Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 Goldstone Report Finds Israeli Military Guilty of War Crimes in Gaza The Independent reports that a United Nations fact-finding inquiry has found that Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza last winter, as did the Palestinian Hamas. The lion's share of blame in the report, however, falls on Israeli forces, which stand accused of planning out a disproportionate use of force, the punishing of a civilian population, and reckless disregard for civilian lives-- all of which are war crimes in international law. The report suggests that some Israeli actions may have gone beyond being mere war crimes to being crimes against humanity. The report will go to the UN Human Rights Commission, which will likely accept it. The findings could in theory drag Israeli officials before the World Court in the Hague, though in practice this outcome is highly unlikely. Both the Israeli government and Hamas rejected the report as biased, which is a pretty good indication that it is even-handed.

...the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.

Mindboggling ignorance, bigotry, racism, and...dare I say it? stupidity! There's a tiny seed of truth, of genuine fear, rage, and hope for the future. A very, very, very TINY seed. The rest of what's on display here? It's a dramatic demonstration of how the Nazi Holocaust could have occurred on everyone's watch.

Mindboggling ignorance, bigotry, racism, and...dare I say it? stupidity! There's a tiny seed of truth, of genuine fear, rage, and hope for the future. A very, very, very TINY seed. The rest of what's on display here? It's a dramatic demonstration of how the Nazi Holocaust could have occurred on everyone's watch. Glenn Beck and FOX News wreak destruction, suffering, and misery on this country--and their audience, having little ability or willingness to think for themselves, find sustenance and solace in that prepackaged propaganda (agit-prop). "Thank G-d for Glenn Beck," they gush. They've been saved.

Thomas Jefferson declared his hope to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country, and rid the world of evil."- ~George W. Bush, quoted by Bob Woodward in "Bush at War"