Iraqis Good Riddance to Bush

Unsurprisingly, Iraqis say good riddance to Bush with much bitterness.

"I hope Obama will correct the negative results Bush made. Iraq should be a country as wealthy as Gulf countries because we have oil, agriculture and splendid civilization," said Abass Majeed, a 38-year-old taxi driver from Sadr City in Baghdad.

But Iman Khalil, a 52-year-old widow, does not agree with him. "We will see no basic change between Bush and Obama. All U.S. presidents are the same: To protect Israel and plunder Iraq's oil reserves," she said emotionally.

Bush gets the boot from Iraq, where he falsely claimed he wanted to bring democracy. Right. By force. As if freedom comes by force. What did he expect? Love isn't by force either.

UK Jewish MP: Israelis Acting Like Nazis in Gaza

Yes, it is true, and finally someone has the courage to say it: Israelis are doing to Gazans what Nazis did to them, albeit on a smaller scale. They rounded them up, starved them nearly to death, and then proceeded to slaughter the defenseless people. And the reasons are the same, too. It is first, and publicly, for security. It is second, and less publicly, for the benefit of the Chosen, the Superior ethnic group. In short, it is slaughter based on racism and militaristic security-hype.

Israel Wipes Gaza Villages Off the Map

Jonathan Miller's report exposes the massacre:



This is unconscionable. It is horrific. It is a war crime. It is beyond words. And it is sponsored by U.S. weapons, and a long-standing policy of treating Israel like the spoiled, beloved child who can do no wrong. Congratulations! You're the proud sponsor of mass murder in the time-worn tradition of Security Trumps Compassion.

Israel traded its conscience for its view of security - apartheid, a protected Elite within a fortress, against the world. That's not a vision of the future. That's a vision of atrocities followed by doom. Good luck with that screwed world view.

Do Something to End the Occupation of Palestine by Israel

If you are sick of the slaughter in Gaza, and want to take action, this is your link.

Gaza's Holocaust, Israel's & US's Shame

This introduction by Tom Engelhardt of Tomdispatch to Tony Karon's article on where do we go from here entitled "Change Gaza Can Believe In" sums up the image of Gaza's holocaust - as close as Israel could come, given the time constraints set by President Obama's impending inauguration to power, to wiping the Palestinians (or those trapped in this slice of Palestinian territory) off the face of the earth. Shockingly, Israel is not satisfied. It wanted to wipe them out more literally, more completely. Any attempt to call it "self-defense", or "battling terrorism" or "preventing rocket attacks" is not simply absurd, illogical or baseless - the attempt to excuse this massacre by such paltry, prissy, spoiled-child reasons is itself another crime. And the U.S., by condoning and supporting such slaughter, is not only complicit, but a partner in crime. When the powerful destroy the weak, the devastatingly weak, and the truly defenseless, only because the weak "bother" them or cause them "discomfort" ... when mass murder is committed for political reasons ... or to appease a population who are so out of touch that they genuinely believe Palestinians are somehow "out to get them" ... it is a real-life horror story.

Yes, we now know the ever grimmer statistics: more than 1,400 dead Gazans (and rising as bodies are dug out of the rubble); 5,500 wounded; hundreds of children killed; 4,000 to 5,000 homes destroyed and 20,000 damaged -- 14% of all buildings in Gaza; 50,000 or more homeless; 400,000 without water; 50 U.N. facilities, 21 medical facilities, 1,500 factories and workshops, and 20 mosques reportedly damaged or destroyed; the smashed schools and university structures; the obliterated government buildings; the estimated almost two billion dollars in damage; all taking place on a blockaded strip of land 25 miles long and 4 to 7.5 miles wide that is home to a staggering 1.4 million people.

On the other side in Israel, there are a number of damaged buildings and 13 dead, including three civilians and three soldiers killed in a friendly-fire incident. But amid this welter of horrific numbers, here was the one that caught my eye -- and a quote went with it: Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli Army, told Parliament on January 12th, "We have achieved a lot in hitting Hamas and its infrastructure, its rule and its armed wing, but there is still work ahead."

Work? The "work" already done evidently included a figure he cited: more than 2,300 air strikes launched by the Israelis with the offensive against Hamas still having days to go. Think about that: in a heavily populated, heavily urbanized, 25-mile-long strip of land, 2,300 air strikes, including an initial surprise attack "in which 88 aircraft simultaneously struck 100 preplanned targets within a record span of 220 seconds." Many of these strikes were delivered by Israel's 226 U.S.-supplied F-16s or its U.S.-made Apache helicopters.

In addition, the Israelis evidently repeatedly used a new U.S. smart bomb, capable of penetrating three feet of steel-reinforced concrete, the bunker-busting 250-pound class GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb. (The first group of up to 1,000 of these that the U.S. Congress authorized Israel to buy only arrived in early December.) In use as well, the one-ton Mk84 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) and a 500-pound version of the same. These are major weapons systems. Evidently dropped as well were "Dime (dense inert metal explosive) bombs designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space. The bombs," reported Raymond Whitaker of the British Independent, "are packed with tungsten powder, which has the effect of shrapnel but often dissolves in human tissue, making it difficult to discover the cause of injuries."

Keep in mind that Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups are essentially incapable of threatening Israeli planes and that the Israelis were using their airborne arsenal in heavily populated areas. Though the air war was only one part of a massively destructive assault on Gaza, as a form of warfare, barbaric as it is, it invariably gets a free pass. Yet, if you conduct an air war in cities, it matters little how "smart" your weaponry may be; it will, in effect, be a war against civilians.

Whatever the damage done to Hamas, what happened in Gaza was, simply put, a civilian slaughter.

Tony Karon sees an opportunity for Obama in this destruction to help make peace between Israelis and Palestinians. First, he says:

The Gaza debacle has made one thing perfectly clear: any peace process that seeks to marginalize, not integrate, Hamas is doomed to fail — and with catastrophic consequences.

But I didn't hear Israel calling the result of their slaughter "catastrophic consequences". That description would be on the lips of Palestinians, both in and out of Gaza. Why should Israelis care? For them, the only "consequence" could be bad PR, and they, like other neocon-driven groups, consider bad PR practically a rite of passage. It goes with the territory.

However, the article asks extremely cogent questions and faces Obama, who espoused the unconscionable "standard" US "line" on I/P issues:

Lest President Barack Obama's opportunistic silence when Israel began the Gaza offensive that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians (more than 400 of them children) be misinterpreted, his aides pointed reporters to comments made six months earlier in the Israeli town of Sderot. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that," Obama had said in reference to the missiles Hamas was firing from Gaza. "I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Residents of Gaza might have wondered what Obama would have done had he been unfortunate enough to be a resident of, say, Jabaliya refugee camp. What if, like the vast majority of Gazans, his grandfather had been driven from his home in what is now Israel, and barred by virtue of his ethnicity from ever returning? What if, like the majority of the residents of this refugee ghetto-by-the-sea, he had voted for Hamas, which had vowed to fight for his rights and was not corrupt like the Fatah strongmen with whom the Israelis and Americans liked to deal?

And what if, as a result of that vote, he had found himself under an economic siege, whose explicit purpose was to inflict deprivation in order to force him to reverse his democratic choice? What might a Gazan Obama have made of the statement, soon after that election, by Dov Weissglass, a top aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that Israel's blockade would put him and his family "on [a] diet"?

"The Palestinians will get a lot thinner," Weissglass had chortled, "but [they] won't die."

The Israeli leadership are people who consider others' suffering a joke. They did not see the universality of the Holocaust experience, and how this should have made the Jews deeply compassionate, among the most passionate supporters of universal human rights. And for many, it certainly did just that. But obviously, that is not true of the Israeli leadership. In fact, Israeli politics in general casts a pall on the notion of anyone having "learned" anything from the Holocaust except the desire to imitate their own tormenters, taking victims of their own to torment and "eliminate" for their own "security" and other "higher purposes".

Obviously, Israelis had no pangs of conscious about this:

Even before Israel's recent offensive, the Red Cross had reported that almost half the children under two in Gaza were anemic due to their parents' inability to feed them properly.

And what was the supposed purpose of starving the civilian population of Gaza? The same purpose of the Nazis: national security. Oh, and keeping the national population "pure", of a "chosen" race. Same game, switched players. Palestinians are now playing Jews to the Israelis' National Socialists. And making this extremely obvious comparison is called, petulantly, "anti-semitic".

