Credited to Cameron [Cam] Cardow
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Smothering America's political "system"
Johann Hari, who usually writes for Britain's The Independent, writing in "This Corruption in Washington is Smothering America's Future" for The Huffington Post, posits that the recent decision of the US Supreme Court allowing corporations to run and pay for political adverts will be disastrous for the political "system" in the US. As he says, it is already bad enough having all those lobbyists crawling all over the place in Washington.
He gives but one example what lobbying - just think what will happen with wealthy corporation funding extensive political advertisement! - can do to corrupt the system.
"To understand the impact this will have, you need to grasp how smaller sums of corporate money have already hijacked American democracy. Let's look at a case that is simple and immediate and every American can see in front of them: healthcare. The United States is the only major industrialized democracy that doesn't guarantee healthcare for all its citizens. The result is that, according to a detailed study by Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die needlessly every year. That's equivalent to 15 9/11s every year, or two Haitian earthquakes every decade.
This isn't because the American people like it this way. Gallup has found in polls for a decade now that two-thirds believe the government should guarantee care for every American: they are as good and decent and concerned for each other as any European. No: it is because private insurance companies make a fortune today out of a system that doesn't cover the profit-less poor, and can turn away the sickest people as "uninsurable". So they pay for politicians to keep the system broken. They fund the election campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and in return, those politicians veto any system that doesn't serve their paymasters. Look for example at Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He has taken $448,066 in campaign contributions from private healthcare companies while his wife has raked in $2m as one of their chief lobbyists, and he has loyally blocked any attempt in the Senate to break the stranglehold of the health insurance companies and broaden coverage".
He gives but one example what lobbying - just think what will happen with wealthy corporation funding extensive political advertisement! - can do to corrupt the system.
"To understand the impact this will have, you need to grasp how smaller sums of corporate money have already hijacked American democracy. Let's look at a case that is simple and immediate and every American can see in front of them: healthcare. The United States is the only major industrialized democracy that doesn't guarantee healthcare for all its citizens. The result is that, according to a detailed study by Harvard University, some 45,000 Americans die needlessly every year. That's equivalent to 15 9/11s every year, or two Haitian earthquakes every decade.
This isn't because the American people like it this way. Gallup has found in polls for a decade now that two-thirds believe the government should guarantee care for every American: they are as good and decent and concerned for each other as any European. No: it is because private insurance companies make a fortune today out of a system that doesn't cover the profit-less poor, and can turn away the sickest people as "uninsurable". So they pay for politicians to keep the system broken. They fund the election campaigns of politicians on both sides of the aisle, and in return, those politicians veto any system that doesn't serve their paymasters. Look for example at Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic candidate for Vice-President. He has taken $448,066 in campaign contributions from private healthcare companies while his wife has raked in $2m as one of their chief lobbyists, and he has loyally blocked any attempt in the Senate to break the stranglehold of the health insurance companies and broaden coverage".
Is it all the [unbiased] News Fit to Print?
The NY Times prides itself on its standards as a newspaper of repute.
It's coverage isn't always that great but as newspapers go it is in many respects above the rest. Certainly it leaves most US newspapers in the dust! But.....as FAIR reports there is more than a slight issue in relation to the Times' Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bonner.
"The New York Times refuses to confirm or deny a report that its Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a child who is an enlisted member of the Israeli Defense Force--even though such a relationship would pose a serious conflict of interest.
The Electronic Intifada website (1/25/10), following a tip, asked Bronner whether it was true that he had a son in the IDF. EI got a reply from Times foreign editor Susan Chira:
'Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner's son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At the Times, we have found Mr. Bronner's coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case'.
The decisions of Bronner's son, however, are not the issue. What the Times needs to ask itself is whether it expects that its bureau chief has the normal human feelings about matters of life or death concerning one's child.
Might he feel hostility, for example, when interviewing members of organizations who were trying to kill his son? When the IDF goes into battle, might he be rooting for the side for which his son is risking his life? Certainly such issues would be taken very seriously if a Times reporter had a child who belonged to a military force that was engaged in hostilities with the IDF; indeed, there's little doubt that a reporter in that position would not be allowed to continue to cover the Mideast conflict.
Having a conflict of interest, it should be stressed, is not the same thing as producing slanted journalism; rather, it means that a journalist has outside motivations that are strongly at odds with his or her journalistic responsibilities. That a journalist has been "scrupulously fair" in the past does not excuse an ongoing conflict of interest; journalists should not be placed in a position where they have to ignore the well-being of their family in order to do their job, nor should readers be expected to trust that they can do so.
That said, Bronner's reporting has been repeatedly criticized by FAIR for what would appear to be a bias toward the Israeli government. For example, Extra! (3/09) questioned an article that Bronner (1/13/09) wrote on Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza that claimed that unspecified "polls have shown nearly 90 percent support for the war thus far"; FAIR's magazine noted that this was "a statistical unlikelihood in a country that is 20 percent Palestinian." The same piece by Bronner claimed that "the largest demonstration against the war so far, with some 6,000 participants, was organized by an Arab political party"; an article by Agence France-Presse (1/3/09) had reported that "tens of thousands" of Israeli Arabs had protested against the war in the Israeli town of Sakhnin. (See also Extra!, 1-2/08, 7/09; FAIR Blog, 2/4/09).
As Electronic Intifada pointed out, the New York Times' own policies acknowledge that the activities of family members may pose a conflict of interest: "A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor," and such conflicts may require a journalist "to withdraw from certain coverage." Given this policy, it is unacceptable for the Times' foreign editor to take the position that the military status of Bronner's children is of no concern. The question posed by EI must be asked again: Does the New York Times' Jerusalem bureau chief have a son in the Israeli military, and if so, why doesn't this pose a conflict of interest?
It's coverage isn't always that great but as newspapers go it is in many respects above the rest. Certainly it leaves most US newspapers in the dust! But.....as FAIR reports there is more than a slight issue in relation to the Times' Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bonner.
"The New York Times refuses to confirm or deny a report that its Jerusalem bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, has a child who is an enlisted member of the Israeli Defense Force--even though such a relationship would pose a serious conflict of interest.
The Electronic Intifada website (1/25/10), following a tip, asked Bronner whether it was true that he had a son in the IDF. EI got a reply from Times foreign editor Susan Chira:
'Ethan Bronner referred your query to me, the foreign editor. Here is my comment: Mr. Bronner's son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At the Times, we have found Mr. Bronner's coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case'.
The decisions of Bronner's son, however, are not the issue. What the Times needs to ask itself is whether it expects that its bureau chief has the normal human feelings about matters of life or death concerning one's child.
Might he feel hostility, for example, when interviewing members of organizations who were trying to kill his son? When the IDF goes into battle, might he be rooting for the side for which his son is risking his life? Certainly such issues would be taken very seriously if a Times reporter had a child who belonged to a military force that was engaged in hostilities with the IDF; indeed, there's little doubt that a reporter in that position would not be allowed to continue to cover the Mideast conflict.
Having a conflict of interest, it should be stressed, is not the same thing as producing slanted journalism; rather, it means that a journalist has outside motivations that are strongly at odds with his or her journalistic responsibilities. That a journalist has been "scrupulously fair" in the past does not excuse an ongoing conflict of interest; journalists should not be placed in a position where they have to ignore the well-being of their family in order to do their job, nor should readers be expected to trust that they can do so.
That said, Bronner's reporting has been repeatedly criticized by FAIR for what would appear to be a bias toward the Israeli government. For example, Extra! (3/09) questioned an article that Bronner (1/13/09) wrote on Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza that claimed that unspecified "polls have shown nearly 90 percent support for the war thus far"; FAIR's magazine noted that this was "a statistical unlikelihood in a country that is 20 percent Palestinian." The same piece by Bronner claimed that "the largest demonstration against the war so far, with some 6,000 participants, was organized by an Arab political party"; an article by Agence France-Presse (1/3/09) had reported that "tens of thousands" of Israeli Arabs had protested against the war in the Israeli town of Sakhnin. (See also Extra!, 1-2/08, 7/09; FAIR Blog, 2/4/09).
As Electronic Intifada pointed out, the New York Times' own policies acknowledge that the activities of family members may pose a conflict of interest: "A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor," and such conflicts may require a journalist "to withdraw from certain coverage." Given this policy, it is unacceptable for the Times' foreign editor to take the position that the military status of Bronner's children is of no concern. The question posed by EI must be asked again: Does the New York Times' Jerusalem bureau chief have a son in the Israeli military, and if so, why doesn't this pose a conflict of interest?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
You gotta believe this......
Hard to believe, but yes, a school district in southern California has banned the DICTIONARY!
Abbey Zimet reports in "Can You Spell c-e-n-s-o-r-s-h-i-p?" on CommonDreams:
"Picking up where "Catcher In the Rye" left off, a southern California school district has banned Merriam-Webster's Dictionary after some poor, no-doubt-now-traumatized kid stumbled on the term "oral sex" - defined, aptly if clinically, as "oral stimulation of the genitals." Menifee will now form a committee to plow through its 470,000-plus entries and decide if all dictionaries containing all sexual definitions should be banned. While they're at it, we hope they check out the meanings of "repression," "ignorance," "fear," and "open marketplace of ideas." If they want to take a break from their virtuous labors, they could help out the homeless in a nearby town who just lost their only impromptu shelter, set up at a church where people seem to know the meanings of "compassion," "priority," and "give me a break."
Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward
Whatever what one might otherwise say, the Chilcot inquiry presently underway in Britain [looking into Britain's involvement in the Iraq War] has shed light on something we rarely see - how the Sir Humphrey syndrome of the public service and Cabinet ministers "works".
George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian's Comment is free is more than blunt when he urges that former British PM Tony Blair ought to be arrested.
"The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression".
And:
"So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on."
