copeland morris ENTWINED SONNET

Her shaded eyes, her necklace black velvet, onyx.
Anguish she spoke; and he carried on, obsessed
As only a young man could. An odd harmonics
Existed within the voice of a mourning dove.
She prepared him for the higher world above.
There and again she has safely seen him off;
They ought to rummage about, for hats to doff.

The birds compare notes: the tunes and chirps of freedom,
The house wrens too, in the garden her dream possessed,
Whose likeness is with proverb or season or kingdom,
Companion in sorrow, salt of Ishmael's tears,
The silver wake under which the mountain appears.
For whom else do their shadows make so bold--
To whom they reply in song a thousandfold?

copeland morris BALAO

The rain and shadow of raindrops, tinsel curtain,

Refrain and shadows
Of raindrops fall.

The gone man is a thief of all to be certain:

Shangri-La, Balao,
The Fillmore, Dreamland.

He could fill them up now; his fingers fly

Like redbuds, crepe myrtle,
Whipped by the wind.

He meets his love on the little square in Balao.

An owl endowed
With tender hoots,

A tiny shiver, watches their awkwardness die.

WITH DEMOCRACY GONE, ...JUSTICE ITSELF IS UNDER PRIOR RESTRAINT

...Too much freedom wandering around loose in the streets and too many people having thoughts of their own undermine the ambitions of the state; long before the evil date of 9/11, the rapidly metastasizing national security agencies were separating the homegrown damned from the homegrown saved. The recent and even more rapid technological upgrades attest to the pathology of a government so afraid of its own citizens that it classifies them as probable enemies.

   Hydra-headed databanks target schoolchildren and the mothers of schoolchildren, church congregations, credit card members, and Facebook friends, anybody at work or at play with a tracking device sold under the label of an iPhone. An NSA device code-named COTTONMOUTH-I can remotely monitor anybody's computer; the CANDYGRAM asset is capable of setting up a telephone tripwire to mimic a cell phone tower. Tens of thousands of surveillance cameras conduct "truth maintenance" and  "event prediction". If all goes well, what comes up on the screens is an American democracy as safely dead as a pheasant under glass.

--Lewis H. Lapham, LAPHAM'S QUARTERLY, Winter 2015, Volume VIII, #1

 At this hour, the US Senate is locked in a debate over the renewal of the PATRIOT ACT, or the retiring of it, (it's sunset clause fulfilled at midnight), May 31st, 2015. 

Come July, JADE HELM 2015, a three month military exercise, is due to be conducted across parts of Texas , Utah, and California; and as such, it will  spread over a huge swath of land. It is seen as practice for civil unrest, --interacting with civilian population,--which is something quite unusual. Yet while it may be the butt of jokes, at the expense of those who are projecting their political agendas and ambitions onto it; there surely must be some valid reasons to inquire about its nature,  its objectives. The very scale of it geographically, and the duration from July to September, is meant to teach a number of specialists what?--about confronting enraged civilians, about arresting and detaining civilians? "Mastering the human domain" is its sales pitch--whatever in the hell that means!

Well, we have enough bugs in our bonnets already without troubling ourselves unduly about our own military, rumbling around in our rural communities, trying to gauge the level of our "permissiveness", how it feels having special forces troops milling around amongst us, as they go about their business hobnobbing with crisis actors: just a big training exercise for a time when--heaven forbid--they should have to subdue, arrest, and detain civilians. But enough about that.

The question is about democracy that expires in the presence of absolute surveillance, and about the prior restraint that is placed on justice, in that repressive sort of environment.

Justice, after all, is about the treatment of persons. Justice is an ideal toward which we must strive as a community. There is a question of a competing balance of rights, as one would weigh two claims upon a scale: the right of those who are injured, against the rights of those accused of doing the injury.

One looks in vain to find justice in a surveillance state. What disappears is that side of the scale which respects the rights of the accused. The rights of the injured can be ignored too, as everyone is treated like a bug under a microscope

Surveillance information is used to ensnare people with trivial arrest records or trouble with immigration; and the FBI or other intelligence services coerce them into working as informants. Being blackmailed this way,  these unlucky are sometimes put in dangerous situations. The justice that should be afforded to them is sacrificed. Sometimes they are sacrificed as patsies, so that a political trick or illusion can further beguile the public.

And so the state breaks the laws, shreds our civil rights, grinds the pawns and small fry into dust, and keeps on recording all our personal data and our conversations. The state looks over our shoulders, as technology permits, to glean what they may from our thoughts. 

