Please tell me if this piece has been rejected and if so why?
David Truskoff
Deadly Shell Game
Did you ever wonder what it must be like to travel all around the world just hitting a little round ball into a hole in the ground and getting paid millions of dollars for doing it? You need not worry about the horrors of Darfur or the terrible suffering of the people of Palestine. You just go on hitting the little ball into the hole in the ground. No, I am not being facetious. I am sure many older peace warriors like me often wonder what it must be like to live in a make believe world. I am not picking on professional golfers. I am sure there are many who are concerned about the shape the world is in, but I see most of the world’s population in the face of the signature character of Mad Magazine who says. "What, Me Worry"?
Are most people so stupid that they would let the media do what it did to presidential Candidate Kerry? The answer must be yes because it actually happened.
The media took a not too bright individual who used his family influence and money to find a hiding place so he would not have to go and serve his country and go to war in Vietnam and made him into a hero. That is what they did for George Bush. At the same time they took his opponent who not only volunteered to serve, was decorated and actually wounded three times and made him into a lying shirker (Senator Dole said Kerry’s three wounds were just scratches)
I am convinced that most of the population lives in that make believe world and would all like to be just hitting the little ball into a hole in the ground.
The US chief defense-industry-lobbying group selected Marion C. Blakey, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, as its new chief executive.
Blakey will head the Aerospace Industries Association AIA that has 178 associate members and 102 regular member companies. AIA, represents 52 manufacturers of military and commercial helicopters, aircraft, engines, missiles and spacecraft, and joins the Israel American Public Affairs Committee to form an unbeatable lobbying block in Washington
Senator William Fulbright was Chairman of the Senate Foreign relations Committee back in the 1960s. He said: "I hadn’t realized before the hearings that the Jewish lobby was so powerful. … I didn’t know". The Chairman: also said, "they know they have control of the Senate politically, and therefore whatever the Secretary tells them, they can laugh at him. They say, "Yes, but you don't control the Senate."
If the Senator was alive today he would be stunned by the influence that has mushroomed into a much-feared ruling clique in the congress. In a 1988 TV News Program. (Sixty Minutes highlighting AIPAC,) former Under Secretary of State George Ball said: "Practically every congressman and senator says his prayers to the AIPAC lobby. They’ve done an enormous job of corrupting the American democratic process."
Since Fulbright expressed his fears the total aid to Israel hovers around $91billion. In 2007 the new $30 billion aid package represents a 25 percent rise in U.S. military aid to Israel, from a current $2.4 billion each year to $3 billion a year over 10 years. The new deal says that the money must be used to purchase military equipment from the US defense industry.
Prior to this new push by those who control the US Congress, Israel has done well by the Bush administration $10.19 billion in U.S. weaponry, $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales program, and another $1.61 billion in Direct Commercial Sales and a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.
And so the shell game becomes obvious. The money that is supposedly loaned (although no one expects to get it back) comes from the American taxpayer. It is then used to buy arms from American death merchants. If you tried to stand in the way of such a deal the combined power of AIPAC and the IAI would steamroller you into oblivion. The US Government by for and of the people no longer exists. I would go further and say George Ball was correct. The US democratic process has been so corrupted by these lobbyists as to make it inoperable.
When someone said the congress still has to approve the $30 Billion deal Secretary Burns said, he believed there would be little opposition in the Senate and House. Now that is a slam-dunk.
There are Zionist supporters who claim that giving Israel the money to buy US arms means jobs for Americans so it is a good deal for both, but it is our money in the first place. Realists know there is little if any trickle down and the Palestinian children that are starving on the West Bank and the poor people who have had their houses blown up by our planes don’t give a damn about the profits of Lockheed and neither do I.
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