Defending Peace
There, that should make a whole lot of people ecstatic. Yet another unwholesome smear to blacken the reputation of a country whose international regard already teeters beyond acceptable. Is this Democratic Republic of Congo, ordering UN peace-keeping troops out of the country to enable the mass rapes and killings to continue unabated? North Korea being roundly condemned by the global community for a cowardly act of war that it denies despite undeniable proof? Sudan, still refusing to view Darfurians worthy of life, limb and property?
Ah, that's it: Iran has finally been rejected for its incendiary pledge to destroy another country, for its obvious and determined intention to obtain nuclear weapons, unsettling the world community with its lunatic agenda. No? Well then, a total rejection by the civilized world of Hamas and Hezbollah, creatures of Iran and Syria whose threat to annihilate Israel and its people will no longer be countenanced? None of the above? What on Earth, then? Ah, China, for its carelessness about its vast ignored rural under-privileged.
Burma? Rwanda? Zimbabwe? South Africa? No, no and no. Well, what is all the fuss about then? Israel. Again? Don't those people know better than to belligerently insist they have a right to exist? Don't they realize that the world is not fond of Jews who push back? Cannot they get it through their thick Jewish skulls that a cowering, submissive Jew is one who just might elicit sympathy in some corners of the world?
Strange, most peculiar to say the least, how revenant the Jews are. Hit them and they pop back up. Gas them in immense numbers, organize a methodology so diabolical that the inventors of brave new devices to rid the world of an unbridled pestilence have good reason to believe that they have finally found the template to mass extermination. Finally, the world finds its conscience, and views Jews as human beings. But this is a temporary lapse and sanity is soon restored.
So that the world is finally ready once again to embrace the most mendaciously evil manipulations of public opinion to revel again in the mass understanding that Jews must somehow be stopped before they reach their goal of controlling the entire world. Expunge them from the Middle East where this ancient people has once again settled among a larger population worshipping another higher order entirely, and the presence of Jews presents as an unbridled affront.
For their intellectual mastery in science and technology, in medicine and culture is a mere facade behind which stands menacingly, glowering, a monster of false superiority. A monster which threatens the security and well-being of the very populations that threaten its own security. No problem; with a built-in psychological aversion to Jews, the anti-Semites of the world unite and public opinion is readily assembled in denunciation.
A country embattled at its borders, and within its borders, for democratically welcoming residents non-Jews as citizens and as members of its ruling elected governing body, is construed as and considered to be racist because it demands recognition as a Jewish presence. Thus alienating the entire world, all of whom are assembled themselves in countries that present as homogeneously Chinese, Arab, Japanese, Serbian, Russian, French, Belgian, Spanish, African, Icelandic - and so on ad infinitum.
Take a country like Ireland and like Turkey for example, inhabited by the Irish and by the Turkish, who look with disfavour upon a country whose majority citizens are those devilish Jews; unheard of and more than slightly unacceptable. Point out, time and time again, that the Jews are racist and intent on exterminating other peoples whom they see as adversaries. Form violent groups dedicated to terrorizing those recalcitrant Jews.
Because those Jews have learned their lesson well, they will no longer go quietly into that dark night; they insist on light and openness and self-defence. Intolerable. Well then, provoke the beast. In broad daylight, assemble a seething mass of Jew-haters and bait the Jews. Provoke them into acting in ways that will help form opinions critical of those vile people. Be a 'peace activist', and bring life-saving goods to a blockaded people whose rulers seethe with hatred for Jews.
Everyone, all over the world, respects that word, 'peace', and by extension those who hold aloft a dove, while behind their backs hangs a Kalashnikov. Arrange a life-saving, blockade-crushing seagoing aid convoy, loaded with goods for an oppressed people whose overseers strike terror into the hearts of civilians whose culture is other than theirs. Cultivate an aura of selflessness. Invite international dupes as enablers.
Mount a violent attack, then claim to have been violated, your trust as a peace activist taken in vain, the Jews, those Israelis - or is it the Israelis, those Jews - have proven yet again their black hearts and utter lack of conscience in attacking the innocent, the vulnerable, the helpless.
The applause is deafening.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Political Realities
A Culture Of Peace
That would, of course, describe the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country that devotes itself to internal peaceful relations among its citizens and its religious elites, and among its neighbours and within the world at large. Iran does this by arresting, imprisoning, torturing, raping and murdering its political dissenters. It expands this complimentary action toward gays, members of other religions, and those whose actions irritate the ruling theocracy.
As a peace-loving nation it frees up scarce funding for needed interior infrastructure and reform to arm and fund extra-territorial militias subordinate to their instructions and anxious to help Iran spread good cheer and companionship and love of humankind through the region. Syria is a willing abettor of Hezbollah and Hamas, through its political impositions upon Lebanon which it once again plans to absorb; all satellites of Iran's ambitions.
Peace-loving Iran assures its Arab Muslim neighbours that their best interests are at the heart of everything Iran plans for their futures, with its own commanding presence ensuring their security. The big stick it shakes is the certainty of nuclear arms, bright on the peaceful horizon. A situation that alarms the world of the West with whom Iran is not particularly comfortable, considering the repugnance of their religious liberalism and other failings.
Suddenly, Israel's quiet nuclear arsenal becomes the cudgel that strikes a chord with its neighbours for though despising Iran, Egypt seems to feel that if Israel surrenders its nuclear deterrence capability, Iran will no longer be interested in building its own. Which, in any event, according to Brazil and Turkey and Spain does not exist other than a feverish figment of U.S.-Israel imagination.
To relieve the tension a stratagem was devised between Iran, Brazil and Turkey that took the United Nations and everyone else threatening sanctions against Iran rather off guard. An issue that was discussed at the UN Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Rio de Janeiro. As host, Brazil's president opened the forum themed "peace through the interconnection of cultures", by speaking of the avoidance of violence.
Iran's intentions are clearly peaceful in nature; whereas those of the United States threaten a state of violence. "The theses on a suspected fracture of civilizations in the world, that would lead inexorably to conflict. These theories are criminal when used as a pretext for military actions so-called preventive", stated Lula. To which one can only respond, WHAT?! But Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan clearly knows what's up, since he emphatically agrees.
According to Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, formerly friend of the West and of Israel, Iran is beyond reproach and the West is hypocritical in its behaviour and demands of Iran. "When we hear those who speak of preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, we realize that they themselves possess nuclear weapons", waxed Erdogan indignantly.
And foreign affairs ministers from Brazil, Spain and Turkey defended the 'diplomatic resolution' to the Iran nuclear position.
Spain's foreign minister, Morantinos was clear on the subject: "I think diplomacy is the only way to solve this important issue ... we're trying to build a new global order,and for that we cannot create a nuclear disorder", said he. Spain too, it appears, exists on Cloud Cuckooland.
Brazil's minister claims a "culture of peace", contrasted with a "culture of conflict".
"Brazil believes in an understanding that makes the guns silent ... the world needs a peaceful Middle East, and obviously Brazil is not out of this need. We defend a country free of nuclear weapons. We believe that nuclear power should be an instrument for promoting development, not a threat", Lula enthused. Shades of Hugo Chavez and Dear Leader Kim Jung-il.
Therefore, a resolution by the Non-Proliferation Treaty's nations, supported in the end by the United States. A resolution that mentions Israel solely, with no mention of Iran, calling on the State of Israel to surrender its nuclear arsenal in the interests of a world free of nuclear weapons. From Toronto, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting, a statement was issued.
"This resolution is deeply flawed and hypocritical. It ignores the realities of the Middle East and the real threats facing the region." Yes, doesn't it? But that will not deter the advance of a regional conference in 2012 to forward the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East. That two-hear hiatus should give Iran more than ample time to get its nuclear ducks all lined in a row and ready to blast.
Labels: Israel, Technology, Traditions, United Nations
Flotilla of the Passione Just
The Gaza flotilla Cypriot authorities intervened in an attempt to prevent pro-Palestinian 'activists', representing nine European countries, including 30 MPs, from leaving the island to join the yearly "aid" flotilla on its way to Gaza.
The flotilla of eight vessels loaded to the brim with ten thousand tonnes of humanitarian aid and some 700 righteously passionate 'peace activists', who appear to feel that Hamas is a respected government agency, with no responsibility itself for a peaceful solution to the stand-off between Gaza and Israel is set for yet another confrontation.
There is no interest whatever in establishing equal responsibility for the goal of peace among the 'peace activists'; the stunt is meant to embarrass Israel while slandering the nation of Jews. If they were not Jews there would be no issue. As Israel is a state comprised of majority Jewish citizens there is an issue.
The Palestinians in Gaza had the opportunity with the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers to make a life for themselves beyond violent 'resistance' to an occupier which no longer 'occupied' the territory. The choice was to mount an offensive against the country, in an ongoing attempt to demolish the very presence of a Jewish state.