The call of "anti-semitic" is used, along with "national security", to cover up and excuse every kind of horror, every sickening atrocity. It just didn't go, thank God, to the extremes of the Nazis, but the same idea is in place. Why don't the Israelis see it? What is wrong with this picture? Ah, but that's another post. I believe it has to do with a right-wing human tendency that comes out when there's a perceived threat to a treasured goal. Ethics become skewed in light of the goal, and the end justifies the means.

Ah, but there are Israelis of conscience. And maybe now is their time to rise up, to shine the light of their hearts on a land scorched by violence and war-hawk insanity. Such as this article by Amira Hass in Haaretz referring to her parents who survived the Holocaust(quoted by Karon):

"My parents despised all their everyday activities -- stirring sugar into coffee, washing the dishes, standing at a crosswalk -- when in their mind's eye they saw, based on their personal experience, the terror in the eyes of children, the desperation of mothers who could not protect their young ones, the moment when a huge explosion dropped a house on top of its inhabitants and a smart bomb struck down entire families...

"Because of my parents' history they knew what it meant to close people behind barbed-wire fences in a small area.... How lucky it is that they are not alive to see how these incarcerated people are bombarded with all the glorious military technology of Israel and the United States... My parents' personal history led them to despise the relaxed way the news anchors reported on a curfew. How lucky they are not here and cannot hear the crowd roaring in the coliseum."

The rest of Karon's article is brilliant in every respect, and well-worth reading. There is a process towards peace to be had, but not via the idiotic present course. You don't pave the road to peace with the bodies of your "negotiating partners".

And, like it or not, Hamas is definitely Israel's "negotiating partner". Fatah has been thoroughly discredited. The only people "against" Hamas are Israelis, the US government, and those who follow along like sheep in their path. Hamas won an election.

For the new Obama administration reinforcing and, as they say in Washington, incentivizing the pragmatic track in Hamas is the key to reviving the region's prospects for peace.

Hamas has demonstrated beyond doubt that it speaks for at least half of the Palestinian electorate. Many observers believe that, were new elections to be held tomorrow, the Islamists would probably not only win Gaza again, but take the West Bank as well. Demanding what Hamas would deem a symbolic surrender before any diplomatic conversation even begins is not an approach that will yield positive results. Renouncing violence was never a precondition for talks between South Africa and Nelson Mandela's ANC, or Britain and the Irish Republican Army. Indeed, Israel's talks with the PLO began long before it had publicly renounced violence.

And people are not hearing the truth about Hamas over stateside.

Hamas made clear that it was committed to good governance and consensus, and recognized Abbas as president, which also meant explicitly recognizing his right to continue negotiating with the Israelis.

Hamas agreed to abide by any accord approved by the Palestinians in a democratic referendum. By 2007, key leaders of the organization had even begun talking of accepting a Palestinian state based on a return to 1967 borders in a swap for a generational truce with Israel.

Hamas's move onto the electoral track had, in fact, presented a great opportunity for any American administration inclined towards grown-up diplomacy, rather than the infantile fantasy of reengineering the region's politics in favor of chosen "moderates."

The US and Israel are pushing the absurd notion that Egypt's dictator, Mubarak, somehow represents moderacy. Mubarak is a tyrant, pure and simple. He is a dictator, hated like hell in his own country. Everyone there prays for his death - hopefully under "enhanced interrogation" circumstances. Hamas is more "moderate" in reality than Mubarak. And yet Mubarak is put in a role of "peacemaker" on the basis of sharing a mutual agenda with Israel - getting rid of Hamas, which is the cousin of the Muslim Brotherhood in, Egypt which is Mubarak's grim reaper-to-be...or shall we say, in waiting?

The world is getting sick of the slaughter, as per this WaPo op-ed. Whole villages have been totally wiped out. It is absolutely, undoubtedly, and ILLEGALLY, genocide. Israel's leaders should be prosecuted for genocide, most certainly. Just as certainly as they never will. Where there's no will...is there a way?

Is President Obama ready to meet this disaster head on? Does he have the courage to defend the defenseless, breaking with long-standing tradition? Does he have the guts to say "No" to AIPAC and the powerful Israel-first commitment? Can he call a slaughter a slaughter? Or will he resort to claiming, like Bushco, that Israel was merely defending itself when it committed these atrocities?

It is in America's interest, and Israel's, and the Palestinians' that Obama intervene quickly in the Middle East, but that he do so on a dramatically different basis than that of his two immediate predecessors.

Peace is made between the combatants of any conflict; "peace" with only chosen "moderates" is an exercise in redundancy and pointlessness. The challenge in the region is to promote moderation and pragmatism among the political forces that speak for all sides, especially the representative radicals.

And speaking of radicals and extremists, there's palpable denial, bordering on amnesia, when it comes to Israel's rejectionists. Ariel Sharon explicitly rejected the Oslo peace process, declaring it null and void shortly after assuming power. Instead, he negotiated only with Washington over unilateral Israeli moves.

Ever since, Israeli politics has been moving steadily rightward, with the winner in next month's elections expected to be the hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. If so, he will govern in a coalition with far-right rejectionists and advocates of "ethnic cleansing." Netanyahu even rejected Ariel Sharon's 2005 Gaza pullout plan, and he has made it abundantly clear that he has no interest in sustaining the illusion of talks over a "final status" agreement, even with Washington's chosen "moderates."

Anything like what has been done before - in every case, giving Israel the veto power over everything, a free hand to do as it pleases, and absolutely NOTHING in terms of negotiating cloud to the Palestinians - we will be back to the unacceptable. Not square one, but mutually assured self-destruction. I don't think even Israel likes that option. They cannot survive on slaughter and inertia. There has to be something higher.

And all eyes are on Obama...

HISTORY! Obama Becomes President: "A New Birth of Freedom"

A new era. Much more than simply a new President. The first African-American president, and all that means. The most eloquent, intelligent, balanced president in a long time. Yes, other Presidents were good, each in their way. But there's something different about Barack Hussein Obama. And everyone can feel it.

Almost two million people watching. In total joy. Two miles of people, seen from space.

The moment so immense almost everyone is at a loss for words. And I am no exception. But President Obama is not at a loss for words, coming through with power and eloquence, righting the wrongs with conviction and truth. At this critical moment, he inspires all the right things. Let's hope and pray this hope and promise fulfills continuously...

Why Brand Obama Is Good for America: Top 10 Reasons

Barack Hussein Obama may be the first president who is actually a brand. So it's rather amazing that he is also one of the most popular brands on the planet. It's spilling over into every aspect of life - and, contrary to the sense of the word "brand" as an advertising gimmick, a commercialization of what should have "deeper" value, it's making things better wherever it goes.

On a business trip to Miami and Orlando, I noticed in the hotel lobby a large group of - maybe Lithuanians? - people, dressed like businesspeople, who spoke some Germano-Russian-sounding language, who were all smiling, enthusiastic, and chanting. Yes, chanting "Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!..."

What was this all about? Or the news article out of Orlando about Obama being a "hit" throughout the Caribbean Islands:

Radio stations across the Caribbean are tuning into U.S. politics, broadcasting rapper and reggae songs celebrating Barack Obama's victory. "Black Man Redemption" by Rapper Tony Rebel, "Yes We Can" by Reggae singer Cocoa Tea and "The Obama Song" by rapper Tyrical are dominating the airwaves in Jamaica. Trinidadians, meanwhile, are enchanted by "Barack the Magnificent," a creation of Calypso legend Mighty Sparrow.Antiguans are singing along with "Barack We Love You," by native calypso singer King Short Shirt.

Followed by a page of letters from local elementary students asking questions directed to the President-Elect. And meanwhile, back in Columbia, the people are "looking forward" to Obama's presidency.

Of course, we know already how excited Africans are for their "native son". Not to mention his unprecedentedly enthusiastic and massive reception in Berlin. But what about China? Hands down - he's an "overwhelming hit" there where last October,

an online poll conducted on China Daily's website by the US embassy, shows Obama enjoys the support of 75 percent among the Chinese.

We know that the name "Obama" tastefully included in any product name is, to borrow a Blogojovitchism, "golden" - spikes sales exponentially. It's just a superlative brand that connotes all that's good about humanity.

