by Stephen Lendman

An October 2007 Haaretz editorial titled "Democracy or hypocrisy" contrasted the "occupying Land of Israel to the democratic Israel" in calling for a "debate about Israel's control over the lives of Palestinians deprived of civil rights," saying its democracy is flawed and not addressing it is hypocrisy.

Throughout history, regimes rhetorically embraced democracy as cover for more despotic policies, no different today throughout the world in countries like India, Pakistan, America and Israel practicing what Michael Parenti calls "democracy for the few," (the) "shadier sides of US political life (in which) proponents of the existing social order have tried to transform practically every deficiency into a strength."

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I am lying on my couch, trying to read. I do that a lot these days. Trying to read. Trying to accept that this is a slow time for me, a season of healing from old wounds and more recent ones, some self-inflicted. Trying to find a place of peace in an ecology that has shunned peace.

Although the blank screen saver has darkened the computer behind me, I can still hear you within the infinite waves of Twitter ever changing the guard; ranting, cajoling, flirting, pushing out declarations of fleeting news and grim prognostication. Beyond, I listen to black tires sighing along shining black streets, in them hearing old girlfriends and lost verse, burned books and crushed revolutions.

In contrast to my wish for both solitude and new friends, I have descended to what amounts to a basement apartment - the sort that has a couple of iron-barred windows right onto the sidewalk. I peer at your rustling feet there, revealing myself to you only for the short bus ride to and trudge back from a cigarette trip to the store. Lock the door. I own pepper spray now. Perhaps I am healing; but I still feel broken. There is nothing for it but time and emotional Kevlar ...

Writing at CounterPunch, Bruce Levine asks, "Are Americans Too Broken for the Truth to Set Us Free?":

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By Norm Lowry

“We are all born & someday we’ll all die…to some degree alone. What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure; to experience the world as a dynamic presence—as a changeable, interactive thing?” Rachel Corrie

My 2009 included investing just short of six months in the Lancaster PA (USA) County Prison; the result of a choice to speak out pointedly against the injustices fomented by my birth-country (USA) against the world's peoples, as well as her own. Having lived for most of my life, blind & deaf to the truth of such travesties, it was an honor to make such an investment. Though well aware that it would be impossible to atone for my past failures to engage against the grand lies, I am utterly committed to standing in the gap (for the balance of my life) by simply saying "NO" to all that is injustice...no matter the personal cost.

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