The Joe Blow Report 2

Put Those Police Cameras on Bankers

Joe Blow — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 16:33:27 +0000

This copy is mirrored from CounterPunch.

DECEMBER 09, 2014

American Police are the Gatekeepers of the National Inequality Policy

Put Those Police Cameras on Bankers

by JESSE JACKSON

A week ago Sunday, five St. Louis Rams professional football players entered a game with their hands up, protesting the killing of Michael Brown. They stand in the lineage of John Carlos and Tommie Smith, of Muhammad Ali, identifying with the pain in their communities and turning protest into power.The gesture turned tochants — “Hands up; Don’t Shoot” in demonstrations across the country. Protesters shut down major thoroughfares from Manhattan to Chicago to Los Angeles to decry the Staten Island grand jury that refused to indict the policemen who killed Eric Garner, turning his plea — “I can’t breathe” — into a call for justice.In these cases, there was no cross examination and thus no indictments. “Justice” rings hollow across the nation. Injustice reins.

These demonstrations, largely by young and remarkably multi-racial crowds, are not the first. They were preceded by Occupy Wall Street, indicting the 1 percent and spreading to hundreds of cities. They were foreshadowed by the dreamers, children demanding the right to come out of the shadows of the undocumented.

They were accompanied by record numbers of workers in low wage jobs at fast food restaurants and the Dollar Stores walking off their jobs in some 190 cities.

They were complemented by women demanding gender equality, particularly at the workplace where discrimination and sexism are still rife.

The streams of alienation and disparities are converging into a river. Injustices in this new age are not only inflammable, they are increasingly inflamed.

The official reaction to police immunity for the killing of unarmed black boys and men Ferguson and Staten Island and Cleveland and Brooklyn has focused, not surprisingly, on the police. The president has created a Task Force on 21st Century Policy, with instructions to report in 90 days. He’s committed millions to put cameras on police.

But he might be better advised to put cameras on bankers. Reckless, unaccountable and murderous police behavior must end, but the police are simply the gatekeepers assigned to keep order.

Behind the gate is the American policy of isolating poor people of color in ghettos, ghettos deprived of jobs, of capital, of decent health care, of affordable housing, of good schools.

Police are assigned to patrol these zones of despair, part of the only thriving industry in these neighborhoods — the jail-industrial complex of more police, police stations, courthouses, bondsmen, jailors, judges, lawyers and prosecutors, court recorders and guards and much more. In this pressure cooker, all of us are vulnerable — none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

In the Civil Rights Movement, the Bull Connors were the violent enforcers. But they were not the issue: The issue was legal segregation that deprived African Americans of their rights and locked them into second-class citizenship.

Today, the police killing of unarmed Blacks is unacceptable and reaching crisis proportions. But the issue is a national policy that abandons poor people of color in their ghettos. If we put cameras on the police, we may get better policing and less injustice (although Eric Garner’s killing was on camera). But what we need is an urban development policy that attacks segregation by race, rebuilds poor neighborhoods, invests in the health and education of poor infants and children, erects affordable housing, offers training for and transport to jobs that exist.

The demonstrations are about justice for Michael Brown and Eric Garner and others that can be and will be added to the list. But they aren’t just about those killings. They are about a national ghetto policy, a national worker impoverishment policy, a national inequality policy.

The slogan “No justice, no peace,” reverberates throughout the country. And the demonstrations are growing and spreading. Different streams of protest are coming together. Occupy Wall Street exposed the 1 percent. The strikes of low wage workers expose the global corporations. The “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” demonstrations expose the harsh injustices of the jail-industrial complex.

Dr. Martin Luther King taught us: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politics, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.” Today, across America, more and more Americans are standing up for what is right.

Jesse Jackson is the founder of Rainbow/PUSH.

Welcome to the Sixteenth Century, Eureka

Joe Blow — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:48:57 +0000

I had to reprint this article from Firedoglake:

Welcome to the Sixteenth Century

By: masaccio Sunday November 30, 2014 10:57 am

.
Please don’t murder us in the streets. We work hard so we should be paid a living wage. Bankers should be treated as equal before the law. Please stop spying on us. We’ve lived here all our lives, don’t deport us to a foreign country. Please stop killing people everywhere in the world. We are entitled to be treated like other people. Please stop poisoning the dirt that grows our food and the water we drink and the air we breathe. The minimal nature of the demands of millions of protesters measures the decrepit state of our nation. It also tells us that the rich people who run this country loathe and despise us.

We killed your kids with impunity. Take that tiny paycheck, and supplement it with government benefits, and punch out before you clean up your work station. Bankers are the engines of prosperity and if they get a bit greedy, it can’t be prevented without destroying capitalism. We spy on you to protect you from immigrants with Ebola and sharp swords. Get back into that closet. You’ll eat and breathe oil and you’ll love it. OK, you noisy group can get married. Now aren’t you happy? Remember, we have the guns, the tanks, the tear gas, the pepper spray, the kettles, the rifles, the humvees, the assault rifles, the MRAPs, and the drones, and we have your data and your phones and your computers and your emails and your facebook pages and your tweets, and we know who you are. And just ignore those thugs on the roofs, those plain-clothes men with AR-15s, they’re either our regular troops or our irregulars, our vigilantes, just out to protect our private property.

As bad as this is, the worst part is that there are millions of people who aren’t elites, who aren’t rich enough to financially survive a lost job or a divorce or a sick kid, but who think this is just fine. Those people vote for the system not just in elections, but by their hatred for their neighbors. Who could have predicted so many citizens would enjoy watching their neighbors thrown out of their houses rather than figure out some way to help? Who would have thought so many citizens would be thrilled to see families broken up and deported? Who would have thought so many citizens would be happy to drink oil instead of water for any reason? Who would have thought that so many citizens would prefer not just to let corporations pay so little to their neighbors, but also to support cutting off all government benefits to those workers? Who would have thought so many citizens would be happy to have some government agent collecting their phones and email and internet search histories?