This is an issue of no moment whatever to the 'pro-Palestinians' who are unequivocally 'anti-Israel', and by extension - or perhaps that should be in reverse order - anti-Semitic. It is an old established tradition and one that will not gracefully fade into history, but rather remains one to be evoked and re-burnished with the flaming zeal of Jew hatred at every historical opportunity.
Ireland, Bulgaria and Sweden, among other luminous states of the world, have sent 17 of their members of parliament. All of whom and many more included, insist that Gazans are living in a state of blockaded social misery, impoverished and fearful for their lives. None of whom recognize that Hamas, which controls Gaza, has sworn to militarily devote all its resources to obliterating Israel from the map of the Middle East.
This is not recognized because to them it is irrelevant.
What is relevant that Hamas, the government of Gaza, a recognized terrorist group with flaming Islamist credentials, has placed itself in a state of war against the country. Israel is entirely within its rights to impose a maritime blockade on the Gaza coast. International law supports it as a legitimate measure in recognition of an armed conflict. And since the blockade exists, no vessels may legally enter the area.
Why would they, other than to cause mischief as is being done on this occasion? To claim that their mission is to rescue the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip from inhumane and unjust living conditions. Which has been imposed upon the Palestinians in Gaza by Hamas and other Palestinian jihadist groups attacking Israel's right to existence, and constantly attempting to murder its people.
Despite which, necessary supplies are continually being transferred overland at border crossings into Gaza. Despite the fact that Hamas continues to impose a siege mentality on the region, striking when and where it can across into bordering Israeli communities, Israel remains invested in humanitarian deliveries to Gaza.
The imposition of economic sanctions with respect to Gaza is the right of any country needing to protect itself from ongoing violent attacks, a right recognized in international law.
Despite the economic blockade that refuses to admit goods not vital to the population such as munitions, concrete and other building materials that are useful to Hamas and do not furnish the needs of civil society, Israel regularly admits essential goods, ensuring that quantities of humanitarian supplies do get through to Gaza, including baby formula, meat, dairy products, and medical supplies; all civilian goods, in short.
If the flotilla organizers insist that the goods they are bringing by sea must be received by Gaza Palestinians, Israel has offered to assist in their delivery.
But it is not in the interests of the flotilla organizers and the passionate 'pro-Palestinian, anti-Israelis' that they unload their cargo in port, as permitted by Israeli authorities, who will vet their acceptability and permit land passage of the goods through to Gaza. Flotilla organizers have a message to deliver and they seek confrontation and denial to ensure that the entire message is spread throughout the world.
The message is clear enough. There is nothing that Israel can do to assuage its detractors, aside from committing itself to prostrate submission to the demands of those who see no practical use for the country to remain as a haven for Jews in an ever-hostile world that seeks to condemn and to judge them and whose bible continues to be The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, European Union, Israel, Political Realities
Islamist Terrorists Avenging Allah
Allah, it is said by faithful Muslims, loves all of humankind. Perhaps not equally, but like any shepherd there is a soft spot for all the sheep in the flock, even those of a neighbour, for are they not all living intelligences? Human nature is a bizarrely-uneven element of particularities, with all manner of permutations in emotions and devotions, temperaments and distempers. The same God, alternately named, is held to hold sway over all those beings of His manufacture.
And when God, or Allah, gave his creatures very elemental instructions on behaviours of merit and concern for the overall well-being and a wish to endorse exemplary behaviour in the flock, it is clear that what resulted was a message received differently by the various elements comprising the entirety. To those good-humoured and -natured beings amenable to living in peace with others, the message was one of kindness and compassion.
To those within whose souls a searing mistrust and sense of personal grievance would be forever stamped on their psyches, the message was corrupted to be interpreted in the understanding that those not of their immediate kith and kin, clan and tribe, mode of belief and surrender of self, were to be held in contempt and violent disregard for their rights would be obligatory - for they are held to have none - causing violence to be visited upon them at every opportunity.
In this, the righteously-bidden associated theistic psychopaths held themselves to be loyal and passionate stewards of Allah's sacred precepts as set down in the Koran and which they and their mullahs rigidly interpret as 'death to the infidels'. And apostates; those Muslims who do not worship the very particular and fanatical kind of Islam that the Wahhabi and the Taliban do, are as infidels, to be delivered to death.
Ahmadi Muslims believe their messiah arrived in 1835, a piously humane man named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who preached an end to religious wars, condemned the spilling of blood, and championed morality, justice and peace; an Islamic revival shunning fanaticism and giving due regard and respect to the founders of other religions. Violent armed jihad has no place in Ahmadi Islam, but intelligent public debate over controversial issues does. The sect is spread around the world, living in peace and harmony everywhere.
But not in Islamic countries of the world, where the sect is held in great disrepute. Where in so many Islamic countries Ahmadis are marginalized by the majority religious community, suffer severe persecution and oppression, and seek haven elsewhere, in non-Muslim countries of the world, when they can. Countries like Pakistan enact discriminatory laws, reflecting the majority view that the Ahmadis within the country represent an insult to Islam.
Making them an easy target for attacks. And what has just occurred in Islamabad, Pakistan - where the country's newly-self-empowered Taliban have mounted terrorist attacks against the Pakistani Ahmadi community, killing over 100 worshippers at two separate mosques, and wounding may others in the severity of the atrocity planned against them - amply illustrates the two sides of Islam.
In one of the mosques there were 1,500 people at prayer when Taliban with hand grenades and suicide vests fired indiscriminately upon the worshippers, killing 30 immediately. Another group of terrorist Taliban entered another mosque where 1,200 people were worshipping, killing the security guards and another 50 people within, wounding twice as many others. Despite a desperate call to police, it was almost an hour before their arrival.
What is difficult to assimilate in the mind of someone attempting to understand how people who claim to be doing Allah's will through slaughter of innocent people, is the dissonance of those killers entering a mosque consecrated to Islam and to Allah, to enable them to commence with the grisly mass murder.
Pakistan is no doubt rather embarrassed at the spectacle of Muslims slaughtering Muslims with the world looking on in horror. And officials of the Punjab where the atrocities took place can wax indignant about the need to "eliminate this kind of extremism", but the truth of the matter is, the breeding ground for fanaticism remain the Islamic seminaries established within the country. And they have continued to proliferate.
In those madrasas so generously funded by Arab oil money, specifically through Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, mullahs teach their charges to detest the infidel, to reject modern thought, to revile moderate Muslims as heretics, and that the highest calling is to engage in violent jihad in the sacred name of Allah.
It would appear that official Pakistan had warning of the potential of such an attack. United Nations experts had given prior warning, but quite obviously there was no need seen to be concerned about the protection of religious minorities.
Labels: Human Rights, Political Realities, Religion, Terrorism, World Crises
The Suicide Plague
Stories abound about the high suicide rate in China. Yet there are many other countries of the world with much higher rates of suicide. Understandably, given the fact that the immense country has reversed its heritage and traditions, a fundamental transition from rural to urban life has taken place and with it the gradual disappearance of traditional values. In urban China there is a steady upsurge of wealth, while in rural China there is stagnation and poverty reigns.
It is claimed that in China greater numbers of women commit suicide than men. Yet with the one-child-per-family policy, men outnumber women, and it is men who face a lifetime alone, not women; theoretically, in any event. Rural suicides appear to outnumber urban events. Stress and depression seems the causation of 70 to 80% of urban area suicides, where the most popular method is to jump off buildings to achieve death, according to the Beijing Suicide Research and Prevention Center.
What has been in the news of late is what is termed a stream of suicides taking place in a huge campus serving as the world's largest electronic manufacturer. Foxconn Technology, which supplies global companies like Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard employs a whopping 800,000 people in its several installations. That is an enormous labour pool. Ten consecutive suicides have taken place at its plants, with young men jumping off the buildings and committing suicide.
Delivering a message? Surely they are; that they find their lives wearily non-worthy of further commitment. Ten out of almost a million? Nothing like jumping to alarmed conclusions with slight reason. The company's labour practises are being questioned, with employees claiming that they are over-worked, to the extent that they must account for every moment they're on duty at the factory. On the other hand, they are well-remunerated, with wages above the average for the country.
And since China has a large and unhappy and restless demographic of unemployed, those with well-paying jobs would be thought to be satisfied to have them. So perhaps it is not the company and its labour practises at fault, but rather that the matter is a reflection of a society finding itself newly rootless, in its expansion into a huge global economy, with old values taking second place to China-style capitalism.
Perhaps all the attention the world media is placing on
Foxconn Technology is misplaced.
