"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy ... who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war ... we are appalled."

A UN convoy attacked, the Red Cross blocked and harassed, international journalists blocked in the apparent vain attempt to hide all the murders, dead men, women and children in the roads, all at the hands of the IDF. The list goes on and on. I hope this is all being carefully recorded to present to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.

Pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today. How and why we are told otherwise?


How many failed predictions, discredited assumptions and evidence of incorrect data are required before an idea loses credibility? CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. It is not a toxic substance or a pollutant. Despite this President Elect Obama met with Al Gore on December 9 no doubt to plan a climate change strategy based on these problems. They make any plan to reduce of CO2 completely unnecessary.

Proponents of human induced warming and climate change told us that an increase in CO2 precedes and causes temperature increases. They were wrong. They told us the late 20th century was the warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us, using the infamous "hockey stick" graph, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) did not exist. They were wrong. They told us global temperatures would increase through 2008 as CO2 increased. They were wrong. They told us Arctic ice would continue to decrease in area through 2008. They were wrong. They told us October 2008 was the second warmest on record. They were wrong. They told us 1998 was the warmest year on record in the US. They were wrong it was 1934. They told us current atmospheric levels of CO2 are the highest on record. They are wrong. They told us pre-industrial atmospheric levels of CO2 were approximately 100 parts per million (ppm) lower than the present 385 ppm. They are wrong. This last is critical because the claim is basic to the argument that humans are causing warming and climate change by increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2 and have throughout the Industrial era. In fact, pre-industrial CO2 levels were about the same as today, but how did they conclude they were lower?

Nightmare on Elm Street's Dinner Table. Thank you, Monsanto!

Just in case you thought it was fine to eat Genetically Modified foods (better identified as "FrankenFoods"), along comes a study which makes it clear that you are eating this make believe non-food at your own peril and, worse yet, you are feeding it to your kids at their peril as well. It is important to note that Codex Alimentarius, which sets standards for the international trade of food, permits genetically modified foods and makes no effort to limit, control or eliminate them. In fact, the US has been trying for years to prevent the labeling of GM foods and seed in international trade to emulate its domestic policy which prohibits any label indication that foods contain GM ingredients, as 75-80% of all foods sold in the US do.

Now it appears that the increasingly prevalent nightmare of a disease called "Morgellon's Disease" may be a result of GM crops and food.

Morgellon's Disease was first described when a woman's 3 year old son developed rashes and intensely itchy sores which produced weird multicolor fibers emerging from his skin. She put up a website about the condition in 2001 and named it "Morgellons Disease" after a 17th century report of a similar affliction.

President George W. Bush has launched "Operation Legacy," which he placed in the hands of his ultimate advisor, indeed his "brain," Karl Rove. Remember Rove? He's the man who refused to testify under oath when summoned by Congress to do so and was recently identified in a Congressional report as the plotter behind the U.S. Attorneys scandal, among other trainwrecks. The Rove effort features a 2-page set of talking points which have been circulated to members of the administration's team highlighting the supposedly major Bush accomplishments which have begun to fill the American media. They start with the contention that "Bush kept us safe" by preventing any further attack on American soil after 9/11. Really?

Turn up the heat, somebody. The globe is freezing. Even Al Gore is looking for an extra blanket. Winter has barely come to the northern latitudes and already we've got bigger goosebumps than usual. So far the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports 63 record snowfalls in the United States, 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month. Only 44 Octobers over the past 114 years have been cooler than this last one.

The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995. You may have noticed, in fact, that Al and his pals, having given up on the sun, no longer even warn of global warming. Now it's "climate change." The marketing men enlisted by Al and the doom criers to come up with a flexible "brand" took a cue from the country philosopher who observed, correctly, that "if you've got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, on average you're warm." On average, "climate change" covers every possibility.

"By that, I mean, 'Get me a lead singer. He's got sort of an androgynous blonde hair, very pretty. We need a guitar player, sort of hatchet-faced, wears a hat, plays very fast, very dramatic. He must be very dramatic. Get me a pound of bass player, pound of drummer ... they're making little cardboard cutouts. They hire a producer, they hire writers ... And in the current stuff now, they don't even bother getting people to play. Don't bother with that guitar player, bass player, drummer - nonsense ... The people in those bands can't write, play, or sing."