The optimists among us point to a bunch of liberal issues on which a plurality of citizens agree according to pollsters. That’s great, and it may even be true. But the fact is that our Constitution is set up to prevent government action against the will of a small minority. It gives tiny Red States plenty of 19th Century Senators who under Senate rules can block any action they don’t like. The House is thoroughly gerrymandered, so that the will of the majority isn’t even represented. Presidential candidates must win the money primary, insuring that they will support the interests of the richest and most retrograde among the top .01% who own 11% of the total wealth of the nation. The Supreme Court has always protected property at the expense of every other interest or value, so even if a decent piece of legislation passed, the five conservative hacks on the Court will strike it down.

It seems to me that this nation is infected by a nameless, faceless dread, a fear of something awful just beyond our ability to grasp. The media, right-wing politicians and demagogues, acting on behalf of their filthy rich patrons, actively exploit that fear to get what they want: a divided nation at war with itself. You don’t have to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh or worse to get this; you can feel it in the air, and get all the examples you need from The Daily Show or Colbert or Oliver. Where does this come from? This is a country rich in resources, armed to the teeth, with a powerful technological infrastructure that should allow a lot of material progress and solutions to any real problems. And yet there’s this:

As of 2014, it’s estimated that nearly half of Americans — 49 percent — say natural disasters are a sign of “the end times,” as described in the Bible. That’s up from an estimated 44 percent in 2011.

How do you explain technological marvels sitting alongside this kind of pre-Enlightenment fright? One explanation comes from @Billmon1, a great Twitter follow. He says that a large part of the US missed the Enlightenment altogether. That part, largely the Red states, but all over the country, is embedded in the 16th/17th centuries:

To be more specific: rooted in 16th/17th century British isles — Scotland, English border lands & Ireland, to be precise. “Celtic fringe.”

About as backwoods, parochial, & religiously bigoted part of W. Europe as you could have found in that era — an era of religious bigotry.

We have a great recent example of this culture in Northern Ireland. After a century of war with itself and its Catholic neighbors, Northern Ireland has turned from religious bigotry to racial bigotry. There are plenty of problems in Ireland, many of which are the result of unbridled capitalism like the short-sighted decisions of the leaders to pay off all depositor loses caused by Irish banks and the outrageous tax schemes that enable the likes of Apple to screw the US out of needed tax revenues. But really, a few immigrants are the problem?

It’s a mirror image of the US. The “Other” is the problem. It isn’t the unjust distribution of wealth, it isn’t the exploitation of the worker by the filthy rich, it isn’t unequal schools, it isn’t poverty or any other structural condition. It’s witches. It’s demons. It’s unholiness. It’s impurity. It’s smoke.

It isn’t fixable. The most you can hope for is bottling up that rage and fear in fewer and fewer people. Instead the media stokes those fires. Self-ordained ministers tell people that it’s sin that cause fires and floods and earthquakes and eclipses. Rage freaks like O’Reilly and Limbaugh and the incomparably stupid Hannity tell their listeners that the end times are coming. Politicians like Lindsey Graham shriek that terrorists are coming to kill them while they sleep. These pre-moderns are now in control of both the House and Senate, and the Supreme Court.

I’m thinking about being a bit fearful myself.

Photo by Georges Jansoone under Creative Commons license

–Joe

Why You Should NEVER Call the Police

Joe Blow — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 22:24:49 +0000

Mirrored from CounterPunch

WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 28-30, 2014

The Shoot First Mentality of American Police

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Few, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.

The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation or determine if they are at the correct address. Are the police trained that the lives of police officers are so much more valuable than the lives of possible suspects, or a houseful of people into whose residence a heavily armed SWAT team enters, that police officers must not accept the risk of judicious behavior when encountering citizens? If this is the case as all evidence indicates that it is, then the police when they gratuitously murder members of the public are merely doing what they have been trained to do. As police are trained to use violence as a first resort, the police cannot be held accountable when they do.

There are a large number of videos available online that show that the first thing that police do when they arrive is to use force.

No sooner is Michael Brown in the grave than Cleveland cops kill a 12-year old boy who has a toy gun that shoots plastic pellets. The child is threatening no one–indeed there is no one else present. The boy seems to be playing a fantasy game in his head. A busy body calls the police. The police arrive and instantly shoot the kid down.

Here is a selection of videos and reports. Some of the videos are compressed to save the viewer time. They range from 59 seconds to the full 7:51 minute video, which shows the kid is just walking up and down the sidewalk. All the action comes at the end. The police arrive and instantly open fire, making no effort whatsoever to assess the situation.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-cleveland-cop-shoot-12-year-old-tamir-rice-n256656

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2850234/Video-released-showing-police-shooting-Tamir-Rice-12-carrying-BB-gun.html

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tamir-rice-shooting-video-released/19530745/

http://nypost.com/2014/11/27/cops-release-video-of-officer-fatally-shooting-12-year-old/

Just a few days before Michael Brown is killed, Ohio police murdered John Crawford inside a Walmart store. What had Crawford done? He had picked up a BB rifle from a Walmart shelf and was on the phone with the mother of his two children, perhaps checking with her whether he could purchase it for the kids. A busy body named Ronald Ritchie felt threatened and called the police. The police rush in and shoot Crawford. The police claim that they ordered Crawford to drop the rifle, but the video shows the police shooting Crawford on sight. The busy body Ritchie actually caused two deaths, as the incident of Crawford’s murder caused Angela Williams to die from a heart attack as she fled the store in response to the police gunfire.

Yes, you guessed it. The grand jury decided the police were justified.

Here is another video that demonstrates that policemen shoot instantly without cause. This is a rare case in which the policeman was held accountable, most likely because the video prevented authorities from fabricating the usual story of police justification.

In this video, police shoot down an unarmed black man in the street. After shooting Kajieme Powell ten times, the cops hold guns on the dead body while they handcuff a dead man. Like an almost endless number of other such videos, this one shows that either psychopaths are recruited for the police force, or police training turns cops into psychopaths.