George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian's Comment is free is more than blunt when he urges that former British PM Tony Blair ought to be arrested.
"The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression".
And:
"So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. I have put up the first £100, and I encourage you to match it. Anyone meeting the rules I've laid down will be entitled to one quarter of the total pot: the bounties will remain available until Blair faces a court of law. The higher the reward, the greater the number of people who are likely to try.
At this stage the arrests will be largely symbolic, though they are likely to have great political resonance. But I hope that as pressure builds up and the crime of aggression is adopted by the courts, these attempts will help to press governments to prosecute. There must be no hiding place for those who have committed crimes against peace. No civilised country can allow mass murderers to move on."
Friday, January 29, 2010
Wanna join the ranks with an iPad?
Apple has done it again! Or has it? Whatever, the newest device released [or at least revealed] by Apple today will have a ripple effect no matter what.
From The Slate's The Big Money:
"They should have called it the iDisrupt. Steve Jobs’ big reveal today was more impressive for its ripple effects than for the device itself. This computer is the climax of a decade’s worth of technological change. For the last 10 years, industries have been coping with how the Internet and mobile computing are changing their business models. And now we have a computer that does not just promise to drive a final stake in the way things once were, but offers a new path forward. Steve Jobs has never been more of a beneficent dictator.
That’s not to say that this thing is perfect. In fact, it’s this writer’s opinion that the device is a moderate disappointment. It’s missing a webcam, Adobe (ADBE) Flash support, non-AT&T (ATT) compatibility, the ability to run two apps at the same time, and any definitively new way to interact with a computer. The question by which this thing should be judged is: What can it do that the iPhone can’t? For now, we don’t know the answer. Which is why this is a step toward the future, but not yet into it.
But its hardware deficiencies don’t negate its effect on ancillary industries. To understand what I mean, let’s look at all of the different industries this tablet touches, changes, and potentially saves. Consider it a disruption report card."
Read on here.
Also read, on Slate, one person's love of the iPad already.
From The Slate's The Big Money:
"They should have called it the iDisrupt. Steve Jobs’ big reveal today was more impressive for its ripple effects than for the device itself. This computer is the climax of a decade’s worth of technological change. For the last 10 years, industries have been coping with how the Internet and mobile computing are changing their business models. And now we have a computer that does not just promise to drive a final stake in the way things once were, but offers a new path forward. Steve Jobs has never been more of a beneficent dictator.
That’s not to say that this thing is perfect. In fact, it’s this writer’s opinion that the device is a moderate disappointment. It’s missing a webcam, Adobe (ADBE) Flash support, non-AT&T (ATT) compatibility, the ability to run two apps at the same time, and any definitively new way to interact with a computer. The question by which this thing should be judged is: What can it do that the iPhone can’t? For now, we don’t know the answer. Which is why this is a step toward the future, but not yet into it.
But its hardware deficiencies don’t negate its effect on ancillary industries. To understand what I mean, let’s look at all of the different industries this tablet touches, changes, and potentially saves. Consider it a disruption report card."
Read on here.
Also read, on Slate, one person's love of the iPad already.
Authorised to kill Americans - by no lesser person than the Pres!
Amazing!
Read the latest piece "Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens" from Glenn Greenwald on Salon - and be more than astonished:
"The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.
But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:
'After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .
The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."
Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.'
Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.
Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?"
Read the latest piece "Presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens" from Glenn Greenwald on Salon - and be more than astonished:
"The Washington Post's Dana Priest today reports that "U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people." That's no surprise, of course, as Yemen is now another predominantly Muslim country (along with Somalia and Pakistan) in which our military is secretly involved to some unknown degree in combat operations without any declaration of war, without any public debate, and arguably (though not clearly) without any Congressional authorization. The exact role played by the U.S. in the late-December missile attacks in Yemen, which killed numerous civilians, is still unknown.
But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:
'After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .
The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."
Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including [New Mexico-born Islamic cleric Anwar] Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added.'
Indeed, Aulaqi was clearly one of the prime targets of the late-December missile strikes in Yemen, as anonymous officials excitedly announced -- falsely, as it turns out -- that he was killed in one of those strikes.
Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?"
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Obama: Time Running Out
Bob Herbert in his latest piece "Obama’s Credibility Gap" in The NY Times does more than some straight-talking about where Obama stands at the present time:
"Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it."
"Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won’t be able to close it."
Terror at firsthand
Paul McGeough, journalist and author of the excellent book "Kill Khalid" [a must read by the way] writing for the Fairfax press in Australia reports in "Suriving Terror" on being caught up in the bombings in Baghdad the other day.
"You'll hear on arriving in Baghdad these days that there's the odd bombing, but the Iraqi capital is safer than it has been for years. Signs of this new sense of security are everywhere.
They are misleading".
And:
"About 3.40pm, I was in my eighth-floor room at the Hamra Hotel in the Jadriya district, when an ominous, dull thud drew me to a window - a thin plume of smoke was rising above the cheek-by-jowl towers of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels on the banks of the Tigris River, about seven kilometres to the north-east.
Putting it down to the same-old, same-old of a violent city from which I had been absent for a couple of years, I returned to my desk. But minutes later the entire Hamra moved on its foundations as a huge cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the high-rise Babylon Hotel, about 2.5 kilometres to the south-east and close by the fortress US embassy. Windows shattered in surrounding buildings.
As emergency service sirens filled the air and security choppers flew in over the stricken hotels, wild, persistent gunfire drew me to the balcony off my room. Kurdish forces, stationed on a main road about 100 metres from the Hamra as security for the nearby presidential palace, were under attack from unseen insurgent gunmen.
What followed was surreal."
Read on here.
"You'll hear on arriving in Baghdad these days that there's the odd bombing, but the Iraqi capital is safer than it has been for years. Signs of this new sense of security are everywhere.
They are misleading".
And:
"About 3.40pm, I was in my eighth-floor room at the Hamra Hotel in the Jadriya district, when an ominous, dull thud drew me to a window - a thin plume of smoke was rising above the cheek-by-jowl towers of the Sheraton and Palestine hotels on the banks of the Tigris River, about seven kilometres to the north-east.
Putting it down to the same-old, same-old of a violent city from which I had been absent for a couple of years, I returned to my desk. But minutes later the entire Hamra moved on its foundations as a huge cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the high-rise Babylon Hotel, about 2.5 kilometres to the south-east and close by the fortress US embassy. Windows shattered in surrounding buildings.
As emergency service sirens filled the air and security choppers flew in over the stricken hotels, wild, persistent gunfire drew me to the balcony off my room. Kurdish forces, stationed on a main road about 100 metres from the Hamra as security for the nearby presidential palace, were under attack from unseen insurgent gunmen.
What followed was surreal."
Read on here.
Time to move on George!
George Mitchell, the US President's Middle East special envoy, has been shuttling back and forth for almost a year now attempting to get something underway [even just talks] in the on-going Palestinian-Israel conflict, let alone having achieved anything at all. He, as Obama, has been trumped at at every turn, principally by Israel's actions, mostly defiant to America's position and in breach of international law.
Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard - and author of "The Israel Lobby" - in a piece "Time for George Mitchell to reign" on his blog on FP well worth reading for its analysis says it's time for Mitchell to move on:
"Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he's gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he's got better things to do."
And:
"When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze -- itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land -- did Obama describe the settlements as "illegal" and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of "strategic cooperation," or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau's intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for "unprecedented" concessions. (The "concessions," by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank "temporarily" while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they'll just take the land a bit more slowly)."
Meanwhile, over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes in "The price of our Middle East policy" that Americans ought to reflect on what has been said by Osama Bin Laden in his latest message to the West, and Obama in particular. Of course there is no gain-saying that violence of the sort engaged in by Bin Laden's followers is deserving of the strongest condemnation and opprobrium. But it is a reflection on the what is said o be underlying thoughts of Bin Laden of their position on the Palestinian conflict, that is deserving of at least discussion - and not just dismissed.
"The connection between our conduct in the Middle East and the motivations for anti-American Terrorism receives far too little attention in general, and -- for reasons Yglesias explains -- the role played by our steadfast support for Israel receives less attention still. It goes without saying that the mere fact that Islamic radicals object to a certain policy (and that policy thus fuels anti-U.S. Terrorism) is not, by itself, a reason to discontinue that policy, but it's certainly a cost that ought to be seriously weighed in deciding whether that policy is wise."
Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard - and author of "The Israel Lobby" - in a piece "Time for George Mitchell to reign" on his blog on FP well worth reading for its analysis says it's time for Mitchell to move on:
"Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he's gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he's got better things to do."
And:
"When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze -- itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land -- did Obama describe the settlements as "illegal" and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of "strategic cooperation," or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau's intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for "unprecedented" concessions. (The "concessions," by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank "temporarily" while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they'll just take the land a bit more slowly)."
Meanwhile, over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald writes in "The price of our Middle East policy" that Americans ought to reflect on what has been said by Osama Bin Laden in his latest message to the West, and Obama in particular. Of course there is no gain-saying that violence of the sort engaged in by Bin Laden's followers is deserving of the strongest condemnation and opprobrium. But it is a reflection on the what is said o be underlying thoughts of Bin Laden of their position on the Palestinian conflict, that is deserving of at least discussion - and not just dismissed.
"The connection between our conduct in the Middle East and the motivations for anti-American Terrorism receives far too little attention in general, and -- for reasons Yglesias explains -- the role played by our steadfast support for Israel receives less attention still. It goes without saying that the mere fact that Islamic radicals object to a certain policy (and that policy thus fuels anti-U.S. Terrorism) is not, by itself, a reason to discontinue that policy, but it's certainly a cost that ought to be seriously weighed in deciding whether that policy is wise."
