Mahler's Prodigal Son

The world fiddles whilst Syria burns

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:15:00 +0000

Credited to Paresh Nath, chief cartoonist for India's National Herald.

Hunger strike protest. 55 days and counting......

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Yet another example of Israeli's appalling "behaviour".......... AFP reports on a situation which should highlight, yet again, how Israel flouts international law and humanitarian norms with impunity and, in effect, silence from Western governments.

"A UN envoy called on Israel on Friday to do all it can for the health of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for the past 55 days in protest at his detention without charge.

Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said he "follows with concern reports about the deteriorating conditions" of Khader Adnan, who has been refusing food since December 18 -- longer than any Palestinian prisoner before him, according to Palestinian officials.

Serry said he "calls on the government of Israel to do everything in its power to preserve the health of the prisoner and resolve this case while abiding by all legal obligations under international law."

Early this month, a military court ordered that Adnan be held in administrative detention for four months, although with his condition frail and worsening, he has been held mostly in a string of Israeli hospitals since early January.

On Thursday, he appealed his detention without charge before an Israeli military judge sitting in a special session in hospital, but the court is not expected to rule before Sunday, his lawyer told AFP.

Adnan, who was arrested near the northern West Bank city of Jenin, had served as a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, but Israel has not charged him formally or revealed any evidence against him.

Under Israeli military law, a court can order an individual held for up to six months at a time without charge, although the order can be appealed.

Each renewal must be approved in a new court session, but the renewals theoretically continue indefinitely.

Serry recalled that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had discussed the situation of Palestinian prisoners during his visit to Israel and the occupied territories earlier this month.
Serry said that his office had been following up on the issue, particularly as regards those held without charge.

"Administrative detention... should only be employed in exceptional circumstances, for as short a period as possible and without prejudice to the rights guaranteed to prisoners," the UN envoy said."

Poignant photo worthy winner of 2011 prize

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:13:00 +0000

From PHOTOblog on msnbc.com:

"The international jury of the 55th annual World Press Photo Contest announced Friday that it had selected a picture by Samuel Aranda as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011.

Jurors said the photo of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen captured multiple facets of the "Arab Spring" uprisings across the Middle East last year. It was taken at a field hospital inside a mosque in Sanaa on October 15.

The winning photo was selected from 101,254 images submitted by 5,247 photographers from 124 countries.

Aranda, a freelance photographer from Spain, traveled to Yemen on assignment for The New York Times. In December he gave an interview to the newspaper about the difficulties of working in Yemen—and the warmth of its people.

"What I would really like is for this photo to help the people of Yemen," he told The British Journal of Photography after learning of the award. "I think it's a country that is often forgotten."

Jury chair Aidan Sullivan said: "The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on. We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East."

Obama attacks whistleblowers

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Far from the sort of liberal he painted himself as when campaigning for the presidency - and bear in mind the man is a lawyer and one time law-lecturer - Obama's administration has done more than any other, combined, to prosecute whistle blowers. Peter van Buren, writing on in "In Washington, Fear the Silence, Not the Noise" on TomDispatch provides the background and details about an administration that certainly doesn't want unpalatable facts to see the light of day.

"On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.

The Obama administration has already charged more people -- six -- under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)

Kiriakou, in particular, is accused of giving information about the CIA's torture programs to reporters two years ago. Like the other five whistleblowers, he has been charged under the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act."

Ten Years On: The Torture Memos

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

It might not seem like it, but it is 10 years from when that now infamous Memo was penned relating to the parameters to the torture of prisoners in the hands of the Americans. The Memo is a shameful document in every respect. More shameful still is that no one has been pursued in connection with it or made accountable for what clearly an illegal course of action. Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, considers the Memo and where things are at now.

