Several Hundred Gather at 16th & Broadway in Sacramento to Protest Wars in Middle East

Did th author of the statement that the Democrats are better than the Republicans fail to pay attention to the news? Did he not read the fact that 100% of the US Senate and 98.2% of the House voted to support Israel's genocidal war crimes, paid for with our tax dollars? Did he fail to pay attention to the last 58 years of votes, all pro-Israel, on the part of the 100% pro-Israel parties, the Democrats & Republicans? WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN THAT THE DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS ARE THE TWIN PARTIES OF WAR AND FASCISM? How many votes for the US military base called Israel by the Democrats will it take? Is 58 years of these viciously reactionary votes by the entire Democratic and Republican Parties enough?

If you want peace, you have to vote for the peace parties, the socialist Peace & Freedom Party and the Green Party, both of which support the Palestinians and Lebanese and oppose the US/Israeli terrorism and war crimes. The Peace & Freedom Party has lots of candidates. See http://www.peaceandfreedom2006.org

IF YOU ARE GOING TO CALL YOURSELF A PEACE ACTIVIST, DO NOT EVEN THINK OF SHOWING SUPPORT FOR THE PRO-US/ISRAEL WAR MONGERS. Did you notice that no Democratic Party politicians showed up at this demonstration? Did you think that was an accident? After all, they need votes. ONCE AGAIN, THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PARTIES ARE BY DEFINITION PRO-ISRAEL PARTIES, that is, pro-war parties. If you want peace, you have to vote for peace, namely Peace & Freedom Party or Green Party.

This was the most interesting event I've ever seen out there, and the diversity of messages and participants was wonderful.

Regarding the previous message from the pro-Israel poster, my wife and I organized the demo, and neither of us asked anyone from the pro-slaughter/pro-Israel group to leave. We've never asked anyone to leave.

I know that a lot of people got upset about the protest warrior being out there, and I know that people didn't like the pro-Isreal group or the "nuke Iran" group out there, but they all had the right to be there just like we did.

On the other hand, people don't have the right to use "fighting words" or make credible threats of harm or commit assault or battery upon others present. A couple of times, some of these limits were tested; but the issues were resolved quickly, and the event was a huge success.

The best thing of all was to see so many new people come out to a 16th & Broadway peace demonstration.

I attended this rally because I'm outraged at the horrific atrocities that Israel is commiting against the Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in the name of "peace" and "self-defense." The pro-Lebanese and pro-Palestinian participants were very peaceful and courageous. Many brought their children. In fact, I've never seen more children at a peace rally before. The only hostile people in the crowd were the pro-Israel, pro-War supporters who showed up with a "Nuke a Iran" sign and threatened the crowd with burning an Iranian flag and dressing up in TNT.

Oh, man, what am I gonna do. "Lord have mercy"...

Well, this last Tower of Protest has come a long way, just from a few months ago, when some liberal do-gooder opined that mentioning Palestine/Israel wasn't very relevant, just kept people away, blahblah.

Now we see at least one well-known local labor leader holding a sign reading "Stop Zionazi War Crimes", while a poster showing an Israeli flag with the Star of David dripping blood, with a swastika, hardly rates a notice. To me, that much represents major progress.

But looking at the majority of the signs & posters, I have to say that except for the Arab- & Muslim Americans, & a handful of people like Steve & Virginia, Pete Horn etc, most of the attendees really have yet to "get it".

Looking at that sign about "Vote Tweedlecrat & take "our" country back", I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Maybe if I knew who the signmaker meant by "our" I'd be able to make more sense of it?

Can somebody explain to me just when it was that the US of A really "belonged" to the majority of African American citizens? Was there such a time, say between the end of Jim Crow and the onset of Mass Incarceration? Was there really a time when the rights & needs of Black People In America were recognized & respected by the Powers That Be?

Did I miss something?

