That recent massacre in Afghanistan......

From Information Clearing House:

"What really happened on the night of March 11 when 17 Afghan civilians were massacred in Kandahar province?

Many Afghans, including some of the survivors that night, believe more than one U.S. soldier was present in the two villages where the killings took place.

With unprecedented access to Afghan military investigators, Yalda Hakim travels to the villages where the massacre took place and interviews survivors of the attack, as well as Afghan guards at the US military base that housed the alleged gunman.

US soldier Robert Bales is in custody, facing charges of mass murder, but Afghan investigators suspect there may have been at least one other killer involved."

The cost of investigating Rupert's illegal activities

The Brits should be rightly outraged that their police force is not only being tied down in investigating the illegal activities of News Ltd. and the divergence of resources from other policing activities, but the cost to taxpayers.     The latest estimate is £40 million.  There really can be no stopping now that the cat is out of the bag! 

"The cost of the Metropolitan police investigations into phone hacking and other alleged illegal activity by journalists is set to rise to £40m and tie up 200 police officers – about seven times the number investigating paedophiles in London, the Leveson inquiry has heard.

Kit Malthouse, Boris Johnson's deputy mayor for policing and crime in London, disclosed the figures to the inquiry on Thursday as he issued a robust defence of his review of the level of police resources tied up in the investigations, amid concern that this would be to the detriment of the detection of "serious and heinous crimes" such as murder, rape and paedophilia.

Malthouse told the inquiry that the Scotland Yard resources dedicated to unearthing alleged wrongdoing by journalists had grown "very significantly" as he contrasted the £40m anticipated cost of Operation Weeting, the inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World, and related investigations, with the £36m annual spend for detecting child abuse cases.

He told the inquiry that 150 Met officers were currently engaged in the various investigations related to alleged phone hacking, computer hacking (Operation Tuleta) and illegal payments to police and other public officials (Operation Elveden).

Malthouse said this number was forecast to rise to 200 – the equivalent of "eight murder squads" – at a time when just 27 police officers were engaged in "tracking down paedophiles".

The Thieves of Burma

Myanmar - formerly Burma - is riddled with corruption.    That's the view of Transparency International.   With an upcoming election, in which Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is a candidate, Christian Caryl writes from Yangon in FP about Burma.

"Burma is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, which is saying a lot. In the most recent Corruption Perceptions Index published by the watchdog group Transparency International, Burma's rank was 180. The only countries that ranked worse were Somalia and North Korea.

This will not come as news to Aung San Suu Kyi's voters. They encounter petty bribery on an everyday basis, but the culture of sleaze here goes way beyond that. For decades, Burma's military leaders divided up this country's astonishing national wealth among themselves, reducing the rest of their compatriots to poverty. On YouTube you can watch a leaked video of the wedding of the daughter of top general Than Shwe (pictured above, and covered in jewels). If you want to pay your respects to someone powerful in Burma, the best way to do so is by giving him or her a car as a present. Rumor has it that the gifts received by the happy couple in the video included 70 sets of car keys.

This is hardly a trivial problem. Burma desperately needs foreign direct investment to jumpstart economic growth and spur the influx of modern management and technological know-how, but investors are likely to shy away if the country can't clean up its act. Why put money into a factory -- or an English-language newspaper, for that matter -- if some politically well-connected thug can come along at the right moment and scoop up your property? Especially when you know that you'll have little chance of redress, since the legal system is also deeply permeated by sleaze.

So malfeasance is a big problem. But there's another reason why Aung San Suu Kyi should make it a priority. Her real power to change things may be limited, but corruption is one area where a bit of sunlight can have a disproportionate effect. If she succeeds in winning a seat, one of the first things she should do upon entering parliament is to propose a public code of conduct for all government officials. She should push for transparency in the administration of all state-owned assets, including clear rules on procurement and the awarding of government contracts."

Double-speak at its best

When will the world wake up?     Those who unquestionably accept what they read or hear which emanates from Israel are living in a bubble.  Double-speak, amongst many other things, are a regular thing.      Just one example as highlighted in this piece from The Passionate Attachment:

"The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem on March 20th described Israeli government rage at a comment made by the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton relating to the killing of three Jewish children in Toulouse France on the previous day. Ashton decried the killing but then tied it in to equally unfortunate deaths of children in other places, including Gaza. Her comment caused Netanyahu to explode, saying he was “infuriated” by the “comparison between a deliberate massacre of children and the defensive, surgical actions” of the Israeli Defense Forces hitting “…terrorists who use children as a human shield.” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman quickly joined in, saying that Ashton should instead be thinking about the “children of southern Israel who live in constant fear of rocket attacks from Gaza.”
 

Where to begin? Israel’s surgical attacks have killed thousands of Gazans, including many children, and the stories about children as human shields comes from – you guessed it – Israeli government sources. The Goldstone report uncovered no evidence that there had been any use of civilians by Hamas militants. Israel has deliberately attacked schools and refugee camps, with little regard for who ends up dying. In its most recent bombings of Gaza, Israel has killed 26 Palestinians, including two children. No Israelis were injured when the Palestinians responded with homemade rockets. In 2011, 105 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, at least 37 of whom were undeniably civilians. This was up from 68 killed in 2010.

In Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, the Israelis killed at least 1100 Palestinians, using phosphorous shells and other weapons considered to be forbidden under international law. Ten Israeli soldiers died as well as 3 civilians, a Palestinian-to-Israeli rate of mortality approaching 100 to one.

The fact that Netanyahu and Lieberman can be taken seriously and reported in the New York Times when they rant about how humane the Israeli Army is demonstrates that there is an operating assumption in the media that the American public can believe just about anything when it comes to Israel. It recalls the foppish French “philosopher” Bernard Henri-Levy’s assertion that the Israeli Army is the world’s most moral. After years of being subjected to intense propaganda, maybe it’s true that the public in Europe and America have been completely brainwashed when it comes to Israel’s bad behavior."

US Supreme Court considers. The people pay hefty health premiums

The much-watched trial in the US Supreme Court on what has become known as Obamacare can be put into sharp focus when one reads this report on CNNMoney on the actual cost to Americans of having health insurance.     Of course that ignores the over 50 million people without any health-cover.     It's hard to fathom why the heated resistance to seeing everyone covered, fairly, for health.   Other countries have done it....and survived!

"Three days of Supreme Court arguments have left the fate of the 2010 health care reform law uncertain. What is certain, however, is that health care costs are continuing to eat away at consumers' budgets.

The cost to cover the typical family of four under an employer plan is expected to top $20,000 on health care this year, up more than 7% from last year, according to early projections by independent actuarial and health care consulting firm Milliman Inc. In 2002, the cost was just $9,235, the firm said.

The projected increase marks the fifth year in a row that health care costs will rise between 7% and 8% annually.

While employers still shoulder a majority of health care expenses, employees have been paying a larger portion of the total amount every year, according to Lorraine Mayne, principal and consulting actuary with Milliman."