What better representation for the United States after years of eroded-to-zilch public image? It's gotten so bad that friends of mine pretend not to be American when at cafes in, say, the Netherlands, so as not to receive dirty looks and bad prices. Even more, the Obama brand incites people to almost-lunatic enthusiasm, joy, hope, action.... good stuff, that.

So, the Top Ten Reasons Why:

1. When you're on the precipice, you need balance. President-elect Obama has balance. Lots of it. Nobody else comes close. And that inspires more balance in others. Weigh the two sides, find a fair solution, be willing to compromise, talk about it, balance your emotions with your mind... Pretty transformative, that! Helps when you're hanging on the edge of an economic, ecological, and otherwise...cliff.

2. Nothing combats depression like inspiration. Obama just walks into a room, and people get inspired. But it's not merely charisma, or oratory. He represents overcoming impossible odds, challenges, achieving the Impossible Dream by hard work and incremental success. He also represents overcoming oppression, a locked-in-steel status quo, a power structure that seems insurmountable, a nasty social attitude in the air, a neocon warmongering mania that nobody can seem to get rid of...and everything you need to get back on your feet in a crisis. Nobody else means "Yes We Can" quite like Obama.

3. He's one of us. He has this amazing ability to identify with Everyman, Everywoman, in Everycountry, while maintaining his American identity. People have this feeling that he understands them, personally. That he cares about them, about what happens to them. He succeeded to have a mass personal relationship with not all, but many on the planet. Maybe it's just lack of pretense, and being down to earth. And something else... je n'sais quoi.

4. When the world is in turmoil, we need someone with an even keel. It's that incredible, unflappable temperament, that pulled Obama through the election process, and that we all hope will pull us through the critical, dangerous days ahead.

5. A brilliant mind: that human gift, and responsibility. Obama has a great mind, and better yet, he actually uses it responsibly. When the challenges get tough, it's not enough to just "get going", as we have seen. It needs a great mind to intelligently work our way through complex issues. No sycophant will do any more. So for Obama to represent the best of the mind does us a world of good. Smart is cool again. Finally.

6. Flexibility, willingness to cooperate. This is essential to building goodwill in world affairs, as well as domestic ones. We've suffered too long through ill will, divisiveness, and "us" vs. "them". The results have been catastrophic. Democracy without cooperation is not democracy. It's a failed state.

7. Obama is a multicultural success story. He blends continents, wildly varying cultures from Kansas to Hawaii to Indonesia, plus of course, Africa, and yet it all somehow works into a very superior "product". He therefore gives us hope that although we are all very different, the common bond is nonetheless intact, and that very diversity contributes toward strength. This is a boon to people against inbreeding, Us v. Them, etc.

8. When we've been sitting on a Ponzi scheme, thinking ourselves rich and powerful, it really helps to find someone with genuine core integrity. Solid ethics. Trustworthiness. Honesty. The high ground. Making good on promises - not just for PR, but just because it's right. Wow, now that's downright refreshing! Barack Obama, from his loving domestic relations with his wife and daughters and other relations, to his making good on promises, to his clean and democratically-run campaign, to his thoughtful, honest relationships with others in government as well as campaigners and those in "Main Street", is the absolute epitome of One Good Man. Not some idealized idol, just a regular guy who works very hard to do things right, and has very high standards.

The net result? Obama made being righteous very, very cool. Bring it on! Which brings us to

9. Pres-elect Obama is just, simply very, very cool. This is an intangible. It's God-given. It's something you either have, or don't have. It may be the "aura" of all of the above. But it's also because he's always working to stay in touch with what's going on around him. He knows technology and uses it. He knows the language, the songs, the music, the culture of everyday Americans. He may not know bowling and country music. But that's OK, because he's cool with what he knows. He goes above and beyond a specific culture, by virtue of his multicultural background added to his being "one of us", added to his cooperative stance, taken to another level by his intelligence. It's everything rolled together in a way that simply ... works.

We're dog tired of things that don't work. And people who make them not work.

10. And at last, Obama resurrects the work ethic. Hard work is part of his success story, and it's not only something that's true, that people can relate to, but it's also very good for the economy. After all, work is how economies are ultimately built - not merely by investing money, that essentially fake/representative thing, but investing actual work. Instead of encouraging people to spend, we find ourselves inspired to sweat. It's very basic, and being enthusiastic about it makes it far more likely to succeed. After all, what's work without a motive? The profit motive just won't cut it any more.

As we watch the incredible scene of President-elect Barack Obama taking the oath of office, and all that goes with it, no one can help but be amazed at how it all got put together, and how one man came to symbolize so much in one unimaginably critical moment. This is a "brand" that will go down in history in more ways than ten. And that can't help but be good for America, and I hope, the world.

Obama Prayer Leader "Linked" to Hamas; So Is Jimmy Carter, I Presume

Fox News and other right-wingers are now playing gotcha with what they see as a vulnerability in an otherwise almost invulnerable celebration/inauguration - drawing a "connection" between someone on Obama's lineup of religious leaders, hence his "side", and .... lots of ooohs and ahhhs and looks of fear and loathing, please ... TERRORISM.

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is one of many religious leaders scheduled to speak at the prayer service at Washington's National Cathedral.

Mattson has been the guest of honor at State Department dinners and has met with senior Pentagon officials during the Bush administration. She also spoke at a prayer service at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Mattson, who was elected president of the society in 2006, is a professor of Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn.

But in 2007 and as recently as last July, federal prosecutors in Dallas filed court documents linking the Plainfield, Ind.-based Islamic society to the group Hamas, which the U.S. considers a terrorist organization.

Neither Mattson nor her organization have been charged. But prosecutors wrote in July that they had "a wide array of testimonial and documentary evidence expressly linking" the group to Hamas and other radical groups.

Note that it says "federal prosecutors" were the sources for this alleged affiliation. Then note that Hamas, named as a "terrorist organization" by the United States, also happens to have been the political party that was voted into power by the Palestinians in a "free and fair election" that was overseen by none other than former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Yes, Jimmy Carter, the right-wing's favorite whipping boy, who also happened to have overseen a number of other foreign elections, to the approval of the United States, or at least, certainly not to his condemnation.

Yet clearly, by this, and by his inflammatory book entitled - wouldn't he be booted off dailykos for this? - "Peace, Not Apartheid" - Jimmy Carter is obviously linked to Hamas and linked to terrorism. How dare he make such inflammatory statements against Israel as accusing them of apartheid? How dare he criticize Israel? Israel is our friend, right or wrong. Wasn't the invasion of Lebanon "conducted" with impunity? Never mind that Lebanon is a sovereign nation. Flying in the face of national sovereignty is a Neocon Calling Card, or should I say right of passage. And Israel's government is the quintessential neocon's dream. Security always trumps compassion, or even cooperation. Compassion is always there basically, or so it appears, for PR.

In fact, Jimmy Carter's links to Hamas and terrorism are stronger than those of Ingrid Mattson, that - do we shudder at the word? - Muslim. She wears a terrorist hijab, in solidarity with terrorism and Islam, which are of course, one and the same. But she never wrote a book entitled Peace Not Apartheid. She did not oversee the election that put Hamas in power. And the allegations are against her organization, not her personally. Never mind that her organization is widely considered to be the most moderate mainstream organization for Muslims in America.

And Jimmy Carter's association with Hamas was not just the allegations of a prosecutor. And nobody even knows the "basis" on which those allegations were made. Jimmy Carter actually wants Palestinians' rights to be considered in negotiations regarding middle east peace in the region. Now that's a tie to terrorism, since Palestinians' rights are right there on Hamas' charter, along with the destruction of Israel. So by these "ties", Jimmy Carter is clearly asking for the destruction of Israel.

And of course, Obama, by having a Muslim give a prayer, is giving in to terrorism. And since any Muslim can probably be linked to terrorism with the flick of a switch, sort of at will, he should have known. But you know, maybe we can forgive him.

After all, Ingrid Mattson also has "ties" to anti-terror efforts.

Law enforcement agencies have used the organization's annual convention as part of its outreach to the Muslim community. The group has provided religious training to the FBI, according to court documents. Karen Hughes, a former Bush confidant and under secretary of state, called Mattson "a wonderful leader and role model for many, many people."

And to Jewish groups. And to the U.S. government.