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Iraq: Some legacy! Cancer and lack of water
We don't read or see all that much about Iraq anymore - the "news" has shifted elsewhere - but the invasion of Iraq and all the years of fighting have left more than a disturbing legacy. Cancer!
The Guardian reports in "Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds":
"More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.
Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion."
And then there is this:
"Othman said Iraq's environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
"We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers," she said. "A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster."
The Guardian reports in "Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds":
"More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.
Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion."
And then there is this:
"Othman said Iraq's environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
"We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers," she said. "A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster."
Can't let aid to the Haitians stand in the way of Hilary's pantsuit
Jesse Hagopian, a teacher from Seattle, was in Haiti with his wife (who works on HIV education in the country) and one-year-old son when the earthquake hit.
He writes on CommonDreams in "Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing":
"Everything you need to know about the U.S. aid effort to assist Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake can be summed up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's touchdown in Port-Au-Prince on Saturday, January 16: they shut down the airport for three hours surrounding her arrival for "security" reasons, which meant that no aid flights could come in during those critical hours.
If there was one day when the Haitian people needed aid to flow all day long, last Saturday was it because the people trapped under the rubble on Tuesday evening couldn't survive much beyond that without water.
Defenders of Clinton will say that her disimpassioned, monotone, photo-op speech was needed in Haiti to draw attention to the plight of the Haitians. But no one north of hell can defend her next move: according to airport personnel that I spoke to during my recent evacuation from Haiti, she paralyzed the airport later that same day to have a new outfit flown in from the Dominican Republic. I am having a hard time readjusting to life back home after having survived the earthquake and witnessing so much death, so even typing those words is making my heart pound uncontrollably.
I guess for America's rulers a new pantsuit is more valuable than the lives of poor, Black Haitians."
He writes on CommonDreams in "Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing":
"Everything you need to know about the U.S. aid effort to assist Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake can be summed up by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's touchdown in Port-Au-Prince on Saturday, January 16: they shut down the airport for three hours surrounding her arrival for "security" reasons, which meant that no aid flights could come in during those critical hours.
If there was one day when the Haitian people needed aid to flow all day long, last Saturday was it because the people trapped under the rubble on Tuesday evening couldn't survive much beyond that without water.
Defenders of Clinton will say that her disimpassioned, monotone, photo-op speech was needed in Haiti to draw attention to the plight of the Haitians. But no one north of hell can defend her next move: according to airport personnel that I spoke to during my recent evacuation from Haiti, she paralyzed the airport later that same day to have a new outfit flown in from the Dominican Republic. I am having a hard time readjusting to life back home after having survived the earthquake and witnessing so much death, so even typing those words is making my heart pound uncontrollably.
I guess for America's rulers a new pantsuit is more valuable than the lives of poor, Black Haitians."
The Pope says you have to do it......blog!
"Pope Benedict XVI has a message for priests of the Catholic Church: they must proclaim the gospel by not only having a website, but by blogging and utilizing new web communication tools.
The 265th Pope of the Catholic Church has been an unexpectedly strong proponent of social media. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, and six months ago, he released Facebook and iPhone apps to spread the Church’s message. It looks like that he hopes Catholic priests will follow his digital example.
In his message, the Pope acknowledges that priests face new challenges due to cultural shifts that have brought the conversation online. Thus, priests must do more than just take the Word of the gospel to the web."
From Mashable, The Social Media Guide. Continue reading here......
The 265th Pope of the Catholic Church has been an unexpectedly strong proponent of social media. Last year, he launched a YouTube channel, and six months ago, he released Facebook and iPhone apps to spread the Church’s message. It looks like that he hopes Catholic priests will follow his digital example.
In his message, the Pope acknowledges that priests face new challenges due to cultural shifts that have brought the conversation online. Thus, priests must do more than just take the Word of the gospel to the web."
From Mashable, The Social Media Guide. Continue reading here......
Monday, January 25, 2010
Iran's "human rights disaster"
No surprise that Human Rights Watch has, in a Report just released, condemned Iran for its violation of human rights post the disputed presidential elections last June.
Reuters reports:
"Iran witnessed its worst internal strife since the Islamic revolution in 1979 when supporters of opposition candidates who lost to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the streets, leading to violent clashes with security forces.
Thousands were detained. Most have been freed but more than 80 were jailed for up to 15 years and five were sentenced to death.
The Human Rights Watch report said the post-election crackdown had turned into "a human rights disaster."
"The Iranian judiciary's show trials of hundreds of demonstrators and dissidents ranks among the most absurd displays of prosecutorial abuse I have witnessed in recent memory," HRW's Middle East Director Joe Stork said at a news conference in Dubai to announce its annual report.
The Human Rights Watch report said many of the detainees had been coerced to confess to vaguely-worded crimes during the trials. Researcher Faraq Sanei said Human Rights Watch had documented 26 such cases of torture or coerced confessions."
Read the full Reuters piece here.
Reuters reports:
"Iran witnessed its worst internal strife since the Islamic revolution in 1979 when supporters of opposition candidates who lost to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the streets, leading to violent clashes with security forces.
Thousands were detained. Most have been freed but more than 80 were jailed for up to 15 years and five were sentenced to death.
The Human Rights Watch report said the post-election crackdown had turned into "a human rights disaster."
"The Iranian judiciary's show trials of hundreds of demonstrators and dissidents ranks among the most absurd displays of prosecutorial abuse I have witnessed in recent memory," HRW's Middle East Director Joe Stork said at a news conference in Dubai to announce its annual report.
The Human Rights Watch report said many of the detainees had been coerced to confess to vaguely-worded crimes during the trials. Researcher Faraq Sanei said Human Rights Watch had documented 26 such cases of torture or coerced confessions."
Read the full Reuters piece here.
That obscene Wall......and its effects
The Israelis call it a "fence". It's a joke, of course, for the Wall which the Israelis have built, at huge cost, is even higher, more extensive and sturdier than the one the East Germans built in the 1960's.
Mondoweiss - a site always worthwhile accessing if one wants to stay across what is happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - reports:
"We are excited to share an excerpt from A Wall in Palestine, a new book by French journalist Rene Backmann. Backmann is a foreign affairs columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur.
The book tells the story of the Separation Wall in the West Bank, its history and devastating impact. The book puts a human face on this massive project, and shows what it has meant for people’s day to day lives. The excerpt below tells one of those stories. Terry Boullata is the principal of an elementary school in Abu Dis, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem that has been bisected by the Wall. The excerpt discusses how the Wall has impacted the school Boullata runs, and how it divides and disrupts the Palestinian families that end up in its path".
Mondoweiss - a site always worthwhile accessing if one wants to stay across what is happening in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank - reports:
"We are excited to share an excerpt from A Wall in Palestine, a new book by French journalist Rene Backmann. Backmann is a foreign affairs columnist for Le Nouvel Observateur.
The book tells the story of the Separation Wall in the West Bank, its history and devastating impact. The book puts a human face on this massive project, and shows what it has meant for people’s day to day lives. The excerpt below tells one of those stories. Terry Boullata is the principal of an elementary school in Abu Dis, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem that has been bisected by the Wall. The excerpt discusses how the Wall has impacted the school Boullata runs, and how it divides and disrupts the Palestinian families that end up in its path".
'We Can Never Have Complete Air Travel Security'
The security at airports now being engaged in borders on the ludicrous. It reflects an over-reaction to the obvious threat caused by the recent so-called underpants bomber. MPS can testify to having recently undergone an absurd pat-down and security check at Calgary Airport en-route to the USA. It took minutes.....but did they pick up a wallet in a security pouch hanging from MPSs' belt? No!
Spiegel OnLine International addresses the issue of airport security in the light of an alarm at Munich Airport the other day. The general consensus seems to conclude that one can never have compete air travel security.
The piece quotes from the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"What has been happening in international airports for years is nothing but window-dressing. Pure symbolism. The misrepresentation of false security. People take off their shoes and reveal the holes in their socks. They give up their nail files and present the see-through plastic bag with the potion against hair loss that they smear on their heads. They are already baring themselves, even without body scanners."
"And members of the security staff become tired in the face of thousands of harmless business people who grumblingly open their laptops. They are worn down by the hundredth soda bottle that they have to take off some child. And they are irritated by having to reject an almost empty toothpaste tube just because it is bigger than 100ml. The actual security is getting lost in the tangled mass of harmlessness, and the airport security staff lose their sense of urgency. It is worn down by the routine. Checking passengers has become a mass business. Every day hundreds of thousands of them have to be funnelled through airports. Even if the security staff were extremely well trained and paid, at some stage they would lose their concentration."
"It is not possible to keep increasing security checks -- in the end the airports would just paralyze themselves. However, the checks have to become more intelligent. This is not, after all, about potentially dangerous objects -- there are enough of those behind the security barriers. It is about dangerous people, such as the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of attempting to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day. The man was a known terrorism sympathizer, his own father had warned the US Embassy about his son -- and still the man was allowed to board a plane heading for America."
"Clever security checks means identifying these people before the flight. That means switching from quantity to quality. Yet no one will dare to do that, because it requires the courage to think outside the box. If there were another attack, then that courage would be construed as irresponsibility."
Spiegel OnLine International addresses the issue of airport security in the light of an alarm at Munich Airport the other day. The general consensus seems to conclude that one can never have compete air travel security.
The piece quotes from the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"What has been happening in international airports for years is nothing but window-dressing. Pure symbolism. The misrepresentation of false security. People take off their shoes and reveal the holes in their socks. They give up their nail files and present the see-through plastic bag with the potion against hair loss that they smear on their heads. They are already baring themselves, even without body scanners."