Since statistics appear to demonstrate a far greater number of women suicides in rural areas, with the method of self-destruction to imbibe pesticides. Those who try to understand the whys and wherefores point to restricted social communication, familial disarray, low levels of education and presumably allied with that, lack of opportunity to realize aspirations. This is all in the realm of educated guesswork; theory.
Suicide in China is now ranked fifth in death-prevalence, after
cerebro-vascular diseases, bronchitis, chronic emphysema, liver cancer, and pneumonia. It ranks, however, as the leading cause of death for those between 15 and 34 years of age. And claims are made that the traditional family and clan structure has undergone a massive alteration, placing people under stress they cannot fathom nor surmount; and this has occurred during the space of a single generation.
That, in fact, parents with a sole offspring placing undue expectations on the success of that child is thought to be an intolerable burden for a single child. To be successful now in the new one-child China is to become wealthy. In a newly sibling-less society, there are fewer opportunities for young people to discuss in depth problems they may feel afflict them, leading to social alienation and despair.
Where once several generations lived together and the elderly among them were cherished, that is now gone. Often enough rural people migrant to the city to find work, and they leave their children behind, to be raised by their grandparents.
The world average for suicide per country is about 100, per million. China's rate now stands at 2.3 times that. The Beijing Youth Daily writes that "suicide and psychological crises have become important public health problems in China"; well, they are that everywhere in the world.
That the media is highlighting China for high suicide rates seems a little out of whack with reality. Given that there are so many countries where suicides are far more prevalent, greater in number than China with its astounding population base. The World Health Organization lists many other countries with far greater rates of suicide than China.
Take, for example, Belarus, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary and Japan, all with higher suicide rates. So the problem appears to be perception and the wish to find fault in a society where none particularly exists; not in that particular vein, in any event.
The simple fact of the matter is, suicide prevention is an imperative in many countries of the world, where authorities are very well aware that people from disadvantaged backgrounds finding no comfort in their life seek to destroy themselves.
Labels: Human Relations, Societal Failures, World Crises
Relative Values: Jews/Muslims
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that
is ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat:
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
Economics:
(zero)
Physics:
(zero)
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; only
FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Si nger
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Ben jamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Si dney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marc us
1995 - Marti n Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Si mon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Si mon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Mark owitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herb ert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Si r Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Marti n Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Ben Acerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu Rose Iacovino
TOTAL: 129
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military
training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause
maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims! The Jews don't hijack
planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in
German restaurants.
There is NOT one single Jew that has destroyed a church. There is
NOT a single Jew that protests by killing people.
The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad
and death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in
standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their
problems.
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand
that humankind respects them!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the
Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more
culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really
say it all:
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more
violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be
no more
Israel '. Benjamin Netanyahu
General Eisenhower Warned Us
It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the
Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the
death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German
people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and
even made to bury the dead.
He did this because he said in words to this effect:
'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its
school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which
claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet.. However, this
is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and
how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beat, experimented on and humiliated' while the German people looked the other way.
The above taken from an email circulating on the Internet; 28 May 2010.
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, Justice, Political Realities, Religion, Values, Viewpoint
After The Fact
After New Orleans was hit by the devastating Hurricane Katrina that destroyed homes and buildings in many parishes in Louisiana, the Bush administration was accused long and loud of having sat on their hands. The drainage canal levees failed and 80% of the city of New Orleans was flooded. The famous U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for so much of the waterworks throughout the United States, designed and built those levees, to withstand the worst that nature could throw at the coast.
In the end, the storm managed to lay to waste all that lay before it, creating the most serious engineering disaster in the country's history. The city has still not yet fully recovered, five years later. A perceived failure to act swiftly and effectively was laid at the feet of federal authorities. It was clear after the fact that the levees were not built to the extreme specifications that they should have been, and the coastal wetlands had seen alterations whose effect managed to minimize their impact on protecting the area.
Hindsight gives us clever solutions to problems that were not, beforehand, fully appreciated because the events leading to the disasters that resulted were not foreseen. Naturally enough, complacency leads to diminished awareness and the dismissal of the need to enact adequately protective measures. President Bush managed to weather 9-11, but he and his administration did not do quite as well with the aftermath of Katrina.
President Barack Obama, for his part, has vowed to do everything, domestically and internationally, differently from his predecessor. He would be better prepared, more proactive, obviously more capable to meet any challenges to come his way. When he inherited the global financial meltdown, thanks largely to inadequate economic legislation that impacted everywhere with the U.S. finance collapse, he dealt with it just as his predecessor would have.
U.S. finance is doing very well, those who engineered the diligence-lapses and worthless paper have been well remunerated, and their representatives in fact now sit as top advisers to the president. The little guy on the street, those who lined up to vote for Barack Obama, well they're not doing quite as well; their tax dollars went to bail out finance and their own finances are pretty anaemic with joblessness rampant.
Barack Obama wanted the world to love and admire America again, so he set out to mount a charm offensive, aiming it at the very huge portion of the world hosting and encouraging raving lunatics whose ambition was to impact the U.S. with as much damage as possible to its institutions and the well-being and comfort of its entitled population. A softening of the distaste for America in the world of Islam has resulted. Not much else.
A great imperial capitalist country drives its economic growth and political-social success on energy; that of its entrepreneurial corporations and their energy-sucking mechanisms. The vast geography of the United States is rich in all manner of mineral resources and fossil fuels as well, but jut not enough to fuel the engine. So new sources are always on tap, and because of the need to discover and make use of new sources, full speed ahead prevails.
Is there some kind of poetic justice in the fact that it is a massive British oil firm, not an American one that has been responsible for visiting the Gulf of Mexico oil well disaster on the United States? The relaxation of rules and regulations is the responsibility of the government of the U.S. The misfortune of an unforeseen mechanical malfunction leading to the disaster of oil gushing from under the sea floor represents the confluence of dysfunction.
Americans are angry and upset, and nowhere more so than coastal marine America where the nation's fisheries and important wetlands will not be the same for an awfully long time to come. There are assurances coming from the administration, that they are on top of the situation, and everything will work out just fine, eventually.
British Petroleum has attempted to calm the situation by describing the gushing oil leak as far less serious than it in fact is. They are using mechanical methods inadequate to the situation in desperate attempts to cap the gusher. The latest attempt has worked elsewhere, but never at the depth of this particular well, but hope is that it will succeed.
The huge extent of the catastrophe has now been recognized and voiced, far worse than the previous worse oil spill, the Exxon Valdez. BP executives in attempts to be reassuring say "...the first thing to recognize is that this is an unprecedented accident" ...
but not unforeseen ... "The industry has been working in the deep water for 25 years and not had to contend with this."
Leaving President Obama and his spokespeople to talk of holding BP to account, making them pay, forcing them to find a solution because the administration cannot, even though they hinted that they would kick BP out of the picture and forge on themselves, only to be reminded by those who know that the technology needed to somehow surmount this dreadful problem is BP's.
Now, isn't that a tangled web of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil", when careful initial evaluation of the environmental impact of a potential spill could have resulted in more stringent legislation that would insist all protective mechanics be in place prior to drilling, avoiding the current hysterical attempts to cap a rogue well?
Labels: Environment, Political Realities, United States
Emerging From The Same Nest
Well! A new report from Amnesty International. And here's an amazing conclusion they managed to reach: the United Nations Human Rights Council, they bitterly claim, appears to be rather ineffectual. Ineffectual?
Why they do their damnedest to pick out those countries of the world with which the general consensus is that their very presence is anathema. Since the Council seems fairly top-heavy with representative countries whose own human rights records are past dismal, what, truly, does Amnesty International expect?
As far as Israel is concerned, Amnesty International blames the United States and member countries of the European Union of obstructing international justice by their presence on the UN Security Council to ensure that Israel is not held fully accountable for the purported war crimes committed during the defensive strike on Gaza. Right; far as Amnesty is concerned it was a deeply offensive strike.
Countries should obviously remain complacent sitting ducks while they're being bombed.
Seems that the UNHRC and Amnesty International are actually singing from the same hymnal, since the UN human rights body also singles out Israel whenever it can for hollow accusations, irrespective of whether or not their own dreadful records should have them being singled out for deep censure, or whether other countries of the world like North Korea, Syria, Iran, Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Congo have something to answer for.
Sitting high on their pedestal of righteous dudgeon, the rights group, in
Amnesty International Report 2010: State of the World's Human Rights points out: "Powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient".
And it seems as far as Amnesty is concerned, 2009 was a "landmark" year.
Their just-issued report documents human rights violations - alleged or proven - in fully 159 countries of the world. Canada rates an entry, in reflection of allegations tossed about by the country's leftists: "Canadian officials failed to protect the rights of indigenous peoples adequately. Concerns persisted about human rights violations associated with national security laws and practises as well as Canadian overseas mining operations".
