MORE sorrow and dying

February 8, 2009

by Harlan Bennett, PhD

I’ve been away from here for a while, for which I apologize. It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say (when did a red-head EVER not have something to say?), it’s that someone sent me this LOVELY gift about a month ago: A specialized virus, written JUST for me, that ate my registry, part of my BIOS, and was extremely friendly in re-re-repeating its incursions regardless of whatever was done to stop it. I’ve now got so much security on this computer, plus half-daily sweeps of OTHER security measures that I’m astonished that I can get ANYWHERE at all - but it’s worth it for the peace of mind that I have at this point.

Be that as it may - and I hope that I’ve truly seen the last of that nasty virus - I’ve been following the news with a great deal of interest, particularly since the Israelis FINALLY got fed up with being attacked from Gaza and decided to do something proactive about the situation. I’ve been saying ever since the Israeli Government started the Palestinian appeasement process that there was going to be serious bloodshed over that decision, even if it was one that was forced on them by world opinion. While I applaud the Israeli Government’s decision to at least try and find a political solution to the twin problems of Gaza and the West Bank, to say nothing of the basically captive and pretty much helpless Palestinians that reside in those two places, there is a lot of history behind what’s going on now that everybody seems to be ignoring. Following is part of a column that I wrote back in June of 2006.

This is a classic example of the classic and completely cowardly Palestinian human-shield ethic: attacking Israeli civilians while HIDING behind a human shield of Palestinian civilians, betting on past action that the Israelis wouldn’t DARE shoot into a crowd of civilian families; now, the Palestinians are squalling about the civilian Palestinian deaths that are a direct result of Hamas’s terroristic tactics. This hide-behind-the-civilians tactic was a favourite one of Arafat’s; count on the nation being attacked to be very reluctant to shed “collateral” - read civilian - blood, and use these innocents to your greatest advantage by making them into YOUR human shield, while your troops cause all manner of mayhem in relative safety, and, when YOUR bloody tactics are completed, turn back into one of those “peaceful” civilians yourself. It’s a win-win solution for Hamas; the international news media pretty much basically ignores murder and mayhem perpetrated
ON the Israelis by anyone, while any preventive or deterrent acts BY the Israelis is treated as if it were the opening wedge of a war of “ethnic cleansing”.

Just goes to show that Hamas minus Yasser Arafat hasn’t changed one teeny, tiny bit. Same old thugs and thuggery, different name.

What’s the point behind all this? The Palestinian Authority has, for the first time in 60-+ years, an internationally recognized STATE of Palestine, behind a declared international frontier. So, it’s not to get the Israelis to move out, since they already did that over two years ago. Gaza is the first independent Palestinian territory in the history of the world. So, what if anything has been done with it? Not much, and also, not very fast. This rich bounty of reclaimed and fertile, arable land, with free building materials donated from all over the world, is basically still sitting there as it was when the Israelis left. Yes, they tore down the houses and synagogues, but truthfully, that was the only way to force most of the Israeli inhabitants to leave. Most did not want to go, and saw no good reason to give the Palestinians their homes, hospitals, and holy places before the Palestinians gave up the ways and rites of violence (Hamas, in other words)
to deserve this. So, the most important question becomes, simply, this: what are the Palestinians waiting for, and why aren’t they bettering themselves right now?

The answer is both simple and complex: The Palestinians, after 60 years, live with and in the victim/martyr mindset, and aren’t truly interested in either learning how to become, or becoming in fact, a people that, for the most part, teach their children that it is far better, and more fitting, to be a suicide bomber than it is to be a farmer - providing that you don’t kill your co-religionists with those boms, just Jews, Israelis and other people that are not your co-religionists. They teach their daughters that it is their sacred duty to pop out babies every 10 months to become, in their turn, martyrs to the “cause” of Palestinian statehood, and further to teach those children to hate Israel, and her allies, and to try and do ill them all. Did any one of you out there in ReaderLand think that the anti-Semetic ravings of the lunatic who runs Iran were fiction or just sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism? Think again, dear readers. All HE is
doing is articulating what every Islamic country really believes, even those who pretend friendliness towards Israel: death to the Jews/Israelis, drive them ALL into the sea, and take everything that this genocide leaves behind. The Palestinians prefer to be victims; it is their reason and rational for living. After all, if you’re a victim, you get ALL the help that a sane - or even an insane - person could wish for: money, materials, intangible help like favorable loan status, medicines, food, clothing….the list is practically endless.