David Crosby, describing the synthetic, manufactured nature of today's rock bands

"David was obnoxious, loud, demanding, thoughtless, full of himself - of the four of them [David Crosby, Steven Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young], the least talented."

David Geffen

First of all, before getting back into the Laurel Canyon scene, I need to say that some of you people really need to mellow out on the visits to my website. Seriously. This isn't a crack-house, for fuck's sake, so just chill out a little bit. I mean, I've grown accustomed to the fact that you feel free to drop in unannounced at all hours of the day and night, but maybe, just maybe, you could consider doing it a bit less frequently. Is that so much to ask?

Don't get me wrong here - I'm flattered by the attention. I really am. The problem though is that you have overloaded my now-overworked website, causing it to spontaneously disappear on, of all days, the morning of September 11, 2008. And to add insult to injury, the generic, no-frills page that popped up instead, proclaiming that my site was under house arrest for the crime of exceeding its bandwidth allocation, was arguably more attractive than my actual homepage.

Luckily, this problem was quickly brought to my attention by a few alert readers and I was able to liberate my site by digging deeply into my pockets to come up with the bail money that the jailers were demanding (I think they referred to it as "adding resources" to my site, but I wasn't really fooled by that. And I didn't, by the way, really dig that deeply into my pockets. But that's not the point. No, the point is that my site is - and I'm sure that there are many of you who do not know this - primitive by design. It is my belief that the 'retro website' look will soon be all the rage, and I want to be at the forefront of that movement. Everything old will someday become new again, and the 'net has been around for long enough now, given our collectively short attention span, that a return to basics - to those first tentative baby-steps some of us took in creating one of those newfangled things called 'websites' - is all but guaranteed. My site, needless to say, will become the template that will be followed by everyone who wants to run with the in-crowd. I will, of course, be regarded as something of a visionary. Unfortunately though, I will ultimately be revealed as a fraud when, a few years down the road, legions of fans suddenly realize that, long after the fad has passed, my site is still retro. Self-righteous critics will denounce me as a poser, a charlatan - they may even invoke that most demeaning of future slurs and label me a 'Palin.' But before that happens, the brief time during which I shall have basked in the limelight will have made it all worthwhile.

Let's not be dragged into calculating how many tons of rice, flour and cooking oil there are in the Gaza Strip 10 days after Israel once again hermetically sealed all the crossings into the enclave. Let's not count the number of children who wait for a nutritious meal at UN Relief and Works Agency schools, and the number of families to whose doorstep Hamas delivers boxes filled with grocery staples. (There are those who swear that these groceries are only given to Hamas members and supporters.) Let's not calculate the number of people dependent on their families for sustenance. There is food in the Gaza Strip, and there will continue to be. Does anyone really think that Israel, the state of the Jews, would allow 1.5 million people to be tossed, crowded and crammed, behind the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers surrounding the narrow strip and starve to death?

The Election is Over; Time to Move On to the Recriminations

Amid the euphoria and angst of the Obama apotheosis, the unreality of a mismanaged, two trillion dollar, taxpayer funded bailout of freewheeling capitalists, and the wars of limbo in Iraq and Afghanistan, one little thing is being overlooked.

George W Bush.

The Decider. The psychopath responsible for this appalling mess we're in. The architect of America's ignoble descent into moral darkness. The washed up and universally despised pseudo-despot who reveled in torture, kidnapping and assassination. The War-Monger.

"Bring 'em On!"

"Dead or Alive!"

The raving ignoramus whose words will haunt us forever.

The spoiled child of privilege playing with the lives of our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, as if they were his personal toys.

The mass murderer who illegally invaded and occupied a foreign nation, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, utterly destroying their cities and bridges, power plants and schools, and scattering millions of them to the wind, as if he were GOD!

The Comic Book Madman obsessed with Death, reading CIA memos about Al Qaeda, sending kidnappers and hit teams and drones around the world, anywhere he wanted, to kill his imaginary enemies, while America burned.

The Super Traitor.

If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America's wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama's choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama's election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces.