Why is it that a country of immigrants, and lets face it we are all immigrants to this country whether recent or from a very long time ago, some of us willing and others of us unwilling conscripts, have such a disdain for today’s immigrants? The deaths of immigrants while under federal government custody is a stain upon the tradition of America and its rule of law. It is unconscionable that people are left to die in federal immigration detention facilities yet there seems to be a pattern of such abuse taking place on our shores.
Month: April 2009
An expected move
The Israeli government has decided not to investigate the actions of its military in Gaza, despite its earlier claims that it would. So what else is new you ask? Well Human Rights Watch has initiated an investigation of its own and it does confirm what was apparent to all who have eyes to see that Israel did use white phospherous against civilians during the Gaza campaign. You can watch what HRW had to say in the video below.
Meanwhile the US continues its obsequious, servile behavior towards the Israeli government which boasts of having one of the strongest armies in the world. Evidently that is not enough to get the US to say to Israelis they’re on their own when it comes to Israeli military aggression, so Obama continues to pledge to defend Israel against its enemies. Mind you Israel’s enemies are the ones it creates; most of its neighbors want peace with the Jewish state in exchange for recognition of their territorial sovereignty. Even the Palestinians want peace, but as usual, that won’t suit the Israelis.
Avigdor Lieberman said Israel’s new government will suspend negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on so-called “final-status” issues – the borders of a Palestinian state, the fate of Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and the city of Jerusalem – until the Palestinians take verifiable steps to end attacks against Israelis.
With the statement, the new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed the policy of its predecessor, led by Ehud Olmert, which had been quietly attempting to negotiate a final settlement of the conflict with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the past 14 months.
It’s easy to see where this is going. The expansionist policy of military aggression of the Israeli government is headed towards the West Bank and it won’t be long, months perhaps, before the Israeli government calls for war against all of what is left of Palestine. Of course all of this will be done with the claim that Israel is under constant threat of extinction from its potent (not!) neighbors.
UPDATE:
The National Lawyers Guild has weighed in on what happened in Gaza, saying
Israel violated international law by targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, misusing weapons, deliberately denying medical care to the wounded and attacking medical personnel, the National Lawyers Guild Delegation to Gaza said today upon releasing a 37 page report containing new evidence on the facts surrounding Israel’s 22 day military offensive in Gaza. The full report can be viewed at www.nlg.org.
“Our findings join a growing chorus of voices—which include Israeli soldiers themselves—asserting that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza offensive,” said Radhika Sainath, one of the attorneys who initiated the seven-day fact-finding delegation to Gaza. “On a number of occasions, Israeli soldiers shot and killed young children as well as unarmed civilians holding white flags—both violations of the laws of war.”The Delegation also uncovered evidence of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields, acts that constitute war crimes, as well as evidence that the Israeli military targeted civilian infrastructure and grossly misused weapons. Further, Israel denied the wounded access to medical care and routinely fired on emergency medical teams attempting to reach those in need of help. Paramedics and doctors reported to the Delegation that many civilians could have been saved if the Israeli army allowed Palestinian medical services access to the wounded. “On one occasion, when Israeli forces did allow Palestinian medical services to enter an area after four days, soldiers prohibited their ambulances from approaching and paramedics were forced to pile the injured on donkey carts,” reported Reem Salahi, a California-based civil rights attorney. “Medical workers were then forced to pull the carts to their ambulances two kilometers away.”
Is it any wonder that Israel has stopped its own investigation; it would incontrovertibly point to IDF culpability in criminal acts. I don’t know why that bothers Israeli officials; for the moment no matter what they do, or what evidence points to they are able to continue to demand and receive US aid which allows them to perpetuate these acts of violence and aggression. With willing accomplices in the US media any investigation, including the ones mentioned in this post, would be ignored and/or not reported. In fact conducting an investigation even if it points to Israeli guilt would be a feather in their cap….it would point to some sort of transparency. However, the frame of mind of the Israeli government is they are not accountable to any authority, and thus no need for such an investigation on their part. It is the height of hubris. Let’s hope it is the pride that precedes Israel’s fall.
