Vice President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Photo: Flash 90

By Ralph E. Stone

March 14, 2010

In President Obama’s June 2009 Cairo Islam speech, he called for a Palestinian state and a freeze on Israeli settlements. The Obama administration seemed to be announcing a neutral U.S. policy in all things Middle East or at least a less pro-Israel approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How naive we were.

Recently, Israel made the U.S. look ridiculous again by announcing the building of 1,600 new settler homes in an area of the occupied West Bank. The announcement came while Vice President Biden was in Israel to emphasize President Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security in the face of a possible Iranian nuclear threat. Clearly, this incident is another illustration of Israel’s lack of interest or incentive to engage in meaningful peace negotiations with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors and a snub of U.S. efforts to jump-start peace negotiations. Does Israel want or need peace? Apparently not.

Israel has exploited the Israeli-Arab conflict by pioneering a successful defense and home security-related economy. It now enjoys a booming prosperity while it is in conflict with its neighbors. Israel’s economy is based on the prospect of continual conflict. Consider, Israel is the leading source of home security gadgetry and anti-terrorist technologies. Israel has over 600 security and homeland-security related companies. Israel is now the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems, precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories.

Does Israel still need a close and supportive relationship with the U.S. to survive? Probably not. Israel’s vulnerability in the Middle East is just a myth. The Arab states do not pose a direct threat to Israel at this time. Even though an Arab alliance has a quantitative advantage, Israel can rely on its technological and military dominance. Israel has a nuclear monopoly in the region, although there is fear that Iran will develop this capability. It has a military superiority vis-a-vis any possible coalition of Arab forces. It has the fourth largest air force in the world after the U.S., Russian, and China. It is the only state in the region with its own defense industry. It has the most modern military in the region with about160,000 personnel.

Before, it was David (Israel) versus Goliath (the Arab ring states). Now Israel has become the neighborhood bully.

Thus, it can be argued that a continued war on terror is good for Israel’s defense and home security-related industries. The closure of the occupied territories serves at least two purposes: to keep the Palestinians caged in and to advertise its defense and home security-related industries. Israel is achieving its goals of slowly taking over the entire country and driving out the non-Jewish population without the necessity of engaging in peace negotiations.

Clearly, the U.S. is not going to use any leverage it may have to force Israel to the negotiation table. Why? Because the conventional wisdom in the White House and in Congress is that it would be political suicide to threaten to cutoff foreign aid, military aid or loan guarantees to force Israel into meaningful peace negotiations. All that remains to the U.S. is bluster and outrage, which Israel and the Arab world have long realized signifies little or nothing. This is the price we pay for our lockstep support of Israel. As a result, the prospect for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the next several years is slim to none.

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Filed under: Land Use, Opinion, Politics, Religion, War

William Chadwick

By William Chadwick

Editor’s Note: William just returned to San Francisco after a few months back in his home country, England, and is looking to rent a room from a kind soul who would enjoy his company and his penchant for theater, screen and play writing.

March 12, 2010

So I am standing in the pub and some woman comes up to me and starts staring at my chest. Specifically, my left breast. In turn, I stare at her left breast. She doesn’t like what she sees, and without a word, she turns and goes off to look at someone else’s chest.

You might be wondering what’s going on by now. I’m at a roommate meetup. I found it on the really useful Meetup.com website, which has meetups for just about everything from playing sports to listening to music to reading plays.

Continue reading Are you a Needer or a Haver?

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Filed under: Housing, Human Interest, Opinion

Concerned citizens watch a February 26 meeting
of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
which met to discuss Muni service cuts and fare increases
to close a $12.1 million budget shortfall in the current fiscal year.
Photos by Luke Thomas 

By Sue Vaughan

March 10, 2010

On Friday, February 26, facing yet another in an ongoing series of deficits, the seven members of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) took drastic action: they decided not to raise the cost of monthly bus passes for seniors, disabled, and youth.  That proposal - to charge $30 for those passes starting on May 1 - would have raised $1 million to help fill the $12.1 million Fiscal Year 2010 budget gap.

The day before, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who wields the power of appointment to the SFMTA board, announced the proposal to raise fares for seniors, disabled, and youth would be pulled.  But the momentum was not to be stopped.  Disabled and senior individuals - and groups representing those individuals - organized and turned out by the hundreds for the meeting.

The decision to withdraw that proposal may have allowed a majority of the Board of Directors to quietly vote for something even more drastic: cutting transit service by 10 percent starting May 1.

That’s nearly the equivalent of one month’s worth of bus service, a retired 30-year veteran of the agency pointed out.

Continue reading Minding Muni, Part II

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Filed under: Economy, News, Politics, Transportation

From Asian Law Caucus

March 9, 2010

Groups Request to Examine Dragnet in Muslim American Communities

SAN FRANCISCO - The ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC), The Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the San Francisco Bay Guardian filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request today seeking records relating to federal government activity in connection to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) investigation of Muslim communities. The groups seek records related to domestic intelligence practices including the use of informants and infiltrators (such as those reportedly used in gyms, community centers and mosques), the FBI Junior Agent Program’s recruitment of Muslim and Arab American children, and investigations of Muslim leaders and imams in northern California.

“According to civil rights organizations, community members, and media reports, the FBI has engaged in a deliberate plan to infiltrate Muslim communities through the use of informants and covert actions. Tensions are especially high between the FBI and Muslim groups following the death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a Detroit cleric who was killed under questionable circumstances during an FBI raid in October 2009.

Continue reading Records Sought in FBI Surveillance
of Northern California Mosques

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Filed under: Law, Media, News, War

By Cindy Sheehan

March 6, 2010

My request to interview President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela was finally granted March 2nd while we were down in Montevideo, Uruguay with President Chavez for the inauguration of the new left-ish president and freedom fighter, Jose Mujica.

The reasons I went down to Venezuela with my team of two cameramen were two-fold:

First of all, I just got tired of all the misinformation that is spread in the US about President Chavez and the people’s Bolivarian Revolution. In only one example, the National Endowment for Democracy (another Orwellian named agency that receives federal money to supplant democracy) spends millions of dollars every year in Venezuela trying to destabilize Chavez’s democratically elected government.

Continue reading Chavez to Sheehan: “We are not anti-American,
we are anti-Imperialism”

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Filed under: News, Politics