Zuckerberg for president

by Edward Thurston

As we continue to witness the buffoonery of Donald Trump’s aspirations to be president of the USA, this small article about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg calling him out on his salacious immigration positions caught my attention. Very few people have really studied the effects of what would happen if Trump’s “shoot from the hip” policies were carried out, especially on immigration.

While I don’t disagree with all of Trump’s positions and I do believe we have border/immigration problems, his extreme resolutions to these problems are what concern me. And bottom line is he is asking people to “believe in him” — and apparently masses of followers are. We Americans have been let down for so many decades by weak or corrupt politicos running our country that we are almost willing to turn the reins over to ANY non-politician. Yet I have to draw the line on Trump, and I will not be blindly following his bluster to the voting booth.

I refuse to believe that a business tyrant like Trump, who has been bankrupt a few times, has obvious misogynist leanings against women and dislikes Latinos, has any chance to be the leader of our country. Do we really want this snarly egomaniac who obviously cannot listen to anyone but himself to lead us through the dark shadows of our economic demise and international entanglements? Do we really want him with his finger on the button of nuclear warheads? Could we really count on him as a unifying agent in our already divided country or world? I don’t think so.

In reaction to all of this, I submit the proposition that Mark Zuckerberg would be a better candidate to lead our country than all the 17 Republican candidates and smaller offering of Democratic candidates combined. He has more money than The Donald at a much earlier age. He is more level headed and less emotional than The Donald. He now leads an bigger organization and manages more money than all these candidates put together in their lifetimes.

In addition to these qualifications, I believe the main problem with electing leaders is that most of them are over the age of 50. I am sorry, but most of our world’s conflicts are caused by people over 50. The older people get, the less flexible they become in their positions and have long memories of past conflicts. Older people are slower to forgive and quicker to be offended. Believe me: I see this in myself. And we expect these people to be peacemakers and find “middle ground?”

Therefore, it is my opinion that we would be better off sending the smartest and most effective 30-year-old business leaders in our country to negotiate trade and get us out of armed conflicts abroad and at home. If all countries sent their 30-year-old leaders to negotiate in their sneakers and bluejeans, things would get done in far more peaceful and “brotherly” fashion. There would be no long memories of past wrongs and hatreds tainting any possibility of a resolution. There would be no lifelong bitterness and ego getting in the way of the most basic conversation.

Let the young idealists take us forward with their understanding that it is all about technology and responsible use and sharing of it that solves most of the world’s conflicts. Not bombs, embargoes or starvation of poor people living under tyrants. It is not about personality or enforcing antiquated laws or historic treaties that make no sense. It is about finding commonality among all of humanity, no matter what race, creed or ranking in the wealth meter in order to live free and responsibly.

It is time for major leadership change in our world — and it is not The Donald. It is more like Zuckerberg.

The Sorceror’s Apprentice

by Uri Avnery

One has to choose: Binyamin Netanyahu is either incredibly shrewd or incredibly foolish.

Take his Iran policy. Actually, there is little to choose from. Netanyahu has no other policy to speak off.

According to him, Iran constitutes a mortal danger to Israel. If it obtains a nuclear weapon, God forbid, it will use it to annihilate Israel. It must be stopped by any means, preferably by American armed intervention.

This may be quite wrong (as I believe). But it makes sense.

So what did Netanyahu do?

For years, he alarmed the world. Every day the cry went out: Save Israel! Prevent the destruction of the Jewish State! Prevent a Second Holocaust! Prevent Iran from producing The Bomb!

The world did not take any notice. It was busy with many other matters. There are crises galore everywhere, all the time. Economic depressions. Plagues. The warming of the earth.

But Netanyahu did not let off. He used every rostrum, from the Knesset to the United States Congress, to shout his message.

At long last, a weary world paid heed. OK, the Jews warn of the Iranian bomb? So let’s do something to prevent it. Not just something. No. Let’s get all the great powers of the world together to compel Iran to end this nonsense.

And they did. The USA, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — practically the whole world — commanded Iran to start negotiations.

