The bodies of the innocents of Newtown Conn. are barely cold but that has not stopped the progressive secularists from turning the slaughter of a madman into an attack on the second amendment. The fact should not be lost that many of these howling for the banning of guns from sane, law biding people are also the ones screaming the loudest for stopping the NYPD from using "stop and frisk" to take illegal guns from criminals. That they in this time of national shock, should choose to turn this horror not into just another good crisis that should not be wasted but into a tragedy that should not be wasted, is disgusting and more evidence that they remain at the root of a national calamity rooted in the exile of faith and values from our everyday lives.
Over the last 40 years American has fundamentally transformed itself into a secular society. This has been done in the name of enlightenment and has less to do with issues of social or economic justice than it does of placing justice in a context devoid of spirituality and time honored moral values for ideological and political reasons.
Today religion, plays little or no part in the lives of over 40% of Americans. The "Golden Rule" and the Ten Commandments are either ignored or ridiculed by many based on the belief that they are quaint anachronisms from an unenlightened superstitious time. The fact that they can still exist in a secular context with as much validity and importance as they can in a religious one, is lost or distorted by those who want to replace absolute moral beliefs with moral relativism.
By rejecting these moral absolutes, society creates a moral vacuum where good and evil are banished as existential realities. Explanations of horrific behaviors are then conjured up as the result of societal pressures resulting in everyone becoming a victim at one time or another to a social order that produces inequality of opportunity as well as inequality of material acquisition. Because of this, we end blaming the gun and not the gunman. The gunman is just another victim who if unarmed would have not acted on his murderous impulses. This is similar to the claim that the "video" not the evil of terrorism, caused the death of four Americans in Benghazi on 9/11/2012.
We also as a society, now value the avoidance of making judgements about the behavior and actions of others, thereby allowing individuals who are sick and deranged to escape both critically needed treatment as well as the consequences of their actions. Our reluctance to acknowledge the existence of evil results in the expansion of evil due to a feeble or nonexistent response to it. The fact is that some people are crazy and there are times when that craziness turns into evil.
History is replete with examples of what can only be described as evil yet modern secularists insist on denying this fact and instead blame society for the actions of individuals.
In this brave new world no one is responsible for their actions and the social and moral chaos that ensues because of this leads to individuals who behave with reckless abandon as Dr. Jeckyl and demonic savagery as Mr. Hyde.
Individual rights come directly from the Christian/Judaic belief in the sacredness and uniqueness of the human soul. The progressive secularist belief that we are instead creatures of a society of inequality and privilege with rights bestowed upon us from government as opposed to a society that has shared ancient moral beliefs emanating from free will and unalienable rights emanating from nature.
In the days and weeks ahead we will hear much from politicians about what has to be or must be done to stop this plague of violence that shows no mercy even to innocent babies. Few will demand that we examine the toxicity and poverty of our culture. Few will dare to demand that we restore religious values to a place of honor in our schools and other parts of the public square. Few will demand that we begin again to make value judgements accompanied by consequences or punishment for behavior at an early age that may predict potential catastrophe at a later one.
Civilization requires rules that are rooted in reason, values and an understanding of human nature. If we do not do this, we continue the death spiral of the spirit that is enveloping the west.
We as a nation, over the last weeks following the election, have been absorbed and fretful about the nation going over a fiscal cliff. On Friday December 15th, 2012 we discovered to our horror, that we have already gone over a spiritual one!
We need as St. John of the Cross wrote in his immortal poem "The Long Dark Night of the Soul" to begin the restoration of God and faith not simply in our lives but at the center of our lives.
"Once in the dark of night,
Inflamed with love and wanting, I arose
(O coming of delight!)
And went, as no one knows,
When all my house lay long in deep repose..."
May the blessed souls of the innocents be embraced by a loving God
ERLANDSSON
.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Democrats and Jews and Jewish Democrats
Thursday, September 20, 2012
WHY HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ABANDONED ME
by
Mark Meyer Appel http://www.thejewishstar.com/stories/Democrats-and-Jews-and-Jewish-Democrats,3566?page=1&content_source
BY
Mark Meyer Appel
I am a life long Democrat and a religious Jew. I have upon occasion, voted for Republicans or independents, but in the main I have stayed loyal to the party of FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ and Bill Clinton. I have done so out of a profound belief that Democrats best personify all the values that we as a people have come to stand for throughout the Diaspora, and since the founding of the State of Israel.
My parents were survivors of the Shoah. They came to America with their shattered live and lost families, met, married and gave birth to my sister and myself. As soon as they arrived they became Democrats because that is where immigrants, refugees and survivors found a welcoming political home in post war America. There never was a day when they did not bless this country for giving them the freedom to practice their religion without fear. For most of my life the thought of being anything but a Democrat was as anathema to me as converting to another religion.