These two reports examine Officer Darren Wilson’s story of why he shot Michael Brown and conclude that Wilson’s story doesn’t make sense. http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side and http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7287443/dorian-johnson-story Most likely, Michael Brown was just another victim of the gratuitous violence that police are trained to use. Darren Wilson’s use of deadly force was in keeping with his training.

The problem with the grand jury and prosecutor in Ferguson and everywhere else is that the real problem–the training of police to use deadly force as a first resort–was not identified as the cause of Michael Brown’s death.

The Ferguson grand jury’s decision is not an exoneration of Wilson’s use of deadly force. Anyone familiar with the American criminal justice (sic) system knows that any prosecutor can get or prevent an indictment from a grand jury. Prosecutors are allowed to determine what evidence is presented. Prosecutors are permitted to bribe witnesses with money or dropped charges, and they can coerce false witness testimony by threatening a witness with charges. Seldom does an indictment or refusal to indict turn on the true facts.

The US justice system is no longer concerned with justice, but with the careers of prosecutors, punishing the powerless, and protecting the powerful. As justice has largely departed the justice system, it is hardly surprising that police lack any concept of justice.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.

–Joe

Crybaby Pounds Ranter

Joe Blow — Fri, 12 Sep 2014 22:37:29 +0000

My personal bent is to let everyone say what they want, within minor limits, especially if they blog. Those limits are when they and their cadre of sycophants personally attack me. Which is exactly what happened with these two bloggers. So, I’m in Seventh Heaven when I read a whack job like this: THE CHIV’D AWARD THIS WEEK GOES TO………………………

If they want to post opinions, that’s fine – just be decent and recognize that is what they are writing, an opinion. Most opinions are just plain worthless; nothing more than conjecture, speculation and cheap guessing – fantasies rattling around in an empty head. That doesn’t say that the opinionator is worthless. Unless he correlates him or herself with their opinions. If so, then they are psychotic and need help.

You can find the blog the Tuluwaa babies are talking about here. You’ll have to scroll down a ways until you get to this: Thanks to Jon and HCDCC members but Linda Atkins needs to learn basic civility. Based upon my own personal experience with John Chiv I’d say he needs to learn how to practice what he preaches. The same goes for Jon Yalcinkaya. From what I read I’d say these two individuals are two kinds of the same hypocritical slime.

People that live in glass houses should never throw stones. – Unspoken words taken right out of my mouth:

Guess what Mr. Chiv’d….you are a public figure as well. You have a political blog and put yourself out there as a member of the media. As a public figure, you may be criticized the same as anyone else. For instance, you claim to be accepting but you are terribly small minded and in many ways a complete bigot!

If these three specimens of humanity only knew how much the general population hate their political guts, they’d crawl back under their rocks and never out again. Either way, they are like snakes eating their own tails. They are proven void of all credibility.

Man! Do I love it when I’m right.

–Joe

Noam Chomsky, The Fate of the Gaza Ceasefire

Joe Blow — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 18:21:59 +0000

[Mirrored from Tom Dispatch, specially for that know-it-all Eric Kirk and his Brownshirt apologists who are so adroit in their polemic sophistry.]

–Joe

Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Fate of the Gaza Ceasefire

By Noam Chomsky
Posted on September 9, 2014, Printed on September 9, 2014
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/

Is there nowhere on the face of the Earth where opinion polls aren’t taken? In the wake of the 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza, parts of that tiny strip of land now look, according to photographs, like a moonscape of destruction. At least 10,000 homes were obliterated and thousands more damaged; at least 175 major factories were pummeled into the dust. Its only power plant was destroyed, damaging electricity, water, and sewage systems. Large apartment houses, as well as the ministry of education, schools, and other sites, were hit and sometimes reduced to so much rubble. It was all part of a massive Israeli assault on Hamas, several of whose senior leaders were assassinated, but also on the Palestinian population, involving what looked like collective punishment for its support of that organization or simply living in proximity to it. And indeed, with almost no hope of rebuilding much of their world any time soon, you might think that Palestinians would hold the Hamas leadership at least somewhat responsible for the destruction that has rained down, as assumedly the Israelis wanted them to. But a recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), begun in the last day before the ceasefire took hold, and carried out, in part, amid the rubble that is now Gaza, suggests otherwise.

It finds that Palestinian opinion couldn’t be clearer. Support hasn’t been this high for Hamas since 2006, when it won a fair and square democratic election. If a presidential vote were held today, the pollsters of PSR discovered, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would beat Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas hands down. Here are just a few of the findings: “79% [of Palestinians] believe that Hamas has won the Gaza War; 3% believe Israel came out the winner; and 17% believe the two sides were losers… If new presidential elections are held today and only two [candidates] were nominated, Haniyeh, for the first time since we have started asking about his popularity about eight years ago, would receive a majority of 61% and Abbas would receive 32%. [The] vote for Haniyeh stands at 53% in the Gaza Strip and 66% in the West Bank. Abbas receives 43% in the Gaza Strip and 25% in the West Bank… A majority of 53% believe that armed confrontation is the most effective means to establish a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel. Only 22% believe negotiation is the best means to establish a Palestinian state and 20% believe that popular non-violent resistance is the most effective route to statehood.”

As historically has often been the case, massive bombings and other assaults do not destroy the support of populations for movements or governments, but tend to solidify it. In other words, Israeli policy is reducing civilized life for Palestinians in a major way and yet increasing the urge both to fight on and the desire for revenge. It’s an ugly pattern and, as TomDispatch regular Noam Chomsky (whose latest book, Masters of Mankind, is due out this week) indicates today, it’s been going on in this same fashion for a remarkably long time, as Israel continues to gobble up Palestinian lands on the West Bank, while working to hem Palestinians in yet further in the Gaza Strip. Tom

Ceasefires in Which Violations Never Cease
What’s Next for Israel, Hamas, and Gaza?
By Noam Chomsky

On August 26th, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) both accepted a ceasefire agreement after a 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza that left 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast landscapes of destruction behind. The agreement calls for an end to military action by both Israel and Hamas, as well as an easing of the Israeli siege that has strangled Gaza for many years.