"On February 7, 2002 -- ten years ago to the day, tomorrow -- President George W. Bush signed a brief memorandum titled "Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees." The caption was a cruel irony, an Orwellian bit of business, because what the memo authorized and directed was the formal abandonment of America's commitment to key provisions of the Geneva Convention. This was the day, a milestone on the road to Abu Ghraib: that marked our descent into torture -- the day, many would still say, that we lost part of our soul.

Drafted by men like John Yoo, and pushed along by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the February 7 memo was sent to all of the key players of the Bush Administration involved in the early days of the War on Terror. All the architects and functionaries who would play a role in one of the darker moments in American legal history were in on it. Vice President Dick Cheney. Attorney General John Aschroft. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld. CIA Director George Tenet. David Addington. They all got the note. And then they acted upon it.

When we talk today of the "torture memos," most of us think about the later memoranda, like the infamous "Bybee Memo" of August 1, 2002, which authorized the use of torture against terror law detainees. But those later pronouncements of policy, in one way or another, were all based upon the perversion of law and logic contained in the February 7 memo. Once America crossed the line 10 years ago, the memoranda that followed, to a large extent, were merely evidence of the grinding gears of bureaucracy trying to justify itself.

There will likely be other opportunities in 2012 to look back at some of those other memos. Perhaps Jay S. Bybee himself, inexplicably rewarded for his role in the scandal by getting a federal judgeship, will say something. Let's leave that for the dog days of August. Today is a day instead to look at one of the first of these odious documents. It is a day to note how simple and easy it was, it still is, for political leadership to make monumental decisions on our behalf without really telling us -- or by simply telling us something that isn't true.

This is not a nostalgic indictment of the Bush Administration's approach to the detainees. Ten years later, the topic is still timely. Right now, another administration is justifying another extraordinary departure from American legal policy-- the assassination of U.S. citizens abroad, with drone strikes, in a secret manner, without affording those citizens any due process. Trust us, the Bush folks said, when it comes to treatment of detainees. Trust us, the Obama White House says, now when it comes to which citizens we are entitled to kill without trial."

A tarnished Apple

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:30:00 +0000

As we witness Apple effectively ward off much of its competition and the brand having such a lustre and huge following worldwide, recent revelations relating to the conditions under which the products are manufactured are disturbing. The New York Times recently carried a piece but now AlterNet has followed up.

"Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The buzz about Apple’s sordid business practices is courtesy of the New York Times series on the “iEconomy. In some ways it’s well reported but adds little new to what critics of the Taiwan-based Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, have been saying for years. The series' biggest impact may be discomfiting Apple fanatics who as they read the articles realize that the iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.

It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long “internships” in Foxconn’s mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, “the Chinese hell factory,” treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

To supply enough employees for Foxconn, the 60th largest corporation globally, government officials are serving as lead recruiters at the cost of pushing teenage students into harsh work environments. The scale is astonishing with the Henan provincial government having announced in both 2010 and 2011 that it would send 100,000 vocational and university students to work at Foxconn, according to SACOM.

Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, told AlterNet that “Foxconn is conspiring with government officials and universities in China to run what may be the world's single largest internship program – and one of the most exploitative. Students at vocational schools – including those whose studies have nothing to do with consumer electronics – are literally forced to move far from home to work for Foxconn, threatened that otherwise they won't be allowed to graduate. Assembling our iPhones and Kindles for meager wages, they work under the same conditions, or worse, as other workers in the Foxconn sweatshops.”

The state involvement shows Foxconn and Apple depend on tax breaks, repression of labor, subsidies and Chinese government aid, including housing, infrastructure, transportation and recruitment, to fatten their corporate treasuries. As the students function as seasonal employees to meet increased demand for new product rollouts, Apple is directly dependent on forced labor."

