Blame Harper for the attack on international aid flotilla.

Bullies do what they do because they are addicted to the adrenaline their brain produces when they engage in violence, and to the endorphin surge they get from terrorizing others. It's all about having and using power over others.

Stevie Spiteful and his cadre of goons - Kenney, Baird, Toews - recognize in Netanyahu a rightwing comrade-in-arms familiar with the bully principle. Alison at Creekside gets it:

Netanyahu says Israel has never had a better friend than Canada and thanked Steve today for being "an unwavering friend of Israel."

Too true. Canada was the first country in the world to boycott Gaza for electing Hamas. When Israel bombed Lebanon in 2008 killing 1400, Steve called Israel's actions "measured". A Canadian killed when Israel shelled UN offices went unremarked by our government. We support the Wall at the UN. Peter Kent, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, has more than once stated on his website that "an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada." We have cut off funding to humanitarian groups like Kairos and UNRWA who have been sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, and replaced members on the board of the once independent group Rights and Democracy with pro-Israel hawks.

Those who study the physiological and psychological factors present in subtance abuse and dependance have pointed out the role of the enabler in allowing the problem behaviours to escalate.

Harper is the biggest enabler of the state of Israel's violent apartheid policies and practices.

Who's the terrorist?

Is Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish a terrorist? Is that why his daughters had to die?

Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.

Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:

“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”

Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.

Some more pictures of terrorists from Guerrilla Radio:






































From Da Arab Mcs: Who's the terrorist?

The ugly face of religious and political zealotry

Any moment now, Blob Blogging Wingnut will be making an announcement that feminism and feminists are responsible to blame for this atrocity in Afghanistan.

Because if there is one thing that brings rabid fundamentalist catholic and islamist fanatics together with genocidal religious patriots, it's the way these authoritarian zealots try to evade responsibility for their words and actions by attacking those who challenge the premise of their authority.

Bang, zoom, straight to the moon!

In Michael Ignatieff’s recent mea culpa , not only does he acknowledge that he was wrong about the Iraq invasion but he reveals a humility that has endeared so many Canadian voters — not. Peppering his earlier paragraphs with quotes from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, he faults his error in judgment on the academic’s propensity to view the world through ideas and knowledge rather than simple understanding of reality. This convoluted explanation of the difference between the intellectual and politician serves as some kind of proof that he has rappelled the walls of his ivory tower to embrace the simplicity of thought of the common man. And who better to represent that common man than Ralph Kramden!

“As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us in life and in politics. Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick.”

The “bus driver” has a shrewder grasp of reality because he bumbles along in life and picks up a few “what’s what” by learning from mistakes. You have to wade through some 15 or 16 paragraphs that grapple with the obstacles faced by politicians and the challenges of dealing with Iraq before Ignatieff actually and clearly acknowledges that he was wrong because others were less wrong. Those who were against the Iraq invasion were too common and simple to know they were right!?! How else can we interpret this:

“We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.”

Ignatieff’s so-called apology is pompous and self-serving. In the paragraph that follows, he basically calls those who demonstrated good judgment callous cynics who didn’t suppose the human rights ideals that fueled his own belief that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. His vision and good intentions, like those of Bush and such honourable Iraqi exiles as Ahmed Chalabi, were his failings? Ignatieff and his fellow neo-conservative pundits do owe an apology for defending and boosting the Bush administration’s ridiculous and illegal plans to liberate Iraq by bringing ruin and insecurity to a nation that had not posed any threat to the US or its allies.

Ignatieff might learn a thing or two about the common man by renting The Honeymooners on DVD. Robert Svedi had this to say about the appeal of this television classic:

“Another reason for The Honeymooners long shelf life is that the problems that the Kramden's and the Norton's faced some fifty years ago, are the same problems that still plague people today. Money shortages, being stuck in a dead-end job, housing and relationship issues and the desire to better one's condition are all things that are dealt with on a daily basis for most of the population every day. The Honeymooners allow us to laugh at ourselves while teaching us that the most valuable commodities are really love and friendship.”

Jackie Gleason’s bus driver has more insight into the human condition than this wannabe Prime Minister.

UPDATE: For the sake of political expediency, I thought I would bite my tongue on the LPC's coronation of Ignatieff as the de facto leader of the party. I've expressed my doubts that he would put his personal ambition aside to work for solutions for Canadians, including working within a coalition government should Harper fail to deliver anything but a just and effective budget. But his recent comments with respect to the brutal assault of Gaza by the IDF was just too much to remain silent. My fellow progressive bloggers have been raking Iggy over the coals and provide great insight as to why he is an utter disappointment. Some have suggested I repost this because it is just too damn easy to dismiss this latest pronouncement as just a gaffe when in fact, Ignatieff has been pretty consistent in his views.

Here is a list of some excellent posts about Iggy's "not an occupation" statement worth reading:

• Ignatieff Gets a Huge Pat On The Back - from The National Post

• Gaza: "Big Concentration Camp"

• Israel faces UN war crimes probe

• Not Good Enough

• Ignatieff the Bloody

• Wanker of the day

• An Israeli atrocity

• Oh, Iggy

Cross-posted at Resettle THIS!

Terrorism and terror

Much has been said and written about the events in Gaza. I listen to Radio-Canada and I read news coverage that attempts to balance the overwhelming, initial pro-Israel bias with parsimonious information eked out from Gaza. Progressive Bloggers have been particularly diligent in seeking out alternate news sources and writing about this bloody conflict which has both sides targeting civilian populations. The side with the best weaponry is inflicting the most savage damage as the number of deaths, mutilations and crippling wounds increase every day in Gaza.

Terror: Intense, overpowering fear. Violence committed or threatened by a group to intimidate or coerce a population, as for military or political purposes.

Terrorism: The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. The state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. A terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

Terrorism, 1795, in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798).

"If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror - virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent." (Robespierre, speech in French National Convention, 1794)

General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded in Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823. Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine - earlier it was used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795) - from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973).

How to end this conflict? Fighting terrorism with terrorism appears to be a losing strategy for all sides. There are alternatives, though they rarely receive the attention and the financial support that armed confrontations do. Which is not incidentally a result of the increasingly lucrative weapons industry.

Here's an overview of groups and organizations who are attempting to fight terrorism and violence with information, reason and pacifist means.

Women Against Occupation

Adalah-NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East

Jews Against the Occupation

Feminist Peace Network

Christian Peacemaker Teams