PRESIDENT MADURO WRITES AN OPEN LETTER TO U.S. CITIZENS

LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES: VENEZUELA IS NOT A THREAT

We are the people of Simon Bolívar , our people believe in peace and respect for all nations.

Freedom and independence

More than two centuries ago, our fathers founded a Republic on the basis that all persons are free and equal under the law.

Our nation made the greatest sacrifices to guarantee South American people their right to choose their rulers and to enforce their own laws today. The historical legacy of our father, Simón Bolívar, is always remembered. Bolívar was a man who gave his life so we would inherit a nation of justice and equality.

We believe in Peace, National Sovereignty and International Law

We are a peaceful people. In two centuries of independence, we have never attacked another nation. Our people live in a region of peace, free of weapons of mass destruction, and in freedom to practice all religions. We uphold respect for international law and the sovereignty of all people of the world.

We are an Open Society

We are a working people, we care for our families, and we have freedom of religion. Immigrants from around the world, live among us, whose diversity is respected. We have freedom of the press and we are enthusiastic users of social media.

We are friends of the American people

The histories of our people have been connected since the beginnings of our struggle for freedom. Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan hero, fought with the American people during their independence fight. We share the idea that freedom and independence are fundamental elements for the development of our nations.

The relations between our peoples has always been peaceful and respectful. Historically, we have shared business relations in strategic areas. Venezuela has always been a responsible and trustful energy provider for the American people. Since 2005, Venezuela has provided "heating oil"  through subsidies for low-income communities in the United States, thanks to our company, CITGO. This contribution has helped tens of thousands of American citizens survive in harsh conditions, giving them relief, and necessary support in times of need, evidencing how solidarity can create powerful alliances across borders.

Incredibly, the US government  has declared our country a threat to its national security and foreign policy

In a disproportionate action, the government of Obama has issued a "National Emergency" declaring Venezuela as a threat to its national security (Executive Order, 03-09-2015). This unilateral and aggressive measure taken by the United States Government against our country is not only unfounded and in violation of basic principles of sovereignty and self-determination under international law, but also has been unanimously rejected by all 33nations of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the twelve member states of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). In a statement made on March 14, 2015, UNASUR reiterated its firm rejection of these coercive measures that do not contribute to the peace, stability and democracy in our region and called on President Obama to revoke his Executive Order against Venezuela.

We reject unilateralism and interventionism

President Obama, without any authority to interfere in our internal affairs, unilaterally issued a set of sanctions against Venezuelan officials with potentially far-reaching implications, interfering in our constitutional order and our justice system.

We advocate for a multipolar world

We believe that our world must be based on the rules of international law, without interference in the internal affairs of other countries. We are convinced that the relationship of respect between all the nations is the only path for strengthening peace and coexistence, as well as for ensuring a more just world.

We honor our freedoms and uphold our rights

Never before in the history of our nations, has a president of the United States attempted to govern Venezuelans by decree. It is a tyrannical and imperial order and it pushes us back into the darkest days of the relationship between the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the name of our long-term friendship we alert our American brothers and sisters, lovers of justice and freedom, of the illegal aggression committed by your government on your behalf. We will not allow our friendship with the people of the United States to be affected by this senseless and groundless decision by President Obama.

We demand:

1- The U.S government immediately cease hostile actions against Venezuelan people and democracy.

2- President Obama abolish the Executive Order that declares Venezuela a threat to U.S. national security, as has been requested by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR).

3- The U.S. Government retract its libelous and defamatory statements against the honorable Venezuelan officials who have just obeyed our laws and our constitution.

Our sovereignty is sacred

The principles of the founding fathers of the United States of America are followed today with the same dignity by the people of Simón Bolívar. In the name of our mutual love for national independence we want the government of President Obama to think about and rectify this dangerous precedent.

We are convinced that the defense of our freedom is a right that we shall never give up because the future of the humanity lies also in our country. As Simon Bolivar said, "The freedom of the New World is the hope of the universe".

"Venezuela is not a threat, but a hope...Independence or nothing" --Simon Bolivar

We are the people of Simon Bolívar, our people believe in peace and respect for all nations.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Venezuelas-Maduro-Writes-Letter-to-US-Citizens-20150317-0011.html. If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

copeland morris THE YEARNING

Serene and beautiful winter be considerate of us,
Shining of intricate clouds, the saffron and crimson,
Flight and foraging of little sparrows and doves.
It opens a scene where lovers have words, avoid
Further words, and depart. See the bodies shrink,
As small and almost as tense as the birds', at times:
Fault lines under the horns of the moon and Venus.