There was only one single issue: preventing Iran from getting The Bomb. Nothing else mattered. Compared to this giant issue, everything else was insignificant.

And then something unexpected happened. Iran’s political system replaced their loudmouth president with a very different one: a soft-spoken, eminently reasonable politician. Negotiations started, and Iran sent an even more soft-spoken, eminently reasonable diplomat to conduct them. The foreign ministers of the world were enchanted.

After playing a little hard-to-get, Iran accepted an agreement. The World got, more or less, everything it wanted. No bomb for a long time. Very intrusive inspection procedures. (They were not really needed. Up-to-date espionage techniques can quickly detect any movements toward a bomb.)

Everybody was happy. Everybody, that is, except Netanyahu. He was furious.

What kind of an agreement is this?

The Iranians will get the bomb. If not now, then in 15 years. Or in 25. Or in 50.

The Iranians will cheat! Persians always cheat! They can’t help it! It’s in their blood! (Not like us, who built dozens of nuclear weapons in secret. After the Holocaust, we are allowed to do things like that.)

And anyway, even if they don’t get the bomb, the Iranians will get legitimization. And money. They will support anti-Israeli terrorists, like Hezbollah and Hamas. (Not very convincing, after Netanyahu had demanded concentration on The Bomb, and not on anything else.)

The huge Israeli propaganda machine was set in motion. The terrible agreement is being denounced from every rooftop. Of course we knew all the time that Barack Obama is an anti-Semite, as is John Kerry. Now we have the proof.

Actually, the play is over. An agreement signed by the entire world cannot be made to disappear with a puff from Bibi. It will be there, even if the US Congress does vote against it and overrides the presidential veto. The world is tired of Netanyahu’s whims. The man got what he wanted, so what now?!

I believe that the Iranians did not want the bomb very much anyhow. According to all available evidence, the agreement aroused joy in the streets of Tehran. The prevalent mood seems to be: “Thank Allah, at long last we’ve got rid of this whole nonsense!”

But the bomb that isn’t has already caused immense damage to Israel. Much worse than if it existed in some dark cavern.

All Israelis agree that the one supreme asset Israel has is its special, unparalleled relationship with the United States. It is unique.

Unique and priceless. In military terms, Israel gets the most up-to-date weapon systems, practically for nothing. No less important, Israel can not conduct any war for more than a few days without an airlift of munitions and spare parts from the United States.

But that is only a small element of our national security. Even more important is the knowledge that you cannot threaten Israel without confronting the entire might of the United States. This is a formidable umbrella, the envy of the world.

More than that, every country in the world knows that if you want something from Washington DC, and especially from the US Congress, you better pass through Jerusalem and pay a price. How much is that worth?

And then there is the veto. Not the little veto Obama will use to neutralize a Congress vote against the agreement, but the Big Veto, the one that blocks every single UN Security Council resolution to censure Israel, even for actions that cry to high heaven. A 49-year-old occupation. Hundreds of thousands of settlers who contravene international law. Almost daily killings.

Condemn Israel? Forget it. Sanctions against Israel? Don’t make us laugh. As long as the almighty United States protects Israel, It can do whatever it wants.

All this is now put in question. Perhaps the damage has already been done, like hidden cracks in the foundations of a building. The scale of the damage may become apparent only in coming years.

Another hidden crack is the rift between Israel and a large part of the Jews around the world, especially in the USA. Israel claims to be the “Nation-State of the Jewish People.” All Jews throughout the world owe it unquestioning allegiance. A mighty apparatus of “Jewish organizations” is policing the vassals. Woe to the Jew who dares to object.

Not anymore. A rift has opened within world Jewry, that probably cannot be repaired. Commanded to choose between their president and Israel, many American Jews prefer their president, or just opt out.

Who is the anti-Semite who has managed to bring all this evil about? No other than the Prime Minister of Israel himself.

Does this trouble the world? Not really.

We Israelis believe that we are the center of the world. But it ain’t necessarily so.