War with Iran

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:30:00 +0000

As there are voices, certainly in some quarters, increasingly calling for an attack on Iran - who's to benefit from that is never articulated - one Newsweek columnist (republished on The Daily Beast)in "The Case for Bombing Iran Shows Hawks Wrong All Over Again" calls for an examination of the facts and concludes:

"I don’t want a nuclear-armed Iran any more than Ferguson does. But I also don’t want to be jollied into another war, having just helped as a U.S. taxpayer to spend more than $1 trillion on the biggest fiasco in our foreign-policy history that killed tens of thousands and displaced countless others and brought us a rather long list of problems, on assurances like these. We cannot foreclose the possibility that a strike against Iran might one day be defensible or necessary. But we should be acknowledging that prospect humbly, and with awareness of the certain fact that it will unleash forces that we can’t anticipate or contain, which is a far different thing from a blithe call from Harvard Yard for “creative destruction.” You’d think if our war caucus had learned anything in the past decade, they’d have learned that."

French parents: Superior to others?

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:20:00 +0000

Now here is a piece, somewhat surprisingly from The Wall Street Journal, almost certain to generate controversy and a wee bit of French bashing. The thesis of the article?......

"While Americans fret over modern parenthood, the French are raising happy, well-behaved children without all the anxiety. Pamela Druckerman on the Gallic secrets for avoiding tantrums, teaching patience and saying 'non' with authority".

The author writes:

"I'm hardly the first to point out that middle-class America has a parenting problem. This problem has been painstakingly diagnosed, critiqued and named: overparenting, hyperparenting, helicopter parenting, and my personal favorite, the kindergarchy. Nobody seems to like the relentless, unhappy pace of American parenting, least of all parents themselves.

Of course, the French have all kinds of public services that help to make having kids more appealing and less stressful. Parents don't have to pay for preschool, worry about health insurance or save for college. Many get monthly cash allotments—wired directly into their bank accounts—just for having kids."

Read the complete piece, here - and vent your spleen, let off steam against the French....or whatever!

The real Greek tragedy

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:08:00 +0000

Credited to Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

So, who is this Rick Santorum?

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Now that the seemingly written-off Rick Satorum remains in contention as the GOP's candidate in this year's American presidential election, who is he? The New Yorker has a pithy and perhaps none-too-flattering pen-portrait in "The Meaning of Rick: Santorum Could Be for Real".

"To educated liberals of almost any description, Santorum is an abomination. It’s not just that he’s a pro-life, anti-gay, anti-contraception Roman Catholic of the most retrogressive and diehard Opus Dei variety. It’s his entire persona. With his seven kids, his Jaycee fashion code, his nineteen-seventies colonial MacMansion in northern Virginia, his irony bypass, he seems to delight in outraging self-styled urban sophisticates: the sort of folks who buy organic milk, watch The Daily Show, and read the New York Times (and The New Yorker, of course).

But it’s precisely his in-your-face, street-corner conservatism that makes Santorum potentially a strong candidate."

Syria: The West doesn't get it

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:32:00 +0000

Robert Fisk, yet again, writing his latest op-ed piece "From Washington this looks like Syria's 'Benghazi moment'. But not from here" for The Independent, is on the money when he details how the West doesn't understand the upheavals in the Middle East, especially as the West lumps each country's issues into effectively all being the same. And then there is the hypocrisy of those in the West, especially La Clinton as Fisk likes to call her.

"President Bashar al-Assad is not about to go. Not yet. Not, maybe, for quite a long time. Newspapers in the Middle East are filled with stories about whether or not this is Assad's "Benghazi moment" – these reports are almost invariably written from Washington or London or Paris – but few in the region understand how we Westerners can get it so wrong. The old saw has to be repeated and repeated: Egypt was not Tunisia; Bahrain was not Egypt; Yemen was not Bahrain; Libya was not Yemen. And Syria is very definitely not Libya.

It's not difficult to see how the opposite plays in the West. The barrage of horrifying Facebook images from Homs, and statements from the "Free Syrian Army", and the huffing of La Clinton and the amazement that Russia can be so blind to the suffering of Syrians – as if America was anything but blind to the suffering of Palestinians when, say, more than 1,300 were killed in Israel's onslaught on Gaza – doesn't gel with reality on the ground. Why should the Russians care about Homs? Did they care about the dead of Chechnya?