Mark Pelavin, director of inter-religious affairs for the Union for Reform Judaism, another organization participating in the prayer service, called Mattson "a really important voice denouncing terrorism."

"Clearly, Dr. Mattson has been welcome throughout the government," he said. "I haven't found anyone anywhere who's found anything Dr. Mattson has said that's anything other than clearly denouncing terrorism in quite explicit Islamic terms."

Pelavin's group has a partnership with the Islamic Society to encourage members of mosques and synagogues to build ties nationwide.

Attorneys for Mattson's group wrote in court documents that it is not a subject or target of the Holy Land investigation. The group has worked with the Bush administration's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, according to court documents.

Wait! Isn't that what neocons and other Islamophobes are always taunting Muslims to do? Denounce terrorism? Then when someone actually does, some prosecutor is dragged out to create a damning "link" to terrorism, thus undercutting the efforts of the terrorism-denouncer and harming their credibility. How can you expect Muslims to come out and denounce terrorism when that in itself could create a "keyword" that would be picked up by "echelon" or some other spying "entity" and would brand that already-under-suspicion Muslim as a "terrorist"? If someone like Ingrid Mattson, who has been praised for her efforts by people from all sides of the equation, can be "linked" to terrorism, what about the rest of us?

This heavy-handedness only makes the situation worse and keeps moderates in hiding while extremists have lots of fuel for the fire. Extremists have nothing to lose, basically. Moderates have everything to lose.

As to the prosecutor "source", that may be about to disappear:

According to e-mails filed in the court case, one of the prosecutors seemed willing to ask the judge to remove the group from the list.

If this is some sort of tactic to dampen down the Obama inauguration's high ground and excitement, it's also typical of the previous 8 years' path toward destruction that wants to use smear tactics and lies to prevent goodwill and cooperation.

The whole world needs more goodwill and cooperation, and Ingrid Mattson, a woman convert to Islam and Islamic scholar - talk about breaking down barriers! - is the kind of leader we need more of. Obama and his team should be proud, not wary, of their choice. It's not like he's the first one to recognize Mattson's importance and beneficial, outspoken stance.

Palestinians Eat Grass in Gaza: For Israel, the Ultimate Holocaust Denial

This incredible blog post is all the more powerful for the comments. Meanwhile, the Times reported that:

AS a convoy of blue-and-white United Nations trucks loaded with food waited last night for Israeli permission to enter Gaza, Jindiya Abu Amra and her 12-year-old daughter went scrounging for the wild grass their family now lives on.

“We had one meal today - khobbeizeh,” said Abu Amra, 43, showing the leaves of a plant that grows along the streets of Gaza. “Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg. When I find nothing, we eat this grass.”

Abu Amra and her unemployed husband have seven daughters and a son. Their tiny breeze-block house has had no furniture since they burnt the last cupboard for heat.

“I can’t remember seeing a fruit,” said Rabab, 12, who goes with her mother most mornings to scavenge. She is dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans, and her feet are bare.

Israel forgot their own experience from the Holocaust, as described by commenter Sonja:

“I used to get …very hungry,” Blum said. “And then something came to me. I said, ‘The cows eat grass to live. How come I can’t do that?’ So I started hunting for grass. But you couldn’t find grass too many places. You find the roots. I used to clean the grass off the roots and chew on the roots, too. But then I discovered an area behind the kitchen. It was a restricted area. Nobody was allowed to go in, and the grass was growing nice. And I used to smuggle myself inside somehow… I ran in, took a handful [of grass] and ran out.”
By Rosa Blum, holocaust survivor, Romania

Holocaust in Romania, by Matatias Carp (6. Life and Death in Transnistria)
June 10, 1942
The buildings on the right housed deportees who had managed to save some
of their money, or because of their good connections were able to receive
aid in Moghilev. On the left side, however, hunger reigned. A number of
those interned had no choice but to eat grass from the meadows and leaves
from trees.

Yom HaShoah: The Train to Belzac
By Eva Galler (holocaust survivor)
It was cold. In one corner there was a little iron stove but no fuel. We were not given enough to eat. The children looked through the garbage for food. There was not enough water to drink. There was one well in the backyard, but it would not produce enough water for everybody. To be sure to get water you had to get up in the middle of the night. Once I had a little water to wash myself, and my sister later washed herself in the same water.
Some people started to eat grass. They would swell up and die. Because of the unsanitary conditions people got lice and typhus. My brother Pinchas got night blindness from lack of vitamins. Every day a lot of people died.

Holocaust survivors remember Lodz ghetto
Reuters - August 29, 2004
LODZ, Poland - Sam Weinreich remembers the last time he came to Radegast train station in Poland’s second-largest city - the day in 1944 he was forced into a cattle car and sent to Nazi Germany’s Auschwitz death camp.
“They promised us bread, so we came here … when you’re hungry, you’ll eat grass. People in the ghetto became like animals,” said Weinreich, one of some 400 survivors who on Sunday commemorated the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto 60 years ago.

Story of Survival - Holocaust experience remembered
by Johnell Lytle-Davis
“Why do they hate us?” Meisel said she asked her mother. “Because we are Jews,” her mother replied. “At least we are alive.”
Meisel revealed that she survived on about 300 calories in a day. “I would eat grass I was so hungry,” she said.

Thank you, Sonja, for this incredible collection of relevant stories.

It seems Israel has no intention of respecting or remembering, let alone learning from, the Holocaust.

Instead, they are trying to create, on perhaps a smaller scale - but in terms of human tragedy, is the death of children ever small for the conscience? - their own little Holocaust, inflicted on someone else.

And the reason is always the same. Security. For the Fatherland.

Palestinian Dr's Daughters Killed While Interviewed on Israeli TV

There seems to be no limits to the Israeli government's love of atrocity. I haven't been able to keep up with it all. The atrocity that is Israel's invasion of Gaza is beyond description, beyond words. It is totally unconscionable.

Just one case in point: frequently interviewed on Israeli TV, Dr. Ezz-El-Din Abu El-Eish, a Palestinian and resident of Gaza who works at works at Israel’s largest hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv, was interviewed by cell phone while his daughters were killed by Israelis as described in this heartwrenching report:

This impressive and peaceful man has been stranded at home during the war. Israel’s Channel 10 TV has regularly interviewed him by phone about the situation. On one occasion, a tank gun aimed at his home - and Israeli media intervention saved him…

What we see in the clip [above] is Israeli anchor Shlomi Eldar holding a cellphone with Dr. Abu El-Eish on the other side, howling with misery. A tank shell has just hit his home and immediately killed three of his children (apparently they cut off the first seconds when the shell actually hit).”

And here's a part of the transcript:

“Eldar: …we have on the line Dr. Abu El-Eish, we have been talking with him over the past period… he [his home] was just shelled, his family is wounded, maybe I can replay…

Dr. Abu El-Eish: No one can get to us… (unclear)… Ya Rabi, Ya Rabi (my god).. [he continues to cry throughout while Eldar talks to the audience]

Eldar: They killed his family, over the past few days we have been… I think I’m a bit overwhelmed too because,… (tearing up) Dr. Abu El-Eish is a Tel Hashomer physician, [to the doctor] Abu El-Eish we are now in the studio, [back to the audience] and he kept fearing his family would get hurt, once this week he went on air to Gabi Gazit [another anchor], because this was the only way [apparently referring to the previous near-miss incident]…. In short, he was now hit, who was hurt Abu El-Eish?

Dr. Abu El-Eish: My girls, Ya Allah, Ya Allah

[around 1:00 into clip]

Eldar: He has eight children whom he has protected throughout the war, at his home in Beit Lahiya, maybe the only thing we can do is to ask someone who can, maybe in the IDF, Abu El-Eish can you tell me where your house is, maybe they will enable ambulances to get there

Dr. Abu El-Eish: (unclear) …to save them, to save them, but they are dead already they were hit in the head, it was in their heads [died] on the spot, on the spot, Shlomi, Ya Allah, … what have we done, what have we done [repeatedly]… they killed the family… [more screams in the background]“

It's an atrocity. The entire invasion of Gaza is a horrific slaughter and a tragedy. And to think this is being done to get votes from Israelis? Do they want the world to think the Israeli public is bloodthirsty, or what? If not, what the hell happened to their brains?

Apparently, their brains went the way of their hearts.