While Israel is obsessed with the Iranian bomb, great changes are taking place in our region. The almost forgotten 13-century old rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims has suddenly reappeared all over. This rift, almost as old as Islam itself, was plastered over by the artificial order established by the notorious colonialist Sykes-Picot agreement during World War I.

What is happening now is a political earthquake. The landscape is changing dramatically. Mountains disappear, new ones are formed. The Shiite axis, from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to Hezbollah in Lebanon is overtaking the Sunni bloc of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Libya and Yemen are tossed around, Egypt harkens back to its glorious Pharaonic past, and in the middle of it all, a new power is raising its head — the Islamic Caliphate of Daesh, which attracts Muslim youth from all over the world.

In the middle of this raging storm, Netanyahu is a man of the past, a person whose perceptions were formed decades ago, in another world. Instead of addressing this new world, with its great dangers and great opportunities, he fumbles around with the non-existent Bomb.

The United States and the other Western powers are cautiously changing their stance. They are afraid of Daesh, as they should be. They perceive that their interests are getting closer to those of Iran and further away from those of Saudi Arabia. The new nuclear agreement fits well into this pattern. Netanyahu’s permanent trouble-making does not.

Is this being discussed in Israel? Of course not. It’s all about the bomb, the bomb, the bomb. The little quarrels between the Muslims are more or less ignored.

Sunnis, Shiites – they are all the same. Anti-Semites. Holocaust-deniers. Israel-haters.

Yet there are great opportunities. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, as well as Egypt, are already hinting that they could cooperate with Israel. In deepest secrecy, of course. Nobody can shake hands openly with Israel as long as the Arab masses see every day on their TV sets the misdeeds of the settlers, the killings of the occupation army, the humiliation of the Palestinian brothers. Like a heavy weight tied to the leg of a swimmer, the occupation prevents us from reacting to the changes in the region.

Lately, there have been ever-stronger rumors about secret negotiations between Netanyahu and Hamas for an eight or ten year-long armistice, that would amount to an unofficial peace agreement. It would create a tiny Palestinian mini-state, while isolating even more Mahmoud Abbas and the main body of the Palestinian people, who are committed to the Arab peace plan.

All this for what? For enlarging the settlements and perhaps annexing another part of the West Bank (“Area C”).

So is the man shrewd or just foolish? A sorceror or just a sorceror’s apprentice?

About the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution and its attackers

GOP off the deep end

by Eric Jackson

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

This is the first sentence of the 14th Amendment which Donald Trump and now, apparently, several other Republicans want to repeal.

Let us understand the original historical context of this amendment and its opening words. It was first and foremost the repeal of the Dred Scott decision, wherein the US Supreme Court had decided that black people are not citizens.

There is an otherwise obscure US racist group calling itself the Posse Comitatus, which back in the 1970s and 1980s pioneered a theory about the US Constitution. They argued that since former Confederate states were forced to ratify the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution as a requirement before being readmitted to the Union, those amendments and all that has flowed from them are null and void, as are all later constitutional amendments. This theory, with a bewildering variety of mutations, was widely adopted by Ku Klux Klan, “patriot” militia, “sovereign citizen” and other far-right movements. Now versions of it are embraced by perhaps one-third of the Republican base.

They don’t want to make too much noise about the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery except when imposed by due process of law, but they believe it to be invalid. Every time that that a certain section of white Americans cheer when an unarmed black man is shot dead, these people reaffirm their commitment to the Dred Scott principle that black people are not citizens and those shot dead had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The right-wing groups that buy into the Posse Comitatus “constitutional” theory or one of its variants do tend to be more vocal in their condemnation of the 16th Amendment, which allows the graduated federal income tax. Of course.

But back to “anchor babies.” This time the attack on the 14th Amendment is not directed against black people, but by way of a slur is directed primarily against Mexican-Americans and those 42 million or so people in the United States for whom Spanish is their first language. (Consider the violence, racial profiling and unlawful arrests inherent in identifying and removing “anchor babies” from the US population. African-Americans may have a different history and different sets of concerns from the various Hispanic groups in the USA, but the well informed ones would fairly well understand the sorts of practices that would be involved.)