This is, however, just the most recent of a series of ceasefire agreements reached after each of Israel’s periodic escalations of its unremitting assault on Gaza. Throughout this period, the terms of these agreements remain essentially the same. The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it — as Israel has officially recognized — until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality. These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called “mowing the lawn” in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as “removing the topsoil” by a senior U.S. military officer, appalled by the practices of the self-described “most moral army in the world.”

The first of this series was the Agreement on Movement and Access Between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November 2005. It called for “a crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah for the export of goods and the transit of people, continuous operation of crossings between Israel and Gaza for the import/export of goods, and the transit of people, reduction of obstacles to movement within the West Bank, bus and truck convoys between the West Bank and Gaza, the building of a seaport in Gaza, [and the] re-opening of the airport in Gaza” that Israeli bombing had demolished.

That agreement was reached shortly after Israel withdrew its settlers and military forces from Gaza. The motive for the disengagement was explained by Dov Weissglass, a confidant of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was in charge of negotiating and implementing it. “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process,” Weissglass informed the Israeli press. “And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders, and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.” True enough.

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,” Weissglass added. “It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Israeli hawks also recognized that instead of investing substantial resources in maintaining a few thousand settlers in illegal communities in devastated Gaza, it made more sense to transfer them to illegal subsidized communities in areas of the West Bank that Israel intended to keep.

The disengagement was depicted as a noble effort to pursue peace, but the reality was quite different. Israel never relinquished control of Gaza and is, accordingly, recognized as the occupying power by the United Nations, the U.S., and other states (Israel apart, of course). In their comprehensive history of Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, Israeli scholars Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar describe what actually happened when that country disengaged: the ruined territory was not released “for even a single day from Israel’s military grip or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day.” After the disengagement, “Israel left behind scorched earth, devastated services, and people with neither a present nor a future. The settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass its inhabitants by means of its formidable military might.”

Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense

Israel soon had a pretext for violating the November Agreement more severely. In January 2006, the Palestinians committed a serious crime. They voted “the wrong way” in carefully monitored free elections, placing the parliament in the hands of Hamas. Israel and the United States immediately imposed harsh sanctions, telling the world very clearly what they mean by “democracy promotion.” Europe, to its shame, went along as well.

The U.S. and Israel soon began planning a military coup to overthrow the unacceptable elected government, a familiar procedure. When Hamas pre-empted the coup in 2007, the siege of Gaza became far more severe, along with regular Israeli military attacks. Voting the wrong way in a free election was bad enough, but preempting a U.S.-planned military coup proved to be an unpardonable offense.

A new ceasefire agreement was reached in June 2008. It again called for opening the border crossings to “allow the transfer of all goods that were banned and restricted to go into Gaza.” Israel formally agreed to this, but immediately announced that it would not abide by the agreement and open the borders until Hamas released Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas.

Israel itself has a long history of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and holding them for lengthy periods without credible charge, sometimes as hostages. Of course, imprisoning civilians on dubious charges, or none, is a regular practice in the territories Israel controls. But the standard western distinction between people and “unpeople” (in Orwell’s useful phrase) renders all this insignificant.

Israel not only maintained the siege in violation of the June 2008 ceasefire agreement but did so with extreme rigor, even preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which cares for the huge number of official refugees in Gaza, from replenishing its stocks.

On November 4th, while the media were focused on the U.S. presidential election, Israeli troops entered Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. That elicited a Hamas missile response and an exchange of fire. (All the deaths were Palestinian.) In late December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire. Israel considered the offer, but rejected it, preferring instead to launch Operation Cast Lead, a three-week incursion of the full power of the Israeli military into the Gaza strip, resulting in shocking atrocities well documented by international and Israeli human rights organizations.

On January 8, 2009, while Cast Lead was in full fury, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution (with the U.S. abstaining) calling for “an immediate ceasefire leading to a full Israeli withdrawal, unimpeded provision through Gaza of food, fuel, and medical treatment, and intensified international arrangements to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling.”

A new ceasefire agreement was indeed reached, but the terms, similar to the previous ones, were again never observed and broke down completely with the next major mowing-the-lawn episode in November 2012, Operation Pillar of Defense. What happened in the interim can be illustrated by the casualty figures from January 2012 to the launching of that operation: one Israeli was killed by fire from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was the murder of Ahmed Jabari, a high official of the military wing of Hamas. Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz, described Jabari as Israel’s “subcontractor” in Gaza, who enforced relative quiet there for more than five years. As always, there was a pretext for the assassination, but the likely reason was provided by Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. He had been involved in direct negotiations with Jabari for years and reported that, hours before he was assassinated, Jabari “received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the ceasefire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.”

There is a long record of Israeli actions designed to deter the threat of a diplomatic settlement. After this exercise of mowing the lawn, a ceasefire agreement was reached yet again. Repeating the now-standard terms, it called for a cessation of military action by both sides and the effective ending of the siege of Gaza with Israel “opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods, and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas.”

What happened next was reviewed by Nathan Thrall, senior Middle East analyst of the International Crisis Group. Israeli intelligence recognized that Hamas was observing the terms of the ceasefire. “Israel,” Thrall wrote, “therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters.” In other words, the siege never ended. “Crossings were repeatedly shut. So-called buffer zones inside Gaza [from which Palestinians are barred, and which include a third or more of the strip’s limited arable land] were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank.”

Operation Protective Edge

So matters continued until April 2014, when an important event took place. The two major Palestinian groupings, Gaza-based Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank signed a unity agreement. Hamas made major concessions. The unity government contained none of its members or allies. In substantial measure, as Nathan Thrall observes, Hamas turned over governance of Gaza to the PA. Several thousand PA security forces were sent there and the PA placed its guards at borders and crossings, with no reciprocal positions for Hamas in the West Bank security apparatus. Finally, the unity government accepted the three conditions that Washington and the European Union had long demanded: non-violence, adherence to past agreements, and the recognition of Israel.