When skies were whited-out we looked for snow
Hoping winter would treat us at once with mercy
After the Norther blew itself out; and strangely
The yearning fit perfectly in place, when flurries
That whirled lay still, and it was just barely morning.
So the fire and the warm house invite our thoughts;
Yet the sky, so fixed and gray, is still sleeping.

GREEK PRIME MINISTER, ALEXIS TSIPRAS, AND SYRIZA PARTY, MAY FOIL BANKSTER'S CRIMINAL CARTEL

The scofflaws of Wall Street and their criminal cohorts within the FED, the Central Bank administrations in Europe, the IMF and their international, vampire-like partners, are openly embarked on a grab for political power. This, of course, involves the seizure of as much money, and as many fiscal and physical objects as their can lay their hands on. So they proceed, right under our noses,  in their attempt to reduce everything, including human rights, national sovereignty, individual and natural assets, --even including the fundamental health and well being of all of us,-- into mere toys for amusement,  and objects at their disposal.

They have bought and sold governments. But Prime Minister Tsipras and the Syriza Party say that Greece and its legacy will not be sold off.

It is shocking that these criminal forces have gotten as far as they have: traffickers in human flesh, ghouls who have dismembered whole societies with military and financial weapons at the ready. These are people who have had nations plundered, and who arrange or foment devastating wars; and indeed, they have tried to turn organized, industrial scale murder into a cultural artifact, a perpetual cost of doing business.

But the resistance to this empire is global, and people have become more conscious of its methods, and of what is at stake, in terms of basic human decency, democratic process, and justice.

Austerity regimes, imposed by criminal financial institutions, are not constructed in order to help any nation pay off its debt; but rather austerity is designed to further weaken and disable the target nation, the victim of the scam, and to suppress that nation's economic growth, while pretending to bolster it with further loan installments. The so-called "bail-out" project is  insidiously designed to force the country to sell off its assets, as well as its effective sovereignty, and turns the country into another stock to be traded on the market. What was unique, beautiful, the people's dignity and history, cultural autonomy, self-determination, possessions, lands, even monuments, would be liquidated on the auction floor.

Let us resolve not to let this happen! In whatever country we call our own, a promise must be made to oppose, to resist this kind of oppression.

The system of government must become honest again, and reflect the honesty and exertions of its people, their insistence on the rule of law, their own just laws. It is up to them, in a democracy, to see that the laws are just, and are applied equally.

Prime Minister Tsipras, and Syriza, have inspired many others beyond the borders of Greece. Now is the time to remember what was said about the importance of Greeks, the spirit and fulfillment of human possibilities, when they stood to enter the European Union. A French politician remembered  the ancient democracy, what Greek democracy means everywhere, and its heritage. He said the event should not be described as their entry into the Union; but rather that "Europe has joined Greece".

This is one promise that has yet to be redeemed.

FEAR IS NOW THE MAIN INSTRUMENT OF ENSLAVEMENT

The fabric of jurisprudence, the law that governs and constrains presidential power, and the covenant that binds the will of the people with those who are presumably elected, has become dangerously weakened; and now, after thirteen years of this corruptive process, we are clearly in for hard times.

Looking at this power projected overseas, as the nation's foreign policy, even watching it as it gradually brings psychological insecurity and fear to our own cities and countryside; we end by observing the same undeniable strategies at work. The longest continuous period of war in our history is happening now; and it is matched by the longest chapter of war propaganda that the people have ever had to endure.

Considering the repetitious and absurd series of scares, the never-ending cast of new bogeymen, the multiplicity of  "Hitlers", of which there never seems to be an end; only a gullible people, or a people driven into a stupor by endless propaganda, would pay any mind to such tactics. The repeated  lies have worn down the will of some, and leave so many numb, or in an unsettled state of fear.

Fear is the driving force of the oppressive war propaganda, fear is used as a marketing tool, and is used to gain the acceptance  and normalization of the NSA Surveillance State. Fear is finally omnipresent when one has become a slave, or is acting as a good citizen in a fascist state.

As James Risen has written in his new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War:

Fear is hard to question. It is central to the financial well-being of countless federal bureaucrats, contractors, subcontractors, analysts, and pundits. Fear generates funds.