In Canada's instance, somewhat reflective of Israel's in that sense, getting slammed for national security provisions under the law where those suspected of, arrested for, standing trial for, documented and proven instances of terrorist activities claiming their human rights and/or their protection under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are being thwarted through the process of apprehension and prosecution.
Amnesty gets some highlighted instances of human rights abuses right, and many more verging on the edge of hysterical denunciation just for the sake of flailing about, accusing everyone. The government of Sri Lanka did indeed target, entice and sequester Sri Lankans in their battle with the Tamil Tigers, and in the process deliberately killed innocent civilians. As did the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam themselves.
Why expect the United Nations to act decisively and with required force of opinion and protective arms in Sri Lanka when it could not move itself to do the same with Rwanda? The United Nations itself has a tedious proven record of inaction and anguished fence-sitting, while wringing its hands with dismay over the bad behaviour of world governments in waging wars, both internal and external.
Why should it be anticipated that the failed predecessor of the current UN human rights body represented an unfortunate anomaly once it was pointed out beyond denial that those who sat on it were themselves abuser states dominating the agenda, and that it would, in its re-invented state, rise above partisan protection of one another against denunciations as human rights violators?
It's a truly sad state of affairs when the international world body that was initiated by the war-time League of Nations to ensure that fairness and justice prevailed on this Globe - that human rights would be recognized as the overriding concern and need for protection of the entire world - would succumb to its current status as a tired, unstable, ineffective institution.
That the critical nature of its offshoots like the Human Rights Council would still be a pretentiously odious sham, and that the once so-highly-respected and effective Amnesty International has somehow lost its way in recognizing and holding to account authentic situations of human rights abuses.
Labels: Human Rights, Justice, United Nations
Psychopaths Of The World - United
Bad enough the world is beset with sociopaths and psychopaths whose unendurable crimes against society make headlines day after day, across the world. Crimes of every description against others, against society, reported in every corner of the globe. From family members visiting harm on their extended families, to predators seeking victims wherever they can be found. This is on the micro-level of society, but the macro-level of the impact of such human monsters is history writ large.
Psychopaths like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and all those who follow in their footsteps. In the present era the world is absorbed with the machinations of world leaders like Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian ayatollahs, with Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro, with Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi and Omar al-Bashir along with others of their ilk whose disturbing presence on the world stage creates strife and uncertainty.
From evil-minded masterminds like Osama bin Laden and his cronies, and their supporters and emulators it is often difficult to ascertain who is capable of mounting the most dangerously vicious and violent offences against civil society and the world at large. Iran threatens world stability and its allies in Turkey and Brazil conspire to whitewash the impending danger.
North Korea, a friend and ally of Iran, exercises its ability to inspire the unsettling fear of war in the Korean peninsula through yet another brutal outrage; an act of war in itself, which saner, cautionary leaders hope to defuse when in fact, nothing can defray the cost of future disaster by down-playing the seriousness of a war-mad despot who starves his people with the assurance that enemies will feed them.
North Korea's Kim Jong-Il has institutionalized neglect and starvation, just as Robert Mugabe has, with both countries heartily reliant on international charity to do what they will not; maintain populations on living rations, while informing their closed societies that international aid is the result of fear on the part of the outside world. They're not too far off the mark, either.
After North Korea sank South Korea's Cheonan, murdering 46 South Korean sailors in the process, the lunacy of the Dear Leader led to the blame of the blameless: "the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea ... formally declares that from now on it will put into force the resolute measures to totally freeze the inter-Korean relations, totally abrogate the agreement on non-aggression between the North and the South and completely halt the inter-Korean co-operation".
The aggressors manage, not subtly, but with rhetorical bravado and with total self-assurance, to convey the message that they represent the higher order of morality and their adversaries upon whom they prey, represent the true aggressors. This display of inchoate insanity is seen in Syria, Iran, with their subordinates Hamas and Hezbollah; it is seen in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Burma and in Sudan.
While civilization in countries like Somalia and Republic of Congo descend into anarchic decay just as Yugoslavia did, and Chechnya and Afghanistan and Pakistan have demonstrated, politically, socially, technologically advanced countries of the world look on in dismay unable to credit what is occurring, desperately attempting to bandage the wounds and set order back into place.
The formula for successfully countering the insanity of psychopathic dictators who torment their own along with the rest of the world has not yet been formulated. Decent, concerned countries of the world who desperately want to find a protocol for dealing with the delusional in positions of power sit in the United Nations somehow hoping that justice will prevail.
It has not, and seemingly will not, as the United Nations wrings its hands in unhelpful, impotent dismay, while obligingly submitting to the usurpation of all that is decent and right by the very human-rights-abusing countries of the world whose agendas continue to foment dissension and violence.
Labels: Human Rights, Political Realities, United Nations, World Crises
Setting The Stage
The prime minister of Lebanon has come to Washington. To warn President Obama, in case it escaped his notice, that there is a "pervasive" Arab frustration associated with the stagnating Middle East peace efforts.
Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, on his first official trip to the U.S., discussed with President Barak Obama concerns that Syria may be arming Hezbollah guerrillas. Needless to say, Mr. al-Hariri, whose government is one of 'national unity', of which Hezbollah plays a distinctly large role, had no idea whatever of where the United States may have picked up such absurd concerns.
He must surely have put President Obama's mind at rest over such purported, unrealistic matters. After all, even if Lebanon itself doesn't mind Syria continuing to dominate its politics and enjoys its superlative relationship with Iran's puppet militia, itself hugely dominating Lebanon's politics and social and religious affairs, the presence of UN troops on the border with Lebanon and Israel should be sufficient reassurance. No?
Can this be for real? President Obama discussing the growing momentum toward achieving more stinging sanctions against Iran, with a government official whose position is tacit support of Iran? Of course Prime Minister al-Hariri knows nothing of the problems that the U.S. faces with respect to Iran. That other Arab states in the Middle East are troubled, does not trouble Mr. al-Hariri.
He is troubled by a militant Israel with its intolerance for violent provocation.
And his message to the American president was simple enough: "The clock is ticking, and it is ticking against us. I also pointed to the pervasive frustration and skepticism in the Arab and Muslim worlds regarding this issue", said Mr. Hariri, post-White House meeting with the amenable president.
"This issue", clearly not one of nascent Iranian domination, and threat of nuclear weaponry, but obviously the intention of Israel to remain in situ.
Lebanon, it must be remembered, was invaded by Israel; once, twice, followed by one tardy, one swift withdrawal, both representing victories - for Lebanon and justice. UNIFIL, in place in southern Lebanon to ensure that Hezbollah withdrew from border mischief and did not re-arm, has been capably able to oversee a complete re-arming of the terror group now in proud possession of advanced missiles.
Scud missiles from Syria, along with M-600 guided rockets capable of carrying a 500-kg warhead with fair accuracy, within the range of Tel Aviv. That's for starters, since they've also been supplied with anti-aircraft and long-range ballistic missiles, through very successful covert operations.
Of course, once Hezbollah begins lobbing missiles into Israel and Israel lobs them right back, the UN force can complain it has been targeted by Israel.
The convenient distraction of escalating hostilities between Lebanon/Hezbollah and Israel, is a very nice cover for Iran's nuclear entitlements. And the sacrifice of a country like Lebanon to an incendiary war with Israel, this time no-holds-barred is just and fair, considering Iran's larger purpose.
Damascus and Tehran have laid their careful plans, and Turkey and Brazil are nicely on side.
The Jews must be ejected from "Palestine" as a first order of business. And then everything else will fall neatly into place. Presumably, the Arab states not in concert with Syria and Lebanon may be quaking in their desert boots, but this is, after all, the Middle East. The Palestinians have been well prepared for the accomplishments leading to the solution of a Jewish state in an Arab geography.
This is where the United States has been so very useful. For thanks to the outstanding work by U.S. Lt.Gen. Keith Dayton, Palestinian Authority security forces have obtained superior military training, becoming a formidable risk to Israeli troops' capabilities of securing the safety and security of Israel, thanks to their own superior training as has been evidenced in the past. But that was then, and this is now, an entirely different era.
These are Palestinian Arabs trained in American-style military action. Trained, equipped and educated as a military force by American soldiers. As a proper infantry force with attack capabilities, resolute and proud of their new military prowess. Not readily given to surrender.
Their American military mentor acknowledges his personal belief that 'his PA army' would attack Israel should Israel not surrender to international demands of peace-making as set out by the Middle East Quartet. Lt.-Col. Dayton seems quite complacent about this situation. He as much as spelled it out a year ago at a Washington lecture.
His opinion was that were Israel not to agree within a two-year time frame to international expectations, the Fatah forces he and his American officers are so proudly training, would eagerly turn their U.S.-provided guns and professional military on Israel.