Israel was infuriated. Its government declared at once that it would refuse to deal with the unity government and cancelled negotiations. Its fury mounted when the U.S., along with most of the world, signaled support for the unity government.

There are good reasons why Israel opposes the unification of Palestinians. One is that the Hamas-Fatah conflict has provided a useful pretext for refusing to engage in serious negotiations. How can one negotiate with a divided entity? More significantly, for more than 20 years, Israel has been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords it signed in 1993, which declare Gaza and the West Bank to be an inseparable territorial unity.

A look at a map explains the rationale. Separated from Gaza, any West Bank enclaves left to Palestinians have no access to the outside world. They are contained by two hostile powers, Israel and Jordan, both close U.S. allies — and contrary to illusions, the U.S. is very far from a neutral “honest broker.”

Furthermore, Israel has been systematically taking over the Jordan Valley, driving out Palestinians, establishing settlements, sinking wells, and otherwise ensuring that the region — about one-third of the West Bank, with much of its arable land — will ultimately be integrated into Israel along with the other regions that country is taking over. Hence remaining Palestinian cantons will be completely imprisoned. Unification with Gaza would interfere with these plans, which trace back to the early days of the occupation and have had steady support from the major political blocs, including figures usually portrayed as doves like former president Shimon Peres, who was one of the architects of settlement deep in the West Bank.

As usual, a pretext was needed to move on to the next escalation. Such an occasion arose when three Israeli boys from the settler community in the West Bank were brutally murdered. The Israeli government evidently quickly realized that they were dead, but pretended otherwise, which provided the opportunity to launch a “rescue operation” — actually a rampage primarily targeting Hamas. The Netanyahu government has claimed from the start that it knew Hamas was responsible, but has made no effort to present evidence.

One of Israel’s leading authorities on Hamas, Shlomi Eldar, reported almost at once that the killers very likely came from a dissident clan in Hebron that has long been a thorn in the side of the Hamas leadership. He added, “I’m sure they didn’t get any green light from the leadership of Hamas, they just thought it was the right time to act.”

The Israeli police have since been searching for and arresting members of the clan, still claiming, without evidence, that they are “Hamas terrorists.” On September 2nd, Haaretz reported that, after very intensive interrogations, the Israeli security services concluded the abduction of the teenagers “was carried out by an independent cell” with no known direct links to Hamas.

The 18-day rampage by the Israeli Defense Forces succeeded in undermining the feared unity government. According to Israeli military sources, its soldiers arrested 419 Palestinians, including 335 affiliated with Hamas, and killed six, while searching thousands of locations and confiscating $350,000. Israel also conducted dozens of attacks in Gaza, killing five Hamas members on July 7th.

Hamas finally reacted with its first rockets in 18 months, Israeli officials reported, providing Israel with the pretext to launch Operation Protective Edge on July 8th. The 50-day assault proved the most extreme exercise in mowing the lawn — so far.

Operation [Still to Be Named]

Israel is in a fine position today to reverse its decades-old policy of separating Gaza from the West Bank in violation of its solemn agreements and to observe a major ceasefire agreement for the first time. At least temporarily, the threat of democracy in neighboring Egypt has been diminished, and the brutal Egyptian military dictatorship of General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is a welcome ally for Israel in maintaining control over Gaza.

The Palestinian unity government, as noted earlier, is placing the U.S.-trained forces of the Palestinian Authority in control of Gaza’s borders, and governance may be shifting into the hands of the PA, which depends on Israel for its survival, as well as for its finances. Israel might feel that its takeover of Palestinian territory in the West Bank has proceeded so far that there is little to fear from some limited form of autonomy for the enclaves that remain to Palestinians.

There is also some truth to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s observation: “Many elements in the region understand today that, in the struggle in which they are threatened, Israel is not an enemy but a partner.” Akiva Eldar, Israel’s leading diplomatic correspondent, adds, however, that “all those ‘many elements in the region’ also understand that there is no brave and comprehensive diplomatic move on the horizon without an agreement on the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and a just, agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem.” That is not on Israel’s agenda, he points out, and is in fact in direct conflict with the 1999 electoral program of the governing Likud coalition, never rescinded, which “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

Some knowledgeable Israeli commentators, notably columnist Danny Rubinstein, believe that Israel is poised to reverse course and relax its stranglehold on Gaza.

We’ll see.

The record of these past years suggests otherwise and the first signs are not auspicious. As Operation Protective Edge ended, Israel announced its largest appropriation of West Bank land in 30 years, almost 1,000 acres. Israel Radio reported that the takeover was in response to the killing of the three Jewish teenagers by “Hamas militants.” A Palestinian boy was burned to death in retaliation for the murder, but no Israeli land was handed to Palestinians, nor was there any reaction when an Israeli soldier murdered 10-year-old Khalil Anati on a quiet street in a refugee camp near Hebron on August 10th, while the most moral army in the world was smashing Gaza to bits, and then drove away in his jeep as the child bled to death.

Anati was one the 23 Palestinians (including three children) killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank during the Gaza onslaught, according to U.N. statistics, along with more than 2,000 wounded, 38% by live fire. “None of those killed were endangering soldiers’ lives,” Israeli journalist Gideon Levy reported. To none of this is there any reaction, just as there was no reaction while Israel killed, on average, more than two Palestinian children a week for the past 14 years. Unpeople, after all.

It is commonly claimed on all sides that, if the two-state settlement is dead as a result of Israel’s takeover of Palestinian lands, then the outcome will be one state West of the Jordan. Some Palestinians welcome this outcome, anticipating that they can then conduct a civil rights struggle for equal rights on the model of South Africa under apartheid. Many Israeli commentators warn that the resulting “demographic problem” of more Arab than Jewish births and diminishing Jewish immigration will undermine their hope for a “democratic Jewish state.”

But these widespread beliefs are dubious.