"And members of the security staff become tired in the face of thousands of harmless business people who grumblingly open their laptops. They are worn down by the hundredth soda bottle that they have to take off some child. And they are irritated by having to reject an almost empty toothpaste tube just because it is bigger than 100ml. The actual security is getting lost in the tangled mass of harmlessness, and the airport security staff lose their sense of urgency. It is worn down by the routine. Checking passengers has become a mass business. Every day hundreds of thousands of them have to be funnelled through airports. Even if the security staff were extremely well trained and paid, at some stage they would lose their concentration."
"It is not possible to keep increasing security checks -- in the end the airports would just paralyze themselves. However, the checks have to become more intelligent. This is not, after all, about potentially dangerous objects -- there are enough of those behind the security barriers. It is about dangerous people, such as the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of attempting to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day. The man was a known terrorism sympathizer, his own father had warned the US Embassy about his son -- and still the man was allowed to board a plane heading for America."
"Clever security checks means identifying these people before the flight. That means switching from quantity to quality. Yet no one will dare to do that, because it requires the courage to think outside the box. If there were another attack, then that courage would be construed as irresponsibility."
The Pillars of Afghanistan’s Economy: Drugs and bribes
There is an element of ho-hum with regard to the news about Afghanistan. Obama has committed more military, there are some issues about the Karzai Government reported from time to time, but otherwise things seem to plugging along in the war torn country. Obviously news like that related to the Haiti earthwork ensures that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and military actions in Pakistan and Yemen are relegated to the back of the news, if reported at all.
Ken Silverstein, writing in Harper's Magazine, reports on what a UN Report has thrown up:
"Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry. As revealed in this new UNODC report, for an overwhelming 59% of the population the daily experience of public dishonesty is a bigger concern than insecurity (54%) and unemployment (52%).
The report says that bribery and drugs generate nearly $5 billion in revenues per year combined, making them the country’s two leading economic forces.
Oh, but there’s good news too: the report says President Karzai has “recognized that corruption is destroying the economy.” So presumably we can expect fast action from him on this soon."
Ken Silverstein, writing in Harper's Magazine, reports on what a UN Report has thrown up:
"Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask the Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry. As revealed in this new UNODC report, for an overwhelming 59% of the population the daily experience of public dishonesty is a bigger concern than insecurity (54%) and unemployment (52%).
The report says that bribery and drugs generate nearly $5 billion in revenues per year combined, making them the country’s two leading economic forces.
Oh, but there’s good news too: the report says President Karzai has “recognized that corruption is destroying the economy.” So presumably we can expect fast action from him on this soon."
Sunday, January 24, 2010
No, they still don't get it......but, did they ever?
"How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.
The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many"
writes Bob Herbert in his latest op-ed piece for The NY Times. He is right. All the signs aren't all that good, yet the Obama fiddles whilst Rome [er, America] burns!
"A new study from the Brookings Institution tells us that the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs. You don’t hear about this from the politicians who are always so anxious to tell you, in between fund-raisers and photo-ops, what a great job they’re doing. From 2000 to 2008, the number of poor people in the U.S. grew by 5.2 million, reaching nearly 40 million. That represented an increase of 15.4 percent in the poor population, which was more than twice the increase in the population as a whole during that period.
The study does not include data from 2009, when so many millions of families were just hammered by the recession. So the reality is worse than the Brookings figures would indicate.
Job losses, stagnant or reduced wages over the past decade, and the loss of home equity when the housing bubble burst have combined to take a horrendous toll on families who thought they had done all the right things and were living the dream. A great deal of that bleeding is in the suburbs. The study, compiled by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, said, “Suburbs gained more than 2.5 million poor individuals, accounting for almost half of the total increase in the nation’s poor population since 2000.”
The door is being slammed on the American dream and the politicians, including the president and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill, seem not just helpless to deal with the crisis, but completely out of touch with the hardships that have fallen on so many"
writes Bob Herbert in his latest op-ed piece for The NY Times. He is right. All the signs aren't all that good, yet the Obama fiddles whilst Rome [er, America] burns!
"A new study from the Brookings Institution tells us that the largest and fastest-growing population of poor people in the U.S. is in the suburbs. You don’t hear about this from the politicians who are always so anxious to tell you, in between fund-raisers and photo-ops, what a great job they’re doing. From 2000 to 2008, the number of poor people in the U.S. grew by 5.2 million, reaching nearly 40 million. That represented an increase of 15.4 percent in the poor population, which was more than twice the increase in the population as a whole during that period.
The study does not include data from 2009, when so many millions of families were just hammered by the recession. So the reality is worse than the Brookings figures would indicate.
Job losses, stagnant or reduced wages over the past decade, and the loss of home equity when the housing bubble burst have combined to take a horrendous toll on families who thought they had done all the right things and were living the dream. A great deal of that bleeding is in the suburbs. The study, compiled by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, said, “Suburbs gained more than 2.5 million poor individuals, accounting for almost half of the total increase in the nation’s poor population since 2000.”
Hey! Don't click that photograph so quickly
In the age of the "fight against terrorism" - which seems to be all pervasive and ever-intrusive in our daily lives - another dimension to the idiocy of viewing just about everything from an anti-terrorist perspective.
CommonDreams reports in "Recording History":
"Following a series of high-profile detentions under new British anti-terrorist legislation, including the arrest of an architectural photographer and the stop-and-search of a BBC photographer, the group I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! is holding a mass action Saturday in London to protest the abuse of terror laws.
"Photography is under attack. Across the country it that seems anyone with a camera is being targeted as a potential terrorist, whether amateur or professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographer...We must work together now to stop this before photography becomes a part of history rather than a way of recording it."
CommonDreams reports in "Recording History":
"Following a series of high-profile detentions under new British anti-terrorist legislation, including the arrest of an architectural photographer and the stop-and-search of a BBC photographer, the group I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! is holding a mass action Saturday in London to protest the abuse of terror laws.
"Photography is under attack. Across the country it that seems anyone with a camera is being targeted as a potential terrorist, whether amateur or professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographer...We must work together now to stop this before photography becomes a part of history rather than a way of recording it."
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Covering Haiti: When the Media Is the Disaster
TomDispatch makes the valid point that the resources which the US media has thrown into the Haiti disaster borders on the "obscene" - and goes on to say that those very people reporting from the devastated nation would have done well to have read Rebecca Solnit's piece on his blog site.
"Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.
I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti."
Continue to read this thought-provoking piece [as we continue see all those horrendous images out of Haiti] here.
"Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.
I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti."
Continue to read this thought-provoking piece [as we continue see all those horrendous images out of Haiti] here.
World Health Agencies Condemn Israeli Blockade of Gaza (Again); Obama's Biggest Mideast Failure
Too true.!....are the only words in response to this clearly argued case as put by Juan Cole in his piece "World Health Agencies Condemn Israeli Blockade of Gaza (Again); Obama's Biggest Mideast Failure" on his Informed Comment blog:
"When a relief plane for the Physicians without Borders isn't allowed to land by US military authorities at the airport in Port-au-Prince, there is an outcry.
But Israeli military authorities will not allow any relief planes at all to land in the Gaza Strip (the Israelis destroyed Gaza's airport in 2001).
We cheer when a Haitian child is rescued from the rubble, but ignore the thousands of Gazan children who are suffering malnutrition and being buried by Israeli policy, a policy that is a war crime. I am of course not the only to be struck by this contrast: see also Phil Weiss and others quoted at his essential site.
On Wednesday, 80 international aid groups called upon Israel to change its policy of blockading civilians in Gaza, because it is having severe negative effects on the health of Gazans.
Admittedly, the situation in Gaza is not as dire as that in Haiti. But it is very, very bad, and it is man-made. The Israeli government imposed a blockade on the Gaza strip in 2007 and has maintained it ever since. It limits the import of fuel and staples, and punishes the whole population. Since half of the 1.5 million Gazans are children, the Israeli siege of the little territory is among the more massive ongoing cases of child abuse in the world. There is a virtual news blackout on this atrocity in the US mass media, and attempts of two sets of activists to get humanitarian aid to Gaza in recent weeks were largely ignored by them."
"When a relief plane for the Physicians without Borders isn't allowed to land by US military authorities at the airport in Port-au-Prince, there is an outcry.
But Israeli military authorities will not allow any relief planes at all to land in the Gaza Strip (the Israelis destroyed Gaza's airport in 2001).
We cheer when a Haitian child is rescued from the rubble, but ignore the thousands of Gazan children who are suffering malnutrition and being buried by Israeli policy, a policy that is a war crime. I am of course not the only to be struck by this contrast: see also Phil Weiss and others quoted at his essential site.
On Wednesday, 80 international aid groups called upon Israel to change its policy of blockading civilians in Gaza, because it is having severe negative effects on the health of Gazans.
Admittedly, the situation in Gaza is not as dire as that in Haiti. But it is very, very bad, and it is man-made. The Israeli government imposed a blockade on the Gaza strip in 2007 and has maintained it ever since. It limits the import of fuel and staples, and punishes the whole population. Since half of the 1.5 million Gazans are children, the Israeli siege of the little territory is among the more massive ongoing cases of child abuse in the world. There is a virtual news blackout on this atrocity in the US mass media, and attempts of two sets of activists to get humanitarian aid to Gaza in recent weeks were largely ignored by them."
Friday, January 22, 2010
Fisk: Another war looming
Robert Fisk, veteran of reporting from the Middle East - he has lived in Beirut upwards of 30 years - writing his latest piece for The Independent foreshadows what he sees as yet another war coming between Israel and Lebanon:
"It looks like a hop, skip and a jump. There's the first electrified fence, then the dirt strip to identify footprints, then the tarmac road, then one more electrified fence, and then acres and acres of trees. Orchards rather than tanks. Galilee spreads beyond, soft and moist and dark green in the winter afternoon – a peaceful Israel, you might think. And a peaceful Lebanon to the north, tobacco plantations amid the stony hills, just an occasional UN armoured vehicle to keep you on your toes. "Major Pardin says you cannot take pictures," a Malaysian UN soldier tells me. Then a second one says the same. Then along comes a Lebanese army intelligence officer and stares at our papers. "OK, you have permission," he declares, and I snap away with my old 36-frame real-film Nikon; the fields, the frontier fence, the high-tech surveillance tower on the horizon. This must be the most photographed border in the world.