Let us look at what is real about pregnant women coming to the United States to give birth, and about births to non-resident foreigners and women who are in the United States illegally. When we do that, we first find a lot of statistics not kept in readily available fashion and what we know makes the term “anchor baby” so wildly inaccurate as to be not only a pejorative slur but also a monstrous slander. And then let us consider what could be done about the “problem,” if it is a problem.

Recently Uncle Sam shut down a series of operations in the Los Angeles area, wherein rich Chinese women would pay large sums of money to get visas to visit the United States, fly in legally, stay at a set place until ready to give birth, have their child in the USA, stay a bit longer to get the baby’s US passport in order, then fly back to China. I have known of Panamanian women with visas to come and go in the USA who have made a point of it to have their kid in Miami rather than Panama City.

Where is the “anchor” stereotype in these situations? The Chinese women in the scam the feds shut down all along intended to return to China, but then, in 18 years or so, the kid wouldn’t have to deal with the vagaries of getting a visa if she or he wanted to study, live or work in the USA. (Lazy suburban rich white kids at elite universities might have reason to complain about another Asian who’s better prepared and will study more setting the curve in the advanced math or physics class — they don’t get much sympathy from me.) Birth in the USA by way of this scheme can be addressed without repealing or changing the 14th Amendment, but in any case it is not about the family staying.

The Panamanians with visas to come and go? Those are usually granted on the basis of wealth, famous talent or the family’s political connections. The woman who legally chooses Miami over Panama City as a place to give birth does not need an “anchor” — she has a visa to be in the USA anyway.

People who slip across the US borders — it could be and often is the Detroit River rather than the Rio Grande — to live and work without the papers to allow them to do so legally DO form families, have children and so on. Overwhelmingly, these people come to work and try to stay out of trouble to avoid deportation. When there are an estimated 11 million undocumented foreigners in the country, they are going to have a certain number of kids. In a country of more than 320 million it really isn’t an important percentage. One has to be 21 years old to be a US citizen sponsoring a relative who is not a citizen moving to the United States.

There may be humanitarian and public policy reasons not to deport the illegally present foreign parents of US citizen children, but legally there is no “anchor” there. And where are the numbers for the right-wing argument about specifically Latin American women who have illegally entered the United States while pregnant or with the intention of becoming pregnant in the mistaken belief of then having a legal “anchor?”

So, if there is a problem, what might be done to control it? Well isn’t THAT yet another playing field for the far right to advance another part of its agenda, the control of women’s sexuality?

So, a famous Panamanian model, perhaps certified foxy by no less than Donald Trump, goes to the United States on a legal visa to work in her field. Are the feds going to come around visiting her every month or few months, forcing her to undergo pregnancy tests and kicking her out of the country if she tests positive? Are they going to do that to young Panamanian women studying at US universities? Is Disney going to lose a percentage of its foreign theme park visitors because US authorities are going to want to do pregnancy checks before female would-be foreign tourists step on the plane? Are all female non-citizens present in the United States to be required to report every so often to pregnancy testing centers, which have holding cells for those testing positive and to be deported?

Times change. In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote and the founders of the United States signed a Declaration of Independence that in its opening paragraph pleaded “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” But world opinion also evolves. Yes, there are countries without birthright citizenship, but the world increasingly looks askance at such jurisdictions.

However, bedrock Republican ideology these days — certainly that for which Donald Trump stands — is a sneering disregard for world opinion, an America in the role of sticky fingered global bully at war to control everyone else’s assets, an America that wears national, racial and gender double standards on its sleeve. Now that the bulk of US manufacturing has been exported, that’s an America left perilously isolated from the world economy, an America whose citizens are likely to be despised and harassed whenever they go abroad, an America likely to be militarily overwhelmed in the end by the majority of the world’s population whom America has insulted.

That’s what the attack on the 14th Amendment means.