The author is well aware of the votes in the House and Senate in support of Israel's right to self-defense. Like many Democrats, I was dismayed and disappointed that nearly all Democrats supported these needless resolutions. However, at the same time I can't say I was shocked by this. The pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington. Few senators or House members are willing to take the risk of openly apposing this lobby. They are also worried about losing the Jewish vote. I haven't seen any statistics, but I would venture to guess that most American Jews are very supportive of Israel. Apposing these measures could amount to political suicide. Not that this completely excuses Democratic support for these measures, but at least it makes their support more understandable.

Voting for Peace and Freedom and Green candidates is irrational in most circumstances, as they cannot win. Also, your description of the Democratic Party as pro-war and fascist is inaccurate. If you look at the Iraq war issue, most Democrats are calling for a complete phased withdrawal from Iraq over the course of a year or less. In contrast, most Republicans are backing Bush’s “stay the course” strategy, which is no strategy at all. Also, Democrats are generally much more supportive of civil rights, civil liberties, national health care, reproductive freedom, organized labor, raising the minimum wage and protecting the environment than are Republicans. The differences between the two federal office-holding parties are actually quite profound. Do you think we would be in even half the trouble we’re in if Gore had become president in 2000?

Still using the tweedle Dee, tweedle dumb rhetoric about the Democratic and Republican parties I see. Well, if saving lives is your goal, this is a counter-productive position. There are profound differences between the two parties and our current winner-take-all system does not allow for more than two parties to hold power at any one time.

It is true that we have some DINO (Democrat In Name Only) elected officials in the Democratic Party. One example is Joe Lieberman, who hopefully will lose to Ned Lemont in tomorrow’s primary. However, there are quite a few real Democrats in both the House and Senate. These include Boxer, Kennedy, Feingold, Leahy, Kerry, Conyers, Kucinich and Murtha; just to name a few. You might not agree with these folks on every issue, but if you look at their positions on ALL the major issues of the day, you will see sharp contrasts with nearly all the Republicans in both houses of Congress. Another thing one has to realize is that we the Democratic Party is much more diverse than the Republican Party. The Republican Party represents the far right for the most part, while the Democrats represent everyone else, from moderate conservatives to liberals.

In our current system, you can have one party rule, which for the most part is what we have now, but you can’t have more than two parties sharing meaningful power at any given time. Make no mistake; our current federal government is a right-wing government. When people refer to taking out country back, they are generally referring to taking it back from the far-right by electing a Democratic majority to the House and possibly the Senate, so that Bush’s abuse of power can be checked.

Dear Don,

Anybody who has the intelligence & the nerve to come out and publicly protest Israelie war crimes is a very valuable person, in my estimation. There aren't that many of us.

So the last thing I want to do is discourage you by injecting a "negative" in to your trip. I'm sorry, I really am, that I find myself in a position where I have to publicly reject what you posted.

Yes, I use the term Tweedledumb; I believe it precise and descriptive. I myself was once dumb enough to believe there were significant differences between the two capitalist parties, but eventually I figured it out.

The only real difference is that they have different sucker lists.

Both are wholly-owned subsidiaries of AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, before which all candidates for national office must regularly genuflect. The only Democrat who has consistently refused to kiss their ass is Cynthia McKinney, and you see what they did to her. Maybe you haven't really followed how Pelosi et al cut McKinney's throat; I advise you to check it out.

Now to your list of "real" Demock-rats: Boxer is more stylish than arch-frum Funstein, but she's still a Zionist. Whenever push comes to shove, she is one of "Them", . Murtha is an arch-warmonger; his proposal is not that we should get the US foot off Iraqi necks, but that we can control the situation without having US troops in harm's way.

Kerry is Dubya's frat brother; he and your 'real Democrat' friends successfully sidetracked the burgeoning anti-Iraqwar movement for a year while they pushed their "ABB/Anybody But Bush" snowjob. Maybe I need to mention the part played in this collossal swindle by David Cobb & most of the Sac Green Party?