A woman dies. Racism alive and well

More than symbolic, that in this week of the US Supreme Court hearing argument on the validity of "Obamahealth" and the shooting, a couple of weeks ago, of the young Afro-American Trayvon Martin, in Florida, now this.....

"The horrific story of Anna Brown, a black, homeless, 29-year-old St. Louis woman and mother of two who after refusing to leave a hospital because her legs hurt so much was arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, dragged into a jail cell and left moaning on the floor, where she died of blood clots minutes later. Police thought she was on drugs. She wasn't. Can anyone possibly argue there is not underway in this country a gender, color and class war, though not the one the right wing envisions?"

Go here to read the whole story.

Global warming: At the tipping point

Whatever the naysayers and others in that camp of doubters and sceptics might say - ostriches is a word which comes to mind! - the scientists are agreed.    Global warming is on and if something isn't done to remedy the situation, it may be irreversible.

"The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. 

Scientific estimates differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably. 

As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.

"This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.

Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.

" We are on the cusp of some big changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state."

The losers.... and the very big winners

It's no wonder that the Occupy Wall Street has taken root in a lot of places around the world - or like movements protesting the ever-increasing divide between the 99% and the 1% of the population.  Exhibit #1 on the figures in the USA from this piece "The Rich Get Even Richer" in IHT Global Opinion.

"New statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem. Even in a country that sometimes seems inured to income inequality, these takeaways are truly stunning.

In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households.

Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent.

The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income."

The ongoing plight of women in Afghanistan

It was supposed to be - so the powers that be of the countries which invaded Afghanistan informed all and sundry - that the "removal" of the control of the Taliban in Afghanistan would see the lot of the womenfolk improve.   There has undoubtedly been progress, as reported from time to time - but far from enough, as Human Rights Watch reports in "Afghanistan: Hundreds of Women, Girls Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’" today.

"The Afghan government should release the approximately 400 women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan for “moral crimes,” Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The United States and other donor countries should press the Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai to end the wrongful imprisonment of women and girls who are crime victims rather than criminals.

The 120-page report, “‘I Had to Run Away’: Women and Girls Imprisoned for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” is based on 58 interviews conducted in three prisons and three juvenile detention facilities with women and girls accused of “moral crimes.” Almost all girls in juvenile detention in Afghanistan had been arrested for “moral crimes,” while about half of women in Afghan prisons were arrested on these charges. These “crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution.

“It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “No one should be locked up for fleeing a dangerous situation even if it’s at home. President Karzai and Afghanistan’s allies should act decisively to end this abusive and discriminatory practice.”"

Targeting children

Yet another aspect of the deplorable, inhumane, scandalous and indecent way in which Israelis treat Palestinian children - as Abby Zimet reports in "Arrested, Traumatized, Shot: No System To Be Part Of" on CommonDreams:

"A heartbreaking report from Save the Children and East Jerusalem YMCA Rehabilitation Program on the more than 8,000 Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation who have been arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded, detained and often brutalized in Israeli prisons, usually for throwing stones - and that doesn't include those caught in the assaults on Gaza. An estimated 90% suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Unsurprisingly, there is little help for them."

Video with YMCA Rehabilitation Program Director Nader Abu Amsha.

Barbaric death penalty

The death penalty still survives around the world as Amnesty International reminds us.   The US remains the only Western nation - civilised? - where it still exists.

"Most countries do not put criminals to death. Only 20 out of 198 carried out executions last year. That number has dropped by more than a third over the past decade. Many nations have abolished the death penalty and more are abolitionist in practice.

"We are determined that we will see the day when the death penalty is consigned to history," said Salil Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International.

At least 676 people were executed across the globe last year for crimes including sorcery, sodomy and murder, according to a new annual report from the group. Executions rose steeply in the Middle East and North Africa, up almost 50% compared to the previous year.

The United States was the only Western country to carry out an execution last year, though death sentences are rarer than a decade ago. Sixteen states have now abolished capital punishment, most recently Illinois, where a lengthy campaign drew attention to errors in the criminal justice system.

Thousands more people are believed to have been executed in China, which does not release reliable numbers, Amnesty said. That dwarfs the number of executions in any other country."

Europe: Axe falls on the arts

Austerity measures in Europe are wreaking their toll on cultural institutions.    Cutting back on funding cultural icons will see us all being losers - not only the citizens of the particular country seeing cutbacks.

"European governments are cutting their support for culture, and American arts lovers are starting to feel the results.

In Italy, the world-famous opera house La Scala faces a $9 million shortfall because of reductions in subsidies. In the Netherlands, government financing for arts programs has been cut by 25 percent. Portugal has abolished its Ministry of Culture.

Europe’s economic problems, and the austerity programs meant to address them, are forcing arts institutions there to curtail programs, tours and grants. As a result, some ensembles are scaling down their productions and trying to raise money from private donors, some in the United States, potentially putting them in competition with American arts organizations."

Myanmar 2012

From The Boston Globe's The Big Picture:

"Is the recent political thaw in Myanmar genuine? Democratic elections are coming to the long-reclusive southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, formerly Burma. A long military dictatorship has nominally ended, and the regime has signed peace treaties with several ethnic separatist insurgencies. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's long house arrest is over, and she is campaigning for a seat in Parliament in the upcoming April 1 vote. Western investment is beginning to mass, which may ultimately be the reason the country is finally opening its doors. Other speculation on the thaw points to the incompetent emergency response to Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which left as many as 140,000 dead and sowed deep dissatisfaction with the government. Whatever the reasons for the unprecedented opening, the isolated and impoverished Burmese people are eager to reconnect with and catch their more developed neighbors in ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations. While it's impossible to represent every corner of any nation, collected here are images from the last couple of months in Myanmar, a nation of 55 million. -- Lane Turner (41 photos total)"

Wanna have sum "fun" (aka influence) with the Brit PM?

Credited to The Independent

Race in the USA

The hope that with the election of Obama in the USA racism would be a thing of the past was clearly misguided.    Witness this piece "The New Jim Crow" from TomDispatch.

"Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.”  Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality.  There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you.  If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you.  Trust us.  Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars.  You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand.  Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this.  It makes them angry.  In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race.  Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African American adults under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

*As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.  The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

*If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life.  (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status.  They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era."

Women in Afghanistan

It is often said by the invading forces in Afghanistan that one objective in going into the country was to help the plight of women under the rule of the Taliban.    The results are mixed as the special report on GlobalPost highlights.

"In the decade since the United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government in Kabul, many positive changes have taken place in Afghanistan, particularly for women. There are many oft-cited statistics to illustrate this, including: the 2.7 million girls now in school, the 68 women currently in parliament, a female provincial governor, a female cabinet minister, and advocacy groups all over the country working to better the lives of Afghan women.