Of course, the gentle countryside is an illusion. Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues in the Israeli government have been announcing that the only "army" of Lebanon is the Hizbollah, the Iranian-armed and Syrian-assisted guerrilla force whose bunkers and missiles north of the Litani river might just tip the balance in the next Hizbollah-Israeli war. And Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah, has been making some even more interesting threats: that his forces will "change the face of the Middle East region" if there is another war with Israel. No-one is in much doubt about what this means. The newly resurfaced Lebanese roads near the border – courtesy of Hizbollah money – suggest that someone might want to move men at high speed towards the frontier. Perhaps even to cross the border."
Continue reading here.
"It looks like a hop, skip and a jump. There's the first electrified fence, then the dirt strip to identify footprints, then the tarmac road, then one more electrified fence, and then acres and acres of trees. Orchards rather than tanks. Galilee spreads beyond, soft and moist and dark green in the winter afternoon – a peaceful Israel, you might think. And a peaceful Lebanon to the north, tobacco plantations amid the stony hills, just an occasional UN armoured vehicle to keep you on your toes. "Major Pardin says you cannot take pictures," a Malaysian UN soldier tells me. Then a second one says the same. Then along comes a Lebanese army intelligence officer and stares at our papers. "OK, you have permission," he declares, and I snap away with my old 36-frame real-film Nikon; the fields, the frontier fence, the high-tech surveillance tower on the horizon. This must be the most photographed border in the world.
Of course, the gentle countryside is an illusion. Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues in the Israeli government have been announcing that the only "army" of Lebanon is the Hizbollah, the Iranian-armed and Syrian-assisted guerrilla force whose bunkers and missiles north of the Litani river might just tip the balance in the next Hizbollah-Israeli war. And Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah, has been making some even more interesting threats: that his forces will "change the face of the Middle East region" if there is another war with Israel. No-one is in much doubt about what this means. The newly resurfaced Lebanese roads near the border – courtesy of Hizbollah money – suggest that someone might want to move men at high speed towards the frontier. Perhaps even to cross the border."
Continue reading here.
More on those deaths at Gitmo
That there ought to be an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the 3 Gitmo prisoners [referred in an earlier posting "More scandal at Gitmo" here on MPS] - remember, not charged with anything, just incarcerated - is beyond question. It goes without saying that how this is played out, especially in the Arab world, can only be seen as disastrous.
Kenneth Olberman discusses the case and interviews Scott Horton:
Kenneth Olberman discusses the case and interviews Scott Horton:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Thursday, January 21, 2010
There are certain truths which cannot be denied
Anyone who follows current affairs and watches even the odd White House press conference, will be familiar with the seemingly crusty elderly lady, Helen Thomas, sitting in the front row of the press corp. She is actually the doyen of the Washington press corp. She also asks the hard questions....
Writing an op-ed piece "Accepting various truths" for timesunion.com she raises some home truths and facts which cannot be brushed under the carpet. The piece is reproduced here, in full, because it is worthy of being read in its entirety and full context:
"No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs.
The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical tilt that comes out of Washington.
President Obama and his predecessors in the White House have scored domestic political points by embracing this world view. This is one vantage point that is truly bipartisan, to the point where no one discusses it.
Michael Scheuer, a former CIA specialist on the al-Qaida terrorists, complained on C-SPAN recently that any debate about American support for Israel is "normally squelched."
"For anyone to say our support for Israel doesn't hurt us is to just defy reality," he added.
Another former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, says the 9/11 Commission report noted that Khalid Sheikh -- the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- cited his violent disagreement with U.S. support for Israel as the motivating dynamic behind the attacks.
Obama knows enough about the Middle East that tightening airport security is not the whole answer to fighting terrorism. He should try a more even-handed policy in the region.
Grievances of the Arab man on the street include bitter criticism of the U.S. for supporting harsh authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and the failure of those U.S.-backed regimes to help the Palestinians in Gaza.
Surely after several years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can dispense with the obfuscation and evasion that flood forth from official U.S. megaphones.
Terrorism spawned in the Middle East is not the only threat we face.
As the American economy digs out from the debris of the Great Recession triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble, we should think about what could happen about another bubble that invisibly chugs through the American economy.
I refer to our bloated defense spending.
The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10 countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a relatively puny 5.8 percent.
If the U.S. defense spending bubble were ever to deflate, domestic job losses would be catastrophic, a stunning fact that raises the question of whether we can ever afford peace.
The American people have long shown they can handle the truth. When it comes to the Middle East and to threats to our economy, so should our leaders."
Writing an op-ed piece "Accepting various truths" for timesunion.com she raises some home truths and facts which cannot be brushed under the carpet. The piece is reproduced here, in full, because it is worthy of being read in its entirety and full context:
"No one in the Obama administration is going to acknowledge that our foreign policy in the Middle East has alienated many Arabs.
The U.S. pro-Israel policy and our shocking neglect of the beleaguered Palestinians underlie almost every initiative or tactical tilt that comes out of Washington.
President Obama and his predecessors in the White House have scored domestic political points by embracing this world view. This is one vantage point that is truly bipartisan, to the point where no one discusses it.
Michael Scheuer, a former CIA specialist on the al-Qaida terrorists, complained on C-SPAN recently that any debate about American support for Israel is "normally squelched."
"For anyone to say our support for Israel doesn't hurt us is to just defy reality," he added.
Another former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, says the 9/11 Commission report noted that Khalid Sheikh -- the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- cited his violent disagreement with U.S. support for Israel as the motivating dynamic behind the attacks.
Obama knows enough about the Middle East that tightening airport security is not the whole answer to fighting terrorism. He should try a more even-handed policy in the region.
Grievances of the Arab man on the street include bitter criticism of the U.S. for supporting harsh authoritarian regimes in the Arab world and the failure of those U.S.-backed regimes to help the Palestinians in Gaza.
Surely after several years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can dispense with the obfuscation and evasion that flood forth from official U.S. megaphones.
Terrorism spawned in the Middle East is not the only threat we face.
As the American economy digs out from the debris of the Great Recession triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble, we should think about what could happen about another bubble that invisibly chugs through the American economy.
I refer to our bloated defense spending.
The United States spends more for its arsenal than any other 10 countries combined. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. accounts for more than 40 percent of the world's total military spending. China is in second place, at a relatively puny 5.8 percent.
If the U.S. defense spending bubble were ever to deflate, domestic job losses would be catastrophic, a stunning fact that raises the question of whether we can ever afford peace.
The American people have long shown they can handle the truth. When it comes to the Middle East and to threats to our economy, so should our leaders."
Post that electoral loss, where to now Mr President?
The victory by the GOP of the former Ted Kennedy Senate seat in the election just concluded will send commentators providing an analysis for days to come. The White House will surely have to sit up and take notice!
The Editor of The Nation in her Editors Cut has her say"
"Election results rarely have a single explanation.
Yet it's pretty clear that Scott Brown's special election win in a state that last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1978 is an indicator of the turbulent national political mood a year after Obama took office.
There is a generalized anti-establishment anger at loose in this country, reinforced by a White House team that has delivered for Wall Street but not enough for hurting communities. It is an anger also fueled by often savage right-wing anti-government attacks."
Read on here.
The Editor of The Nation in her Editors Cut has her say"
"Election results rarely have a single explanation.
Yet it's pretty clear that Scott Brown's special election win in a state that last sent a Republican to the Senate in 1978 is an indicator of the turbulent national political mood a year after Obama took office.
There is a generalized anti-establishment anger at loose in this country, reinforced by a White House team that has delivered for Wall Street but not enough for hurting communities. It is an anger also fueled by often savage right-wing anti-government attacks."
Read on here.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
More scandal at Gitmo
Obama announced the closure of the infamous Gitmo within 12 months of his inauguration. That is now not going to happen. When remains an open question.
Meanwhile, The Independent reports in "Claims of US cover-up over Guantanamo deaths" - based on a lengthy report in Harper's Magazine - on another scandal involving Gitmo, this time, the alleged suicides of 3 prisoners. If one reads the way in which the US claimed the inmates died it beggars belief!
"Three inmates at Guantanamo Bay who, according to a report by the US Navy died after all committing suicide on the same day, in fact died from suffocation inflicted during interrogation sessions, a US magazine has claimed.
In its March edition, Harper's magazine accuses the US government of perpetrating a cover-up to conceal the true cause of the deaths of the three men – Salah Ahmed al-Salami, 37, a Yemeni, and two Saudis, Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, 30 – who died in June 2006.
The magazine, which has already posted the article by contributing editor Scott Horton on its web site, bases its conclusions on an examination of portions of the Navy report that were declassified and anonymous interviews with prison guards. "The cover-up is amazing in its audacity, and it is continuing into the Obama administration," Mr Horton contended.
At the time, the commander of the camp, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, said the men had committed suicide in concert with one another as "an act of asymmetrical warfare" aimed at the US. The official version of events says the three men stuffed rags down their own throats and then hanged themselves in their cells using bed sheets. However, the magazine cites guards saying the men's bodies had not been taken from the cells. They suggested the men had been in a separate building used for harsh interrogation sessions.
The guards also asserted that the day after the alleged suicides, they had been assembled by senior officers who told them that they were to stick with the official version of what had happened. "The official story... was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centrepiece of the report – a reconstruction of the events – was simply unbelievable," the Harper's article claims.
"Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated."