The Intercept has an interview of James Risen by Glenn Greenwald, which I recommend to readers.

But when fear is a means to an end, and the goal of US policy is the fragmentation and destruction of other people's societies,--even to the undoing of their culture;-- then going past war's previous destruction,  to a new stage of chaos, is also a more corrupt and vicious kind of aggression. This is what has been done, and is still being done, to what remains of Iraq and Syria.

The US leadership, congressional and presidential, is implicated in a history that has continued for years. This is a process of subversion, carried out on the Dark Side, beyond public scrutiny, and abetted by cable and broadcast networks, with the falsification of events by these propaganda organs.

Libya's society has been cast into the outer darkness, by nations whose leaders have expressed no remorse, and who have used the breakdown of authority in that land, as a cover, in order to move arsenals of weapons into the hands of real extremists, the same extremists to whom our hypocrite president refers, in public, as America's sworn enemies.  The former president of France, M. Sarkozy, one of the schemers behind this double war crime, first attacked Libya, and then covertly transfered the aggression toward Syria. He has only recently resumed his post as the leader of French conservatives, instead of being brought to justice for these crimes.

Turkish authorities continue to facilitate transfers of supplies to Islamic extremists,  funneled like the arms the CIA previously smuggled out of Libya into this very dirty game; but it is nothing new. The United States has been busy training  those religious extremists whose mission is to destroy a lawful government in Syria. The most terrible of the bogeymen, the multi-national ISIS, or ISIL, as Obama insists on calling it, has been receiving converts from the ranks of those the US trained, in Jordan, and has been armed from many sources, the Gulf States and Saudis, as well as by having weapons which the Americans have spread around.

The United States has a history of promoting state terror through proxy armies, using zealots and psychotics who are happy to do what they are inclined to do. From arming the Contras in Nicaragua, which was done illegally in the 1980s, we come to  the latest craze of advancing sectarian, or religiously inspired terror, as Obama's policy of lies and hysterical claims permits.

Andre Vltchek, a novelist and war correspondent, brings us to an understanding of the ends our country has been pursuing in Iraq. At personal risk, he traveled deep into the Kurdish land of northern Iraq, where the Kurdish Peshmerga has pushed back against ISIS troops, regaining their villages to the west, coming within 15 kilometers of Mosul. He writes:

In the evening I am having a cup of tea with an old scientist, a nuclear physicist, Ishmael Khalil, originally from Tikrit University, now a refugee. We are in the ancient tearoom in the center of Erbil.

“All that I had was destroyed... I have no idea what is left of my university... Western allies supported the IS: Saudis, Qataris, and Turks. Americans are the main reason for this insanity – for total destruction of Iraq. Not just me, ask any child and you will hear the same thing... We all used to belong to a great and proud nation. Now everything is fragmented, and ruined. We have nothing – all of us became beggars and refugees in our land,” Khalil says.

To take what has been fragmented by violence and terror, and to use fear
in a canny way to further atomize and divide a society, can be a means to an extreme where society breaks down, and a nation's culture is wounded. And what empires inflict on their prey, they bring back with terrible results to their people at home. 

william blake THE HUMAN ABSTRACT

PITY would be no more

If we did not make somebody Poor;

And Mercy no more could be

If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,

Till the selfish loves increase:

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the ground with tears;

Then Humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of Mystery over his head;

And the Catterpiller and Fly

Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat;

And the Raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea

Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree;

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the Human Brain.

WHO ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES?

By Grayson

Grant Wood's most famous painting features an iconic farmer, his prim daughter and a pitchfork. His most satiric painting was Daughters of Revolution. Three white-haired ladies pose with raised teacup before a recreation of George Washington Crossing The Delaware. With their hatchet mouths and squinty, almost feral, eyes, they seem to gloat over the mere fact of their birth.

Wood completed the painting in 1932 when the country was deep in depression, thousands out of work, homeless. Breadlines were common. Wood makes the point—still relevant today—that the robber barons surely had nothing to fear from the polite, pampered ladies of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who are about as far from real revolution as one could get.

I often wonder how a country so enamored of its revolutionary origins could produce so many obedient apostles of the status quo, which always aligns itself with wealth and power against those who have neither.

For example: all those who sided with the insurance industry against universal health care, including the so-called “Tea Party” Republicans, who have been known to dress up in the costumes of their revolutionary idols.