Good thing Israel has the United States on its side.
Labels: Israel, Middle East, Technology, Traditions, United States
Muslim "Mainstream and Silent Majority"
Isn't human nature incredible? We reel from the insults we perceive that others hurl at us in disrespect of our beliefs, yet we hesitate not one moment to insult and threaten and harass those who are innocent of any ill intent toward us. This, needless to say, is the universal "we", for "we" do not all subscribe to the same modus operandi.
Heightened sensitivities to one's own agenda, ideology, religious beliefs, traditions, heritage appear to make some groups highly insensible to the insults they impose upon others. And so it is that we are informed through the media that Muslim organizations in the United States have chosen to highlight their presence in a most incendiary, ill-conceived and utterly incompetent manner.
The plan is to build a huge $100-million mosque and Islamic centre with all manner of social amenities, including a 500-seat theatre, daycare centre, swimming pool and basketball court, in the shadow of Ground Zero, New York. This religious edifice would be capable of accommodating 2,000 worshippers.
"We want to create a platform by which the voices of the mainstream and silent majority of Muslims will be amplified. A centre of this scale and magnitude will do that", according to the director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, backing the project. Incredibly the proposal achieved a vote of confidence at a meeting of the New York Community Board.
The community of non-Muslims in New York City appears, however, not to be at all confident that this is what they would like to see ensconced in an area that had been destroyed by the events of September 11, 2001, when Islamist jihadists struck the World Trade Centre towers, destroying that landmark and murdering almost 3,000 people.
The proposal verges on the indecent; indecent to the memory of those who died, of the people of New York who underwent a dreadful trauma, of wounds that will never completely heal due to an act that brought the world to a breathless suspension of belief.
For a religious community that screams bloody murder every time they feel slandered, this is a breath-takingly incredible move.
"What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Centre buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack? Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in the eye of America." Indignant disbelief stated by the director of a group named Stop the Islamicization of America.
But there is this about Muslims; they steadfastly assert the authority of the Koran, of the righteousness of Islam, of the peaceful nature of their religion and urge all others to make an effort to understand and respect them. While in their turn they appear to be unable to grasp that respect must be mutual and genuinely shared.
The mosque proposal is an incendiary indication of disrespect.
And of course when it is pointed out that Islam - which saw the light of day millennia after Judaism, and over a thousand years after Christianity, from whose roots each followed one another sees itself as the culmination and perfection of that source - feels justified in building its holy places of worship directly over those of its predecessors.
Muslim innocence of underhanded intent prevails.
If the intention truly is that an edifice and a religious centre needs to be built on such a scale to represent the needs of the "mainstream and silent majority", then it should be located elsewhere, and quite obviously needs to be.
Perhaps if "mainstream and silent majority" Muslims featured themselves far more prominently in rejection of violent jihad they would also earn more general respect. But never to the extent, logically and emotionally, that they should feel entitled to mount their presence upon territory destroyed by fanatical coreligionists.
To do so would make of New York, heavily populated by a Jewish tradition and presence, an spiritual offshoot of what Islam has perpetrated on Judaism in Jerusalem, imposing the al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount.
Labels: Justice, Traditions, United States
Empowered by Indignant Rage!
You can mess with some women and get away with it, but eventually there will be those among the women who take themselves seriously enough to reject the thesis that they are meant to be subordinated to men's will and who will no longer accept their dignity as independent human beings being trampled upon by ignorant, boorish, fanatical-religious watchmen.
To begin with it sounds like a typical Monty Python-like government title: The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Volunteer ultra-religious Islamists patrolling the public arena in Saudi Arabia to apprehend the dissolute young women who display their unacceptably wayward predilections, insulting Islam by consorting with men.
Women sufficiently degraded in social attitudes and religious conviction that they assert themselves to wear unsuitable garb, scandalizing the public, and particularly the posses of the self-righteous morality police. Prowling shopping malls in a dress code not recognized by the religious authorities.
And of the utmost degrading acts, appearing in public with men not their fathers, their brothers, their husbands. The volunteer religious police have latterly been taken aback at the viciously unexpected behaviour of some miserable elements of the country's women who have taken it upon themselves to protest the harassments and arrests.
One young woman, reported in a Saudi newspaper, had the unmitigated gall to beat the Mutaween-member (volunteer policeman) so thoroughly on his face that he was taken to hospital for treatment. Allowing her fearful male companion time to compose himself, after he had fainted with fear.
Another woman caught in the act of meeting a man in a public area - by one of the 5,000 religious volunteers on patrol - gave her fearful male friend the opportunity to absent himself, by pointing a gun at the men in the patrol vehicle and shooting at them.
"People are so fed up with these religious police, and now they have to pay the price for the humiliation they put people through for years and years", one activist said. "There will be more resistance."
Go to it, Saudi women!
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, Middle East, Sexism
Assault On Kandahar Base Repelled
Oh. Repelled. That's good. Isn't it? NATO security forces managed to repel an attack by "a small number of insurgents attempting to enter the base on the north side". Good thing their attempt was foiled. "No insurgents have penetrated the base perimeter", according to a NATO statement. Now that
is a huge relief. And we also learn that no Canadians were involved in repelling the attack, according to the chief Canadian military spokesman.
"All military and civilian personnel on the base are being instructed to stay in safe locations as a precaution"; again a NATO statement. As it was, several NATO troops and civilians were wounded in the attacks. Evidently they were unable to take precautionary action to ensure their personal safety because the Taliban made no effort to pre-warn them of an impending attack. Not very civil, but then what can you expect from "13th-Century failed state" representatives?
They are skilled in a type of predatory, no-holds-barred, warfare that civilized countries simply do not engage in. When they strike, it is for the jugular. Or for the unwary military personnel on duty travelling along dusty provincial roads that have been booby-trapped very effectively by 'home-made' explosive devices. Many of which can be identified with constituent parts from Iran, one takes it. Many of whom were trained in the border regions of Pakistan, one takes it.
Spurred on by their irredentist, fanatical-religious-jihadist mentality to coax foreign troops from their home geography. Figures, right? NATO military members, on the other hand, are polite and well-behaved and follow orders. They also, quite logically, inform the enemy well beforehand that strikes are in the planning stages and will be mounted on specific, well-publicized dates.
The latest are efforts to secure Kandahar City and four other districts. So here's the plan. We'll simply expand on the successes seen thus far by those intrepid Canadian troops who have unfortunately had ramp ceremonies for 146 members of the Canadian military ... and counting. "The first guys on the beach here are the Canadians." And the Canadian forces are providing counsel for the U.S. surge-troops.
"History will write that the Canadians came here and for years fought and struggled as the situation got worse. Their brigade did what four brigades-plus are going to be doing and their hands were full." So went the comradely homage to Canadian efforts in war-ravaged Kandahar province by U.S. marine Col. David Bellon. It does present as an existential dilemma; well trained and armed Western troops unable to completely repel a rag-tag guerrilla army.
And in Canada, troop morale is getting a big lift out of carefully watching the unfolding military court trial of Captain Robert Semrau, accused of second-degree murder in the death of a Taliban fighter. Who had, mere moments before been stationed up in a tree with his companions, firing on the Afghan National Army troop to which Captain Semrau and his buddies were attached, as advisers.
The court martial sitting in judgement must sift through the witness accounts that conflict with statements made by others, some in Captain Semrau's defence, others condemning him. For executing a severely wounded-unto-death Taliban fighter whom Afghan fighters refused to treat, left to die in agony of his wounds. A mercy killing, said Captain Semrau.
Had he and his buddies been accurately targetted by the Taliban fighter and his crew it would have been quite without mercy.
Labels: Conflict, NATO, Traditions, Troublespots
John Brennan's Seleced Audience
Obama Advisor: Warm Words for Saudi Arabia, Hizbullah, Al-Qudsby Hillel Fendel
John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security, called Jerusalem “Al-Quds,” praised Saudi Arabian religious tolerance, and is encouraging of Hizbullah.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has drawn attention to the above three instances of recent remarks by one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s top terrorism-issues advisors, calling them “outrageous” and “disgraceful.”
Speaking to an apparently Muslim audience at New York University in February, at a forum co-hosted by the White House and the Islamic Center at New York University." Brennan first told a story in Arabic, evoking laughter and concluding with, “Don’t tell the folks who don’t speak Arabic what I said.” He then said that his favorite city in the Middle East is “Al Quds, Jerusalem.”
In the same speech, Brennan also spoke of his time at the American University in Cairo in the 1970s, referring to the common aspirations of his former Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian classmates, including the freedom “to practice our faith freely … In Saudi Arabia, I saw how our Saudi partners fulfilled their duty as custodians of the two holy mosques at Mecca and Medina.”
