Chris Hedges: Israel’s Trojan Horse and Billionaires, Economies And Elections

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Trojan Horse

The Israeli military is the fourth most powerful military in the world. In the last six months it has turned the Gaza Strip into a howling wilderness. Most of us 2.2 million inhabitants have been driven into a tiny corner in the south in the city of Rafa where they face an invasion planned by Israel with American support. Israel sent a delegation to Washington last week. The story spun by the Biden administration is that they are working with Israel to try to moderate Israel. This is perception management.

Meanwhile, in another PR move, the United States, announced that it is building a temporary pier on the Mediterranean shore of Gaza to facilitate the importation of food stuffs. But it doesn’t say that the pier will facilitate the export of Palestinians in to permanent exile.

Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. The United States is not serious about getting food for Palestinians. It continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, including opening up its weapons storage facility in Israel for the Israelis to freely use.

Contrary to American law, the Biden administration, has circumvented Congress 100 times to send even more weapons and bombs which have killed more than 32,000 people and injured another 70,000 while destroying most of the homes in Gaza, their hospitals, schools, mosques , water and sanitation plants, and electrical infrastructure.

Israels reaction to the judgment of International Court Of Justice, the highest court in the world, was to ignore their founding of plausible, genocide and to ignore their decisions – taken together amount to a cease-fire. Israels goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza and resettle it with their own people. Last week Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner gave his opinion on the subject calling the western shore of Gaza good beachfront property most suitable for development now that the Palestinians have been driven out of their homes.

Defenders of Israel say that Israel is acting in self-defense, that Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon are behind Hamas, and that in any case the figures of death and injury of Palestinians are lies perpetrated by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas.

Guest ” Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer. Chris Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for the Christian Science Monitor, NPR and the Dallas Morning News. His books include Death of the Liberal Class, War on America, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and his book War Is a Force That Gives US Meaning, which was a finalist for the national Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction.

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Billionaires, Economies And Elections

There were 614 billionaires in America four years ago before the pandemic. Now there are 737. Their total wealth is more than $5 trillion. In the last four years they went from having 2,947,000,000,000 to having 5,529,000,000,000. The golden rule in the United States is that he who has the gold makes the rules. A corollary to this rule is – follow the money.

The immense concentration of wealth among a handful of billionaires in America has destroyed every institution in our country from education to politics. What effect does it have on elections? We have two parties. Both support capitalism which has resulted in having two parties of big money. They make it nearly impossible to challenge their hegemony by forming a third party.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United ruled that corporations are people. Thus, they can exercise their free speech rights and donate an unlimited amount of money to preserve and advance their perceived interests. In 1937 the great political journalist Ferdinand Lundburg analyzed wealth and class in the USA in his book Americas 60 Families. He wrote about how they functioned for the purpose of gaining and keeping political and economic power.

In 1968 Lundburg published The Rich and the Super Rich. It shows how the ruling elite controls the mainstream media and the US economy and have virtually uncontested influence over American political institutions. The infamous names of the ruling class back then were Rockefeller, Ford, Vanderbilt, Melon, Dupont, Guggenheim, Whitney, and Astor. They made their money in oil, steel, chemicals, that is to say, basic industry. But their wealth was relatively small compared to todays economic titans who have made their money in tech industries and speculation.

Guest – Patrick Martin, senior editor at the world socialist web site where he covers a range of political issues in the United States.

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