As I understand it, the kinds of revolutionaries celebrated by the DAR and the Tea Party don't usually side with the well-fed and complacent at the top, but arise from below, when the have-nots begin to suspect the political and economic cards are stacked against them.

This seems to be where we are now: record numbers of people in poverty, who, in spite of their best efforts, even working full time, still struggle to get ahead. Among them are many former middle class people—nice, decent folk who woke up one morning to find they couldn't send their kids to college. Now many of them can't even adequately feed their families or keep a roof over their heads.

In Detroit, where the price of tap water has soared above the average and many are jobless, the city has cut the water off for thousands of people, mostly black, who can't pay their bills—a move condemned by the United Nations as an international human rights violation.

Hard to believe this is the U.S.A.! In fact, it's what happens when you have a small cadre of multimillionaires deciding the fate of the rest of us—which campaign to back, which legislators to buy, whether or not we'll have health care or keep Social Security, and where the next war will be. Literally life and death decisions, rarely motivated by decency or ethics, but strictly driven by profit.

The result is a wholesale attack on the Commons—to wipe out pension funds, destroy unions, slash public education, and turn everything, even the right to clean water, over to corporations.

And rest assured, if it succeeds in Detroit, it can happen anywhere.

A stellar example of this mentality is Texas' own Greg Abbott, candidate for Governor, and enthusiast for privatizing just about everything, including education. In 2011, Abbott supported cuts to Texas schools by $5.4-billion, resulting in job losses for 12,000 teachers across the state.

As Attorney-General, Abbott ruled to keep confidential the locations of dangerous chemicals, like ammonium nitrate, the stuff that blew up the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, obliterating dozens of homes, a middle school and a fifty-unit apartment complex.

Abbott's campaign receives funding from the billionaire Koch family, which has interests in the chemical-fertilizer industry.

Clearly, the playing field is out of plumb. And it's not apt to change for the better so long as those in power remain virtually indistinguishable from the robber barons they serve.

Nor can we expect much support from the likes of the “Daughters of Revolution” or the Tea Party, those stalwart celebrants of our first war for freedom, who, had they actually been there, likely would not have been throwing tea in Boston Harbor, but would have sided  with the Tories, just as they side with those in power today.

Indeed, there's nothing particularly honorable or noble in polite conformity. It would be hard to name a single positive change in our world achieved by that crowd. Conformists did not cross the color line to occupy lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960, nor did they risk their lives registering blacks to vote in Philadelphia, Mississippi in '64. Conformists did not end child labor laws or bring women the right to vote. They had no hand in creating Medicare or Social Security. And just as they were absent in the marches to end the Vietnam War, they're now missing in the struggle to end our current wars, including the latest senseless provocations toward Russia.     

If somehow we manage to get workers unionized, if we succeed in raising pay to a living wage, if we start making corporations pay their fair share, and make college available to all, you can bet it will be the conformists—the power-brokers and their apostles—who will stand in the way, as they always do.

As most revolutions start from below by people without wealth or power, so this one will, too. The Occupy Movement was the beginning. Let the conformists stay home.

 

First published in Fort Worth Weekly.

CHRIS HEDGES AT NYC GAZA RALLY: "GODS COVENANT IN THE PROMISED LAND"

ISRAEL IGNORES WORLD OPINION, AS IT CONTINUES ITS MASSACRE IN GAZA

AFP Photo/Marco Longari

London's Telegraph has reported that Israel's IDF has killed more children, more than the total of Hamas fighters killed, during the latest outbreak of carnage in Gaza.

Well over 1,000 people have been killed by IDF forces.

The Israelis have bombed hospitals, and paramedics,--and  grade schools,-- even those under the protection of the UN, serving as shelters for civilians. Drones and snipers, tanks, have pushed deep into Gaza, and it is as though the population of Palestinians is being squeezed in a vise. The Israeli government seems incapable of hearing about, or assuming any responsibility for bombing UN monitored facilities, or other civilian structures. They have become deaf to accusations.

There is always cruelty and sadism performed by the occupier over a subject people; and it exists in the hearts of those who cheer and pull up lawn chairs, to watch high explosives turn Palestinians and their dwellings into rubble and blood. Israel's barking voice, Netanyahu, its strange leader, has admitted recently that there will be no two state solution, There was never going to be such an agreement. And really it must be concluded that all Israeli negotiations have been examples of bad faith,--a deception undertaken  in order to steal Palestinian land. It was always about building more settlements for Israelis, while cornering the Palestinians into ghettos, into places where water is scarce, where farmers come under sniper fire as they try to till their land, where fishermen are harassed and bottled up close to shore.