Meanwhile, The Independent reports in "Claims of US cover-up over Guantanamo deaths" - based on a lengthy report in Harper's Magazine - on another scandal involving Gitmo, this time, the alleged suicides of 3 prisoners. If one reads the way in which the US claimed the inmates died it beggars belief!
"Three inmates at Guantanamo Bay who, according to a report by the US Navy died after all committing suicide on the same day, in fact died from suffocation inflicted during interrogation sessions, a US magazine has claimed.
In its March edition, Harper's magazine accuses the US government of perpetrating a cover-up to conceal the true cause of the deaths of the three men – Salah Ahmed al-Salami, 37, a Yemeni, and two Saudis, Talal al-Zahrani, 22, and Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, 30 – who died in June 2006.
The magazine, which has already posted the article by contributing editor Scott Horton on its web site, bases its conclusions on an examination of portions of the Navy report that were declassified and anonymous interviews with prison guards. "The cover-up is amazing in its audacity, and it is continuing into the Obama administration," Mr Horton contended.
At the time, the commander of the camp, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, said the men had committed suicide in concert with one another as "an act of asymmetrical warfare" aimed at the US. The official version of events says the three men stuffed rags down their own throats and then hanged themselves in their cells using bed sheets. However, the magazine cites guards saying the men's bodies had not been taken from the cells. They suggested the men had been in a separate building used for harsh interrogation sessions.
The guards also asserted that the day after the alleged suicides, they had been assembled by senior officers who told them that they were to stick with the official version of what had happened. "The official story... was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centrepiece of the report – a reconstruction of the events – was simply unbelievable," the Harper's article claims.
"Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated."
Yet another by-product of the Haiti disaster - Trafficking of Children
As if Haiti wasn't confronted with enough woes and the suffering of its people, The Atlantic in a piece "Island of Lost Children" raises the troubling issue of what will doubtlessly become a trade in the trafficking of children now that many have lost their parents:
"In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity.
When the earthquake struck the impoverished island country last Tuesday afternoon, human traffickers suddenly gained access to a new population of displaced children. With parents dead, government offices demolished, and international aid organizations struggling to meet life-or-death demands, these kidnappers are in a unique position to snatch children with very little interference.
In today’s world, the twin causes of human slavery—poverty and vulnerability—increase exponentially after natural disasters. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, trafficking gangs moved quickly, seizing children and selling them as prostitutes in nearby Malaysia and Jakarta. In 2008, after floods devastated the Indian state of Bihar, groups of children were lured out of relief camps and sold to brothels across the nation.
I’ve seen many such stories up close. For the past three years, I’ve worked in India for International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency with twelve offices around the world. Rescuing victims of slavery and sexual exploitation are our specialties, and natural disasters unfailingly bring us new business. One of my first cases dealt with a widowed mother and her six children who had been trafficked after a drought destroyed their livelihood. A local kiln owner, who was in the business of offering good jobs to drought-affected villagers, had approached them with an opportunity. The desperate widow took the bait and found herself and her children forced into slavery at a brick kiln with no hope of escape. The widow was subjected to violent physical abuse and raped repeatedly by the owner and his cronies.
In Haiti, as in India, human trafficking is a problem at the best of times. Even without the pandemonium unleashed by a 7.0 earthquake, an estimated quarter-million Haitian children are trafficked within the country each year. These slaves, known as restavecs, are typically sold or given away to new families by their own impoverished parents. Physical and sexual abuse is common for restavecs. Many owners use the girls as in-house prostitutes, sending them to live on the street if they become pregnant.
Not all of these trafficked children end up as domestic slaves within Haiti—plenty of others are promised work in the Dominican Republic but are instead sold to work in agricultural fields or brothels across the border. Poor children who escape a life in bondage most often end up in street gangs; if they are fortunate, they may be accepted into overcrowded orphanages.
In some cases, countries with trafficking problems have been able to rally around their children after natural disasters. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, an article from The Guardian reported stories of mysterious “relatives” showing up to take children from their hospital beds—a friendly male stranger, a never-before-seen aunt in an orange shawl. Doctors and medical staff knew exactly what these adults were after: earlier that same year, 400 Pakistani minors had been rescued from the United Arab Emirates, where they’d been enslaved as camel jockeys during the racing season. The hospital protected its young patients, refusing to turn them over to any adult without legal documentation. After several thwarted kidnapping attempts, The Guardian reported, a policewoman was guarding the doors of Islamabad’s largest hospital and its 960 hospital beds were under constant supervision.
Such a concerted effort appears unlikely, if not impossible, in Haiti today. Keeping an eye out for suspicious strangers would seem to be the least of the nation’s problems. With most of Haiti’s hospitals reduced to piles of rubble, aid groups like Doctors Without Borders are struggling to set up inflatable care centers in parking lots. Prisoners are escaping from their destroyed cells, and the riots surrounding food trucks have stretched police forces to their limits.
Meanwhile, an entirely new chunk of Haiti’s population has become homeless over night. Even with aid pouring in from around the world, essential resources like food and medicine are enormously scarce on the streets of Haiti. But for predators looking for boys and girls to sell for labor and sex, Haiti is the right place to be."
"In Haiti’s unstable post-quake atmosphere, at least one industry is poised to flourish. For those who buy and sell children for sex and cheap labor, Haiti is ripe with opportunity.
When the earthquake struck the impoverished island country last Tuesday afternoon, human traffickers suddenly gained access to a new population of displaced children. With parents dead, government offices demolished, and international aid organizations struggling to meet life-or-death demands, these kidnappers are in a unique position to snatch children with very little interference.
In today’s world, the twin causes of human slavery—poverty and vulnerability—increase exponentially after natural disasters. When the tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, trafficking gangs moved quickly, seizing children and selling them as prostitutes in nearby Malaysia and Jakarta. In 2008, after floods devastated the Indian state of Bihar, groups of children were lured out of relief camps and sold to brothels across the nation.
I’ve seen many such stories up close. For the past three years, I’ve worked in India for International Justice Mission (IJM), a human rights agency with twelve offices around the world. Rescuing victims of slavery and sexual exploitation are our specialties, and natural disasters unfailingly bring us new business. One of my first cases dealt with a widowed mother and her six children who had been trafficked after a drought destroyed their livelihood. A local kiln owner, who was in the business of offering good jobs to drought-affected villagers, had approached them with an opportunity. The desperate widow took the bait and found herself and her children forced into slavery at a brick kiln with no hope of escape. The widow was subjected to violent physical abuse and raped repeatedly by the owner and his cronies.
In Haiti, as in India, human trafficking is a problem at the best of times. Even without the pandemonium unleashed by a 7.0 earthquake, an estimated quarter-million Haitian children are trafficked within the country each year. These slaves, known as restavecs, are typically sold or given away to new families by their own impoverished parents. Physical and sexual abuse is common for restavecs. Many owners use the girls as in-house prostitutes, sending them to live on the street if they become pregnant.
Not all of these trafficked children end up as domestic slaves within Haiti—plenty of others are promised work in the Dominican Republic but are instead sold to work in agricultural fields or brothels across the border. Poor children who escape a life in bondage most often end up in street gangs; if they are fortunate, they may be accepted into overcrowded orphanages.
In some cases, countries with trafficking problems have been able to rally around their children after natural disasters. After the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, an article from The Guardian reported stories of mysterious “relatives” showing up to take children from their hospital beds—a friendly male stranger, a never-before-seen aunt in an orange shawl. Doctors and medical staff knew exactly what these adults were after: earlier that same year, 400 Pakistani minors had been rescued from the United Arab Emirates, where they’d been enslaved as camel jockeys during the racing season. The hospital protected its young patients, refusing to turn them over to any adult without legal documentation. After several thwarted kidnapping attempts, The Guardian reported, a policewoman was guarding the doors of Islamabad’s largest hospital and its 960 hospital beds were under constant supervision.
Such a concerted effort appears unlikely, if not impossible, in Haiti today. Keeping an eye out for suspicious strangers would seem to be the least of the nation’s problems. With most of Haiti’s hospitals reduced to piles of rubble, aid groups like Doctors Without Borders are struggling to set up inflatable care centers in parking lots. Prisoners are escaping from their destroyed cells, and the riots surrounding food trucks have stretched police forces to their limits.
Meanwhile, an entirely new chunk of Haiti’s population has become homeless over night. Even with aid pouring in from around the world, essential resources like food and medicine are enormously scarce on the streets of Haiti. But for predators looking for boys and girls to sell for labor and sex, Haiti is the right place to be."
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Is Gaza on anyone's radar?
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March, 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December, 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Wright writes in a piece "Israel and Egypt continue to Squeeze the Lifeblood out of the People of Gaza" on Common Dreams:
"Two weeks ago, almost 2,000 internationals came to Egypt and Gaza in a massive show of civil society support for the people of Gaza. 1,362 persons representing 44 countries in the Gaza Freedom March and over 500 persons with the Viva Palestina Convoy let the people of Gaza know of their concern for the tragic consequences of the actions of their governments in support of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
Yet, two weeks later, with the apparent approval of governments (United States, European Community and Canada) who support the quarantine, blockade and siege of Gaza, Israel and Egypt have tightened the squeeze to wring the lifeblood out of the people of Gaza.
The United States government continues to assist Egypt with the installation of the underground wall to cut off the tunnels under the border of Gaza and Egypt. According to Reuters, on January 14, 2010, U.S. three military personnel from the U.S. embassy in Cairo visited Rafah to follow up on the building of the barrier. According to security sources in Rafah, visits by U.S. military have been taking place monthly.
In a press conference this week in Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said, "What we'd like to see is for Hamas to stop using the border crossings as methods for smuggling in weapons and let's get the weapons smuggling stopped." Duguid did not address the use of the tunnels to get life-saving food and materials prohibited by Israel."