But GlobalPost has spent several months unearthing other facts and previously untold stories of women and girls caught in the labyrinth of Afghan’s corrupt and failing judicial system. These facts and the stories behind them do not bode so well for the future of Afghanistan’s women:

*Violence against women has never been higher, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). The statistics for 2011 show a sharp increase over the same period in 2010.

*Nearly 90 percent of all cases, both criminal and civil, are settled in informal (tribal) courts, where women’s rights are almost universally ignored.

*Tribal courts still widely engage in practices inimical to women, such as “ba’ad” — the tradition of bartering a girl or woman as settlement for a dispute between families.

*Tribal courts now enjoy US funding and protection; the US government is putting roughly $15 million into the so-called ‘informal justice’ sector this year.

*Critics of the program worry that by providing aid and support for these tribal courts, the US government is giving legitimacy and power to a structure that will never defend the rights of women.

As women’s rights activist Roshan Sirran stated in an interview with GlobalPost: “In the tribal courts, the first sacrifice is women. Always.”

In this ‘Special Report’ titled “Life Sentence: Women and Justice in Afghanistan,” GlobalPost correspondent Jean MacKenzie examines several heart-wrenching stories that have not made it into the media spotlight. These are tales of women who have been unfairly imprisoned, traded off like sheep to settle murder cases, mistreated by family members and isolated from society by traditions that they are powerless to change.

In every case, the tribal courts, often aided by the state system, were the perpetrators of injustice.

For too many Afghan women, it seems just being born in the country amounts to a life sentence."

Reflections from a visit to Iraq

Luke Wilcox is the Development and Communications Director for the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project. Luke has also worked with The Advocates for Human Rights, the Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center, and  Washington Office of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Luke was a Katherine Davis Fellow for Peace in 2010 and graduated from Boston University with an M.A. in International Relations and speaks Arabic.  He writes about his visit to Iraq "Witnessing Our War and Its Consequences" on CommonDreams:

"While the US military withdrawal in December marked a symbolic end to almost 9 years of war and occupation, it’s not “over” for the people I met. They, their children, and future generations of Iraqis (as well as Americans) will live with the consequences of the war on Iraq.

In Iraq, at least 100,000 civilians died from 2003 to 2011 as a result of the war. Some estimates put the number at over 1 million. Approximately 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced by the war, including 40 percent of the middle class. Seventy percent of children in Iraq suffer from trauma-related symptoms and there are perhaps five million orphans in Iraq. Electricity comes and goes every couple of hours and 7.6 million still lack access to clean water. According to Transparency International, Iraq was the eighth most corrupt country in the world in 2011 – a legacy of both previous power structures and the American occupation.

Nearly everyone I talked to while in Iraq had a friend or relative killed, injured, or tortured during the last 8 years. Torturers included the Iraqi Army, American forces, Saddam Hussein’s henchmen, Al Qaeda, and sectarian militias. One of the students I helped teach, Muhammad, played on Iraq’s national tennis team. In 2007, his coach and three of his teammates were stopped in the car they were driving, ordered to get out, and executed “for wearing shorts.”

When Sami and I visited Baghdad, he said, “Look what’s happened to this city. It was such a beautiful place when I visited it growing up.” I saw buildings riddled with bullet holes, concrete walls and military checkpoints still dividing neighborhoods, and garbage covering street corners.

Iraq’s slow fall from regional leader in health and education to ruined state did not begin with the United States, but American involvement in Iraq over the last few decades (including bombing during the 1990 -91 Gulf War, international sanctions, and the most recent war and occupation) completed the destruction."

Ah yes......those Apple shares!

Credited to Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen

A blight on all Australians

That Australians still tolerates refugees being imprisoned - often in locations far away from cities or even decent-sized towns - is a disgrace and a blight on all Australians.      The effect on just about all those imprisoned is trauma if not self-harm and suicide.      Politicians of all persuasions, apart from the Greens, stand sorely condemned for their callous and uncaring response to the on-going issue of imprisoned asylum-seekers.

"According to the International Detention Coalition (IDC), Australia currently holds 528 children in secure and remote facilities. Last week it released its Captured Childhoods report at the 19th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The authors spent two years listening first-hand to the stories of children and parents from all over the world who have experienced or been impacted by immigration detention. 

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen responded with a statement that that the 'Federal Government is continuing to move children and vulnerable families out of detention facilities'. Effectively it underlined how slowly this is taking place, as if there is no urgency.   

The Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition said nothing. It was left to the Greens' Sarah Hanson-Young to urge legislation to outlaw child detention and to declare that it is 'shameful that Australia is on the list of countries that locks children up simply for seeking refuge and safety'."

Just think about all that nuclear "stuff" out there......

An abandoned middle school, part of the contaminated area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Pripyat, Ukraine, March 17, 2011. The ghost town which once had a population of about 50,000 people, was given a few hours to evacuate in April 1986 as radiation streamed into populated areas after an explosion at the reactor. (Photo: Joseph Sywenkyj / The New York Times)

Well overdue time to reflect on all that nuclear stuff out there.....and the repercussions, imminent and prospective.   truthout provides the lowdown in "400 Chernobyls: Solar Flares, Electromagnetic Pulses and Nuclear Armageddon".

"There are nearly 450 nuclear reactors in the world, with hundreds more being planned or under construction. There are 104 of these reactors in the United States and 195 in Europe. 

Imagine what havoc it would wreak on our civilization and the planet's ecosystems if we were to suddenly witness not just one or two nuclear meltdowns, but 400 or more! How likely is it that our world might experience an event that could ultimately cause hundreds of reactors to fail and melt down at approximately the same time? I venture to say that, unless we take significant protective measures, this apocalyptic scenario is not only possible, but probable.

Consider the ongoing problems caused by three reactor core meltdowns, explosions and breached containment vessels at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi facility and the subsequent health and environmental issues. Consider the millions of innocent victims who have already died or continue to suffer from horrific radiation-related health problems ("Chernobyl AIDS," epidemic cancers, chronic fatigue, etcetera) resulting from the Chernobyl reactor explosions, fires and fallout. If just two serious nuclear disasters, spaced 25 years apart, could cause such horrendous environmental catastrophes, it is hard to imagine how we could ever hope to recover from hundreds of similar nuclear incidents occurring simultaneously across the planet. Since more than one-third of all Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, this is a serious issue that should be given top priority.[1]"

Ugly....and double-standards

This piece on +972 requires no comment other than to re-iterate the points made in the article.    Ugly and double-standards are two words which spring to mind.

"Last Monday, a mob of Beitar Jerusalem football fans rioted at the Malcha Shopping Center. Notorious for their racism, the fans’ chants often include “MAH-vet l’araVEEM” – death to Arabs.

