Helen Thomas. Heroine in our Time.

I applaud you, Helen Thomas!


For she speaks the truth. Always. Fearlessly. Without reservation.

The only member of the White House press corps not in the thrall of a corporate master.

And now she's “retiring”.

Why?

For speaking the truth. Her truth, as she sees it along with millions of others'.

She said:

Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old superveteran of the White House press corps and a staunch liberal, has resigned days after a video was released in which she told an interviewer that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine. Remember these people are occupied, and it's their land," and Israelis should "go home, to Poland and Germany."

I salute you, Helen Thomas, for speaking up in the press for over sixty-five years. In spite of the Bushes and all the other hawks who made your job so untenable. An honest job unlike the other corporate shills in the press room who dance to the tune of their puppeteers.

The US department of Disinformation is alive and well and forcing this fearless woman to apologise for speaking the truth.

Because, you know, the US and many other countries including Canada, does not want to address the appalling situation of Palestine and its relentless and continuing ethnic annihilation by Israel.

Another day, another genocide

So depleted uranium is now being used on the civilians of Gaza. DEPLETED. URANIUM. This can cause cancers and birth defects for generations to come.

Of course this was a learned atrocity. The effects of depleted uranium are still being manifested in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf Invasion. No, I will not call it a war. These are all illegal invasions of sovereign countries with horrific weapons of mass destruction. The same kind of WMDs that Bush The Dim Decider lied about the terrorists having and thus forcing an illegal invasion of his own into beleagured Iraq. So this invasion of Gaza is very small potatoes indeed when compared to the uncountable victims (some estimate over a million) of the Bush slaughters.

And then we have the attacks on the UN schools in Gaza, children shredded in front of their parents, seven children in one family blown apart. The children were sent to the school for safety but were located by GPS systems used by the Israelis. The UN stands by helplessly. The US silent. Outrage is too tame a word for these horrific events.

And next up to the plate is U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates bleating for more dollars for more WMDs (let's call it like it is, people) for even more genocides in Afghanistan and Iraq. To the tune of a total of 140 billion dollars for 2009. US$140,000,000,000. How much does that work out per dead body?

All this in an imploding US economy where the populace at the end of 2009 will all be rattling their tin cups under bridges.

Here in Toronto, we did have a mass protest against the Israeli invasion this past Saturday, and another in Montreal - two of the few in North America and the biggest.

But really, who cares about such protests? There could be a million of us marching up to the Israeli embassies all over the world, it would not stop the needless death of a single innocent child.

We will only wake up when such horror happens on our own shores.