Demand a Stance from Your Wimpy Congressperson on Gaza

Olmert Plays Pawns Bush, Rice: Israel Dictating US Foreign Policy

For years, many have said that U.S. foreign policy, especially in the middle east, is basically run by Israel. Under Bush II, this rumor has been engraved in granite. In fact, W has seen fit to let Israel basically run wild with whatever right-wing schemes it could come up with. And these schemes tend to run to the bloody, overkill side. But now Olmert is up front and center about it. Or should I say, he's bragging about how he called Bush up in the middle of the night, told him to get Condi to last-minute reneg on her planned support for a cease-fire agreement on the Gaza massacre, so, of course, ol' George cain't say no, and made poor Condi back out in an embarrassing breach of promise.

But then, there is no such thing as a promise from the US to anyone other than Israel, or so it seems. In his own bravado:

Olmert: "It transpired all of a sudden that a vote would be held in 10 minutes' time. I tried to find President Bush, and I was told he was attending an event in Philadelphia. I know that if somebody tried to find me on the phone right now, it would have to be something unusual and extraordinary for them to say: Leave it all and go to some room to talk to me. In this case, I said: I don't care, I have to talk to him right now. He was taken off the podium and brought to a side room.

I spoke with him; I told him: You can't vote for this proposal. He said: Listen, I don't know, I didn't see, don't know what it says. I told him: I know, and you can't vote for it! He then instructed the secretary of state, and she did not vote for it.
It was a proposal she had put together, one she formulated, one she organized, one she maneuvered. It left her rather embarrassed, abstaining in the vote on a proposal she herself had put together. That was why the French and the Brits said she had pulled a fast one on them, she having been the one to spur them to submit the proposals."

The NYT indicates Rice & the State Dept deny any such influence, stating this was their plan all along.

After the vote, Ms. Rice said the United States “fully supports” the resolution, which called for “an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza,” but opted to abstain to see the outcome of an Egyptian-French peace initiative.

Well, WAS the call in the middle of a speaking engagement by Bush made by Olmert the reason Rice backtracked on the cease-fire plan she allegedly drafted herself? And was she really embarrassed?

About "embarrassed", I have my doubts. It didn't embarass her when Israel destroyed Lebanon's airport and infrastructure and many civilians were slaughtered because of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers. It didn't embarrass her when Israel invaded Gaza, a civilian population with none but the most rudimentary self-defense. Why would this embarrass her? Ah, according to Olmert, it's her ego that was wounded.

So Olmert's getting bored with killing civilians and destroying lives of millions for political gain. So now he wants to mess with superpower egos.

Let's hope this whole thing backfires. Do tyrants and criminals ever pay a price? After 8 years of Bush and right-wing Israelis, one sincerely wonders. Now Obama's coming, so maybe Israeli neocons are having their bloodthirsty last stand. But will there be a similar sea change inside the borders of Israel itself, a shift to the left?

When the slaughter of innocents becomes how you impress an Israeli citizenry, it seems the opposite is true. Will Obama join the legacy of Bush and others to applaud massacres by standing on the sidelines blaming Hamas? Or will there be hope for the future? We are waiting...and hoping...and hoping...

Naomi Klein: Want Mideast Peace? Boycott Israel

This heartening post by the ever-honest, ever-justice-loving Naomi Klein entitled "Want to End the Violence in Gaza? Boycott Israel" outlines the only path to Mideast Peace. Israel has never faced, and plans that it never will face, any consequences of a serious nature to its actions. It bombed Lebanon's airport to near-extinction, destroyed much of the country's infrastructure, and killed many children, women, and oh, don't forget, men - most of whom had nothing to do with the border skirmish in which two Israeli military men were kidnapped. Kidnap two soldiers of ours? We'll put you back to the stone age.

But Gaza was already hitting the stone age with a blockade that targeted mainly women, children, the sick and elderly. It has nothing to do with war. Israel's actions in the mideast are unconscionable. And then.... they invade. Invade a basically defenseless civilian population. Don't tell me this garbage about Hamas. Hamas was a legitimately elected government, supervised by Jimmy Carter. The U.S. in its infinite contortions of injustice metes out "justice" by labelling various groups of choice "terrorist", a title that means "fair game for invasion, attack, torture, whatever you can come up with."

It's been Bush's policy to say to Israel, "Sic 'em!" and then lean back and watch the sick show of slaughter, in Lebanon in '06 and now in Gaza. Always there's a "good reason": it's because of Hamas. They're terrorists! But Israel? They're defending themselves. Against homemade rockets. With cluster bombs, bombs of other descriptions dropped from supersonic jet fighters. It's a little "unbalanced"? But not terror?

From Naomi Klein:

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- BDS for short -- was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures -- quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

Thank you, Naomi. Finally, someone speaks out. Let's hope others will hear your voice.

Israel Uses Unconventional Weapons Against Gazans

OUTRAGE! As if it's not enough to massacre hundreds of civilians in a show of overwhelming force by Goliath Israel against the prepped-by-starvation population of Gaza, now we learn from Mads Gilbert, a brave Norwegian doctor working in Gaza, that Israel is using unconventional weapons in their war on Palestine aka "War On Hamas". According to Dr. Gilbert:

"The Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy. These weapons have an enormous power to explode."

"All that is happening in Gaza here now is against international law, it is against humanity."

"Almost all of the patients we have received have these severe amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.

You know we have a lot to do. Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics do an incredibly heroic job to save their people. Doctor Eric and I are just a small drip in the ocean, but we learn from them."

IN an interview, Dr. Gilbert addresses allegations that Israel is using depleted Uranium and is deliberately targeting civilians.

Doctor Mads Gilbert is a member of a Norwegian triage medical team present in the besieged Gaza Strip. The team has exposed that Israel has used depleted uranium weapons in its war on the impoverished territory which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. He described the conditions inside Gaza in an exclusive Press TV interview.

Press TV: What can you tell about the uranium findings?

Dr. Mads Gilbert:The findings about the uranium I cannot tell you much about, but I can tell you that we have clear evidence that the Israelis are using a new type of very high explosive weapons which are called Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) and are made out of a tungsten alloy.
These weapons have an enormous power to explode.

The power of the explosion dissipates very quickly and the strength does not travel long, maybe 10 meters, but those humans who are hit by this explosion, this pressure wave are cut in pieces.

This was first used in Lebanon in 2006, it was used here in Gaza in 2006 and the injuries that we see in Shifa [Hospital] now, many many of them I suspect and we all suspect are the effect of DIME weapons used by the Israelis.

On the long term, these weapons will have a cancer effect on those who survive. They will develop cancer we suspect. There has been very little research on this but some research has been among other places in the United States, which show that these weapons have a high tendency to develop cancer. So they kill and those who survive risk having cancer.

If true, it appears to be a mass campaign of terror aimed and demoralizing the Palestinian people into capitulating into accepting a gulag archipelago as a so-called "homeland", which will be overseen and administrated by their captors, the Israelis, and in which their actual autonomy will be severely limited by the double-whammy of checkpoints and physical isolation and separation of these prison-islands from one another. Of course, rejection of the right of return means that it will not be a Palestinian "homeland" in the sense that Israel is a Jewish "homeland", but will be more of a pre-fabricated, US-Israeli-dictated residential living zone where basic human needs will be more likely to be allowed than they are in the current situation. Of course, neither the U.S. nor Israel considers "basic human needs" to include freedom of movement, or the ability of people expelled from their homes to return to their families and relatives.

And I have an appeal to the Israeli doctors and nurses. They are my colleagues. We belong to the same international community, the medical community. I wish that the good doctors and nurses in Israel tell their government to stop these atrocities. We cannot continue with this. We may differ in opinions, but you cannot treat the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza in this way.

And who are the majority of the victims? Terrorists?

Half of the population in Palestine are below 15 years and 80 percent of the people in Gaza live below the level of poverty defined by the UN. Now they don't have food, they don't have electricity. It's cold they don't have warmth and in addition to that, they are killed.

And so how many people have been affected by these unconventional weapons?

Dr. Mads Gilbert: Almost all of the patients we have received have these sever amputations. They seem to have been affected by this kind of weapon. Of course, we have many fragment injuries and burns but those who have got their limbs cut off, constitutes quite a large proportion.