As Haaretz reports, hundreds of  Beitar hooligans swarmed into the mall following a game at the nearby Teddy Stadium. They “hurl[ed] racial abuse at Arab workers and customers and chanting anti-Arab slogans, and filled the food hall on the second floor.” Then they mobbed three Arab women eating with their children in the food hall, yelling epithets and spitting on them. Some Arab men employed as cleaners came to the women’s rescue; they had only their broomsticks as weapons, but succeeded in chasing the hooligans away – albeit temporarily. But then… 

… a few minutes later [the Beitar fans] returned and assaulted them. “They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them,” said Yair, owner of a bakery located in the food hall. “They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. I don’t understand how none shattered into pieces. One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy, and then they had a go at his brother who works in a nearby pizza shop and came to his rescue.”

The attackers also asked Jewish shop owners for knives and sticks to serve as weapons but none consented, witnesses said. Avi Biton, Malha’s security director, sent a force of security guards in an attempt to restore order, but they were outnumbered. He called the police who arrived in large numbers about 40 minutes after the brawl started. At about 10.30 P.M., they evacuated the mall and the management shut its doors. 

Gideon Avrahami, the director of the mall, called the riot “…disgraceful, shocking, racist incident” and apologized in person to the Arab workers. Avi Biton, the mall’s security director, promised to increase security measures when the next Beitar game was played at the nearby stadium.

Meanwhile, amongst the Israeli media only Haaretz newspaper published a report about this incident – even though it occurred five days ago. One would think that a major race riot in Jerusalem’s largest shopping mall, patronized by Jews and Arabs alike, would garner some significant local media attention. But no.

More shocking and insidious is the fact that, even though the riot was recorded by the Malha shopping centre’s CCTV cameras, no-one has been arrested. Why not? Well, said the police, because no-one filed a complaint.

Okay, let’s try a little thought experiment here. Imagine that a few hundred Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel rioted at the upscale Ramat Aviv mall in northern Tel Aviv. Imagine that they were fans of the Arab soccer team Bnei Sakhnin, that they waved team jerseys and scarves as they chanted “death to Jews” in Arabic and cursed and spat at some nice middle class Jewish women sipping cappuccinos with their children and sharing pains au chocolat at the Arcaffe. Imagine that they ran around the mall, asking for knives to attack the cleaning staff that was trying to protect the women from being attacked. And that they slammed some of those cleaners into plate-glass shop windows.

Imagine that all of this was was recorded on the Ramat Aviv shopping centre’s CCTV cameras.

And then imagine the police announcing to the media that they had not made any arrests because no-one had filed a complaint."

Can an automated article win a Pulitzer?

My oh my!    Now even the writing of articles is being automated.     Hence a piece on Slate

with the apt title "A Robot Stole My Pulitzer!"

"Can technology be autonomous? Does it lead a life of its own and operate independently of human guidance? From the French theologian Jacques Ellul to the Unabomber, this used to be widely accepted. Today, however, most historians and sociologists of technology dismiss it as naive and inaccurate.

Yet the world of modern finance is increasingly dependent on automated trading, with sophisticated computer algorithms finding and exploiting pricing irregularities that are invisible to ordinary traders.

Meanwhile, Forbes—one of financial journalism’s most venerable institutions—now employs a company called Narrative Science to automatically generate online articles about what to expect from upcoming corporate earnings statements. Just feed it some statistics and, within seconds, the clever software produces highly readable stories. Or, as Forbes puts it, “Narrative Science, through its proprietary artificial intelligence platform, transforms data into stories and insights.”
 

Don't miss the irony here: Automated platforms are now “writing” news reports about companies that make their money from automated trading. These reports are eventually fed back into the financial system, helping the algorithms to spot even more lucrative deals. Essentially, this is journalism done by robots and for robots. The only upside here is that humans get to keep all the cash."

If you hadn't already noticed, things are hotting up

The world's weather people have spoken.      To mark World Meteorological Day (on 23 March) this from the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva:

"The World Meteorological Organization’s Annual Statement on the Status of the Global Climate said that 2011 was the 11th warmest since records began in 1850. It confirmed preliminary findings that 2011 was the warmest year on record with a La Niña, which has a cooling influence. Globally-averaged temperatures in 2011 were estimated to be 0.40° Centigrade above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14°C.

Precipitation extremes, many of them associated with one of the strongest La Niña events of the last 60 years, had major impacts on the world. Significant flooding occurred on all continents, whilst major droughts affected parts of east Africa and North America. Arctic sea ice extent fell to near record-low levels. Global tropical cyclone activity was below average, but the United States had one of its most destructive tornado seasons on record.

The annual statement for 2011 was released for World Meteorological Day 23 March. In addition, WMO also announced preliminary findings of the soon to be released Decadal Global Climate Summary, showing that climate change accelerated in 2001-2010, which was the warmest decade ever recorded in all continents of the globe.

The rate of increase since 1971 has been “remarkable” according to the preliminary assessment. Atmospheric and oceanic phenomena such as La Niña events had a temporary cooling influence in some years but did not halt the overriding warming trend.

The “dramatic and continuing sea ice decline in the Arctic” was one of the most prominent features of the changing state of the climate during the decade, according to the preliminary findings. Global average precipitation was the second highest since 1901 and flooding was reported as the most frequent extreme event, it said."

A true sign of the times!

Credited to Bill Schorr, Cagle Cartoons, truthdig

Promoting a lie.... to kids

GM food is a risk.  The jury seems pretty well unanimous on that.    That hasn't deterred companies like Monsanto, Dow and Dupont still being out there peddling their message that all is good in the GM "world".   Now kids are being targeted with material in effect claiming GI food is cool.

"Monsanto, Dow, Dupont and friends may have reached a new low by bringing their genetically engineered lies into the classroom via their new Look Closer at Biotechnology, an activity book/fairy tale that tells kids about "all the wonderful ways" that biotechnology grows more food, helps the environment and improves our health, none of which is true, but anyway....Brought to you by the Council for Biotechnology Information (sic), a corporate mouthpiece whose sole aim is to make more money for these guys.

"Hi Kids! This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology - a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home."

Yet another assault on privacy and freedom of movement

It won't be long before other governments around the world follow suit, but the USA - that supposed bastion of freedoms of all sorts - has extended the time during which information may be held on citizens even if there is no known connection to anything to connect that person with terrorism.    And this under a so-called liberal President.   Just imagine a Republican regime in office!

"The Obama administration has approved guidelines that allow counterterrorism officials to lengthen the period of time they retain information about U.S. residents, even if they have no known connection to terrorism.

The changes allow the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the intelligence community’s clearinghouse for terrorism data, to keep information for up to five years. Previously, the center was required to promptly destroy — generally within 180 days — any information about U.S. citizens or residents unless a connection to terrorism was evident.

The new guidelines, which were approved Thursday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., have been in the works for more than a year, officials said.

The guidelines have prompted concern from civil liberties advocates."

Israel shoots the messenger......yet again!

If you don't like what they say simply condemn and ignore them.  Israel has perfected the routine.    Needless to say it fails, miserably, in addressing the issue at hand.    This piece "Israel won't co-operate with UN mission on settlements" from The Age newspaper explains.

