Life goes on...

"When I left home this morning, the streets were full of people who were going to work and schools with full determination as if there were no clashes and bombs an hour earlier"
-Baghdad Treasure post BOOOM Tuesday, May 23, 2006
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Some of today's news stories that I feel should be read...
(not necessarily by you of course, but...)

Iraq doctor brings evidence of US napalm at Fallujah
"EVIDENCE to support controversial claims that napalm has been used by US forces in Iraq has been brought to Australia by an Iraqi doctor."
So that's where the WMDs were! With the Americans!

Dozens Killed In Wave Of Bombings
The post-"victory" security situation in Iraq isn't getting any better.
So far the American Invasion of Iraq has lead to the deaths of
FOURTY THOUSAND PEOPLE ...

Why all is quiet on the American home front
...yet people don't seem like they really care.


The state of the world's human rights
Report by Amnesty International, regarding a topic important to those of us who believe that Torture is Wrong.

Israel turns blind eye to attacks on Palestinians:
AFP story on the report from Amnesty International
(I think perhaps they should stress Israeli attacks on Palestinians, rather than attacks Israel "turns a blind eye" to, but who am I to say...)

Amnesty concerns over Shannon Airport use
RTE story (from Ireland) about the CIA using Shannon Airport to transport detainees to the "secret detention facilities" brought to light by the International Committee of the Red Cross. This story is also regarding today's Amnesty International report.

...also...

Haniya offers long-term truce in exchange for pullout
Hamas offers to recognize the State of Israel, and also offers a long term Truce. Sources include Israeli Ha'aretz daily news, and the story is brought to you by Monsters and Critics (a news aggregate favorite of mine)

"Review of the Arab press - May 22"
from Monsters and Critics News

(My personal favorite) A noise that should be dispelled
China's rebuttal to recent American Media reports about "China's technological threat"

Russia, China discuss bilateral cooperation and within SCO
from ITAR-TASS, Moscow--- Discusses the SCO, which I have previously mentioned in this blog, including the Conspicuously absent entry and other linked entries.
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The propaganda Blitz is on against Iran now. I wonder how many months it will be before the War Drums are beating so loud that we can't hear ourselves think.

Just today, the AP ran a story that I came across in the Bucharest Daily News regarding the fact that some Israeli lawmakers are planning on filing a lawsuit against the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which claims, and I am not making this up:

A group of Israeli lawmakers and former diplomats plan to sue Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accusing him of conspiring to commit genocide, one of those involved said yesterday.
Ahmadinejad recently said Israel should be wiped off the map and dismissed the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth."
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said Ahmadinejad's comments violate the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, to which Iran is a signatory.

Ok, perhaps there is no common sense in the world, but can I possibly be the only person who finds it ludicrous that the Iranian president's comments are a violation of the Geneva Conventions according to Israel, but their genocidal slaughter of tens of thousands of Palistinians are not?!?!

Today's report by Amnesty International about their data gathered for 2005 touches on this subject:

Killings and attacks by the [Israeli] army:
Some 190 Palestinians, including around 50 children, were killed by the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories. Many were killed unlawfully, in deliberate and reckless shootings, shelling and air strikes in densely populated residential areas, or as a result of excessive use of force. Some were extrajudicially executed and others died in armed clashes with Israeli soldiers. Hundreds of others were injured.
Seven children aged between 10 and 17 were killed and five others seriously wounded in an Israeli air strike as they were picking strawberries in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya on 4 January. Those killed included six members of the Ghaben family – Rajah, Jaber, Mahmoud, Bassam, Hani and Mohammed – and Jibril al-Kaseeh.
On 27 October, Karam Mohammed Abu Naji, 14, Salah Said Abu Naji, 15, and Rami Riyad Assaf, 17, were killed when the Israeli army launched an air strike on a car travelling near the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. As well as the three child bystanders, all four people in the car were killed. Nineteen other bystanders, including seven children, were injured. Two members of a Palestinian armed group were believed to be the intended target.
On 3 November, 12-year-old Ahmed al-Khatib was fatally wounded by Israeli soldiers during a raid in Jenin refugee camp and died three days later. The army stated that he had been playing with a toy gun and soldiers had mistaken him for a gunman.


This is from the Human Rights Watch report on
Human Rights Issues in Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories
While the total number of Israeli and Palestinian casualties fell in 2005 following the February ceasefire, the overall human rights situation in Israel and the OPT remained grave. Since the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000, Israel has killed nearly three thousand Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, including more than six hundred children. During the same period, Palestinian fighters have killed more than nine hundred Israelis inside Israel and in the OPT. Most of those killed on both sides were civilians.

it continues...

In July 2005, the Israeli Knesset approved legislation that effectively bars Palestinians from the OPT from suing Israel for death, injury or damages caused by Israeli security agents. The amendment to the Civil Wrongs (Liability of State) Law, 5712-1952 further strips Palestinians of an effective remedy for serious human rights abuses, which is required under international human rights law. The Knesset passed the bill at a time when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had criminally investigated fewer than ten percent of the Palestinian civilian deaths since September 2000, and have convicted only a handful of IDF soldiers for causing death or injury. In August, an Israeli court handed down an eight year sentence, by far the longest of the past five years, to the soldier found responsible for lethally shooting Briton Tom Hurndall in Gaza in 2002. The IDF maintains the policy that killings of Palestinians will be investigated only under “exceptional circumstances,” which neither the IDF nor the government has ever defined. The Israeli authorities’ failure to bring perpetrators to justice fosters a culture of impunity.

(By the way, these reports only cover published reports of civilian casualties [which can be limited in their scope]. They do not cover those dying from malnutrition or other aspects of this Humanitarian catastrophe.)

All of these reports are limited to the PAST YEAR.
This has been going on since 1967.
Yet somehow, the Iranian president saying Israel should be "wiped off the map" and asserting that the Holocost could be a "myth" somehow constitutes the War Crime. The Iranian President explained himself a small bit in his letter to the U.S. president:
"I am sure you know how – and at what cost – Israel was established:
-Many thousands were killed in the process.
-Millions of indigenous people were made refugees.
-Hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland, olive plantations, townsand villages were destroyed.
This tragedy is not exclusive to the time of establishment; unfortunately it has been ongoing for sixty years now. A regime has been established which does not show mercy even to kids, destroys houses while the occupants are still in them, announces beforehand its list and plans to assassinate Palestinian figures, and keeps thousands of Palestinians in prison. Such a phenomenon is unique – or at the very least extremely rare – in recent memory.Another big question asked by the people is “why is this regime being supported?” "

He also notes:
Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them. Throughout history many countries have been occupied, but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people, is a new phenomenon that is exclusive to our times. Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel.

His rhetoric regarding Israel being "wiped off the map" is actually quite literal, not a genocidal threat, at least according to my (hopefully logical and not emotionally-based) interpretation of the situation: the state of Israel was an artificial creation that does not belong, and as such should be removed.

I am not saying that I agree with his views. I am only saying that presenting such a viewpoint is not Genocide (especially when compared with the last 50 years of systematic Palestinian slaughter at the hands of Israel).

But, such an accusation fits perfectly with the current war that's being waged. Yes folks, the west is at war (again!). It's not a terror war, it's not an imperialist war (although the latter exists and the former is the nom-de-guerre for a current policy of repression and oppression):
It's a Propaganda War.

And it's going on all around us.

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See also,
Wikipedia Entry regarding Israel and War Crimes
(not "verified as objective," but substantiated nonetheless)