Look at it the other way round. Yes, we all know that Syria's intelligence service has committed human rights abuses. They did that in Lebanon. Yes, we all know this is a regime in Damascus, not an elected government. Yes, we all know about corruption. Yes, we watched the UN's humiliation at the weekend – although why La Clinton should expect the Russians to click their heels after the "no-fly zone" in Libya turned into "regime change" is a bit of a mystery."

US Says Russia/China UN Veto "Disgusting", "Shameful", "Deplorable", "a Travesty" . . . Really?"

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Read this piece on Information Clearing House (from the Arab Studies Institute) and reflect on the large number of US vetoes at the UN over the years since 1972 - and the hypocrisy of the US and others in slamming Russia and China for their vetoes at the UN the other day in relation to Syria.

A sample:

"1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.

1973 Affirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.

1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.

1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.

1976 Affirms the rights of the Palestinians.

1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure UN decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security.

1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.

1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.

1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.

1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa.

1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa."

Continue reading here.

Salute to man who speaks the truth about Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Politicians, especially American ones, speak in positive terms about what is happening in Afghanistan. What emerges from time to time from the military "on the ground" is that things aren't all that rosy at all. Now, a US Army officer has given a grim assessment of the situation in Afghanistan.

"A US Army officer has accused the American military of painting a misleading picture of progress in the war in Afghanistan while glossing over the Kabul government's many failings.
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis deliberately broke ranks with the official portrayal of the war after spending a year in the country, issuing a grim assessment and accusing his superiors of covering up the harsh realities that plague the mission.

"What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by US military leaders about conditions on the ground," Davis wrote in an article published in Armed Forces Journal, a private newspaper not affiliated with the Pentagon.

"Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level," he wrote under the headline, "Truth, Lies And Afghanistan: How military leaders have let us down."

Local Afghan government officials are failing to serve the Afghan population and their security forces are reluctant to fight insurgents or are colluding with the Taliban, he wrote.

"How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by US senior leaders in Afghanistan?" he said in his article.

Davis has also reportedly shared his pessimistic view with some members of Congress and written a classified version of his article for the Defense Department, a highly unusual move that he expects will anger his commanders and short-circuit his professional career.
"I'm going to get nuked," he was quoted as saying by the New York Times. "

An endless stream of moolah

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:30:00 +0000

Credited to Patrick Chappatte, IHT

Gingrich demonises the dead

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:36:00 +0000

Insidious is the word which immediately comes to mind when one reads what Gingrich is saying in referring to the now long dead Saul Alinsky. Who? you may well ask. Read this piece by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship on CommonDreams to see how Gingrich "conjures" and beats up prejudice and bigotry.

"And now, a word about a good American being demonized, despite being long dead. Saul Alinsky is not around to defend himself, but that hasn’t kept Newt Gingrich from using his name to whip up the froth and frenzy of his followers, whose ignorance of the man is no deterrence to their eagerness, at Gingrich’s behest, to tar and feather him posthumously.

In his speeches, Gingrich pounds away at variations on the theme like the piano player in a cheap Western saloon. He declares, “The centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky,” or, “I believe in the Constitution, I believe in the Federalist Papers. Obama believes in Saul Alinsky and secular European socialist bureaucracy.”

It’s all quite clever and insidious, a classic lesson in how to slander someone who cannot answer from the grave, reminiscent of the tactics Gingrich used in those GOPAC memos back in 1996, when he suggested buzz words and phrases to demonize opponents: corrupt, decay, pathetic, permissive attitude, self-serving, and, of course, radical.