Continue reading here piece, here.
Meanwhile, op-ed writer for Haaretz, Akiva Eldar, in his latest piece "Israel's compassion in Haiti can't hide our ugly face in Gaza" has some thoughts on how Israel is responding to the crisis in Haiti - yet ignores it's closest neighbours, the 1.5 million Gazans:
"But the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza. Only a little more than an hour's drive from the offices of Israel's major newspapers, 1.5 million people have been besieged on a desert island for two and a half years. Who cares that 80 percent of the men, women and children living in such proximity to us have fallen under the poverty line? How many Israelis know that half of all Gazans are dependent on charity, that Operation Cast Lead created hundreds of amputees, that raw sewage flows from the streets into the sea?
The Israeli newspaper reader knows about the baby pulled from the wreckage in Port-au-Prince. Few have heard about the infants who sleep in the ruins of their families' homes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces prohibition of reporters entering the Gaza Strip is an excellent excuse for burying our heads in the sand of Tel Aviv's beaches; on a good day, the sobering reports compiled by human rights organizations such as B'Tselem, Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on the situation in Gaza are pushed to the newspapers' back pages. To get an idea of what life is like in the world's largest prison, one must forgo "Big Brother" and switch to one of the foreign networks.
The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza. The missiles that Israel Air Force combat aircraft fired there a year ago hit nearly 60,000 homes and factories, turning 3,500 of them into rubble. Since then, 10,000 people have been living without running water, 40,000 without electricity. Ninety-seven percent of Gaza's factories are idle due to Israeli government restrictions on the import of raw materials for industry. Soon it will be one year since the international community pledged, at the emergency conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, to donate $4.5 billion for Gaza's reconstruction. Israel's ban on bringing in building materials is causing that money to lose its value."
Wright writes in a piece "Israel and Egypt continue to Squeeze the Lifeblood out of the People of Gaza" on Common Dreams:
"Two weeks ago, almost 2,000 internationals came to Egypt and Gaza in a massive show of civil society support for the people of Gaza. 1,362 persons representing 44 countries in the Gaza Freedom March and over 500 persons with the Viva Palestina Convoy let the people of Gaza know of their concern for the tragic consequences of the actions of their governments in support of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
Yet, two weeks later, with the apparent approval of governments (United States, European Community and Canada) who support the quarantine, blockade and siege of Gaza, Israel and Egypt have tightened the squeeze to wring the lifeblood out of the people of Gaza.
The United States government continues to assist Egypt with the installation of the underground wall to cut off the tunnels under the border of Gaza and Egypt. According to Reuters, on January 14, 2010, U.S. three military personnel from the U.S. embassy in Cairo visited Rafah to follow up on the building of the barrier. According to security sources in Rafah, visits by U.S. military have been taking place monthly.
In a press conference this week in Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said, "What we'd like to see is for Hamas to stop using the border crossings as methods for smuggling in weapons and let's get the weapons smuggling stopped." Duguid did not address the use of the tunnels to get life-saving food and materials prohibited by Israel."
Continue reading here piece, here.
Meanwhile, op-ed writer for Haaretz, Akiva Eldar, in his latest piece "Israel's compassion in Haiti can't hide our ugly face in Gaza" has some thoughts on how Israel is responding to the crisis in Haiti - yet ignores it's closest neighbours, the 1.5 million Gazans:
"But the remarkable identification with the victims of the terrible tragedy in distant Haiti only underscores the indifference to the ongoing suffering of the people of Gaza. Only a little more than an hour's drive from the offices of Israel's major newspapers, 1.5 million people have been besieged on a desert island for two and a half years. Who cares that 80 percent of the men, women and children living in such proximity to us have fallen under the poverty line? How many Israelis know that half of all Gazans are dependent on charity, that Operation Cast Lead created hundreds of amputees, that raw sewage flows from the streets into the sea?
The Israeli newspaper reader knows about the baby pulled from the wreckage in Port-au-Prince. Few have heard about the infants who sleep in the ruins of their families' homes in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces prohibition of reporters entering the Gaza Strip is an excellent excuse for burying our heads in the sand of Tel Aviv's beaches; on a good day, the sobering reports compiled by human rights organizations such as B'Tselem, Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel on the situation in Gaza are pushed to the newspapers' back pages. To get an idea of what life is like in the world's largest prison, one must forgo "Big Brother" and switch to one of the foreign networks.
The disaster in Haiti is a natural one; the one in Gaza is the unproud handiwork of man. Our handiwork. The IDF does not send cargo planes stuffed with medicines and medical equipment to Gaza. The missiles that Israel Air Force combat aircraft fired there a year ago hit nearly 60,000 homes and factories, turning 3,500 of them into rubble. Since then, 10,000 people have been living without running water, 40,000 without electricity. Ninety-seven percent of Gaza's factories are idle due to Israeli government restrictions on the import of raw materials for industry. Soon it will be one year since the international community pledged, at the emergency conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, to donate $4.5 billion for Gaza's reconstruction. Israel's ban on bringing in building materials is causing that money to lose its value."
Remembering Marthin Luther King
Today is Martin Luther King Day in the US. It is a public holiday - of sorts.
The Atlantic publishes a letter of Kings to mark the day:
"King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published in The Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother," was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement.
"While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in"
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here ...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider ..."
Continue reading here.
The Atlantic publishes a letter of Kings to mark the day:
"King's famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," published in The Atlantic as "The Negro Is Your Brother," was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement.
"While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in"
I am in Birmingham because injustice is here ...I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider ..."
Continue reading here.
Haiti: The US response wasn't all that speedy.....notwithstanding the hype
Greg Palast has been a trenchant critic of governments for many years now. His reporting and commentary is fearless - and seemingly always well researched.
His latest missile, on Information Clearing House, is directed against the US in its "response" to the crisis and devastation in Haiti. It wasn't all that great despite the hype, spin and PR from the President downwards.
"1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
2.
There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5.
Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
9.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10.
Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president."
Palast goes on, here, to give a "history" of Haiti and why and how, aside from the devastating earthquake, it has found itself in such dire political and economic position.
Meanwhile, this from CommonDreams:
"Doctors Without Borders, working tirelessly in Haiti, says one of its cargo planes loaded with a critically needed inflatable surgical hospital and other supplies was blocked from landing at Port-au-Prince and rerouted to the Dominican Republic - yet another tragedy in a city with only two fully functional medical theaters and many thousands in need of treatment. Haiti air space is now said to be under U.S. control: Is this really the best we can do?"
His latest missile, on Information Clearing House, is directed against the US in its "response" to the crisis and devastation in Haiti. It wasn't all that great despite the hype, spin and PR from the President downwards.
"1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama?
2.
There's no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF "austerity" plans.
3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?
4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5.
Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.
6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.
9.
Gates wouldn't send in food and water because, he said, there was no "structure ... to provide security." For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it's security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10.
Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It's treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president."
Palast goes on, here, to give a "history" of Haiti and why and how, aside from the devastating earthquake, it has found itself in such dire political and economic position.
Meanwhile, this from CommonDreams:
"Doctors Without Borders, working tirelessly in Haiti, says one of its cargo planes loaded with a critically needed inflatable surgical hospital and other supplies was blocked from landing at Port-au-Prince and rerouted to the Dominican Republic - yet another tragedy in a city with only two fully functional medical theaters and many thousands in need of treatment. Haiti air space is now said to be under U.S. control: Is this really the best we can do?"
Jack Straw’s secret warning to Tony Blair on Iraq
Anyone who watched events unfold before the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would have been across Tony Blair, then Britain's PM, rushing headlong into invading Iraq alongside his buddy George W.
The evidence is slowly seeping out that Blair was even warned about not going to war and that it could not be justified. Perhaps Blair, still seen by some as someone to listen to, will end up the war criminal that he, and people like Bush and Australia's PM Howard, clearly were.
The TimesOnLine reports:
"A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.
The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.
It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.
The letter will be a key piece of evidence at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war when it questions Straw this week.
The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: “The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq.”
Straw said Iraq posed no greater threat to the UK than it had done previously. The letter said there was “no credible evidence” linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and that the “threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September”.
The evidence is slowly seeping out that Blair was even warned about not going to war and that it could not be justified. Perhaps Blair, still seen by some as someone to listen to, will end up the war criminal that he, and people like Bush and Australia's PM Howard, clearly were.
The TimesOnLine reports:
"A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.
The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.
It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.
The letter will be a key piece of evidence at the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war when it questions Straw this week.
The document begins in a way that now appears eerily prophetic: “The rewards from your visit to Crawford will be few ... there is at present no majority inside the PLP [parliamentary Labour party] for any military action against Iraq.”
Straw said Iraq posed no greater threat to the UK than it had done previously. The letter said there was “no credible evidence” linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and that the “threat from Iraq has not worsened as a result of 11 September”.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Hate is a Growth Industry: The Right-wing Media React to Haiti
Read this piece "The right-wing media react to Haiti" from MediaMatters for America to gain an insight how the likes of Fox News [news?] and the conservative right wing of politics have reacted to the crisis in Haiti. It is hard to believe that - yes, anyoneanyone! - could give these sort of people any time. They live in a parallel universe, of sorts!
For example:
"Fox News Channel's highest-rated shows, for example, all but ignored the disaster, according to a new Media Matters study:
On January 13, Fox News' three top-rated programs for 2009 -- The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck -- devoted a combined total of less than 7 minutes of coverage to the earthquake in Haiti, instead choosing to air such things as Beck's hour-long interview with Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly's discussion of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, and Sean Hannity's advocacy for Massachusetts candidate Scott Brown's Senate campaign."
And:
"Limbaugh said President Obama would use the Haitian tragedy to enhance his standing with the "light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country." Then he seemed to dissuade people from contributing to relief efforts, complaining: "[W]e've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."