The realistic alternative to a two-state settlement is that Israel will continue to carry forward the plans it has been implementing for years, taking over whatever is of value to it in the West Bank, while avoiding Palestinian population concentrations and removing Palestinians from the areas it is integrating into Israel. That should avoid the dreaded “demographic problem.”

The areas being integrated into Israel include a vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem, the area within the illegal “Separation Wall,” corridors cutting through the regions to the East, and will probably also encompass the Jordan Valley. Gaza will likely remain under its usual harsh siege, separated from the West Bank. And the Syrian Golan Heights — like Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders — will quietly become part of Greater Israel. In the meantime, West Bank Palestinians will be contained in unviable cantons, with special accommodation for elites in standard neocolonial style.

These basic policies have been underway since the 1967 conquest, following a principle enunciated by then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, one of the Israeli leaders most sympathetic to the Palestinians. He informed his cabinet colleagues that they should tell Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.”

The suggestion was natural within the overriding conception articulated in 1972 by future president Haim Herzog: “I do not deny the Palestinians a place or stand or opinion on every matter… But certainly I am not prepared to consider them as partners in any respect in a land that has been consecrated in the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner.” Dayan also called for Israel’s “permanent rule” (“memshelet keva“) over the occupied territories. When Netanyahu expresses the same stand today, he is not breaking new ground.

Like other states, Israel pleads “security” as justification for its aggressive and violent actions. But knowledgeable Israelis know better. Their recognition of reality was articulated clearly in 1972 by Air Force Commander (and later president) Ezer Weizmann. He explained that there would be no security problem if Israel were to accept the international call to withdraw from the territories it conquered in 1967, but the country would not then be able to “exist according to the scale, spirit, and quality she now embodies.”

For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept. It has been a highly successful policy. There is every reason to expect it to persist as long as the United States provides the necessary military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support. For those concerned with the rights of the brutalized Palestinians, there can be no higher priority than working to change U.S. policies, not an idle dream by any means.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival, Failed States,Power Systems, Occupy, and Hopes and Prospects. His latest book,Masters of Mankind, will be published this week by Haymarket Books, which is also reissuing 12 of his classic books in new editions over the coming year. His work is regularly posted atTomDispatch.com. His website is www.chomsky.info.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook andTumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me.

Copyright 2014 Noam Chomsky

© 2014 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/

Gossipmonger Caught with Pants Down

Joe Blow — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 21:34:18 +0000

Looks like the North Coast’s number one gossipmongering crybaby got caught trying to pass off another crock of crap on the unsuspecting. That of course does not include the cadre of Tuluwa apologist crybabies and their standard fare nonsense.

Tuluwa(a) ROT:

NO BRIDGE FOR YOU! CLAM BEACH DESTROYERS.

https://tuluwatexaminer.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/hey-sundberg-no-motorized-vechicles-on-clam-beach/

The Mad River Union is reporting that the California Coastal Commission is forcing the County to adhere to the process and obey the law to the letter. What a bummer for the County, who apparently went behind the public’s back in a probable Brown Act violation and secretly sent in an application to install a 90 foot railcar style bridge. A bridge that would have allowed easy vehicle access to Clam beach.

Well the Coastal Commission said sorry Rex, Ryan, Virginia and Estelle you actually have to complete Environmental studies before we can consider your request. We all know what those environmental studies would show! So it looks like they are going to avoid that embarrassment and just say they can afford to do them. Boo hoo!

So rest easy snowy plovers and regular beach goers you’re safe for now thanks to the California Coastal Commission

I expect Tuluwa’s verbose enforcer Mola to come out with a couple of thousand words to put poor Clueless in his place for daring to question the veracity of this blog and the people that support it.

You obviously have no idea how the permitting process works. You must first submit an application to a regulatory agency and in return they will tell you what studies should and need to be done. This is always the case with the Coastal Commission. Did you ever think that perhaps the County submitted the permit due to the pressure it was receiving but knew wholeheartedly that the Coastal Commission would come back with dozens of conditions and recommended studies? By just submitting the permit application, the County received what they wanted to hear — no way a bridge is being constructed due to the impacts to wetlands and sensitive dunes.

Believe me, I know exactly what I am talking about. All you did was spew out misinformation. You are the one that should be embarrassed!

When it comes to “adhere to the process and obey the law to the letter” these two-faced hypocrites are the last ones to be spouting off their self-righteous ridicule. It is impossible for any of them to be “embarrassed.” That requires a modicum of self-respect and they don’t have any.

–Joe

Even Brownshirts Step In It, Once In Awhile

Joe Blow — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 00:34:44 +0000

Tuluwat ROT

IT’S TIME FOR EUREKA CITIZENS TO HAVE A ROLE POLICING THE POLICE

This is a timely issue that all Eurekans and residents of Humboldt County need to address. It’s interesting that the people at this blog were able to see this problem in this community and write about it, but cannot see just how big a pile of shit they stepped in themselves. They can condemn the Eureka Police Department, the Chief of Police and the City Council for gross “crimes against humanity,” BUT what they cannot see is what they ARE themselves – that, in their own way, they do and commit the same kinds of crimes. They need a Review Board to check and censure their own “criminal” conduct.

Sadly, their hypocrisy totally negates any credibility they might have. If you want proof of this observation just follow the comments.

Until people can learn to take responsibility for their own lives and what they do, Review Boards are nothing more than an empty panacea. If you want accountability, then you first must learn to actually STOP at all stop signs. Problem is, I don’t expect anyone over at that blog to understand that…

–Joe

Eric Kirk’s Brilliant Act of Justification

Joe Blow — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 19:45:33 +0000

[UPDATE :: Sickness Incarnate]

Below are a couple of following comments to the posting below – I just had to indulge. You just can’t get anymore disconnected than Eric Kirk is here. The pure outpouring of malevolent hatred for anyone that doesn’t submit to him, his right to judge, is astounding. This state of mind is where physical violence starts.

August 29, 2014 at 8:09 pm

bolithio

Yeh, well all I am trying to say is that at some point…we have to acknowledge that God (any and all of them) is not going to rescue us from ourselves.