In the case of Saul Alinsky, most of the crowd knows nothing about the target except that they’re supposed to hate him. And why not? There’s the strange foreign name – obviously an alien. One of them. And a socialist at that. What’s a socialist? Don’t know — but Obama’s one, isn’t he? Barack Hussein Obama, Saul Alinsky – bingo! Two peas in a pod, and a sinister, subversive pod at that."

So, who is this Alinsky guy? Read on here.

India tackles Google

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:29:00 +0000

We may not always like Google, all it represents or its ways in some countries - that is, complying to strictures on its availability or co-operating with the authorities - but now it is under attack in, of all places, India. Associated Press reports:

"Google India has removed web pages deemed offensive to Indian political and religious leaders to comply with a court case that has raised censorship fears in the world's largest democracy, media reported Monday.

The action follows weeks of intense government pressure for 22 Internet giants to remove photographs, videos or text considered "anti-religious" or "anti-social."

A New Delhi court Monday gave Facebook, Google, YouTube and Blogspot and the other sites two weeks to present further plans for policing their networks, according to the Press Trust of India.

For India's more than 100 million Internet users, the government says, U.S. Internet standards are not acceptable.

The case highlights the difficulty India faces in balancing conservative religious and political sentiments with its hope that freewheeling Internet discourse and technology will help spur the economy and boost living standards for its 1.2 billion people."

The map says it all

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

Despite the continuing talk about a 2 State solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, one has to only look at the maps below to see how the Israelis have eaten into the West Bank that it just won't be possible for the Palestinians to have a country of their own which isn't akin to a giant Swiss cheese.

Tariq Shadid is a Palestinian surgeon living in the Middle East, and has written numerous essays about the Palestinian issue over the years. He contributed a article to PalestineChronicle.com - which can be read here.

What worth the UN?

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:30:00 +0000

The disgraceful veto exercised by Russia and China on the proposed UN Security Council resolution on Syria - to be borne in mind put up by the Arab League - again shines the spotlight on the effectiveness of the UN, and in particular the Security Council. It's a subject taken up by Stephen Walt, professor of international law at Harvard, on his blog on FP.

"There are a number of reasons why the U.N. effort has failed thus far, but part of the blame lies with the liberal interventionists who abused the Security Council's mandate during last year's intervention in Libya.

You'll recall that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized military action in Libya to protect civilians. The resolution was directly inspired by the fear that Qaddafi loyalists laying siege to the rebel town of Benghazi were about to conduct some sort of massacre there. In response, Res. 1973 authorized member states "take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." France, the United States and other foreign powers quickly went beyond this mandate, using airpower and other forms of assistance to help the rebels defeat Muammar Qaddafi's forces and oust him from power.

One can argue that this was the right course of action anyway, because getting rid of a thug like Qaddafi was worth it. That's a debate for another day, although I would note in passing that post-Qaddafi Libya remains deeply troubled and the collapse of the regime seems to be fueling conflicts elsewhere. But what if the Libyan precedent is one of the reasons why Russia and China aren't playing ball today? They supported Resolution 1973 back in 2011, and then watched NATO and a few others make a mockery of multilateralism in the quest to topple Qaddafi. The Syrian tragedy is pay-back time, and neither Beijing nor Moscow want to be party to another effort at Western-sponsored "regime change." It is hardly surprising that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin condemned the failed resolution on precisely these grounds. In short, our high-handed manipulation of the SC process in the case of Libya may have made it harder to gain a consensus on Syria, which is arguably a far more important and dangerous situation.

Don't get me wrong: I shed no tears for Qaddafi or his family and I'd be delighted to see Bashar al-Assad gone in Syria. The Libya precedent is not the only reason why China and Russia dug in their heels, and I think their decision to veto the resolution could be costly for them. But it is both ironic and tragic that some of the most enthusiastic defenders of multilateralism and international law seem all too willing to ignore them when they get in the way of other things they want to do, however laudable the latter goal might be. But a commitment to multilateralism and international law is not something you can invoke when it suits you and ignore when it doesn't, at least not without paying a price. Powerful states like the United States can (and do) act with impunity on occasion, but they shouldn't be surprised when such behavior backfires later on."