"Israel has described as ''hypocritical'' a decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to launch an investigation into the impact of its settlement construction on the human rights of Palestinians. 

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in areas Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Palestinians say the continued expansion of settlements, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice, denies them a viable state, making a ''two-state solution'' all but impossible to achieve. Israel says the status of settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

The 47-member council decided late on Thursday to: ''dispatch an independent international fact-finding mission … to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory.''

It called on Israel to co-operate fully with the mission and not obstruct the process - a request Israel has already said it will deny. A government official quoted in The Jerusalem Post said Israel ''would not co-operate with a kangaroo court''.

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the UN body as ''detached from reality'', saying it was a ''hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel''.
But a Palestine Liberation Organisation executive committee member, Hanan Ashrawi, welcomed the move, saying: ''Israel cannot continue to violate flagrantly and wilfully its obligations under international and humanitarian law without consequence.''

In most areas in which settlements are constructed, Palestinians are prohibited from building new homes or structures or renovating existing buildings, and many are prevented from using roads and accessing electricity, water and other utilities. They are subjected to hundreds of checkpoints, forcing them to abandon the most direct route to their homes and travel long distances.

The planning restrictions forced Palestinians to build without building permits and live under the constant threat of eviction and demolition, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its February report.

In the first two months of 2012, the Israeli authorities demolished 120 Palestinian-owned structures, including 36 homes. This displaced 229 people - about 60 per cent of these were children - and adversely affected 450 others, it found.

Meanwhile, violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers continued to be reported throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, OCHA said. ''Attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property take various forms, including attacks with live ammunition and baseball bats, the cutting of trees, stone throwing and the vandalising and torching of mosques, in addition to other various types of assault.''

Last year, almost 10,000 trees, mainly olive trees, were damaged or uprooted by Israeli settlers, severely affecting the livelihood of hundreds of Palestinian families, OCHA found.
In two reports to Brussels from EU heads of mission, officials found settler violence against Palestinians had more than tripled in three years to total hundreds of incidents, The Guardian reported.

The starting date for the international UN fact-finding mission is yet to be confirmed."

Fox News stoops even lower. Yes, it's possible

Simply shake your head at this (from CommonDreams).....

"Outrage and actions still growing in the wake of the Florida murder of Trayvon Martin: a new police chief and prosecutor, possible civil rights and grand jury charges, much angry commentary, a Million Hoodie March in New York and a Change.org petition that has now garnered over a million and a half signatures, many bearing poignant comments. LeBron James and his Miami Heat teammates assembled for a powerful 'We Are Trayvon Martin' photo, and Samuel Jackson shot a short angry video about blame. Over at Fox News, though, readers have declared Martin "a little thug ghetto monkey." Just wow.
Who are these people?"

Libya = Mess

The NATO forces who went into Libya have moved on, the world seems well satisfied with the outcome, especially the death of Gadhafi, the media hardly reports from the country anymore - and the country has been left in a mess.

"One year after the U.S., Britain, and France began their war in Libya, the harmful consequences of Western intervention are readily apparent. The internal disorder and regional instability that the West's assault created were foreseen by many critics. And yet, Western governments made no meaningful efforts to prepare for them. No one planned to stabilize Libya once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, and the National Transitional Council (NTC) rejected the idea of an outside stabilization force, which has left Libya at serious risk of fragmentation and renewed conflict. Intervention "on the cheap" may be more politically palatable in the West because of the low cost to Western nations, but it can still be quite destructive for the countries affected by it.

Libya is now effectively ruled by the militias that ousted Gadhafi, and some militias run parts of the country as their own fiefdoms independent of any national authority. The most powerful militias in the western cities of Zintan and Misrata have refused the government's calls to disarm. These militias believe that remaining armed allows them to retain political influence in the new order that they fought to create.

Amnesty International has documented numerous cases of abuse and torture of detainees by local militias, and there have been many reports of reprisals against civilians living in perceived pro-Gadhafi areas. Militia rule is made possible by the weakness of the NTC, which never had real control over armed rebel forces during the war, and still does not. Plus, the council's opacity and corruption have been rapidly de-legitimizing it in the eyes of Libyans".

Israel curtails Palestinian access to water

Israel's actions know no bounds.   Now it's limiting Palestinians to access water in the West Bank.

"Israeli settlers have taken over dozens of natural springs in the West Bank, limiting or preventing Palestinian access to much-needed water sources, a United Nations report said on Monday.

The report produced by the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 30 springs across the West Bank had been completely taken over by settlers, with Palestinians unable to access them at all.

In most instances, the report said, "Palestinians have been deterred from accessing the springs by acts of intimidation, threats and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers."
The report said an OCHA survey carried out in 2011 identified a total of 56 springs that were under total or partial control of Israeli settlers, most in the part of the West Bank known as Area C, which is under full Israeli civil and military control.

"Springs have remained the single largest water source for irrigation and a significant source for watering livestock" for Palestinians, OCHA said, noting that some springs also provide water for domestic consumption.

"The loss of access to springs and adjacent land reduced the income of affected farmers, who either stop cultivating the land or face a reduction in the productivity of their crops."

The report said in most cases where settlers were trying to limit Palestinian access to springs, they have undertaken to turn the area into a tourist attraction, constructing pools, picnic areas and signs carrying a Hebrew name for the spring.

"Such works were carried out without building permits," the report said."

Supporting "our boys! Oh yeah?

The catch-cry is the same the world over.   "Our boys" - that is, those in the military - must be supported above all else.    They are the ones who sacrifice their lives for "our" country, etc. etc.   You've heard it again and again!     So, what to make of this by the GOP in the USA?

"This week, which marks the 9th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, let us note one of many crimes committed by the recently released GOP budget written by Rep. Paul Ryan: In the nearly 100-page document, the word "veteran" does not appear. But veterans are there: They face $11 billion in cuts.

"For those of us who served, in many ways, yesterday is today. And today, we read that the GOP doesn't even talk about veterans in their budget."

Pause to reflect on the fact that it was George Shrub, aka President Bush, he of the GOP, who sent the military into Iraq and Afghanistan - with all the casualties that have followed.

Water!

Water!  We all need it, rich or poor and wherever we might live out there in the big, wide world.     It is already evident in certain areas of the world that nations are doing whatever they can to secure the ready accessibility to water.   As but one example, think Israel in cornering the supply of water in the Jordan Valley.

Two reports out today again highlight the critical importance of water, for a variety of reasons, political and otherwise.

First, from "No Water, No Food" on Dawn.com:

"Water is a basic necessity of life, yet it remains inaccessible for a large part of the world’s population. At present, almost one fifth of the global population (about 1.2 billion people) live in areas which are water scarce and a quarter live in developing countries that face water shortages. Globally the situation is getting worse due to the increase in population and the need for more water for agriculture, industry and household use to meet the needs of the increasing population. With the existing climate change scenario, it is predicted that almost half of the world population will be living in water stressed areas by 2030."