It would seem that Israel is indeed using unconventional weapons. But since when did Israel care about conventions of war? Pre-emptive attacks, pre-emptive assassinations, collective punishment against civilians, and the imprisonment of an entire civilian population within its secure walls and guarded fences, the deprivation of liberty and the means of living, all these are against international law. And Israel joins with Dick Cheney, when faced with the condemnation of those who are brave and outrageously daring enough to give a damn about the people of Palestine:

"SO?"

How long will these outrageous acts continue? As long as the world looks on like a giant piece of inert protoplasm. Israel's banking on it.

Bush Legacy: Total Devastation of All He Surveyed

This is how Tom Engelhardt sums up Bush's Ponzi Presidency:

Perhaps, in the future, historians will call him a Caesar -- of destruction.

Veni, vidi, vastavi... [I came, I saw, I devastated...]

Bush's ravaging of the planet (not discussed in the article, which focuses on military and economic devastation - ah, so much devastation, so little time to account for it all...) was perhaps in part due to his focus on destruction of the people ON the planet and their well-being, in failed, ill-devised, idiotically-administered, compassion-be-damned wars. Oh, and bloating the military into its own iron bubble. Wars, too, can be a Ponzi scheme. Not just the economy anymore.

Mr. Engelhardt's synopsis reminds us that it's not only Bush:

Between 1945 and George W. Bush's second term, the U.S. economy, American corporations, and the dollar have held remarkable sway over much of the rest of the world. New York City has been the planet's financial capital and Washington its war capital. (Moscow, even at the height of the Cold War, always came in a provincial second.)

Which was, of course, due to a strong military focus by the U.S. in trying to "round up the world" by military domination coupled with soft-sell propaganda.

In the wake of the Cold War, its various military commands (including Northcom, set up by the Bush administration in 2002, and Africom, set up in 2007) divided the greater part of the planet into what were essentially military satrapies. And yet, the U.S. military, post-1945, simply could not win the wars that mattered.

Or in other words,

In the major wars (and even some minor actions) the U.S. military fought in those decades, it had been massively destructive but never victorious, nor even particularly successful.

Yet the gung-ho Bush war-neocons wanted full speed ahead:

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and the various neocons in the administration were fundamentalist idolaters -- and what they worshipped was the staggering power of the U.S. military. They were believers in a church whose first tenet was the efficacy of force above all else. Though few of them had the slightest military experience, they gave real meaning to the word bellicose. They were prejudiced towards war.

This seems to have always been the Republican line: patriotism means pro-war, and what's important is to have a war. The consequences of it are immaterial. The logic, the motivation, the reasons why are all out of question. Republicans want war - ours is not to reason why; ours is but to fight...and die.
And so this analysis of American "victories" show how, in fact, they were anything but:

Yes, it had "won" largely meaningless victories -- in Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada in 1983; against the toothless Panamanian regime of Manuel Noriega in Operation Just Cause in 1989; in Operation Desert Storm, largely an air campaign against Saddam Hussein's helpless military in 1990 (in a war that settled nothing); in NATO's Operation Deliberate Force, an air war against the essentially defenseless Serbian military in 1995 (while meeting disaster in operations in Iran in 1980 and Somalia in 1993). On the other hand, in Korea in the early 1950s and in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from the 1960s into the early 1970s, it had committed its forces all but atomically, and yet had met nothing but stalemate, disaster, and defeat against enemies who, on paper at least, should not have been able to stand up to American power.

Of course, Mr. Engelhardt's article is about body counts, and how Bush avoided them. Yes, he counts the tally of "victories", but the true cost of devastation is not publicized. And with good reason:

... the military had been counting bodies as well, but as the possibility of victory disappeared into the charnel houses of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon and the president finally gave in. While this did not stoke an antiwar movement, it represented a tacit admission of policy collapse, a kind of surrender. It was as close as an administration which never owned up to error could come to admitting that two more disastrous wars had been added to a string of military failures in the truncated American Century.

That implicit admission, however, took years to arrive, and in the meantime, Iraqis and Afghans -- civilians, insurgents, terrorists, police, and military men -- were dying in prodigious numbers.

And those numbers of casualties, the dead among supposed "enemies" who in some ways come off more as "victims" - the civilians, the children, the families, and in Gitmo, even the accused "enemy combatants", at least the ones arrested as minors... - only served to reveal the human tragedy behind Bush's failures. Thousands of dead, many of them innocents who never would have done anything to U.S. citizens, soldiers or otherwise, had we not invaded, uninvited, and created havoc everywhere we went.

Various groups of scholars and pollsters also took up the task, using sophisticated sampling techniques (including door-to-door interviews under exceedingly dangerous conditions) to arrive at reasonable approximations of the Iraqi dead. They have come up with figures ranging from the hundreds of thousands to a million or more in a country with a prewar population of perhaps 26 million.

United Nations representatives have similarly attempted, under difficult circumstances, to keep a count of Iraqis fleeing into exile -- exile being, after a fashion, a form of living death -- and have estimated that more than 2 million Iraqis fled their country, while another 2.7 million, having fled their homes, remained "internally displaced."

Similar attempts have been made for Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch has, for instance, done its best to tally civilian deaths from air strikes in that country (while even TomDispatch has attempted to keep a modest count of wedding parties obliterated by U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq). But, of course, the real body count in either country will never be known.

One thing is certain, however: it is an obscenity of the present moment that Iraq, still a charnel house, still in a state of near total disrepair, still on the edge of a whole host of potential conflicts, should increasingly be portrayed here as a limited Bush administration "surge" success. Only a country -- or a punditry or a military -- incapable of facing the depths of destruction that the Bush administration let loose could reach such a conclusion.

Ever heard of an economic meltdown? And now...the planet, please...

Israel's "Up Yours" to Arabs Goes Down Wrong-Way Street

This calls for a toast. Israel, in a celebratory send-off to Favorite Neocon Dick "Mr. Torture" Cheney, is slaughtering "terrorists" (Israeli-speak for Palestinians) en masse in that super-powerful Security Threat, Gaza.

Gaza, where the civilian population has been under an indefinite siege, deprived by Israel of food, medicine, water, gas, and other staples as "collective punishment" for being ... for being ... in Gaza, and somewhat "self-governed" by Hamas. What crime could be worse than "self-government"? Gaza, where unemployment is the highest in the world at 49%. Gaza, where

Half the city's residents receive water only once a week for a few hours.

Gaza, which most of the world recognizes as a "humanitarian disaster." Gaza, where the average income was estimated in better times, last summer, to be about $2/ a day. And that's for those who can find income. Gaza, which has been reduced to living on the dole:

more than one million Palestinians in Gaza live on the modest assistance provided by the UNRWA and FAO in addition to other Arab and Islamic charitable organizations.

Gaza, where no one goes in or out without first passing through a surly Israeli guard at a checkpoint:

The population of Gaza is subject to Israeli closures and checkpoints, which often make it impossible to travel to or work in Israel and the West Bank, and Hamas' leadership are at constant risk of being killed by Israeli security forces.

Gaza also lives under a tight blockade, which often makes it impossible for food, water, medical supplies and other essentials to reach the population.

Gaza, governed as much as that is possible by Hamas, called a "terrorist organization" but which is also a political party and provider of public services in a population which has none of the above - and with less corruption that Yasser Arafat's old party. Gaza, from whose soil Hamas soldiers fired rockets into Israel in protest of Israel's provocative killing of 5 Hamas soldiers. Israel, of course, is always in the process of killing anyone associated with Hamas, having been given that neocon green light for assassination by Bush/Cheney, the darlings of the right-wing in power these days in Israel.

Rockets? Oh, yes, those rockets. Disturbing Israeli civilians. The answer? Death to thy neighbor. And all thy neighbor's wives, children, parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, and anyone and anything that is thy neighbor's. Of course, Gazans are not "neighbors" to Israelis. They are "terrorists". Every man, woman and child.

Oh, yes, Israel must attack Gaza, of all places. After the people have been starved nearly, but not quite, to death. Gaza, a prison masquerading as a "territory" masquerading as a "homeland" masquerading as a "dream". Well, not exactly a prison. Unlike a prison, people can procreate. Unlike a prison, they get no food or water to feed their children. Unlike a prison, they are told to fend for themselves, while being prevented from being able to do just that. Unlike a prison, they are not convicted of any crime, except being Palestinian, which is not a crime, and of defending themselves or fighting for their human rights, which is called "terrorism", which is a neocon crime.