US Drones - and the death of "innocent" civilians

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:13:00 +0000

Obama may have down-played the killing by drones now used extensively by the USA over quite a number of countries - has anyone at the White House and Pentagon heard about the sovereignty of nations? - but a report put out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism concludes that many civilians, including those attending funerals and rescuers, have been killed by drones,

"The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’

Speaking publicly for the first time on the controversial CIA drone strikes, Obama claimed last week they are used strictly to target terrorists, rejecting what he called ‘this perception we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly’.

‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties’, he told a questioner at an on-line forum. ‘This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans’.

But research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama."

Total reported killed: 2,383 - 3,019
Civilians reported killed: 464 - 815
Children reported killed: 175
Total reported injured: 1,149-1,241
Total strikes: 312
Obama strikes: 260

Freezing in Europe! Now what do the climate sceptics have to say

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:53:00 +0000

Europe is in the grip of absolutely freezing weather. In some eastern European countries the temperatures have gone down to -35C. Add to the cold the sad fact of something like 250 people having died in the bitter cold. The cause for all of this? The Independent reports that scientists say climate change is the cause. And what do the sceptics say now?

"The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.

A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week.

The death toll from Arctic blast has been particularly severe in the Ukraine, where many of the dead have been people sleeping on the streets. Heating and food tents have been set up to ease their hardship. In Romania 24 people are known to have died and 17 in Poland.

A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.

In particular, the loss of Arctic sea ice could be influencing the development of high-pressure weather systems over northern Russia, which bring very cold winds from the Arctic and Siberia to Western Europe and the British Isles, the scientists believe. An intense anticyclone over north-west Russia is behind the bitterly cold easterly winds that have swept across Europe and some climate scientists say the lack of Arctic sea ice brought about by global warming is responsible.

"The current weather pattern fits earlier predictions of computer models for how the atmosphere responds to the loss of sea ice due to global warming," said Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "The ice-free areas of the ocean act like a heater as the water is warmer than the Arctic air above it. This favours the formation of a high-pressure system near the Barents Sea, which steers cold air into Europe."

Utter madness

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:30:00 +0000

As if America isn't confronted with enough issues from the ready availability of firearms, now an attempt to increase access to them in the State of Virginia - believe it or not, doing away of the restriction of acquiring one gun per month. Mad!

"Virginia is poised to lift a 19-year-old limit on handgun purchases, with the Republican-controlled state Senate expected to do away with the one-gun-per-month cap in a final vote Friday.

With the purchase limit likely headed for extinction, Richmond appears to have grown friendlier to gun rights since Republicans took control of the evenly divided Senate last month, pro-gun and gun-control activists agree.

This week, the Senate passed a bill prohibiting localities from requiring that people seeking concealed handgun permits submit fingerprints as part of their applications. The House passed a bill allowing government employees to store guns and ammunition in personal cars parked in workplace lots, including those at child-care centers and parks."

Romney: Ignorance on show

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:00:00 +0000

As a non-American one can only shake one's head that the best the Republican Party can apparently do is put up 2 possible candidates for the presidential election later this year. Gingrich, a knave and untrustworthy motor-mouth at best! And Romney- someone whose statements have clearly shown how much he is out of touch with Main St.

Romney's ignorance is taken up by Charles M. Blow in his op-ed piece "Romney, the Rich and the Rest" in The New York Times. After going through the various statements (well worth reading and reflecting on) he concludes his piece with some sobering facts on the American scene.

"But perhaps the most pernicious part of his statement was the underestimating of the rich and poor and the elasticized expansion of the term “middle income” or middle class. Romney suggests that 95 percent of Americans are in this group. Not true.

According to the Census Bureau, the official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent.