I actually participated in the Kucinich campaign in the very early stages; I remembered his refusal to knuckle under to the corporations & banks who wanted to privatize the Cleveland electric utility, so I thought him worth checking out. Well, it turns out he's an enormous phony, just playing a role assigned by the party leaders, to attract a certain "niche" constituency, i.e. Affluent New Age Yuppie Idealistic Dreamworlders. Just take a look at his campaign materials: pure Reader's Digest.

In order to really grasp what I'm telling you, you need to understand that this is a Capitalist society, in which elements of "democracy" are present but basically the place is run by an Oligarchy. In other words, there are the Rulers and the Ruled. Some of the Ruled specialize in helping the Rulers Rule; in slavery days they were called Drivers, now they're called Democrats;)

Well, that's not entirely accurate: the Rulers had other gunsels then, as they do now, but the underlying principle is basically correct.

If you remember your Machiavelli, you know that Rulers do not rule solely by coercion; in fact they prefer to use force as little as possible. Their preference is for the Ruled Population to accept "Authority" as legitimate, to internalize the rationalizations presented by the Rulers.

Thus in ancient Sumer we saw the emergence of Priestcraft, the use of religious mythology to keep the peasants docile while the priests appropriated any surplus graincrop above that needed to keep the peasants alive to produce next year's crop.

We can follow the career of the God hustle on through Egypt, Greece, Rome, medieval Europe, the Ottoman Empire, right up to the present. But with the rise of Industrial Capitalism, universal basic education, & the printing press, it was decided to supplement the pulpit with other tools & institutions, such as The Media & Labor Unions.

Actually "organized Labor" wasn't politically very significant until the Bolshevik revolution was followed by the Great Depression; the Democratic Party which up till then had been mainly occupied in establishing & maintaining Jim Crow was enlisted to "contain" workingclass dissastisfaction. So we saw FDR make a pile of promises, stage a bunch of gestures & charades, & actually produce a few real concessions, like Social Security & the Wagner Act, and distribute a few crumbs like WPA & ADC which later became AFDC. The depression however persisted until WWII.

The WPA was dropped shortly after Pearl Harbor; the Wagner Act was gutted immediately after VJ Day by passage of Taft-Hartley. It wasn't until the advent of the Clintons that AFDC was gutted, with the help of "progressive democrats" Grantland Johnson & Duane Campbell.

Which brings us to the "Run Jesse Run" caper. The easiest way I like to explain this form of bunco operation is by analogy with the mechanical rabbit they use to inspire greyhounds to run, at county fair dog races? Dog racing isn't as common as formerly, so maybe you've never been to a dogtrack & never seen a "tin rabbit"?

Anyway, they have this thing made out of sheet metal, shaped like the outline of a rabbit? which runs on a track, like a toy train but a monorail? Which they anoint with rabbit-musk; the dogs don't care about the shape, that's for the customers, the dogs go for the smell.

So at the start of the race, they start the "rabbit" moving & a fraction of a second later the gates open & the dogs take off after it. As soon as the dogs cross the finish line, the rabbit disappears, flops down out of sight & is covered with a rubber thing so the dogs cant smell it.

Which is exactly the number Jesse Jackson ran on all the suckers, including yours truly. Not once but TWICE. They actually had me out walking precincts for fucking MONDALE, can you believe it? Grantland J & Joe Serna. Old Joe was a nice guy, but an enormous hypocrite. Scared shitless of Runyon/Saltzman, Bob Dresser, the Fahn family who were the visible zionist ThoughtPolice honchae in town then. Joe'd been to Guatemala, seen what the Israelies were doing there, supporting the Death Squads. He'd talk about the Israelies like dogs as long as no reporters were present.

But I digress, & I'm spending too much time on this. I have to get busy and make some more Star of David signs with the blood dripping & the swastika, for Muna & Gask to take to SF Saturday.

Anyway, I urge you to take another look at it? "Assume Nothing"?

Maybe we can talk more about it sometime, f2f?

Regards & good luck,

Dan;)

Here are two links for the Fox News ignoramuses! http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14406.htm http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak01.html