But like am unjust prison, Gaza's only hope of human dignity is for its people to riot. And like a prison, all the power is in the hands of their jailers, guards, and executioners.

But...if all the power is in the hands of their jailers, the Israelis...who are nuclear armed...have supersonic jets...advanced weaponry...a well-trained standing military machine...

WHY THE HELL ARE THEY THREATENED BY A RAG-TAG, STARVING, IMPRISONED POPULATION WITH NO ARMY AND ONLY HOMEMADE OR STON-AGE PRIMITIVE WEAPONS??????

Because Gazans have lots of one things Israelis have less of: powerful motivation. You se, unlike the Israelis, Gazans are fighting to SURVIVE. And everybody knows, ain't no motive like that survival motive. It shoots adrenalin into the brain. It makes guys blow themselves up just to spite their tormentors. It takes people to their extremes, in endurance, in passion, in uniting for a cause. And Israel'[s attacks are increasing that motive, exponentially!

Israelis, on the other hand, have a more amorphous, philosophical motive: The Dream. The Dream of a Homeland for the Jews, especially after the Holocaust. Never mind that to achieve the Dream one must displace millions of inhabitants from that land. Compassion, comesmash'em! It's all about the Dream. It's like, more ideological. We're number one, and you're number nothing!

But what really is problematic here is that the Israelis are also amorphously-guided, by a cloud, as it were. A pillar of fire from the bombing of innocents by night, and a pillar of smoke from their ashes and the ashes of homes, hospitals, schools are more destroyed by day. They have no clear plan, except to react to every little perceived "provocation" like a high-strung cliffhanger on steroids. All they have to go on is a Dream and a Prayer.

The Dream: God told us to take this land OR ELSE.
The Prayer: Please take all those nasty Palestinians offa my land NOW.

The Tactic: Nuke 'em! Screw 'em! Bulldoze 'em! They're not even human! They're terrorists! They hate us! They're out to kill and destroy us! THEY ARE GOING TO DESTROY OUR DREAM!

The Strategy: Kill the Palestinians' motive to survive, their will to live, their human dignity, their pride, their children, whatever they hold dear, to totally annihilate their humanity, so they will agree to be placed in a Gulag Archipelago under Israeli supervision where they can be brutalized and never raise their voices, hands, heads, or hearts in any meaningful way.

Sounds a lot like Cheney's "robust interrogation".

Problem is, it doesn't work. You can't kill the human soul. Correction: when you try to kill the human soul, the only thing you succeed in killing is your own conscience. And with it, your own soul.

Ooops! That means, the Israelis are messing with their own conscience! Their own collective souls! And then...we all know God doesn't "choose" people without a conscience. And...wasn't that the Dream? The Motive? The Biblically sanctioned Holy Land of Israel? Wasn't it supposed to be...divinely ordained? But if God doesn't choose people with dead souls and dead consciences, then he... will choose someone else. A different people... a people who do not idolize the ideals of Dick Cheney and the neocons. A people who don't slaughter to impress their own constituency, as if the Israeli people vote based on bloodlust - whoever slaughters the most Palestinian children gets voted into office. Please tell me it ain't true! It sure as hell looks and sounds like it. But I don't want to believe...

Is THAT what Israel is all about? Is THAT what Israel represents? Power at all costs? Comfort for a few privileged - "comfort" meaning "lack of rocket volleys that shake us up" - at the cost of starvation of millions? Or the direct, deliberate, intentional murder, genocide of hundreds???? Is that the Dream? What the hell kind of a Dream is that, Israel????

This genocide will not go down easy.

Remember when "tough guys" didn't gun down women and children because it was beneath them? When it was too "low" for them to kill those who were weaker than them? How do you talk to Israelis who forgot that murder has consequences? Is it not "murder" when you're in power and using a military "machine" to do the killing? So it has no consequences? So Israel is blame-free? Why do they always attack those weaker than them, at their weakest point? Why don't they ever show that higher ground of "tough guys" in Westerns, of days gone by? Why don't they give a damn about families?

The world may croak like a freshly-slaughtered capon. The Arabs may make Very Strong Statements, signifying nothing. The U.S. may IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, ask ("pretty please") Israel (the beautiful, cruel, temptress girlfriend) to "try" not to kill "too many" civilians. Israel may answer "OK, we'll try, but...we'll won't promise, and we're not gonna stop bombing, invading, etc..."...

Yes, the whole world may join with Cheney in a rousing chorus of "So?"

But you can't eradicate the soul and heart of a nation in order to find the soul and heart of your own nation. It doesn't work that way.

Face it, Israel. Or better yet, say goodbye to right-wing Zionism like we're saying goodbye to Dick Cheney and the discredited neocons. For Israel to survive, it's got to have a goal that INCLUDES the existence of REAL, LIVE, NON-TERRORIST, NON-KOWTOWING, UPPITY, PROUD, HONEST, HUMAN......PALESTINIANS. With dignity. On both sides, not just your side of the border.

And while you're at it, watch your morals when you claim divine rights. Or the disaster you are toasting:
"Up Yours!"
may be your own.

Despots Rejoice! Israel Massacres Palestinians, Drops Seeds of Extremism

In a move guaranteed to increase violence and ensure there will never be peace in the Middle East, Israel slaughtered over 290 Palestinians in the already-beleaguered Gaza strip, in an air attack during which on Sunday, over 100 tons of bombs were dropped.

Recall for a moment that residents of Gaza have been under siege, without food, water, gas or medical supplies for what seems an interminable amount of time, and Israel has only allowed such humanitarian aid to "trickle down" in a sort of perverse economic starvation plan. We're talking, of course, about civilians. The "plan" was ostensibly to starve the people into submitting to Israel and rejecting Hamas. The result has been to create more hatred and extremism and despair. Great "plan", Israel! And now we're ready to witness more extremism and despair! Especially with the Arab world being run by megalomaniacs and despots. All hail the kings and dictators! As long as they feed us our oil, let them bulldoze their constituencies. To hell with people, constituencies, and the rule of law. Let the slaughter begin!

According to the AP, here's an update on how it went down:

Terrified prisoners fled a Gaza City jail bombed by Israeli warplanes on Sunday, their faces white with dust and red with blood as they stumbled over huge piles of rubble.

Across the territory, grieving families pitched traditional mourning tents of green tarp outside the homes. Yet the rows of chairs inside these tents remained largely empty, as residents cowered indoors for fear of new Israeli strikes. Plumes of gray smoke rising into the sky marked the site of the latest Israeli attacks.

Even for war-weary Gazans, who've lived through countless Israeli incursions, air attacks and months of bitter Palestinian infighting, the latest surprise Israeli air offensive was unusually traumatic. In all, more than 290 people — most of them Hamas policemen, but also 20 children — were killed in some 300 Israeli air attacks over two days.

On Saturday, shortly after Israel unleashed the deadliest-ever offensive against Hamas and its rocket squads, hospital morgues quickly overflowed. In the initial chaos, the dead were wrapped in blankets and lined up on the ground, as frantic relatives searched for their loved ones.

On Sunday, 25 unclaimed bodies still lay in the morgue of Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa, their faces disfigured beyond identification. In the southern town of Rafah, residents held a mass funeral for 14 people, including two brothers, and a father and son, all of them members of the Hamas security forces.

The shelling began at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, a work day in Gaza, just as children returned home from school, women shopped in local markets and police directed traffic.

So again, Hamas will come off to the Palestinians as the hero against the evil Israelis, if it's PR you care about. But who gives a damn about PR? The same people who have NOT ONE QUALM about killing 300 relatively defenseless people from the air? So what? Hiroshima killed far more. Can't come close to Hitler's murder roll. So why do we bother? The whole nation of Palestine is being wiped out from the air. Or no! The U.S. "kindly advised" Israel to "try" to avoid civilians, and the Israelis, from the goodness of their hearts, said "OK, we'll try"... And they added that they can't tell when this slaughter/siege will end, but "probably" not any time soon.

And why should they? Who gives a damn? The so-called Arab world is being held by the testicles by their Sacred Cow Dictators. I'm sure the Saudis are in a huge rush to stand firmly on the side of everybody and nobody. The Gulf States are equally castrated. The whole world is answering in chorus with Dick Cheney: "So?"