Secondly, this Report from the Defence Intelligence Agency done for Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, in essence concludes:

• We assess that during the next 10 years, water problems will contribute to instability in states important to US national security interests. Water shortages, poor water quality, and floods by themselves are unlikely to result in state failure. However, water problems— when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions— contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure.

•  We assess that a water-related state-on-state conflict is unlikely during the next 10 years. Historically, water tensions have led to more water-sharing agreements than violent conflicts. However, we judge that as water shortages become more acute beyond the next 10 years, water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage; the use of water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives also will become more likely beyond 10 years.

Caught, and suffering, either way

Credited to Mike Luckovich, truthdig

The hazzards of being a journalist.....and "exposing" a Government

Journalists are increasingly in the firing line as they seek to report what governments don't want revealed, and even more, if challenged.     CPJ - the Committee to Protect Journalists - is forever championing the cause of journalists and exposing what has happened to them around worldwide.   Case in point....Umar Cheema in Pakistan.

"Umar Cheema, a reporter with Islamabad's The News, was abducted in September 2010 by unknown assailants who stripped, beat, and photographed him in humiliating positions. Cheema's unwillingness to stay silent about his abduction and the abuses he suffered has drawn wide attention to the nationwide issue of anti-press violence in Pakistan.

Almost immediately after he was released, Cheema went on television to tell the world of the abuses and humiliation he endured at the hands of "men in police commando uniforms." He said his captors asked why he continued with his critical reporting--was he trying to discredit the government and bring back former President Musharraf?

In the months since his kidnapping, Cheema has been harassed and threatened for his coverage of politics, national security, and corruption. In keeping with Pakistan's record of near-perfect impunity in the cases of hundreds of journalists threatened, abducted, and killed, Cheema's case remains unprosecuted and unsolved. But his courage has rallied his colleagues across the nation. An editorial in the English-language daily Dawn said, "No half-hearted police measures or words of consolation from the highest offices in the land will suffice in the aftermath of the brutal treatment meted out to journalist Umar Cheema of The News. This paper's stand is clear: the government and its intelligence agencies will be considered guilty until they can prove their innocence."

No Turkish delights for the country's reporters

"Turkey has sparked international criticism over its treatment of journalists who dare to criticize the government, with many jailed on terrorism charges. The recent release of prominent reporters may signal change, but more than 100 journalists are still imprisoned in the country, more than in China or Iran."

From SpiegelOnLine:

"Non-governmental organizations like Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch had long criticized Turkey for its repression of journalists, but a line was crossed with Sik and Sener's arrests".

***

"More than 100 journalists are still awaiting trial in Turkish prisons -- more than in China or Iran. To make matters worse, the AKP government further tightened the anti-terrorism legislation in 2006. These arbitrary laws are used to target government critics on the left and the right, but especially Kurdish journalists suspected of being sympathizers with the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). In a large-scale operation underway for months, the government has been trying to solve the Kurdish problem in its own way.

In addition to 68 Kurdish reporters, more than 6,000 Kurdish mayors, politicians and activists are currently in Turkish prisons. In many cases, their only offence is to have used banned words like "Kurdistan." The accused are often completely ignorant of what they allegedly commited. Their attorneys say that a "climate of fear" has taken hold, and that it is no longer clear what exactly can be written and thought, or even what the AKP government likes and dislikes."

Falling into and out of war

Bill Keller, writing in "Falling In and Out of War" in IHT Global Opinion engages in some navel-gazing about the role of the media, and the public media generally, giving due consideration to and evaluating any case for a war - especially, at the present time, the case being beaten up for an attack on Iran.

"When you’ve been wrong about something as important as war, as I have, you owe yourself some hard thinking about how to avoid repeating the mistake. And if that’s true for a mere kibitzing columnist, it’s immeasurably more true for those in a position to actually start a war.

So here we are, finally, messily winding down the long war in Afghanistan and simultaneously being goaded toward new military ventures against the regimes in Syria and Iran. Being in the question-asking business, I’ve been pondering this: What are the right questions the president should ask — and we as his employers should ask — when deciding whether going to war is (a) justified and (b) worth it? Here are five, plus two caveats, and some thoughts about how all this applies to the wars before us.

1. HOW IS THIS OUR FIGHT?

It ought to be the first question we ask. Sometimes the answer is obvious. There is a broad agreement that it was in America’s vital national interest in 2001 to go after the homicidal zealots behind the 9/11 attacks on America, and the Afghan regime that hosted them. Whatever you think of how the war was waged or how long it should continue, the going-in was, as the cops say, a righteous shoot.

Often the American stake is not so clear-cut. We may feel an obligation to defend an ally. (Some allies more than others.) We have been known to fight for our economic interests. We intervene in the name of American values, an elastic rubric that can mean anything from halting a genocide to, in George W. Bush’s expansive doctrine, promoting freedom.

Senator John McCain, demanding American air strikes to help rebels topple the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, adopts the Bush “freedom agenda” rationale: by halting suffering and helping overthrow tyranny, we earn some leverage with the victors, improving the odds that Syria will become less hostile to our interests. For a variety of robust dissents, look no further than the conservative Web site National Review Online. There you find the neocon view that intervention is not about fomenting a Syrian democracy; it is about striking at an Islamist, anti-American cabal centered on Iran. You also find the libertarian view that our national interest is best served by staying out of a situation we can only make worse."

Continue reading here.

The overwhelming evidence about climate change

A view of the Runge reservoir in the town of Runge, some thirty-seven miles north of Santiago on February 3, 2012. Reuters/Ivan Alvarado

With a good part of the world experiencing climate quite out of kilter with what should be the case over recent time, Bill McKibbin, writing in The Nation, puts climate change into context.

"The National Weather Service is kind of the anti–Mike Daisey, a just-the-facts operation that grinds on hour after hour, day after day. It’s collected billions of records (I’ve seen the vast vaults where early handwritten weather reports from observers across the country are stored in endless rows of ledgers and files) on countless rainstorms, blizzards and pleasant summer days. So the odds that you could shock the NWS are pretty slim.

Beginning in mid-March, however, its various offices began issuing bulletins that sounded slightly shaken. “There’s extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented,” Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro told the Daily Herald. “It’s extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day,” the office added in an official statement.

It wasn’t just Chicago, of course. A huge swath of the nation simmered under bizarre heat. International Falls, Minnesota, the “icebox of the nation,” broke its old temperature records—by twenty-two degrees, which according to weather historians may be the largest margin ever for any station with a century’s worth of records. Winner, South Dakota, reached 94 degrees on the second-to-last day of winter. That’s in the Dakotas, two days before the close of winter. Jeff Masters, founder of WeatherUnderground, the web’s go-to site for meteorological information, watched an eerie early morning outside his Michigan home and wrote, “This is not the atmosphere I grew up with,” a fact confirmed later that day when the state recorded the earliest F-3 strength tornado in its history. Other weathermen were more… weathermanish. Veteran Minneapolis broadcaster Paul Douglas, after noting that Sunday’s low temperature in Rochester broke the previous record high, blogged “this is OFF THE SCALE WEIRD even for Minnesota.”

