitor and inspect nuclear weapons.

Although Obama has not achieved any of his mighty goals, the fact that he has set them is what earns him the special honor. It takes a real courageous man in this world to stand up to the forces of hatred and bias to advocate for fairness for all.

Obama’s policies may or may not achieve their stated goals, but they have already changed the dynamics of one important region of the world in the Middle East.

The Nobel Peace Prize will put a special pressure on Israel to stop pretending that it supports peace. It throws cold water on the face of Israel’s arrogant and reticent society that it cannot pretend to seek peace and embrace politics and politics of racism, apartheid, bigotry and war.

Israel cannot pretend to support peace and continue to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem and imprison 1.4 million civilians in the world’s largest and most oppressive prison system called the Gaza Strip.

Israel cannot claim the right of defense when it is in offense against justice, the rule of law and peace and it cannot hide behind lies it perpetrated through the manipulation of a friendly international media to assert that Hamas started the November 2008 war.

In fact, everyone knows that Israel started that war for one reason, to exact punishment on Hamas before Obama could be sworn in as president.

For the first time in world history, the facts are clear and all of the crimes in this world have been placed together shoulder-to-shoulder. Israel’s phony claims of being the victim when it is in fact the aggressor and oppressor are exposed.

Obama is what the late great President John F. Kennedy is said to have been but could never become. He is the light of hope that might open the door to a world that is genuinely at peace and where all men and women are created equally and where the concerns of the poor are as important as the concerns of the wealthy.

As an American and a Palestinian Arab Christian, I am proud of this year’s choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in a way, I feel a special part in that award as if the peace prize has been awarded not to just one man, but to an entire world of people who have not completely given up on hope.

 Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talks how host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.

Published in The Independent Monitor November 2009 issue.

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 President Barack Obama’s first call in coming to office was to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He then made an epoch speech to the Arab and Muslim world to repair the damage caused by his right-wing and narrow-minded predecessor President George W. Bush.

Obama has pushed the Israelis to force them to accept peace based on returning Arab lands, even though the Israelis have surrounded the wagons and have allowed Israel’s most racist elected official, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to become their spokesman. In fact, Israel’s Lieberman is the new face of hate in the world.

He is shifting from the illegal American war and occupation in Iraq to the genuine fight against terrorism and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Obama has vowed to the American people that despite this country having wasted hundreds of billions on politically-motivated wars driven by oil money greed, he will fight to make their own country a place where every American will be guaranteed the right to adequate healthcare, something most Americans now lack.

You don’t even need to read the announcement from the Nobel Committee explaining why they have given this year’s Peace Prize to President Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama is more than just a president seeking justice. His name has come to symbolize a movement of change. Change from a past driven by racist bigotry and hatred to a future of justice where the Rule of Law actually has relevance, and justice is based on issues of principle and fairness, not on partisan political influence.

Israel is not just a “Jewish state” in Obama’s eyes, but a nation that must also abide by the rule of law. Hypocrisy has no place in Obama’s administration, which is why his words have placed special notice on Israel which has more nuclear weapons than any other power outside of the United States and Russia. And yet Israel refuses, like Iran, to abide by the international rules seeking to limit and monitor and inspect nuclear weapons.

Although Obama has not achieved any of his mighty goals, the fact that he has set them is what earns him the special honor. It takes a real courageous man in this world to stand up to the forces of hatred and bias to advocate for fairness for all.

Obama’s policies may or may not achieve their stated goals, but they have already changed the dynamics of one important region of the world in the Middle East.

The Nobel Peace Prize will put a special pressure on Israel to stop pretending that it supports peace. It throws cold water on the face of Israel’s arrogant and reticent society that it cannot pretend to seek peace and embrace politics and politics of racism, apartheid, bigotry and war.

Israel cannot pretend to support peace and continue to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem and imprison 1.4 million civilians in the world’s largest and most oppressive prison system called the Gaza Strip.

Israel cannot claim the right of defense when it is in offense against justice, the rule of law and peace and it cannot hide behind lies it perpetrated through the manipulation of a friendly international media to assert that Hamas started the November 2008 war.

In fact, everyone knows that Israel started that war for one reason, to exact punishment on Hamas before Obama could be sworn in as president.

For the first time in world history, the facts are clear and all of the crimes in this world have been placed together shoulder-to-shoulder. Israel’s phony claims of being the victim when it is in fact the aggressor and oppressor are exposed.

Obama is what the late great President John F. Kennedy is said to have been but could never become. He is the light of hope that might open the door to a world that is genuinely at peace and where all men and women are created equally and where the concerns of the poor are as important as the concerns of the wealthy.

As an American and a Palestinian Arab Christian, I am proud of this year’s choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and in a way, I feel a special part in that award as if the peace prize has been awarded not to just one man, but to an entire world of people who have not completely given up on hope.

Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talks how host. he can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.

Published in The Independent Monitor November 2009 issue.

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