In another speech before Lebanese leaders who visited Washington recently, Brennan told them, “Hizbullah is a very interesting organization,” and said that it had evolved from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia and now to an organization that has members within the parliament and the cabinet. “There is certainly the elements of Hizbullah that are truly a concern to us, what they’re doing,” Brennan said. “And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.”
The ZOA noted that Hizbullah is actually a Lebanese-Iranian proxy terrorist group that has called continually for the elimination of Israel.
“These comments by John Brennan are as outrageous as they are deeply troubling,” ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “No one refers to Jerusalem in the English language as Al-Quds, unless they have a specific political, anti-Israel agenda - in this case, pandering to Israel’s enemies, who will draw comfort from the use of the term Al-Quds by a senior U.S. government official.”
Klein termed “disgraceful” the fact that “Mr. Brennan’s pandering is taken so far that he speaks of some supposed shared goal of freedom of religious practice, and then immediately refers in complimentary words to Saudi Arabia - a country that is notorious for its harsh denial of freedom of religion, in which even non-Wahhabi Muslim mosques are prohibited, let alone churches and synagogues.”
Regarding Brennan’s comments about Hizbullah, Klein said, “Worse, Brennan give unwarranted legitimacy to the recognized terrorist group Hizbullah, thereby undercutting past U.S. efforts to isolate this murderous outfit.”
Klein sums up: “John Brennan is yet another hand-picked Obama adviser who shows a distinct animus against Israel and partiality for its enemies. It is unsurprising that, when Barack Obama is advised by people like these, quite apart from the President’s own troubling history of friendships with vicious critics of Israel and having belonged for two decades to an anti-Israel, anti-American black supremacist church, the Obama Administration has ignited major tensions in its relations with Israel while not holding accountable and penalizing the Palestinian Authority for continuing terrorism and incitement to hatred and murder.”Published 23 May 2010, Arutz ShevaLabels: Israel, Political Realities, Troublespots, United States
The Auld Sod
Once-proud Britain is still proud of herself. Though it is becoming increasingly questionable why that should be so. Little news items scattered here and there throughout one's newspapers are supremely instructive with respect to the state of conflicted insecurity of that once-empire-building country. One can only wonder where sanity has fled in the face of what can only be construed as a fatally endemic state of political correction gone dreadfully awry.
Two men apprehended as suspected al-Qaeda terrorists whose plans were to annihilate innocent Britons as they went about their leisurely pursuits in a packed shopping centre and whom a British court accepted that they were both guilty of planning an "imminent attack" in Manchester, before being arrested, have 'won the right' to remain in Britain. To hold them accountable, and to move to deport them to Pakistan would, alas and alack, breach their human rights.
As a former colonial-vestige country of the yet-proud British Empire, Pakistan which broke away from India in 1948 to form its own state, has a long tradition of grudging allegiance to Britain, along with disdain for its former colonial power. The greater preponderance of attacks on British soil by home-grown or visa-carrying jihadists are Pakistani in origin.
Pakistan, where Saudi Arabia built and bankrolled religious schools that urged on young Muslims the need to prove fealty to Allah by sacrificing themselves to vengeful jihad against the infidels and the Crusaders. Of course Pakistan and Afghanistan are not the only countries where these fundamentalist-style Wahhabi madrasas are ensconced; they exist throughout Europe and North America, as well.
The presiding judge of the Special Immigration and Appeals Commission declared himself "satisfied" that ringleader Abid Naseer "still poses a serious threat to the national security of the United Kingdom", but given that the country's human rights law disallowed deportation if the receiving country might visit violence upon them, it could not be permitted. Would-be mass murderers are to be given haven from their country of origin which might punish them.
Even while the judge was convinced that this jihadi sent "sinister" coded emails to al-Qaeda contacts detailing his determination to carry out a "mass-casualty attack", his hands were tied. And, according to a former British anti-terrorism police chief: "Our counter-terrorism legislation has been knocked into a cocked hat and we haven't got the measures that people need in this country to keep them safe."
Yes, but they do benefit hugely from the nice, warm feeling of brotherhood and all's well with the world, with the enactment of "human rights" laws which protect all the vicious malefactors who choose to afflict society, since they are sadly misinformed and know not what they do. The superior-minded human-rights defenders can smile happily in their death-throes.
Another example of the auld sod slipping more than a few of its neural cogs:
A woman of 95 years, a lovely old widow living in the Swansea area had the unmitigated gall to become momentarily confused as she was sorting between recycling bags. This elderly widow actually placed an empty, and nicely washed butter tub into the incorrect recycling bag. She had carefully laundered 15 tins for recycling, and tossed them all, along with the tub into a green bag. The tub belonged in a black bag.
Gaspingly, incredibly sloppy. What must she have been thinking? When the recycling crew - formerly described as garbagemen, now known as recycling engineers, arrived to collect the contents of the green recycling bag they were aghast to discover the empty butter tub lying innocently, but with evil intent, within. An official notice was stuck to the bag warning this aged miscreant that her bag was not collected for the obvious reason that it had been contaminated.
Instructing the homeowner that
mixing up recycling can lead to prosecution....
Oh, we're not finished, not yet. Here's another beauty.
Disciplinary action is being sternly considered for a British magistrate in the wake of his having characterized two teenage boys as "absolute scum". Them's fighting words, to be sure. The remark just slipped out of Austin Molloy's outraged mouth when he was sentencing two 16-year-olds in Blackburn, Lancashire for their rather socially-averse behaviour.
The boys had entered Blackburn Cathedral, and set about scribbling racist and sexually-rife abusive remarks on the pages of prayer books. They took a cross said to be priceless and with considerable effort bent it out of shape. In total causing an estimated $4,500-worth of vandalizing damage. These boys were so brilliant they signed their names in the church's guest book. Which led to their apprehension.
At their sentencing they were fined and sentenced to probation. But the 57-year-old magistrate, told the boys: "Normal people would consider you absolute scum". To which a delicate-minded court clerk objected, calling the language 'inappropriate', and taking it upon herself to see that an enquiry be launched to determine whether judge should be disciplined.
Fittingly enough, the father of one of the boys has responded: "I totally agree with what Mr. Molloy said, and I've not got a problem with him whatsoever. I back Mr. Molloy 100%. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Molloy should get his job back. The whole family is absolutely disgusted. I've worked my whole life, and my son was brought up as a Catholic boy going to church, so why he has done what he has done, I don't know... He was been a stupid boy."
That too, is unsurprising. The entire country appears to have gone soft in the head; becoming rather collectively "stupid".
Labels: Britain, Security, Social-Cultural Deviations, Societal Failures
There Is No Neutrality
In Thailand - briefly war-torn, more permanently torn between its urban yellow-shirt advantaged sophistication and rural and urban working-poor socially disadvantaged a simmering disaffection resembling a guerrilla civil war that will yet come back to haunt the country - fire-bombed buildings cast a cloud of grey-ash bitterness in the mouths of surrendered red-shirts. It has been recounted that a handful of top red-shirt leaders surrendered to police.
And the government imposed another curfew overnight in the capital. Extending that curfew, in acknowledgement of wide-spread and spreading discontent, to nearly a third of the country's 76 provinces. There remain pockets of resistance in the capital. Receding protesters have resorted to hapless surrender, but not before wreaking impotent revenge in destroying many of the capital city's valued landmark area structures. Aligned, of course, with wealthy capitalism.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand, cinemas, banks, television station, and Central World, said to be one of South-east Asia's most extensive shopping centres, fire-bombed, destroyed. The rampage that furious protesters embarked upon gave voice to their determination to be heard, while doing little to advance their cause beyond destroying symbols of inheritance for some, disinheritance for them. Yet the very ferocity of their violence might, after all, open eyes and ears.
Both the yellow and the red declare their devotion of the country's king. Held in such great esteem, but yet not sufficiently so to quell the unrest and the violence. Still, it was the violence, of the government's instructions to the military, to open with live fire on the protesters that led to the surrender of red shirt leaders. "I know this is unacceptable to some of you ... but we cannot stand this cruelty.
"We will exchange our freedom with your safety. We have tried our best." This, then, is temporary. There is no solution in sight, other than to ultimately placate such a large proportion of the population. The administration felt suitable for the yellow shirts is obviously rejected by their adversaries. Who insist they will accept nothing less than a return to true democracy.
The military coup that deposed the leader they support, now living in exile, elevated another political ideologue to leadership, one rejected by those supporting the previous leader. Each of them have been accused of massive corruption. But it was the deposed leader that brought he country out of its parlous financial insecurity and into prosperity. And he had been democratically elected to do that.
His party and his supporters were denied the opportunity to present themselves again for re-election through the military's manipulation of the justice system. Now justice waits.