The Palestinians have embraced this disease, that of victimhood, martyrdom, blood and suffering, and made it a part of their national psyche. They have been offered their own, independent state, not once, but at least three different times. They have, basically, spit on the idea, including the one set forth by President Clinton. They have been given all of Gaza. What is their response? Rocket attacks into peaceful, unarmed Israeli villages, in, mind you, PRE-1967 Israel at that! If you, dear reader, were an Israeli caught in the particular rat-trap, what would YOU do? What can Israel do, except what it’s already doing? They are trying to take out these bases and keep their people safe from harm. We’d do the very same thing if there were missles and mortars being lobbed across our borders with Mexico or Canada - and the civilian population had better be out of there long before the bombs or mortars start falling, lest they, the civilian population, become
casualties themselves, simply be being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Take a good, long, hard look at that wretched, pathetic photos of those poor little Palestinian children, and the other casualties that have been killed and wounded and maimed, and ask yourself the obvious question: just WHO is responsible for the misery and grief of the Palestinians in Gaza? It’s all part of the martyr/victim disease, and the Israelis are, finally, sick and DAMNED tired of being victimized by a group of cowards who have been hiding behind the civilian population of Gaza for years, gambling that the Israelis won’t risk the almost certain and universal condemnation of the rest of the so-called “civilized” world by retaliating against them. After nine days of “surgical” air strikes, Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, bisecting the coastal territory and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas gained momentum.

TV footage showed Israeli troops with night-vision goggles and camouflage face paint marching in single file. Artillery barrages preceded their advance, and they moved through fields and orchards following bomb-sniffing dogs ensuring their routes had not been booby-trapped. The military said troops killed or wounded dozens of militant fighters, but Palestinian medical teams in Gaza, unable to move because of the fighting, could not provide accurate casualty figures. Hamas said only four fighters had been killed. Gaza health officials said around 20 civilians had also died in airstrikes and shelling. They included a 12-year-old girl, five members of the same family and another eight civilians killed by a tank shell in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

In his first public comments since the ground operation was launched, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel could not allow its civilians to continue to be targeted by rockets from Gaza. “This morning I can look every one you in the eyes and say the government did everything before deciding to go ahead with the operation,” he said. The fault for this latest atrocious escalation in the Palestinian/Israeli undeclared war lies squarely with Hamas, which is an organization of thugs in the contemptible style of Yasser Arafat at his worst. Gaza is their main base of operations, and for the Israelis to carry a ground war to them, on turf that Hamas and their “freedom fighters” are far more familiar with, is either stupid or heroic - and I honestly can’t decide which to call it. Whatever else it might be, necessary it certainly is, if the civilian casualties are to be kept to an absolute minimum BY the Israeli troops.

I do know this: Both sides are wrong. Hamas was wrong to think that the Israelis would just fold their hands and continue to allow Hamas and their rockets to gain more and more range, to kill more and more civilians, including innocent and basically helpless children, and Israel was wrong to allow this atrocious, genocidal behaviour to go on as long as it has.

Y’all know what’s the saddest thing about this whole episode? Has anyone besides me noticed that NONE of the international news organizations have bothered to count up the casualties in the ISRAELI civilian population over the course of the last 3 or so years, and weep for them? NAAAAAH, it’s all about the poor, powerless Palestinians, who were stupid enough in 1948 to believe the Arab League when the first attempt to “throw the Jews into the sea” was made. The Palestinians were told that this was only going to take about a week, and then they’d have all the arable land, and the water wells, and the farms and orchards, and the animals ALL to themselves - so run now, and we’ll get you back here in a week.

Pretty good week, eh? It’s only lasted 60+ years.

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Written by Harlan Bennett · Filed Under Misanthropy

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Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.
read more at Mother Jones
How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
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