So what's new? How does Israel imagine that Palestinians will ever think of Israelis except as torturers, killers and usurpers? Gee, thanks, pal, for killing my parents, children, sisters, brothers, grandparents, and friends. Help yourself to my hovel of a home so you can bulldoze more space for your rich DNA-approved High-Caste Israelis to enjoy their superiority while we, the Untouchables, go homeless. Reasonable expectation, n'est pas?

Obviously, Israel has no intention of ever working towards peace. Their sole aim is to create such extreme and abject despair as to cause the Palestinians to agree to being herded around like cattle within a territory that is in fact a gulag archipelago. Their "homeland" is now a prison, without freedom to move, to make business, to live. All they are free to do is leave, give up, and kiss their Master Tormentors goodbye, while the Tormentors look at them in disgust and disdain, denying them the dignity of being called "human", except, or course, in asides in op/eds in certain newspapers that perhaps fear some weird ancient buried thing called "conscience". What was that?

Oh, yes, the great and holy Reasons! How could I, a pawn in a machine going nowhere, dare not to mention the Holy Fair & Honest Reasons! Dear World, We, the Israelis, because of the atrocities of the Holocaust, have taken residence in a spot of land once called some other name, but now called Israel, and sent its previous residents, bunch of backward pastoral/nomadic types, packing. They sold out - what were we to do? And it was and is a beautiful dream, for Zionists to find a Jewish Homeland by replacing Palestinians and removing their rights not only to live on their land, but to do business, eat, educate their families, or have medical care on their land. And if they DARE to FIGHT BACK, WE WILL DESTROY THEM!

Perfect reasoning! The Dream. Remember, the most important thing in the universe is to Have a Dream, and then Live That Dream. It trumps everything else. And Zionism trumps compassion, certainly. Of what use is compassion? People are being killed every day. Why pick on Israel? What did they do wrong? Have they no rights, in your view, to defend themselves?

So killing 300 Palestinians from the air is simply Israel's way of stopping what had become a sort of stone age "Offensive" from Hamas, throwing rockets and grenades into Sacred Israeli Territory by not Palestinians, not People, but... Terrorists.

Ah, yes, Terrorists! Notice that Israelis frequently refer to any Palestinian as a Terrorist. And they really believe it. So what is terror? It's an emotion. And why did Palestinians resort to terror? Because they had nothing else. You take a people without an army, without half-decent weaponry, without a country, without much in the way of land, many of them homeless or crowded several-families into a home so as not to be technically homeless, and then slaughter them from the air. Gee, it sure looks bad. But the important point to remember is to BLAME THE PEOPLE. BLAME THE PALESTINIANS. BLAME, ABOVE ALL, HAMAS.

You see, Israel is not responsible for anything it does. Everything it could possibly think to do is absolutely justified. It was first justified by the Holocaust. Now it is justifiable by the Palestinian Resistance. How dare those uppity niggers rise up in rebellion? After all, they ain't got the right DNA. If they did, we might have to leave them alone. In fact, if they had the right DNA, they would be sympathetic. How do you make people sympathetic to Israel? By showing your humanity. Too bad that's not the tactic du jour in right-wing neocon-run Israel...

Or am I insane? Yes, all the world is insane, and only Israel and the U.S., aka Israel's nana, are sane. They are sane because they are in power. But if they were not in power, they, too, would be despised. So power is just a way to not be despised.

But I really hate to believe there is no hope to get to the Israeli heart or its people. Is it true, the neocon idea that only terror fights terror? What do Gazans feel when their children are killed from the air? Happiness?

And how many Israelis were killed by Hamas in the rocket-firing binge that brought down on their heads this horrific overkill of retaliation? How many? 300? Let's see:

Israeli sources said more than 21 rockets and mortar shells landed on Western Negev. There were no reports of casualties.

Oh, and there is another total disaster in the way of Israeli "interpretation of facts." There is no distinction made between Hamas policemen and Hamas "militants." What the hell kind of security or peace do you expect if people cannot have policemen? What does it mean to kill police? So if they were Hamas? What other political party is there, pray tell? Calling them terrorists does not make them terrorists. They were protecting schoolchildren. But of course, who can protect schoolchildren from Israel? Israel fights from the air with supersonic jets against folks with primitive, ineffective weapons.

Yes, I can see they were in imminent danger. What a sense of balance!

Am I not Human? Blog Campaign: The Untouchables in India

Although this story is about one of the most aggregious forms of human-against-human abuse ingrained into a long-established social system, it also brings one of the most moving triumphs over such oppression.

Oppression and discrimination are almost set in stone, it seems, for the lowest group in the Hindu caste system in India, the Untouchables. Considered as if less than human, even though such caste discrimination is now illegal in India (per the Untouchability Act of 1955), their plight is unimaginable in every way. From simple things like being able to obtain water from a well - they are considered to "unclean" and cannot touch the pump, but must wait until a higher caste woman takes pity on them to pump water for them - to social punishment for success - such as happened to a leatherworker whose business and financial success led to his family being beaten, his home burned down, and tractor stolen by a gang from a higher caste for "rising above" - it is really the human soul and dignity that they aim to destroy. The reality of this caste system is so horrific as to be almost unfathomable.

To be born a Hindu in India is to enter the caste system, one of the world's longest surviving forms of social stratification. Embedded in Indian culture for the past 1,500 years, the caste system follows a basic precept: All men are created unequal. The ranks in Hindu society come from a legend in which the main groupings, or varnas, emerge from a primordial being. From the mouth come the Brahmans—the priests and teachers. From the arms come the Kshatriyas—the rulers and soldiers. From the thighs come the Vaisyas—merchants and traders. From the feet come the Sudras—laborers. Each varna in turn contains hundreds of hereditary castes and subcastes with their own pecking orders.

A fifth group describes the people who are achuta, or untouchable. The primordial being does not claim them. Untouchables are outcasts—people considered too impure, too polluted, to rank as worthy beings. Prejudice defines their lives, particularly in the rural areas, where nearly three-quarters of India's people live. Untouchables are shunned, insulted, banned from temples and higher caste homes, made to eat and drink from separate utensils in public places, and, in extreme but not uncommon cases, are raped, burned, lynched, and gunned down.

They are also called "Dalit":

Dalit, a term that has become synonymous with Untouchable, is the name that many Untouchables, especially politically aware individuals, have chosen for themselves. The name means "oppressed" and highlights the persecution and discrimination India's 160 million Untouchables face regularly. First used in the context of caste oppression in the 19th century, it was popularized in the 1970s by Untouchable writers and members of the revolutionary Dalit Panthers (the name was inspired by the Black Panthers of the United States). Dalit has largely come to replace Harijan, the name given to Untouchables by Gandhi, much like the Black Power movement in the United States led to the replacement of the labels colored and Negro with black. For some activists, Dalit is used to refer to all of India's oppressed peoples whether Hindus, Muslims, Christians, tribal minorities, or women.

In 1997, K.R. Narayanan, an Untouchable, was sworn in as President of India, marking progress in the banning of discrimination against Dalits. In cities, that is. But in the rural areas, that prejudice is being largely practiced, due to ignorance and poverty.

One of the most inspiring stories about conquering that discrimination, which shows a path toward fighting oppression and ignorance in the most effective and miraculous way possible - using, of all things, health care - is here - in the story of Untouchable women selected by a group called Jamkhed to be health workers for their respective communities in rural India. Their transformation from outcasts to respected community leaders, performing most of the functions of doctors and to some extent city (or should I say village) planners, from "stones without a soul" to vibrant, life-saving and heroic human beings and role models is truly amazing.

This excerpt lets the miracle-workers speak for themselves:

The real benefits, the women say, cannot be measured in rupees. "When I started, I had no support from anyone, no education, no money," said Sathe. "I was like a stone with no soul. When I came here they gave me shape, life. I learned courage and boldness. I became a human being."
In 2005 Babai Sathe, Untouchable, was elected the sarpanch—village leader—of Jawalke.

(Jawalke is her village.) Even the most heart-rending tragedies can have a transformative, compassionate, uplifting ending - if we work together on it. If India can conquer their long-standing institutionalized oppression, certainly the rest of the world can learn from that, too. But there is much left to be done in India, too, of course. At least this is a start.