Labels: Human Relations, Political Realities, World News
Go Back To Where You Came From
It is a favourite slogan of xenophobes, of indigent peoples who feel they are being invaded by an unwelcome tide of foreigners through normal migration generally termed emigration by segments of a society wishing to become immigrants elsewhere in the world - "go back to where you came from". People who are nationals of a geographic entity calling itself a nation, a country, who fear the incursion of strangers, who blame them for their own lack of opportunities in employment and sharing the wealth of their country's natural and national resources.
Currently, governments welcome immigrants who often bring their experience and education and professional attributes with them, attempting to escape an intolerant and oppressive society to make a better life for their families. Countries of the world are also obligated to accept a certain number of refugees - displaced persons who for reasons of political instability, internecine or tribal warfare leading to dislocation, or a totalitarian government enforcing their version of religion or ideological fundamentalism - to offer asylum.
People who comfortably belong to a majority group, who see themselves as original investors of a society, part of the heritage, culture and generally-accepted social mores, with a political system that reflects their values, tend to look at intruders with a jaundiced eye. But for those countries' citizens truly advanced in the social acceptance of others, seeing them as a source of societal enrichment. Generally, a period of adjustment and grudging acceptance leads to some modicum of tolerance.
People who emigrate to countries where their outward differences make them instantly recognizable as foreign elements in an otherwise homogeneous society have always been initially met with suspicion and often enough outright hostility. In our modern world, particularly within advanced countries, there has been a sea change in attitudes. Regardless of which there are certain elements of society that are often viewed poorly, seen as caricatures, representatives of
unwanted foreign traits.
Jews, a group of people whose well-documented origin was in the Middle East historically, were dispersed in two massive events when occupiers found them to be irritatingly and single-
mindedly devoted to their religion and their traditions. Through conquest by the ancient Assyrians who also destroyed the First Temple in 586 B.C. When Jews returned from their sojourn in Iran, and re-constructed the temple, it was destroyed again in 63 B.C. by the Romans and the Israelites again dispersed.
The current dispersal of Jews from their ancient tribal homeland (which included part of what is today called Israel, and parts of Lebanon and Jordan as well), the diaspora, settled over the
millennia that followed within the Middle East, across Europe, into Asia and India and eventually into North America. Everywhere that Jews settled they were considered to be outsiders, interlopers, strangers whom the original population tolerated, or did not.
It was in 1930s Germany where fascism led by an Austrian house painter whose hatred for Jews was so deeply entrenched, that anti-
semitism found its apogee in a state-approved, state-initiated, state-planned mass annihilation. Where an earlier Russian screed called "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" were taken as proof of Jewish duplicity and greed, and racist propaganda began its dehumanization of an entire people to eventually enable Nazi Germany to embark upon a systematic program of mass extinction.
In Europe at that time to be a Jew was to be a degraded human anomaly, a malign force, a hindrance to social justice and uniformity within society; a despised sub-human presence desperately requiring extirpation. Throughout Eastern Europe in particular Jews were hounded and forbidden by law to be viewed as entitled to security, and ongoing pogroms kept Jewish communities quietly, fearfully, out of sight. In the Middle East Jews were permitted to live as a tolerated group paying a 'tax' for the privilege.
Western Europe was a more improved, yet still difficult place for Jewish acceptance as equals within society. Jews, as a group, suffered from a dreadful public image and official neglect in between pogroms, wherever they lived. In the 15
th Century the Spanish Inquisition forced Jews to turn to Catholicism, or expulsion; those who converted to become
marranos and found to be secretly practising their faith were put to the torch. The balance were expelled in 1492 as undesirables.
When the Allies liberated concentration camps wherever Nazi Germany prevailed all over Europe, they found the remnants of European Jewry, barely alive, after six million Jews had been systematically slaughtered. Records of their geographic origins carefully maintained; their properties assimilated by the state, their hair and clothing and gold teeth extracted to be used in the wartime economies of the Axis powers. Jews aided the Axis war effort, through forced slave labour, and some even survived that experience.
From the vast acreages of the concentration camps with their gas chambers and their crematoria the armies of the allied powers sought to repatriate Jews from the camps to their 'homelands', their places of European origin. The sick and demoralized Jews in refugee camps, sad remnants of a proud people, were difficult for Allied armies stationed in Europe, to deal with. When Jews returned to their homes throughout Europe there was nothing to return to; their homes had been taken by others or had been destroyed; their families had been fed into the death machine, and they had nothing left.
What they were left with in many places of Europe was hostility by their former neighbours some of whom were reluctant to surrender property not theirs. Nor the children entrusted to them to help them survive. And anti-
semitism that simply refused to bow to the sorrow of the Holocaust. So many Jews who had survived the horrors of the death camps met their death on return to their former homes. Right-wing groups would travel through villages to rout out the returned Jews and murder them.
A homeland of their own which had always been a dream, the return to Zion, to the Jewish capital of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, where sat the most holy symbol in Judaism, became an imperative as influential Jews living in North America and England began to formulate accelerated plans that the Zionist movement had always advocated. Jews were actually smuggled, hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, into British-mandated Palestine.
This happened with the connivance of Palestinians. For at that time, in the 1940s, Jews were 'Palestinians'. There were in the mid-1940s roughly 900,000 Arabs living in the region of Palestine, and approximately 600,000 Jews. When the struggle of the Jewish diaspora to attain a place of their own where Jews could find haven and security denied them anywhere else in the world resulted eventually in the United Nations declaring partition for Palestine, Jews returned to their historical homeland.
Partition was celebrated by Palestinian Jews and rejected by Palestinian Arabs and the Arabs in the greater Middle East. War was imposed on the new State of Israel time and weary time again and each time Israel prevailed, was able to defend herself and establish the state that Jews had longed for so passionately. Sixty-two years later, Israel is still negotiating with a still-outraged Arab community for recognition. Arab Palestinians have time and again rejected the potential for a country of their own.
Concessions were never adequate to their needs and desires. When, in fact the reality was that there was only one concession that would have sufficed, and that would have been the complete surrender of the land that Israel sits upon, to be 'returned' to Arab rule which might allow Jews to live in the greater geography as dependents. Egypt, which signed a peace agreement with Israel 30 years ago has never relented in its antagonism toward the Jewish State. And Jordan is little different.
The Egyptian High Court is currently considering stripping citizenship from Egyptian men married to Israeli women, and this would engulf thousands of Egyptian men and Israeli women, married for decades and raising families together, in an impossible situation. A lawsuit was filed on the grounds that "Egyptian nationality laws warn against marriage to anyone characterized as Zionist"; which, of necessity describes any Israeli. The high court has directed the ministry to 'take the necessary steps to strip these Egyptian men of their nationality'.
Which, presumably, could be restored should they choose to renounce their marriages, leave wife and children.
And, at the very time that U.S.-sponsored 'proximity' peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority proceeds, PA-owned television broadcasts a message calling on Israelis to 'return' to their true places of origin; Europe and Ethiopia, thus enabling Palestinian Authority Arabs to return to the Israeli cities that should now revert to Arab ownership.
The televised message urges Israelis to go to "your original homeland". Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Russia and Ethiopia, all presumably eager to receive their former residents. Whereas, according to the message, those eastern Jews who lived in and were then thrust from Arab countries such as Syria, Egypt and Iraq upon the establishment in 1948 of Israel, would obviously not welcome their return. Nor be prepared to return to them their confiscated properties.
This message by the Palestinian Authority is one that PA children know well. They are instructed in their schools to believe that Jews menace their childhood and threaten their adulthood. They are taught to fear the Jewish presence, and to resent it for the tragedy it brought to Palestinian Arabs who fled their homes at the exhortation of their Arab allies preparing to assault Israel in its formative years. Those same Arab states confident they would speedily conquer a small Jewish, ill-equipped state. Though fate decreed otherwise.
How is there to be peace between Jews and Arabs when most Israelis are sabras now, born in Israel, those whose parents originated in Europe. And they are held, by the PA to be foreigners? Many more had been in the Middle East as subservient groups to the Arabs for millennia, while others had lived in their traditional homeland, including Jerusalem, for hundreds of years.
How is there to be peace between Jews and Arabs when the forthcoming populations, the children grown to adulthood are taught and believe that Jews have no right to be there? Israeli Arab children with full Israeli citizenship are taught that they live in "part of occupied Palestine". Does this equip them to future life as peaceful citizens of side-by-side states?
For that matter, what of the Israeli Arabs who have been duly elected by their Israeli-Arab constituents - all of whom have full entitlements as Israeli citizens - and sit in the Knesset as MKs and who fulminate against the state, and declare that it should be dissolved and become majority Arab?
How can peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority become reality when the PA steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish state?
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Middle East, Traditions, Troublespots
The Agony Of Afghanistan
Another Canadian soldier lost. This time the highest-ranking of Canada's military personnel assigned to the war in Afghanistan. Some war that is.