For example:
"Fox News Channel's highest-rated shows, for example, all but ignored the disaster, according to a new Media Matters study:
On January 13, Fox News' three top-rated programs for 2009 -- The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck -- devoted a combined total of less than 7 minutes of coverage to the earthquake in Haiti, instead choosing to air such things as Beck's hour-long interview with Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly's discussion of Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, and Sean Hannity's advocacy for Massachusetts candidate Scott Brown's Senate campaign."
And:
"Limbaugh said President Obama would use the Haitian tragedy to enhance his standing with the "light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country." Then he seemed to dissuade people from contributing to relief efforts, complaining: "[W]e've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."
Sunday, January 17, 2010
George W. Obama
There is no doubting that Obama is getting a bad press and surveys show him as being seen as the least popular president in the first year of office. The "yes we can" man is seen as wanting on so many fronts that his credibility has been severely spiked.
Writing in Village Voices, Nat Hentoff, points out:
"Before President Obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as I often did in the Voice, that George W. Bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the Constitution itself. Accordingly, he turned the "war on terror" over to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—ardent believers that the Constitution presents grave obstacles in a time of global jihad.
But now, Bush's successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago—is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we've signed."
Read on, here, to see a fairly compelling case made out to support what Hentoff asserts.
Writing in Village Voices, Nat Hentoff, points out:
"Before President Obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as I often did in the Voice, that George W. Bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the Constitution itself. Accordingly, he turned the "war on terror" over to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—ardent believers that the Constitution presents grave obstacles in a time of global jihad.
But now, Bush's successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago—is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we've signed."
Read on, here, to see a fairly compelling case made out to support what Hentoff asserts.
China not alone in net censorship
Rebecca MacKinnon is the co-founder of www.GlobalVoicesOnline and a former CNN Beijing bureau chief.
Writing in The Guardian in "Censorship is alive in the free world" [republished in The Age] she points out that whilst there is all the controversy about Google in China at the moment, that China is by means alone in net censorship. MPS can report that even this site was subjected to a Net Filter when visiting Syria a few weeks ago. The site was simply not be accessible.
"GOOGLE'S stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance will be rightly lauded by defenders of human rights. But when it comes to Google's vow not to ''do evil'' by its users, China is by no means the company's only headache. And we should remember that the Chinese are not the only ones putting pressure on Google in ways that are arguably harmful to freedom of expression.
According to the Open Net Initiative, the number of countries that censor the internet has gone from a handful a decade ago to almost 40 - and the censorship club's fastest growing membership segment consists of democracies.
Google's woes in many countries have to do with something lawyers call ''intermediary liability'': the intermediary service, which serves as a conduit for customers to post videos, photos or blogs, send messages, search for web content, or whatever, is held liable and can potentially be sued, prosecuted or otherwise punished for what its users do on its service."
Writing in The Guardian in "Censorship is alive in the free world" [republished in The Age] she points out that whilst there is all the controversy about Google in China at the moment, that China is by means alone in net censorship. MPS can report that even this site was subjected to a Net Filter when visiting Syria a few weeks ago. The site was simply not be accessible.
"GOOGLE'S stand against Chinese censorship and surveillance will be rightly lauded by defenders of human rights. But when it comes to Google's vow not to ''do evil'' by its users, China is by no means the company's only headache. And we should remember that the Chinese are not the only ones putting pressure on Google in ways that are arguably harmful to freedom of expression.
According to the Open Net Initiative, the number of countries that censor the internet has gone from a handful a decade ago to almost 40 - and the censorship club's fastest growing membership segment consists of democracies.
Google's woes in many countries have to do with something lawyers call ''intermediary liability'': the intermediary service, which serves as a conduit for customers to post videos, photos or blogs, send messages, search for web content, or whatever, is held liable and can potentially be sued, prosecuted or otherwise punished for what its users do on its service."
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Going where others fear to tread
For anyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, in the MSM to criticise Israel is to invite the wrath of the very loud and vocal pro-Israel lobby. Jews will attract opprobrium and offensive epithets whilst non-Jews will be labelled anti-semitic or anti-Zionist.
It is therefore more than encouraging to see Andrew Sullivan - one of America's foremost and popular bloggers - on his The Daily Dish, go where others fear to tread:
"The Netanyahu government has all but declared war on the Obama administration and then openly disses a vital ally, Turkey. The slow cultural shifts in Israel - toward ever more arrogance, more fundamentalism, more Russian immigrant racism, contempt for the Muslim world, military adventurism, and the daily grinding of the Palestinians on the West Bank and pulverization and inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza ... well maybe some others can explain it.
All I can say is: it saddens me, as a longtime lover of the Jewish state. It does not represent the historic mainstream of liberal Jewish society, it is a betrayal of many Jewish virtues that goyim like me deeply admire, and it seems designed for war as some kind of eternal and uplifting state of mind. I hope Israel shifts soon. For Israel's sake."
It is therefore more than encouraging to see Andrew Sullivan - one of America's foremost and popular bloggers - on his The Daily Dish, go where others fear to tread:
"The Netanyahu government has all but declared war on the Obama administration and then openly disses a vital ally, Turkey. The slow cultural shifts in Israel - toward ever more arrogance, more fundamentalism, more Russian immigrant racism, contempt for the Muslim world, military adventurism, and the daily grinding of the Palestinians on the West Bank and pulverization and inhumane blockade of the people of Gaza ... well maybe some others can explain it.
All I can say is: it saddens me, as a longtime lover of the Jewish state. It does not represent the historic mainstream of liberal Jewish society, it is a betrayal of many Jewish virtues that goyim like me deeply admire, and it seems designed for war as some kind of eternal and uplifting state of mind. I hope Israel shifts soon. For Israel's sake."
Yes Virginia, those Wall St. bankers are "clueless"
Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman makes more than some valid, and critically important points about the US economy - and by implication the world-wide economy - in his latest op-ed piece "Bankers Without a Clue" for The New York Times.
"The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — the group that aims to hold a modern version of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, whose investigations set the stage for New Deal bank regulation — began taking testimony on Wednesday. In its first panel, the commission grilled four major financial-industry honchos. What did we learn?
Well, if you were hoping for a Perry Mason moment — a scene in which the witness blurts out: “Yes! I admit it! I did it! And I’m glad!” — the hearing was disappointing. What you got, instead, was witnesses blurting out: “Yes! I admit it! I’m clueless!”
O.K., not in so many words. But the bankers’ testimony showed a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. And that’s important: It tells us that as Congress and the administration try to reform the financial system, they should ignore advice coming from the supposed wise men of Wall Street, who have no wisdom to offer.
Consider what has happened so far: The U.S. economy is still grappling with the consequences of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; trillions of dollars of potential income have been lost; the lives of millions have been damaged, in some cases irreparably, by mass unemployment; millions more have seen their savings wiped out; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, will lose essential health care because of the combination of job losses and draconian cutbacks by cash-strapped state governments.
And this disaster was entirely self-inflicted. This isn’t like the stagflation of the 1970s, which had a lot to do with soaring oil prices, which were, in turn, the result of political instability in the Middle East. This time we’re in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves."
"The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — the group that aims to hold a modern version of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, whose investigations set the stage for New Deal bank regulation — began taking testimony on Wednesday. In its first panel, the commission grilled four major financial-industry honchos. What did we learn?
Well, if you were hoping for a Perry Mason moment — a scene in which the witness blurts out: “Yes! I admit it! I did it! And I’m glad!” — the hearing was disappointing. What you got, instead, was witnesses blurting out: “Yes! I admit it! I’m clueless!”
O.K., not in so many words. But the bankers’ testimony showed a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. And that’s important: It tells us that as Congress and the administration try to reform the financial system, they should ignore advice coming from the supposed wise men of Wall Street, who have no wisdom to offer.
Consider what has happened so far: The U.S. economy is still grappling with the consequences of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; trillions of dollars of potential income have been lost; the lives of millions have been damaged, in some cases irreparably, by mass unemployment; millions more have seen their savings wiped out; hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, will lose essential health care because of the combination of job losses and draconian cutbacks by cash-strapped state governments.
And this disaster was entirely self-inflicted. This isn’t like the stagflation of the 1970s, which had a lot to do with soaring oil prices, which were, in turn, the result of political instability in the Middle East. This time we’re in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves."
Yemen: Wrong Support, Wrong Message
As America seems to be opening another front on its war on terror, this time in Yemen - in other words, another war in addition to those already in Iraq, Afghanistan and partly in Pakistan - wiser heads are suggestion caution, not the least because of the impact in the wider Arab world.
McClatchy reports in "Obama aid to Yemen could risk backlash in Arab world":
"President Barack Obama's decision to boost U.S. aid to Yemen to help the small Arabian Peninsula country fight al Qaida risks tying the U.S. more closely to an autocratic ruler whose repression of economic and political grievances is strengthening the terrorists and pushing his impoverished nation toward breakup.
"Any association with the (Yemeni) regime will only confirm al Qaida's narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims," warned Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor.
The State Department's latest international human rights report cited allegations that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime tortures and assassinates suspected opponents, operates secret prisons and muzzles independent media".
McClatchy reports in "Obama aid to Yemen could risk backlash in Arab world":
"President Barack Obama's decision to boost U.S. aid to Yemen to help the small Arabian Peninsula country fight al Qaida risks tying the U.S. more closely to an autocratic ruler whose repression of economic and political grievances is strengthening the terrorists and pushing his impoverished nation toward breakup.
"Any association with the (Yemeni) regime will only confirm al Qaida's narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims," warned Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor.
The State Department's latest international human rights report cited allegations that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime tortures and assassinates suspected opponents, operates secret prisons and muzzles independent media".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)