Israeli justice. Coming to an American near you
In an earlier post I spoke of how Israelis have the view they can kill anyone they consider a terrorist. Ever since the Bush administration’s ascendancy, the public announcement of the Israeli government has been they will go anywhere to kill terrorists they think are a threat. Well, it seems this has been policy of the government long before it was stated back at the beginning of Bush’s first term, and it also seems the Israelis include Americans as possible targets of their murder. No, I don’t mean Americans who stand in front of bulldozers and get plowed under or Americans who are standing on land owned by Palestinians and get shot by IDF goons, I mean Americans employed as civil servants to project American interests.
(John Gunther) Dean, whose memoir is titled Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests, was American ambassador in Lebanon in August 1980 when a three-car convoy carrying him and his family was attacked near Beirut.
“I was the target of an assassination attempt by terrorists using automatic rifles and antitank weapons that had been made in the United States and shipped to Israel,” he wrote. “Weapons financed and given by the United States to Israel were used in an attempt to kill an American diplomat!” After the event, conspiracy theories abounded in the Middle East about who could have planned the attack, and why. Lebanon was a dangerously factionalized country.
The State Department investigated, Dean said, but he was never told what the conclusion was. He wrote that he “worked the telephone for three weeks” and met only official silence in Washington. By then Dean had learned from weapons experts in the United States and Lebanon that the guns and ammunition used in the attack had been given by Israelis to a Christian militia allied with them.
“I know as surely as I know anything that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was somehow involved in the attack,” Dean wrote, describing how he had been under sharp criticism from Israeli politicians and media for his contacts with Palestinians. “Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried to kill me.”
Why America continues to be assaulted, threatened and intimidated by a petulant friend is an example of the decline of an empire at the expense of an ally. Inevitably, we get what we deserve; if we allow ourselves to be owned by the Israelis and whimper and cry at what they’ve done to us as a nation, then we have no one to blame but ourselves. With the economy in near collapse, and a world war looming on the horizon, it won’t take much for America to become a second rate power following the lead of lesser nations and we’ll have no one but ourselves to thank for that. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
What does 50 billion dollars get you?
The more I think about Bernard Madoff and his crime of stealing 50 billion dollars of other people’s money the more I’m amazed at what he got away with. Fifty billion dollars gets you about 10 Nimitz class nuclear powered aircraft carriers and I don’t see anything like that parked in front of his NYC apartment or in the garage of any of his houses or those of his relatives. So in addition to wondering how much is 50 billion US dollars is the question, where did it go? That’s a whole lot of money. Even if it’s squirreled away somewhere, there’s no chance Madoff himself will be able to use it since he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life, and at 70 years of age, that might not be long.
Finally there’s the question, how did this guy manage to steal such a large amount of money from so many people over so long a period of time without getting caught? The answer is Madoff has connections who ignored pleas to officials over a number of years of Madoff’s crimes that he was crooked. Let’s not forget we’re not talking about a couple of million dollars. At the time officials were warned Madoff had already squandered several billion dollars and as early as 2001 people were saying there’s something rotten in Denmark with this guy. Now, I would just love to blame the Republicans for this 50 billion heist because they were the ones who were negligent, and ignored Madoff until the end of Bush’s term. But accounts claim that Democrats were the recipients of Madoff’s stolen money with contributions he gave to Democratic office holders/seekers, so the responsibility for regulatory blinders is no doubt shared. The question then becomes, is there anyone in government who thinks it’s wrong to steal 50 billion dollars? Apparently not. Are all politicians and their political appointees that crooked? Apparently so. Fifty billion dollars can buy a lot of influence as well. Spread out over several decades among money hungry, greedy politicians, no doubt that amount of money can vanish, but with huge rewards for the one distributing it. It wouldn’t take much for a politician to turn a blind eye to repeated requests to investigate someone who is lining their pockets with untoward amounts of money.
I’ve often read about sleeper cells of Islamic terrorists in the US, which haven’t been discovered yet by the way despite the repeated claims of their existence, but Madoff’s financial manipulation and graft are on a scale that Muslims and any other terrorists would “die” for. Quite simply, Madoff’s stolen money was used to influence legislation for Madoff’s interests and those of his clients. He did that while wearing expensive suits, a firmly entrenched member of the financial side of society who was loved and respected by all, yet he bought politicians and advanced causes, especially his own, that were in direct contravention to the interests of America. He should be water boarded until he tells us where the money went, to whom and for what purpose. Nothing less than that should be acceptable.
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