And that’s the income poor. It doesn’t even count the “asset poor.” A report issued this week by the Corporation for Enterprise Development found that 27 percent of U.S. households live in “asset poverty.” According to the report, “These families do not have the savings or other assets to cover basic expenses (equivalent to what could be purchased with a poverty level income) for three months if a layoff or other emergency leads to loss of income.”

On the other hand, the definition of “rich” is more nebulous. However, according to a December Gallup report, Americans set the rich threshold at $150,000 in annual income. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau 8.4 percent of households had an income of $150,000 or more in 2010.

So at the very least, nearly a fourth of all Americans are either poor or rich.

That would leave about three-fourths somewhere in the middle, but not all middle class. Tricking the poor to believe they’re in it, and allowing the wealthy to hide in it, is one of the great modern political deceptions and how we’ve arrived at our current predicament.

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last month, nearly a fifth of families making less than $15,000 said that they were middle class and nearly two-fifths of those making more than $100,000 said that they were middle class.

Romney is not only cold and clumsy, he’s disastrously out of touch, and when talking about real people, out of sorts. If only he had a heart, and if only that heart was connected to his brain."

By-passing censorship

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

From Abbey Zimet at CommonDreams:

"Children's art from Gaza - aimed at helping heal Palestinian kids traumatized by Operation Cast Lead, but censored at the last minute by the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, Ca. after pressure from Jewish groups - is now available in a searing book, "A Child's View from Gaza." Born largely of the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA)'s “Let the Children Play and Heal,” project, the book features drawings from kids who survived the Israeli assault that killed 1,400 people, but still see its planes and guns and bodies wherever they look. With a moving, truth-telling forward from Alice Walker. Buy this book, help these kids.

From Alice Walker's forward:

"I realize it's hard for grownups to accept that we've had a hand in making a small child armless, legless, eyeless. We want to keep thinking Americans are generous, fun-loving, baseball-crazed folks who draw the line, collectively, at child abuse. At child murder. That image was never true, and it certainly isn't now....Each child who sees the art should be given some background about war. Any war. For it is war that humanity must outgrow, wherever it arises...We can encourage ourselves, and our children, never to be afraid to feel. No one dies from compassion, is a mantra they might like. Empathy is a wave that need never be stopped. If our children catch this wave, from the ocean of tears shed by Palestinian children, they might have a future in a more stable and saner world."

Hungary: An "interesting" member of the EU

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:30:00 +0000

How things are shaping up in EU member, Hungary, ought to give pause for thought to its fellow-members. A democracy? Hardly, as the country takes a very sharp turn to the Right.

"Though largely ignored by the national media, Hungary's right-wing extremist Jobbik party operates within a surprisingly well-developed and self-sustained online universe. What's more, recent studies have found that the party's supporters aren't the "losers" that many experts thought they were.

The leader of Hungary's right-wing extremists rarely expresses himself so clearly. Speaking before a crowd of a few thousand supporters in Budapest's Sportmax complex on Saturday, Jan. 21, Gábor Vona announced the end of liberal democracy in the world. In the speech traditionally delivered before party members in January, the 33-year-old politician demanded "no compromising" either with or as part of the ruling political system, calling instead for "fighting, fighting and still more fighting." "We are not communists, fascists or National Socialists," Vona said. "But -- and this is important for everyone to understand very clearly -- we are also not democrats!"

Vona's words were met with highly enthusiastic applause. It was the first time that the head of the right-wing Jobbik party ("The Better") -- which received just under 17 percent of the vote during elections in April 2010 -- had made such a crystal-clear rejection of democracy. The speech was only given slender and primarily disinterested coverage in the Hungarian media. Elöd Novák, a deputy chairman of the party, claimed that this probably had more to do with organizational priorities rather than a conscious effort to boycott reporting on the event. "We are the second-strongest party in Hungary," he said, "but we hardly play any role in the traditional media."

Foot in Mouth Personified!

noreply@blogger.com (Gustav) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Credited to Steve Benson