Israelis > Iranians > Israelis. People to people power. Restoring sanity?

If only a venture such as this, reported here, on CommonDreams, could achieve what politicians can't or won't.    People to people power?

"In an increasingly popular Facebook campaign initiated by an Israeli family, Israeli and Iranian citizens are expressing mutual respect and a hope for peace between the two countries.

The campaign was started by an Israeli couple, graphic designers Ronnie Edri and Michal Tamir, who began posting poster-messages on Facebook expressing love for Iranians in a bid to "cut across the growing anxiety and fear over the possibility of an Israel-Iran war, and address Iranian citizens directly".

A group of Iranians reciprocated with a response solidarity campaign stating, "We love you, Israeli people! The Iranian people do not like war with any country," via a poster uploaded to Facebook.

The posts have gathered hundreds of followers and responses on Facebook."

Yet another wave of refugees

There were refugees galore from the fighting in Iraq.    They ended up in both Lebanon and Jordan as also Syria.    Now, with the onslaught of the people of Homs, and elsewhere in Syria, people are again on the march.   

"Officially, there are around 12,000 Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon, but the true number is likely to be far higher. The borders between the countries are traditionally porous, and although it has become harder to cross, towns and villages in Lebanon have reported recent sharp increases in number of refugees arriving.

In Tripoli. Lebanon's second city, you see minivans on Syrian number plates laden with possessions and packed full of people. No seat goes spare. Local community leaders say that refugees have been arriving in their hundreds, looking for places to stay. The money they bring will not last forever, and for some it has already run out.

The refugees may have escaped the conflict, but they have not left it behind. They speak of people, businesses and belongings left at home, and of their uncertainty about whether they will be able to return. Speaking to them, you feel they have only left the country in a physical sense; emotionally, they are still very much in Syria."

Staggering and sobering stats

The facts speak for themselves.

From reason.com:

"U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales’ suspected early March murder of 16 Afghan civilians is cast by the military-industrial-congressional-media complex as the isolated madness of a single American soldier. In fact, victims in the village of Kandahar are just the latest among six million who have perished in America's wars-of-choice in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and now the Central Asian graveyard of empires, Afghanistan.

That sobering estimate of death comes from John Tirman, executive director of the MIT Center for International Studies, and author of The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars, whose arguments were recently summarized in The Washington Post essay, “Why Do We Ignore the Civilians Killed in American Wars?”

****

"With an exceptionalist view of our own goodness, Americans ignore the genocidal carnage unleashed on the world in the decades since the good war was fought by America’s greatest generation. The reason isn't complicated. The chicken hawk elites who start, propagandize, and run the wars don’t have to put themselves in harm's way fighting them. The Bushes and Obamas send 20-somethings to their deaths in the deserts of the Middle East and the tribal hills of Central Asia, in service to the industrial war profiteers, the neoconservative think tank experts, and the editorial page war hawks. Done in the name of “national defense,” offensive military spending becomes Republican corporate welfare and a Democratic jobs program."

Iraq War 9 years on......Lessons learned?

This week marks the ninth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the so-called Coalition of the Willing.    Remember all the hype about WMD's, the imminent threat of Saddam launching whatever, etc. etc.    All nothing more than fiction as we now all know - and the politicians who got the world into the mess stand sorely condemned.    And of course the Iraqis are still suffering.   Any lessons to be learned?

"This month marks the ninth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Regardless of your views on the wisdom of that decision, it's fair to say the results were not what most Americans expected. Now that the war is officially over and most U.S. forces have withdrawn, what lessons should Americans (and others) draw from the experience? There are many lessons that one might learn, of course, but here are my Top 10 Lessons from the Iraq War.

Lesson #1: The United States lost. The first and most important lesson of Iraq war is that we didn't win in any meaningful sense of that term. The alleged purpose of the war was eliminating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but it turns out he didn't have any. Oops. Then the rationale shifted to creating a pro-American democracy, but Iraq today is at best a quasi-democracy and far from pro-American. The destruction of Iraq improved Iran's position in the Persian Gulf -- which is hardly something the United States intended -- and the costs of the war (easily exceeding $1 trillion dollars) are much larger than U.S. leaders anticipated or promised. The war was also a giant distraction, which diverted the Bush administration from other priorities (e.g., Afghanistan), and it made the United States much less popular around the world.

This lesson is important because supporters of the war are already marketing a revisionist version. In this counter-narrative, the surge in 2007 was a huge success (it wasn't, because it failed to produce political reconciliation) and Iraq is now on the road to stable and prosperous democracy. And the costs weren't really that bad. Another variant of this myth is the idea that President George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus had "won" the war by 2008, but President Barack Obama then lost it by getting out early. This view ignores the fact that the Bush administration negotiated the 2008 Status of Forces agreement that set the timetable for U.S. withdrawal, and Obama couldn't stay in Iraq once the Iraqi government made it clear it wanted us out.

The danger of this false narrative is obvious: if Americans come to see the war as a success -- which it clearly wasn't -- they may continue to listen to the advice of its advocates and be more inclined to repeat similar mistakes in the future."







Continue reading here.
 

Hate speech and its tragic aftermath

The tragic shootings in Toulouse - not only at the Jewish school but also of the Arab-Caribbean soldiers the other day - again brings to the fore that hate-speech, and everything that goes with it, has its consequences, and in this case, awful ones.

This excellent op-piece from The Guardian puts things into context....perfectly!

"Over the past few years of recession and regression, it has become a trite truism of European politics that you can't go wrong going to the right. Politicians across the continent have found a new magic formula for electoral success and survival by playing on fears of foreigners and particularly of Islam – the wink and a nod that says that immigration has been the root of our social and economic decline. This is by no means an exclusively rightwing vice. Anyone who has heard the Dutch Labour party recently will have difficulty putting light between them and the demagogue Geert Wilders.

Until today, they might have tried to argue that there was no harm in it, that it's healthy even, a rebalancing of the scales after two decades of biting our tongues and creeping political correctness.

The French airwaves have been full of such ugly equivocation these past few weeks as Nicolas Sarkozy has lurched his party wildly to the right in an attempt to save his skin, claiming there were "too many immigrants in France" and stoking Islamophobia with a ridiculous claim that the French were being secretly forced to eat halal; his prime minister François Fillon even said Jews and Muslims should put their dietary laws behind them and embrace modernity.

Claude Guéant, the interior minister who took personal control of the investigation, has been the most consistently xenophobic, championing the superiority of European Christian civilisation over lesser cultures who force their women to cover up – yes, observant Jews and Muslims, he meant you. The nadir came last week when Sarkozy's new immigration chief Arno Klarsfeld – the eldest son, ironically, of Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld – called for a wall to be built between Greece and Turkey to save Europe from barbarian invaders.