Do we want to take responsibility at some point? If people really want to emulate this ‘godness’, with humility, peace and fairness – whats stopping them?

Could it be the endless character assassination, ridicule and bullying?

August 29, 2014 at 8:51 pm

Eric Kirk

NAN – I should apologize. You’re mentally ill. You can’t help yourself. Get help!

And I get that you’re an expert because you took a Jewish studies survey course as a sophomore in college. And you watched Fiddler on the Roof. I get it. [Emphasis mine]

These kinds of Elitist Demigods are a threat to everyone. Something these mockers might take to heart:

Elisha Mocked
“Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. He went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.” -2 Kings 2:23-25.

Dead Right and Still Alive – That’s my motto!

Don’t you just love it when you’re proven RIGHT?

In past blog comments I’ve had considerable to say about the Brownshirt movement that is strong and assertive at particular local blogs. These racist, bigoted hypocrites took great exception to me and my right to make observations on their blogs. When they got personal, I took exception. These people, for the most part, live in this community, work and play, where I live. If you can terrorize and commit blog murder, a form of censorship, lie, slander and commit further acts of hate, you are a threat to this community. Some of these blogs are nothing more than gossip-mongering hen houses, just spreading the hate and filthy lying accusations. It may seem like harmless opinionating, but cut across a lie or try defending your own personal integrity against and you suddenly are confronted with a pack of rabid dogs trying to rip out your throat. What these Brownshirt thugs don’t realize, and I’m primarily talking about those running blogs, is that what they dish out is what they receive as their reward.

That is why when I read Eric Kirk’s latest act of hysteria, I just had to point it out for everyone. When I objected to Kirk’s personal attack like this on me, he censored me from his blog. Here he is in his own filthy words:

August 28, 2014 at 11:51 pm

Eric Kirk

NAN, you are either deliberately dense or so fucking stupid it’s pathetic. No way am I going to waste any effort responding to that bullshit. It’s the most pathetic and vindictive crap you’ve written to date, and that’s really saying something.

The one that is “dense and so fucking stupid” is Eric Kirk. He is a classic example of the Elitist demi-gods in our society telling everyone else how to think, believe and act. Yet, they are totally clueless, as I’ve pointed out and substantiated many time in the past. So, for your enlightenment you can draw your own conclusions. Here is the comment he was referring to:

August 28, 2014 at 9:27 pm

Not A Native

Eric first asserts the following:
“I do not endeavor to “characterize” Israeli society.

And then he proceeds to establish his relevance and bonafides precisely by characterizing in very narrow terms the few people with Jewish ancestry he’s encountered

“….having been immersed in socialist left wing politics all of my life which is very heavily Jewish influenced

“my in-law Jewish family on the subject, including my wife’s communist grandmother,”

Though Israeli may be a very diverse lot, the Jews Eric whole expereince is with certainly aren’t but it supports the stereotype Eric wants to promulgate and reinforce, Jews are left wing. Eric is sickening because he truly believes the form of antisemitism that falsely characterizes Jews as being anarchists and revolutionaries.

But that’s not enough for Eric. The most damning form of antisemtism he’s yet divulged is to come:

“But they[Israelis] are brought together by the fact that they are broadly hated in the west as “Zionists,” “Christ killers,” and in recent decades “infidels.”

And Eric can’t understand why a Jewish homeland in Germany was rejected

While Nazi antisemitism denied Jews humanity, Eric’s is more insidious. He denies Jews their religion. and declares them to be defined as the objects of others’ hatred. In that way, Eric promotes a recasting of Toynbeeism.

What truly unites Jews is devotion to their holy scripture. For the sake of that alone, many Jews have chosen death. The willingness to sacrifice for that, if absolutely necessary, is what perpetuates the Jewish nation. And other Jews have forsaken it, choosing to assimilate and pass on only shadows of a former heritage.

The disaffected, alienated, or disgruntled Jews are among the ones Eric encountered and has extrapolated onto all Jews and Israeli society. His ideas about Jews in general and Israelis in particular are just stereotypes from the political camp he takes in as whole cloth and denies Jews their Jewishness.

Just a few Israeli self reflections:

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/why-i-am-not-orthodox-or-secular

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/zionism-or-toynbeeism

http://www.think-israel.org/rosenberg.herzogtoynbeedebate.html

And to further demonstrate my “rightness” – my total justification for standing against these parasites:

August 29, 2014 at 6:36 am

Mitch

I’m standard-issue secular American Jew. The Jewish people I grew up with very definitely considered themselves “to be defined as the objects of others’ hatred.” Nearly to a one, we had no interest in scripture. We defined ourselves by our maintenance of various traditions associated with the religion, but nobody believed God was involved in the events the traditions celebrated. Matzoh is not belief.

August 29, 2014 at 7:12 am

Not A Native

Eric, an old layers expression: ‘When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the table’.

Your only response is table pounding. and cursing. Gee, how much critical thinking and deep understanding does that display? [Emphasis mine]

Mitch, your response exactly matches my points. “Standard secular American Jews”(its an absurd notion that a secular Jew is ‘standard’) aren’t a continuing line or predecessors for a future Jewish nation or Jewish State. You’re Toynbee’s poster child of why Jews shouldn’t exist today.

So, there you are. If you go to this comment (click on the date) and follow along, since writing this observation Eric has apologized with his usual hypocritical sarcasm and ridicule. An apology is not worth the words when you continue to justify your right to do what you did in the first place – keep right on attacking and terrorizing.

Kirk and his apologists totally delegitimized themselves.

–Joe

Fred’s Little Piece of Paradise

Joe Blow — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 21:29:13 +0000

When I read Fred’s latest – Fred and Marcy Sittin’ In a Tree… – and I thought about why I commented on his previous article (Why Repair Brick Chimneys?), it occurred to me why we are where we are in our Democracy. It would be nice to live in a utopian world, especially here on the North Coast. Good, decent, efficient, uncorrupt elected government representatives, just courts, police that protect and serve EVERYONE, an unpolluted bay and rivers, no homeless, no drugs and no bad effects of the decades-long criminal marijuana business. But, then that might be too boring for Paradise.

