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Recent Commentsby Gus Leonisky on Wed, 2009-01-07 13:55
Robert Fisk: Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask
Wednesday, 7 January 2009 So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night's work in Gaza by the army that believes in "purity of arms". But why should we be surprised? Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians? What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive. by Gus Leonisky on Wed, 2009-01-07 11:58
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have told the United Nations they support a new Egyptian plan for a ceasefire in Gaza. The plan, put forward by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after talks with French President Nicholas Sarkozy this morning, calls for an immediate truce in the fighting between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire proposal came after at least 30 Palestinians died in an Israeli attack at a United Nations-run school in the coastal enclave on Tuesday. Israel said the artillery strike was targeting Hamas fighters who launching mortar bombs from inside the school. by Gus Leonisky on Wed, 2009-01-07 09:34
Israel has agreed to set up a "humanitarian corridor" in the Gaza Strip, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said. Israel's military will open up "areas for limited periods of time, during which the population will be able to receive the aid", it said. ----------------- Gus: "Then we bomb the hell out of them!.... " by Gus Leonisky on Tue, 2009-01-06 21:47
... We understand Mr. Obama’s decision to leave the current crisis to President Bush. But we hope he and his team are prepared for whatever faces them in this immediate crisis, and that they are working on a broader strategy for the region. There is little chance of restraining Hamas without dealing with its patrons in Syria and Iran. Mr. Obama will also have to move quickly to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza need to see that there is another way out of their misery and that Hamas and its rockets are not the answer. ------------------ Gus: Has anyone paid any attention to history? see toon at top... by John Richardson on Tue, 2009-01-06 18:28
Former prime minister John Howard will be honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour that can be bestowed by a United States president, in recognition of his role in fighting terrorism and standing by the US as an ally. The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, who provided troops for the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, is also being honoured by US President George Bush, as is Colombian President Alvaro Uribe."The President is honouring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said as she announced the list on Monday Washington time. "All three leaders have been staunch allies of the United States, particularly in combating terrorism."And their efforts to bring hope and freedom to people around the globe have made their nations, America and the world community a safer and more secure world," she said. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/highest-us-civilian-award-for-howard/2009/01/06/1231003973247.html?sssdmh=dm16.354256by John Richardson on Tue, 2009-01-06 18:24
Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain. The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the "surveillance society" threatening personal privacy.Hacking – known as "remote searching" – has been quietly adopted by police across Britain following the development of technology to access computers' contents at a distance. Police say it is vital for tracking cyber-criminals and paedophiles and is used sparingly but civil liberties groups fear it is about to be vastly expanded. Remote searching can be achieved by sending an email containing a virus to a suspect's computer which then transmits information about email contents and web-browsing habits to a distant surveillance team.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/new-powers-for-police-to-hack-your-pc-1225802.html by John Richardson on Tue, 2009-01-06 06:30
More than 100 Australian Jews, including two award-winning novelists and a former federal cabinet minister, have signed a statement condemning Israel's siege of Gaza, heightening tensions within the local Jewish community over the violence. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, meanwhile called yesterday for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but refused to criticise the Israeli offensive.Authors Linda Jaivin and Sara Dowse, the environment minister in the Whitlam government, Moss Cass, and the NSW Greens leader, Ian Cohen, are among 120 Australian Jews to accuse the Israeli Government of a "grossly disproportionate military assault on Gaza because it was Israel that violated the fragile truce on November 4, 2008". Their statement has provoked a backlash from leaders of Australia's main Jewish groups, who argue that Israel is acting in self-defence.The statement was co-ordinated, but not endorsed, by the group Independent Australian Jewish Voices. It is part of an international outcry from dissident Jewish groups, including J Street in the US and Gush Shalom in Israel. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/australian-jews-protest-against-israels-action/2009/01/05/1231003936981.htmlby Gus Leonisky on Tue, 2009-01-06 06:26
read more at Chris Floyd... ... It is remarkable, and scary, to read the US military writing about how it goes around the world bringing "stability" to (often ungrateful) people. This past October the Army published a manual called "Stability Operations". It discusses numerous American interventions all over the world since the 1890s, one example after another of bringing "stability" to benighted peoples. One can picture the young American service members reading it, or having it fed to them in lectures, full of pride to be a member of such an altruistic fighting force. by John Richardson on Tue, 2009-01-06 00:21
from Crikey ….. The Gaza Strip: Arabs don't count Jeff Sparrow writes:Here’s a headline from Israel Today that you didn’t see in many local papers: ‘US, Australia back Gaza strike; rest of the world doesn't.’ Yes, another Coalition of the Willing has been assembled and, yes, once again we’ve enrolled in its lonely ranks.The Australian army won’t, of course, see action in Gaza but then the service John Howard provided for George Bush was always far more political than military. Australian support added a veneer of legitimacy to Bush’s illegal invasion – and, as the Israeli press notes, that’s the part Gillard’s playing now. In fact, with most of the world erupting in anti-war demonstrations, if you close your eyes, it might be 2003 all over again. The attack on Gaza began with what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz inevitably described as ‘shock and awe’. Once more, we were told that high-tech wonder weapons would surgically separate the belligerents from the combatants. Once more, this proved utter nonsense. Despite Israel’s exclusion of foreign journalists from Gaza, we know that the IDF has attacked a university, a school, a mosque, many civilian police stations, a television station, the Palestinian parliament, the ministry of education, the ministry of housing, and the ministry of foreign affairs.As with Iraq, the military campaign follows a crippling regime of sanctions, the effects of which were largely ignored by the Western press. Famously, in 1996, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when confronted by the figure of half million Iraqi children dead because of the blockade, responded: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it." The Israelis arrived at the same calculation about Gaza where, even before the attacks, Palestinians were suffering from malnutrition. As to their state now, well, you can either believe Israel’s Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (there is, she says, "no humanitarian crisis in Gaza") or Amnesty International ("The health sector in Gaza lacks equipment, medicine and expertise at the best of times and has been further depleted due to the prolonged Israeli blockade. It is now completely overwhelmed and unable to cope with the large number of casualties.") The conventional narrative about Gaza holds that Hamas provoked the crisis, flouting a ceasefire and increasing its rocket launches in early December. Like the dog-and-pony show about Iraqi WMDs, this is entirely misleading. As Jeremy Hammond notes, in reality, the ceasefire actually came to an end on 4 November because, with the media’s attention focused on the US elections, Israel launched an airstrike into Gaza that killed five Palestinians.Perhaps more importantly, though it’s rarely acknowledged in the Western media, for some time now Hamas has indicated that it would accept a two-state solution. In April this year, MSNBC reported the following: The leader of Hamas said Monday that his Palestinian militant group would offer Israel a 10-year “hudna,” or truce, as implicit proof of recognition of Israel if it withdrew from all lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East War.Khaled Mashaal told The Associated Press that he made the offer to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in talks on Saturday. “We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition,” Mashaal said. In his comments Monday, Mashaal used the Arabic word “hudna,” meaning truce, which is more concrete than “tahdiya” - a period of calm - which Hamas often uses to describe a simple cease-fire. “Hudna” implies a recognition of the other party’s existence. As recently as 23 December, Hamas was still making similar offers. Hamas would consider renewing a lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, but wants guarantees the Jewish state will halt incursions and keep border crossings open for supplies of aid and fuel, a spokesman said today. One doesn’t have to admire Hamas’ political philosophy or strategic orientation to recognize that it’s not an amorphous expression of innate evil, firing missiles at Israel just for the hell of it. Given that the blockade of Gaza has been condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and just about every reputable human rights organisation in the world, Hamas’ insistence on the opening of the border as a precondition of peace seems entirely reasonable. But, in 2003, we were told that Saddam refused admission to weapons inspectors (when in fact they were withdrawn by Richard Butler), and today we hear constantly that Hamas that makes negotiations impossible. There’s a final comparison between Iraq and Gaza, and it’s even more important. More than anything, the invasion of Iraq re-accustomed the Western world to colonial violence on a massive scale, not simply because it resulted in the deaths of perhaps a million people but also because the day-to-day business of an occupation necessarily normalizes brutality, with Abu Ghraib merely the most overt example. Defending the indefensible in Iraq steeled a generation of apologists to accept a hitherto unthinkable level of cruelty – so long as it was inflicted on Arabs.Today, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald draws attention to Michael Goldfarb, the editor of the Weekly Standard (an American version of Quadrant), writing about Israel’s assassination of a Hamas leader. The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it's not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions.In September, President Bush lectured the United Nations on terrorism. "No cause," he said, "can justify the deliberate taking of innocent human life". The naïve might think that killing little children fits his description exactly, even if their father belongs to Hamas. But that would be to miss the point. What the world learned from Iraq is that Arabs don’t count. And that’s what we’re seeing again in Gaza. by Gus Leonisky on Mon, 2009-01-05 09:30
What is to be done about the biggest problem that emerged in 2008? I refer, of course, to the rise in global food prices, up 83 per cent since 2005. For the many poor people who spend a large proportion of their meagre incomes on food, this is a disaster. But as we shall see, it's a disaster the West could do a lot to solve quite easily. If only we can overcome a few modern superstitions. In the long run, we should encourage smaller farms to be effective provider for the locals, rather than the opposite. "Small is beautiful" is still the mantra underpinning our best hopes on all fronts, including independence. But of course multinationals want us to be dependent... But countries like Haiti live under the sword of "cheap" food imports, possibly becoming lazy suppliers in this basic area of life. The shortage of rice worldwide was due to the Australian drought. And worldwide droughts are not going to go away, including those in Australia. Large "commercialisation" of crops have failed miserably in drought times. Well managed small farms with water retention device such as tanks or dams can be more effective and employ more people than a cropping machine. In "commercialisation" of agriculture, vast amounts of forests, or tree clumps would be destroyed, compounding the general problem of global warming, as well as displacing populations. There is also more value in eating more green plants, beans, lentils and root vegetables than excessive amount of carbohydrates like wheat, which the West is prone to — thus having to deal with related obesity. The Multinationals want our business, fair enough, but in the end when we are at the mercy of their supplies, as food would be more and more under the Collier proposal, there would be a small step to have to pay a king's ransom on credit, while the multinational would "manage" our needs and wants to suit their profits — all without counting the other costs borne by the social structures or the environment. Increasing commercialisation of agriculture — including GM crops — in most country will only lead to a new larger kind of greater poor. When food is abundant on "commercial" farms in Australia, plagues of mice or locusts often devastate the crops or the stored grains, then the mice and the locust die out from starvation. Another boom and bust cycle awaiting humanity under the idea of "industrialisation" of agriculture... demanding more and more controls to stem the new problems |
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