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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Glenn--
Your gloss of Friedman et al as terrorist cheerleaders with pens for pompoms is exactly the lens through which America and Israel are viewed by most of the world.
The fact that this view is relagated to a blog on Salon, Juan Cole and a few others, plus the fact that the new Sean Hannity demolished Rachael Maddow in the ratings last night, tells us exactly where we are on the world's moral scale.
Just stand Tom Friedman up next to him.
Godwin - hell.
When Tom Friedman dies, the Prince of Darkness, the Devil himself, will have to find another job. I predict labor unrest among the Demons Union, Local 666, to protest the new leadership in Hell. Even demons have standards. The New York Times, apparently does not.
Point taken.
Keep up the good work.
Glenn mentions reports that the IDF are using white phosphorous on the civilian population of Gaza.
The reports may as he says be "unconfirmed", but the Israelis certainly have past history of using this weapon against unarmed civilians in built-up areas, as shown by this quote from Dr Amal Shama'a of the Barbir Hospital, Beirut, after Israeli phosphorous shells had been fired into West Beirut, reported in the "Times" of London, August 1, 1982:
"I had to take the babies and put them in buckets of water to put out the flames. When I took them out half an hour later they were still burning. Even in the mortuary they smouldered for hours."
The babies of whom she spoke were two five-day-old twins. (Incidentally, the phosphorous ordnance referred to was supplied by the United States.)
just like Leni Reifenstahl. That he actually believes his propaganda is irrelevent.
In a recent Times column on occasion of the Holocaust remembrance, Israel's founder David Ben-Gurion is quoted as describing the image of Jews in the death camps as "a decisive, embarrassing and painful statement of the disintegration of spiritual-ethical strength". I cannot imagine a more accurate evocation of life & death in Gaza in 2008.
Of course Tom Friedman is a troll - he's always been a cheerleader for US misadventures overseas.
Israel may or may not be trying to punish the Gazan population. If they are doing this in the hope of cowing the Palestinians into submission, they are doomed to failure. The conflict is driven by resource scarcity, primarily land and water, and the pressure on these limited resources grows every day as the population grows and the Israeli economy grows.
This is not the only driver of the conflict, but it is a major driver, and one that is sure to get worse, not better. All this talk of terrorists and punishment and defending the borders, etc., etc. is so much rationalization. The real issue is access to resources.
Sadly, the entire world will be faced with this situation soon enough. There already pockets of intense competition for resources that have becomre violent, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict being just one example. The Israeli/Palestinian war is merely an opening act to a larger worldwide struggle for access to increasingly scarce resources.
If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims
Them Palistine guys must all have ADD, 'cause we gotta keep shellin' 'em again and again, to put the learnin' right to 'em. And starvin' 'em don't teach them nothin' 'bout livin' in peace!
/snark
Really, isn't this a little like trying to teach someone karate by kicking the shit out of them?
Israel denied using WP during the 2006 war, when reports about its use stubbornly would not go away. Months after the war, Israel officially admitted that they had indeed used WP.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6075408.stm
There can be no question that Israel is again using WP in Gaza. I've posted more than one CNN clip here. WP is being used as ground bursts for smoke, which is legal, but questionable in an urban setting. But to use WP as air-bursts, where burning WP is broadcast over several urban blocks indescriminantly, would by most definitions be a war crime, and certainly good evidence for the terrorism claim by GG. When visual evidence is broadcast worldwide by CNN, CNN international, and other broadcasters on live TV, it's hard to see how this usage can be described as "unconfirmed". This is not to mention the published photographic evidence in various news outlets.
Greenwald's reporting is overly tentative in this regard--given the published evidence. I'm reminded here of his reluctance when reporting Iraqi civilian casualties.
Also, a note on where and how WP burns, as stated in exerpted article. It doesn't just burn in contact with "air". It burns in the presence of oxygen. It will burn in a bucket of water. Similarly, once it burns into a human body, it will burn through the body and/or into/through bone.
I have heard that the passive submission of the Jewish populations of Europe to the humiliations, indignities, dispossessions, displacements, imprisonments, exploitations, and mechanised mass murders inflicted upon them by the Nazis was a conscious choice, encouraged and justified by rabbinical teachings. I wonder how true this is?
Because the lesson of the Holocaust that the Jewish State of Israel has clearly learned is that passive submission to genocide is a bad strategy.
So why do they expect the filistina to follow that strategy and submit to invasion and humiliation and displacement and murder?
And why does Israel expect that becoming their evil enemy is anything but evil?
This kind of thing makes me physically ill. White phosphorous is a cruel, cruel weapon. In a just world, those who gave the orders to use the weapon would be locked away for the rest of their lives.
The dance is always the same - there are "rumors", or "unconfirmed reports" of the X using Y in Z. For X you can substitute Israel, or the US, or Britain. For Y you can substitute white phosphorous, depleted uranium, or cluster munitions. For Z you can substitute Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Then the media just drops the ball, no investigation. Six months to a year from now, there might be an article somewhere that confirms the use of white phosphorous during the current Gazan campaign. Then is will disappear completely.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