Today in Toulouse we have been given a horrific illustration of where such delirious cynicism can lead. All of those who have been shot or killed in and around the city in the past eight days have had one thing in common. They are from visible minorities. They had names or faces that marked them out as not being descended, as Jean-Marie Le Pen would say, from "our ancestors the Gauls". Their roots – both Jewish and Muslim – were in the Maghreb or the Caribbean. They were, in short, a snapshot of la France metissée – the mixed race, immigrant France that works hard and "gets up early" to empty bins and look after children; the people who die disproportionately for France yet who are also most often locked up in its prisons and crumbling banlieues.

As one father said this morning as he hugged his son to him outside the school, "They are attacking us because we are different."

Police are a long way yet from catching, never mind understanding, what was going through the head of someone who could catch a little girl by the hair so he wouldn't have to waste a second bullet on her. But some things are already becoming clear. He shouted no jihadist or anti-Semitic slogans, going about his grisly business in the cold, military manner oddly similar to Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who massacred 77 people at a social democrats summer camp last summer.

As with Breivik, politicians will be quick to the thesis of the lone madman. Another lone madman influenced by nothing but his own distorted mind, like the lone gang of neo-Nazis who had been quietly killing Turks and Greeks in Germany for years unbothered by the police, who preferred to put the murders down to feuds or honour killings.

What could be the link, they ask, between Jewish children and French military personnel? The link is they are both seen – and not just by a far-right fringe – as symbols of all that has sabotaged la France forte, to borrow Sarkozy's election slogan. Confessional schools, be they Jewish or an informal weekend madrassa, are seen as actively undermining the secular Republic by activists of groups like the Bloc Identitaire and the Front National, as well as some members of Sarkozy's UMP, and even some on the left.

A black man or a Muslim, particularly one of Algerian origin, in a paratrooper's uniform touches a raw nerve among the old guard of the far right. It was the paratroopers who did the bulk of the dirty work to keep Algeria French, and who also tried to oust De Gaulle when he went against them.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the end of that war that left more than a million dead and two countries twisted and contorted by the pain of it in almost equal and opposite ways.

Not even Sarkozy, who has most politically to lose from these killings, is trying to hide the link with race and religion. Just as he echoed the old National Front slogan "Love France or leave it" and then denied he ever said it, he yesterday called on the French people to stand up "against hate", having spent the past few months manically stirring it. The next 34 days will see whether he will be swept away by the storm he has helped to start."

The real weight of war

Credited to David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

No names, no interest, no concern

This piece / commentary from AlJazeera certainly highlights the way the West reflects on its actions in the Middle East - and more importantly, its response.....

"In the days following the rogue US soldier’s shooting spree in Kandahar, most of the media, us included, focused on the “backlash” and how it might further strain the relations with the US.

Many mainstream media outlets channelled a significant amount of  energy into uncovering the slightest detail about the accused soldier – now identified as Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. We even know where his wife wanted to go for vacation, or what she said on her personal blog.

But the victims became a footnote, an anonymous footnote. Just the number 16. No one bothered to ask their ages, their hobbies, their aspirations. Worst of all, no one bothered to ask their names.

In honoring their memory, I write their names below, and the little we know about them: that nine of them were children, three were women."

See also Glenn Greewald's op-ed piece "Afghanistan and American imperialism" on Comment is Free in The Guardian.

How Goldman Sachs cares?

Credited to Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons, truthdig

The real Artist

The movie "The Artist" has seemingly enchanted audiences everywhere and garnered awards all over the place.    That it is a silent movie in black and white makes the popularity of the movie even more noteworthy.     

The New York Review of Books looks at the movie and the person who really effected the transition from silent movies to talkies.

"Now that The Artist has whetted our interest in the silent film and the revolutionary impact of sound, it may be time to reconsider the career of the man who made the conversion to sound the basis of a whole new kind of movie, Fred Astaire. The Artist suggests quite accurately that the definitive event of the new sound era was the arrival of the film musical. Sound meant music; music meant jazz. But the technological transition was slow. After the first feature-length sound movie, The Jazz Singer (1927), which starred Al Jolson, it was six years before the advent of the Jazz Dancer proved that talking and even singing mouths were not nearly as expressive in the new medium as dancing feet, especially and almost exclusively the feet of Fred Astaire. Astaire and the difference he made to the film musical add up to more than the story of one career. No other film genre provided as perfect a synchronization of sight and sound or an experience as exhilarating, and that was very largely Astaire’s doing."

Continue reading here.

Boycotting those wretched settlements might save Israel

When The New York Times publishes an op-ed piece such as that by Peter Beinart, perhaps - just perhaps - the tide of opinion in the USA is shifting, even if only slightly.     It certainly is time for the world to wake up to the almost unquestionable fact that something will give in the Palestinian-Israel conflict if it isn't resolved and that a two State solution is effectively no longer possible giving the "facts on the ground".

"To believe in a democratic Jewish state today is to be caught between the jaws of a pincer.

On the one hand, the Israeli government is erasing the “green line” that separates Israel proper from the West Bank. In 1980, roughly 12,000 Jews lived in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem). Today, government subsidies have helped swell that number to more than 300,000. Indeed, many Israeli maps and textbooks no longer show the green line at all.

In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the settlement of Ariel, which stretches deep into the West Bank, “the heart of our country.” Through its pro-settler policies, Israel is forging one political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy, given that millions of West Bank Palestinians are barred from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives.

In response, many Palestinians and their supporters have initiated a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.), which calls not only for boycotting all Israeli products and ending the occupation of the West Bank but also demands the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes — an agenda that, if fulfilled, could dismantle Israel as a Jewish state.

The Israeli government and the B.D.S. movement are promoting radically different one-state visions, but together, they are sweeping the two-state solution into history’s dustbin.

It’s time for a counteroffensive — a campaign to fortify the boundary that keeps alive the hope of a Jewish democratic state alongside a Palestinian one. And that counteroffensive must begin with language.

Jewish hawks often refer to the territory beyond the green line by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, thereby suggesting that it was, and always will be, Jewish land. Almost everyone else, including this paper, calls it the West Bank.

But both names mislead. “Judea and Samaria” implies that the most important thing about the land is its biblical lineage; “West Bank” implies that the most important thing about the land is its relationship to the Kingdom of Jordan next door. After all, it was only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948 that it coined the term “West Bank” to distinguish it from the rest of the kingdom, which falls on the Jordan River’s east bank. Since Jordan no longer controls the land, “West Bank” is an anachronism. It says nothing meaningful about the territory today.

Instead, we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel.” The phrase suggests that there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it. It counters efforts by Israel’s leaders to use the legitimacy of democratic Israel to legitimize the occupation and by Israel’s adversaries to use the illegitimacy of the occupation to delegitimize democratic Israel."