Most Americans are unaware of the harsh and arbitrary limitations placed on foodstuff that is allowed to enter Gaza. Israel puts a stranglehold on the allotted calories that each person is Gaza is expected to consume. They have bragged about putting Palestinians "on a diet". This is no joke. It has been calculated scientifically; and this stingy allotment of nourishment has been coldly calculated.

The worst element of the massacre is that Netanyahu manufactured his obscene case for bombing and ground invasion; and it turns out that he was in too much of a hurry to wait for Israeli police to get to the bottom of the investigation into the killing of the three Israeli teenagers. The fact persists, that Netanyahu manipulated events and prolonged uncertainty about the kidnapped kids, even though he had been informed, privately, that they were killed soon after being taken.

The Israeli leader drove his country into its present tantrum of destruction. And it turns out that political Hamas, the party elected to govern Gaza, was not responsible for the deaths of the Israeli teens.


These events have come to shatter a relatively quiet period in Gaza, that has existed for a while between Hamas and the Israeli authorities. But now, the terrifying destruction of civilians cannot be called war; for it is primarily a slaughter. It is murder. No comparison exists between the arsenal of US arms, that Israel has, and the homemade rockets Hamas uses. What an occupied people has done, is to resist, to face the colonial power that will not allow their underlings any foothold of sovereignty, or any allowance of dignity. Colonial Israel doesn't offer them even second class citizenship; it will only administer the lives of its subjects.

Netanyahu did not let out that the kidnapped teenagers were dead; and he stirred up anxiety and public dread, and used the uncertainty as a pretext to commence attacks on Hamas , in Gaza, on July 1st, before an investigation could have properly identified the perpetrators. And this was prior to the Hamas retaliation, with its rudimentary, unguided rockets.

 Naftali Frankel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach were killed in a car that was abandoned later by their kidnappers; and their bodies, as reported by The Guardian, were found in a valley near Hebron.

Following the discovery of the bodies the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, blamed Hamas for the murders, warning the militant group will pay a heavy price for the deaths. "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay ... [They] were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts," Netanyahu said in a statement.

 But Netanyahu went with collective guilt, once more,  which he managed to heap upon Hamas and the people of Gaza; and he never intended to rein in the revengeful power he was unleashing. At the funeral of the slain Israeli youths, he cried out, "They sanctify death, we sanctify life...They sanctify cruelty, and we mercy and compassion. That is the secret of our strength."

But the Prime Minister was painting a target on Gaza again.

But needless to say, the duly elected government in Gaza is not using those whom it serves as human shields; and Palestinians love their children as much as Israelis love their own kids. And yet the corrosive propaganda would have us believing the absurd.  Chris Hedges recently wrote that Israel cannot seem to self-correct:

When all this does not work, when it becomes clear that the Palestinians once again have not become dormant and passive, Israel will take another step, more radical than the last. The “process of destruction” will be stopped only from outside Israel. Israel, captive to the process, is incapable of imposing self-restraint.

When Palestinian leaders reject passivity, and respond as soon as the community is attacked, Netanyahu calls them terrorists.

What kind of terrible judgment  is being enacted when Israel's huge fragmentation bombs obliterate whole families? How will killing four little boys who are playing on the beach,--all of them wiped out by an Israeli airman who takes special care to pick them off, --how will this settle accounts with God? After Israel saturates Gaza with a deluge of blood, how will the garden grow? They are clearly insane if they think the climate will improve.

This kind of behavior is in no way moderated by self-reflection. A different leader with a different mindset, whose goals were really expressions of compassion, could have included some remorse for the tragic killing of the other teenager, 17 year old Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The Palestinian boy was forced to drink gasoline, and then burned to death, by a couple of Israeli teens, who thought they were exacting revenge for the deaths of young Frankel, Shaar, and Yifrach.

The opportunity was never grasped by Netanyahu (who called the killing of Khdeir "loathsome").  But the Prime Minister was focused on ending a great many Palestinian lives; and he did what he could to whip up the rage of the Israeli public.

***

Trembling

by Hilmy Salem

We can resist the sectarian kings

With a single turn in the opposite direction.

But given how nimble we are

The strong ones tremble

Every time two people exchange a smile.

But for those who trade in doubt

Before love, and after it,

Our gift to them: a crutch.

--translated from the Arabic by Dima Hilal and Idra Novey