Thinking about how it is today in Eureka – Humboldt County actually – reminded me of how it was for my parents right after the war. My father was logging in Southern Humboldt, decided to buy a 40 acre piece of land that bordered a county road and build a home. So, he opened up a road to a place with a great view and began. No issues with connecting to the county road. Not long afterwards a PG&E truck pulled up, the driver wanted to know if my father wanted them to run a line to the house, a house he hadn’t even started building yet. Wouldn’t cost him a dime, all he had to do was set a pole for a meter box. Over a period of time my father, with some family and friends help built a beautiful home. He installed his own sewer system, water system and built a two car garage. Not one time that I can remember was he ever hassled by a county building inspector. He paid taxes on the home and property, so they must of signed off on the home at sometime. I don’t remember periodic inspections either. I know he often talked about making sure everything met building codes. Today that would be unthinkable. When I read Fred’s naivete I know why. The Planning Commission has become and institution unto itself.

The problem is that the more laws everyone is subject, not to mention the self-imposed laws the police subject everyone to, the more lawless everyone becomes. Then there are the so-called “good citizens,” like Fred setting standards for everyone with their brilliant opinions. They got their noses in everyone’s business. If they can’t tell you what to do they’ll tell you how to think and what to believe. No one ever grows up. And, so goes Paradise.

In my lifetime, paradise was for my mother’s and father’s generation. Growing up in those years, I can tell you, and you too Fred, IT WAS NOT BORING!

–Joe

Why I Love Living In Eureka

Joe Blow — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:29:52 +0000

[Latest UPDATE] [UPDATE II – In his own words]

Why I love living in Eureka, CA.

Eureka is just full of these kinds of people – don’t you just love them? Given the opportunity they’ll tell you what brand of toilet paper you should use, if any. Read this and weep folks.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2014

Why Repair Brick Chimneys?

This article in the Santa Rosa Press- Democrat got me to thinking about something again. The article is about a kid in Napa that had a chimney fall on him during their earthquake of a few days ago. It nearly killed him. I had to wonder if his parents are going to rebuild that chimney?

Many people do. I’ve seen it here in Eureka many times. When an earthquake damaged our chimney back in the early ’90s, I tore it down. The part sticking above the roof, anyway. But I can think of two very large chimneys almost within sight of my house that were damaged and repaired. Now they have the potential to be damaged again or even collapse.

Make that three or more chimneys if you count the Arkley’s. Theirs were damaged back in the 2010(?) quake and they seemed to go to some effort and expense to rebuild them. I had to ask Cherie Arkley why they went through all that effort when they could have simply replaced the damaged sections above the roof with stovepipe. She just shook her head and almost glared at me. Some folks just like brick chimneys.

With that in mind, why are we still using traditional bricks for chimneys? I would think it wouldn’t be too difficult to come up with a simulated brick made out of something akin to what they used for space shuttle tiles: super light, fireproof but durable. Make bricks out of something like that and I would think the hazards of earthquake vs. brick chimneys would pretty much be eliminated, yet you’d still have the brick appearance some insist upon.

I’m wouldn’t expect people to rush out and replace their brick chimneys with the phony ones, but on new construction and repairing earthquake damaged ones, seems a lightweight alternative would make perfect sense.

All right, entrepreneurs, let’s develop those artificial bricks.

Addendum: A fellow replying to my comment in the Press- Democrat advises me such artificial bricks are already being used, although I’m not sure they’re exactly what I was proposing.

posted by Fred Mangels

[Update Wednesday, August 27, 2014]

Fred’s Comment Section produces some brilliant Fred-style homespun wit. (Or should I say, “worthless opinions”?):

Anonymous said…

You, a non-1%er, dare question an Arkley? The nerve.

9:37 AM

Fred Mangels said…

Oh, stop it.

I just asked why they were going through all that hassle for a chimney that might well get damaged again. I think her glaring at me was just she felt stove pipe would be tacky. I don’t think so, but it’s their money to waste.

9:48 AM

[UPDATE II – In his own words :: Better Fred than me.]

Fred Mangels said…

I’m not sure what they used. I drove by there today to see if I could refresh my memory but couldn’t tell if it was real brick or that veneer stuff. Maybe someone hip to construction could tell?

I do know I mentioned to Cheri it seemed foolish to put up another brick chimney when it might just get damaged again. She replied that the way they were doing it, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Whatever. I still don’t think it would have looked any worse if they just replaced the chimneys with stove pipes, but maybe that’s because I’m a low class kind of guy. [Emphasis mine]

–Joe

The Joe Blow Report 2

Put Those Police Cameras on Bankers

Put Those Police Cameras on Bankers

Welcome to the Sixteenth Century, Eureka

Welcome to the Sixteenth Century

Why You Should NEVER Call the Police

The Shoot First Mentality of American Police

Crybaby Pounds Ranter

Noam Chomsky, The Fate of the Gaza Ceasefire

Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Fate of the Gaza Ceasefire

By Noam Chomsky Posted on September 9, 2014, Printed on September 9, 2014 http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/

© 2014 TomDispatch. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/

Gossipmonger Caught with Pants Down

Tuluwa(a) ROT:

NO BRIDGE FOR YOU! CLAM BEACH DESTROYERS.

Even Brownshirts Step In It, Once In Awhile

IT’S TIME FOR EUREKA CITIZENS TO HAVE A ROLE POLICING THE POLICE

Eric Kirk’s Brilliant Act of Justification

[UPDATE :: Sickness Incarnate]

Dead Right and Still Alive – That’s my motto!

Fred’s Little Piece of Paradise

Why I Love Living In Eureka

Why Repair Brick Chimneys?

By Noam Chomsky
Posted on September 9, 2014, Printed on September 9, 2014
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/

© 2014 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175892/