There are no distinct enemy lines. Foreign troops are stationed in the country to defend it against the ongoing incursion of a vital element of that very nation; the most populous of the main tribal groups whose dedication to re-installing a sternly fundamentalist version of Islam that routinely violated human rights, and which remains an insurgent force that has been unstoppable.
International human rights workers and foreign civilians skilled in health care, political reform, municipal infrastructure, legal and social and educational reforms all working alongside Afghan civilians, medical personnel, civic officials and politicians to try to bring the country into the 20th Century with 21st-Century dedication to the less fortunate.
Foreign military personnel have been attempting to persuade the civilian population that they are present in their country to support their human rights.
But who represents the civilian population? Many among them, loyal Pashtun tribespeople, are also Taliban; this is an army that wears no uniform. Among them are people who do wear uniforms, the uniforms of the national police, of the country's military, some of whom have another persona at other times as members of the Taliban. How does one identify and deal with these realities?
And thanks to the pre-warning, the very public and well-reported notification by NATO that they plan assaults in specific targets at specific times, the 'insurgents' are always prepared. They are resilient and dedicated, and they are fearlessly dedicated to causing as much damage to as many symbols of foreign and national infrastructure and personnel as they possibly can.
And possibly they can, far more than NATO likes to admit. Having infiltrated the very bastions of foreign and national structures and presence, they have become adept at outfoxing the incapable Afghan government forces, as well as the foreign forces far more capable of battling traditional, uniformed and identifiable enemy contingents than evanescent civilian-clad insurgents, capable of evaporating into the larger community.
Since NATO has been able to mount larger offences to retake towns that the Taliban have become comfortable within, particularly in Kandahar province, the pay-back from the Taliban has been increased violent assaults. "In the last three months, you've seen the rate of assassinations go from basically one or two a week to one or two a day - that's really serious", according to a spokesperson for Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
Afghans holding public office, struggling to represent their constituents in municipalities where the Taliban are known to infiltrate easily, are murdered and those whom they represent become increasingly psychologically debilitated. The son of an assassinated local leader, has said: "...people come into a place like this with guns and kill someone, and no one saw anything, no one knows who they are or where they've gone?"
Assassins enter mosques with impunity and kill their targets. They drive motorcycles or vans loaded with explosives and detonate themselves, killing scores of innocent people. Little wonder the population is increasingly demoralized. "There are criminals among the police - not all, but a big group who are accountable to warlords and drug dealers. They can be bought for money", one mayor recounted, whose own life has been threatened countless times.
A member of Kandahar's provincial council, one accustomed to presenting as an interlocutor between the Taliban and foreign forces explains: "Whoever says anything against the Taliban, they threaten them or kill them", so who will identify the Taliban among them? "There are checkpoints and so forth outside the city, so they can't come in big numbers, but they can come in by car or motorbike, by many separate ways", eluding NATO forces, but known to the local population who know better than to turn them in.
In the final analysis, despite the assurances of success as a potential due to a new way of thinking and acting, foreign troops are stationed in a country whose traditions and history have been known for hundreds of years to be unamenable to foreign intervention. It's called tilting at windmills. An entire society cannot be turned around; its heritage, culture, religion, to reflect the values of societies which have nothing in common with them geographically, socially, historically.
Villagers speak uneasily that regardless of the presence of Western and Afghan troops, nothing hinders Taliban fighters - remaining difficult to identify from any other Afghan male - from filtering back into the very places where they have been ousted from, through well-publicized NATO operations. Ordinary Afghans cannot, even if they wished to, be too helpful to foreign troops, or to their own, distrusted military.
To do so would be to become readily identifiable as a target for Taliban retribution. Where is the solution?
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, NATO, World Crises
Harsh Justice
There was a time once when human life was held to be less valuable than it now is in our advanced societies. When, in countries like France or England, people could be thrown into jail for 'stealing', literally, a crust of bread. When children as young as six and eight were sent into the fields to work intolerably long hours in miserable circumstances along with their poverty-stricken parents, or underground to mine, along with sightless ponies.
Societies thought themselves charitable when they operated workhouses for the indigent, when they took children into orphanages where cruelty and half-starvation was the order of the day.
We no longer live in that era. While it is undeniable that there are countries in the world where children are abducted from their tribal villages and brought to armed camps where they are taught to fire weapons, to attack others and to mercilessly kill - and where young girls become camp prostitutes - these atrocious assaults against the human rights of children do not occur, with impunity, in advanced, democratic countries of the world.
True, there is no place, no country in the world where children are completely safe from exploitation and misery, but most societies exercise a collective conscience that insists on protecting children from abuse, allowing them to grow into mature, well-balanced adults. Despite which, children pattern themselves after those closest to them. And when children are born into families that are seriously socially dysfunctional, it's little surprise children adopt those values.
But can a civilized country, one that models itself proudly as the foremost freedom-loving, -defending country in the world, have enacted laws that degrade the protected position of childhood? Well, surprisingly, seems so. News has reached the reading public that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled "that juveniles who commit crimes
in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to
life in prison without the possibility of parole".
Now that is stunning. The very idea that in the United States of America young people not yet of the age of majority may be locked away for the rest of their natural lives. Five of the justices sitting on the Supreme Court supported a majority-held opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in agreement that the 8th amendment of the American Constitution categorically forbids such sentences as cruel and unusual punishment.
The vote came out six-to-three. "A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release, but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term", wrote Justice Kennedy. Astonishingly, to someone not an American, and not familiar with the American justice system, this ruling represents the first time the court has taken the step of excluding a class of offenders from an acknowledged form of punishment, other than the death penalty.
Why, in that great country with its vast population and legal system that seems the envy of so many other countries, was there never a separate category by which the crimes committed by young people, by juveniles, by children, would be judged taking into account that their values were not yet fully formed, that young people, given opportunities to correct their character flaws could go on to lead decent, normal lives, with the help of a more humanistic approach to judgement?
Dissenting Justice Thomas pointed out that a majority of states in his country favour severe punishment to be meted out to juveniles, that fully 37 states of the union, along with the federal government have enacted laws permitting life-without-parole sentences for juveniles who have been convicted of non-homicide offences. The State of Florida appears to be one of the states most given to such convictions. With another ten picking up the slack; in other words most states do not, even though they're on the books, apply such harsh penalties.
To apply such a level of punitive judgement against young people who offend society's ethics, morals and defensive laws is tantamount to taking the value of human life very slightly. Unspoken, but assumed, is the fact that those young people who so aggrieve the community as to become the victim of such harsh judgements are represented by the poor lower class, the uneducated, the unemployed, the misfits within society. And a stern society feels more secure with their firm incarceration.
This is abhorrent, this mode of justice, this severe punishment. And it is unworthy of a great country that it remains in practise to this very day. It is social depravity. It is unacceptable, and past time that the United States abolish such judgements.
So, well done, and about time....
Labels: Human Rights, Political Realities, United States
Thailand's Anguish
Thailand's problems seem to be raging over a wider geographic area than simply the capital Bangkok alone. The unrest and discontent and downright resolve to bring down the government appears to be spreading. Which is likely why the government is now adamant that it will brook no further attempts by the 'red shirts' to offer a pause in the violent proceedings, so that the matter could be discussed in a more civil manner.
Since the government knows that its opponents will not be satisfied until they achieve some measure of accommodation toward their grievances, and the government is decidedly unwilling to relent in its determination to utterly squash the protests, it does not really look as though the country will come out of this situation with the government appearing to be one dedicated to human rights and entitlements of all its citizens.
With the government giving permission to the military to consider an area of the national capital a "live fire zone", to enable troops to gain control of the situation, it looks as though government really does no longer care how their actions look to the international community, let alone their own citizens. And the current government has no wish to permit any kind of foreign intervention.
Since the protests began in March over 1,6000 civilians have been wounded, well over 60 demonstrators killed.
The anti-government 'red shirts' are determined to have another, free and fair election. One that the ruling government forces will not convert into an opportunity for them to resume business as usual, by disallowing competing political candidates to stand for office, as was done previously.
In the current violent melees, police officers themselves have turned against the military, in support of the protesters. It has even been reported that the army might be resisting its government's insistence on a full-bore assault on its opposition. Does that not bode ill for the government?
Which claims it governs in a fully democratic manner? Despite coming to power through a coup in 2006? Throwing Thaksin Shinawatra out of office, a head of state who brought the country to prosperity, paying off its debts. He was charged with corruption, and his opponents took undemocratic steps to unseat him.
There's something fundamentally, dramatically wrong with a nation where the urban elite and the rural poor are at a deeply divided crossroads.
And the divided loyalties seen between the security services should signal something important to the government.
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, Political Realities, World News
