View From The Left Coast

They’re doing it again! This time it’s the people who run Israel: somebody does something bad to them, so they start whacking on a third party. In this case, Hezbollah, a group of people within Lebanon, kidnaps two Israeli soldiers, and the next thing you know, Israel is destroying airports, bridges, UN observers, and forcing tens of thousands to flee (being strafed along the way). They’re going after Hezbollah, but they’re going after the Lebanese, too, in places where there are no Hezbollah, presumably to terrorize the Lebanese into kicking the Hezbollah out.

The only problem is, the Israelis are doing exactly what the US did in Iraq (who learned from whom, I wonder), and the outcome is clearly going to be the same: a whole lot of innocent people killed, and their survivors are so incensed they’ll become your enemies. Bombing roads and airports, trashing entire cities, targeting powerplants and even UN observers who have been there for years.

All the while the Cheney administration refuses to even ASK them to stop. The US was able to get other countries to start talking about sending relief to those being bombed (who will soon be starving, if they survive), but Cheney won’t allow anyone to talk about stopping the attacks that are causing the suffering. How much sense does that make? Now Australia has withdrawn their UN observers, and said a proposed UN security force to replace the Israelis would be a "suicide mission."

And to top it off, even the Democrats quickly jump on the bandwagon, saying, in effect, that Israel can do anything it wants to whomever it wants. They say that if Canada attacked the US, we’d be justified in fighting back. Right. Somebody in BC sends a missile at Walla Walla, and it’s OK to make a parking lot out of Toronto?

Somehow, people are missing the obvious: going after innocent people, tens of thousands of them, to get at a small group attacking you is not only wrong, it’s counterproductive. What’s really going on here is that these people in the Muslim world, driven up against the wall over the past several decades, have come up with an effective strategy to go after those they see as their oppressors. Their method of warfare is terrorism, and, short of killing every muslim person in the world, you’re never going to stop them. Declaring “war on terrorism� makes as much sense as declaring war on poverty and killing the poor. Just as embedding the press in the infantry they’re supposed to be covering makes them part of the story, the Hezbollah folks know that embedding themselves in Lebanese society makes them part of that society. Thus the Israelis argue that, to kill the Hezbollah, you have to destroy the host society.

They’ve had 50 years to learn it hasn’t worked with the Palestinians, still living and dying in “refugee camps� (for 50 years??), and they still don’t get that it won’t work in Lebanon. All that will happen is a lot of innocent people will die, be driven from their homes, their lives blasted, and they’ll end up becoming terrorists. And their children will kill Israelis, and so on ad infinitem.

And we can’t even ASK for a cease fire.

Come on, people, let’s THINK for a change. If one behavior doesn’t work, maybe it’s time to try something different.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 02:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I’ve always been inclined to do business locally, wherever possible. I do this in part because over the years my family and I have had small businesses always going up against big companies and being squashed. We haven’t been alone in this experience. . .for a variety of reasons more and more local businesses are going the way of the dodo.

When I first moved to this rural Northern California community 19 years ago, there was a local bank, the Bank of Loleta I thought I’d support. So for several years, we had a good relationship. Then they got eaten by U.S. Bank, which then got involved in some very shady doings, so I was shopping for another bank. Luckily for me, they started another one here: Humboldt Bank. So I dealt with them, got to know their employees, and things were swell. Then Humboldt Bank got eaten by another: Umpqua Bank. Despite their insisting in their ads they were a local bank, they really weren’t: all the managing was done in Sacramento. They made a number of changes their employees weren’t happy about, then they spun off their credit card business to Elan Financial Services. Their “service� stank, so I canceled my card.

In looking for another card, I was tempted to do business with Working Assets Long distance (WALD), an “alternative� and “non-corporate� company that was an alternative to the horrible AT&T (a once-busted trust now unbusting itself). I like their politics, and they “issue� a credit card.

Then I started to look at the fine print on their card application.

The issuing company is an outfit called MBNA Corporation. MBNA (which used to be Maryland Bank) was a bank holding company headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware prior to being acquired by Bank of America in 2005. It was the world's largest independent credit card issuer, specializing in affinity marketing. They’ve become a billion dollar a year corporation issuing and managing cards for people like the Sierra Club, the University of Texas, various alumni associations, and WALD. Like the oil companies in the Middle East, the putative owners make a little while the corporate heavies make A LOT.

But it gets worse.

It turns out MBNA and their employees (knowingly or unknowingly) are heavy supporters of the Republican Party, and especially George W. Bush. So here you have the Sierra Club and WALD making a little off selling THEIR name (and, oh by the way, yours too, if you’re a member), while the very folks they spend donated money to stop make even more from the credit card company! Que 21st Century!

So here I am stuck supporting Corporate America through my credit card, my computer, and now (since AT&T gobbled up SBC, which had gobbled up Pac Bell) my local carrier is AT&T! I vote one way, and they buy two votes the other way with money I gave them.

I suppose the only alternative is to stop buying things (like gas, food and electricity) that aren’t made by Corporate America and, well, drop out. All the local businesses are being bought, co-opted, or driven out of business by Rob Arkley.

And if I get sick or need medical care. . .that’s a whole nother can of worms.

Posted by Walt Frazer at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)