The two simply seemed to belong together. Jews became Democrats because there was no other moral choice. Democrats believed in what Maimonides taught “Anticipate charity by preventing poverty“ and “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
Despite the horrors of pogroms, world wars and anti Semitism that never seemed to die, we still believed “All the evils that men cause to each other because of certain desires, or opinions or religious principles, are rooted in ignorance. [All hatred would come to an end] when the earth was flooded with the knowledge of God.” and we believed that the Democratic Party believed this also. It made perfect sense …to be a good Jew and a good Democrat were hand in glove with one another.
We fought on the battlefield of civil rights and social justice as good Jews and good Democrats. In our minds the Democratic party had come to stand for “Tikkun olam”. Their goal like ours, was also a just society in which humanity could “repair the world“.
We also believed that the other guys were the enemy of all of the above…that they were anti-Semites…that they were the people who established all the quotas in the colleges and country clubs and charities…that they hated immigrants.
Israel became the focus of much of our political energy. The very fact that it was there was proof that the world could be repaired. It also was proof that Jews were not only smart but that we were tough and in the course of time, “Eretz Yisrael” became that place that we as a people had lost over 2500 years ago…a national home. Since fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the absorption of Judaea and Israel into Roman provinces … Jews had no home. The survival of Israel became more than a cause to American Jews. It became part of who we are.
For all of my adult life, my faith and my culture and my identity as an American included the secure knowledge that Israel existed and was the ally and strongest friend of all Americans. That has not changed for me nor will it ever change but it has changed for the Democratic Party.
The administration of President Barack Obama has not had the same kind of relationship with Israel that other Presidents of both parties have enjoyed. We are beyond the point of pretending that the extreme left who now run the party since Obama’s election, are our friends. They are not and the pathetic voice vote to amend their platform over G-D and Jerusalem is the final evidence. There was no three quarters yea vote supporting these changes and the whole world knows it. Further, a plank in the platform condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization that cannot be recognized until it disavows the use of terror and accepts that Israel has a right to exist, was not restored to the platform. Nor was the language restored, stating it was the policy of the Democratic Party that there was no suicidal “right of return” for all descendants of Palestinians who left after partition to return to the State of Israel, to reclaim the land that supposedly had been “stolen” from them. This is a policy that would mean the end of the State of Israel as a Jewish state and the entire world knows this.
The fact that this situation occurred in the wake of an already tense situation between Israel and this administration regarding the profound nature of the existential threat of a nuclear Iran, simply magnified that despicable voice vote, and added yet another reason not to reelect this President or trust the leadership of this party.
It also should be remembered that this administration refuses to accept the reality of the Israeli “Red Line” with regard to Iran. The government of Bibi
Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear that Iran having the capacity for nuclear weapons is unacceptable and a mortal threat to the nation. The United states on the other hand has as its “Red Line”, Iran simply having a nuclear weapon. This is a gap that is as big as the Grand Canyon when your very existence is at stake.
The Obama administration has also made it extremely clear that it will not commit to multi-lateral actions to prevent Iran from reaching nuclear weapon capacity. At the end of August in London, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey stated unequivocally that “the United States would not have Israel's back if it unilaterally attacked Iran“. He added that such an attack would "clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran's nuclear program" and speaking personally stated. "I don't want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it."
No one can convince me that General Dempsey said all of the above without the explicit approval of President Barack Obama. The President certainly did not disavow it. These statements also occurred within a larger context. Simultaneously with this, the Jewish Daily forward reported that “U.S. military officials admit that an upcoming joint U.S.-Israel military exercise has been downsized, but deny that it is because of mistrust of Israel.
Time Magazine reported Aug. 31 that Austere Challenge 12, the ballistic missiles exercise scheduled for the end of October, was greatly downsized, with Washington cutting by more than two-thirds - to about 1,500 - the number of U.S. troops participating, and reducing the number and quality of missile interception systems to be used.
“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” Time quoted an unnamed senior Israeli military official as saying.”
Again all of the above was happening as the Iranians were being publicly disrespected at their 120 Non-Aligned Nation summit in Tehran. The new President of Egypt Mohammed Morsi and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon both took advantage of the international press attention their attendance had created and which had given Amadinijad and the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a diplomatic triumph in the face of American led economic sanctions. Each refused to back the bloody regime in Syria, and denounced threats of genocide in the region while also calling on Iran to adhere to UN resolutions. Moon later also brought up Iran’s horrid human rights record. Morsi in an even bigger insult began his remarks with praise for the “successors” of the Prophet which in Shia Iran is tantamount to blasphemy since they only recognize the “descendents” of the Prophet.
Why is all of this important? It is important because American sanctions which General Dempsey so admires are not working. The summit was a diplomatic coup for Iran until Morsi and Moon humiliated them. What does the US do to capitalize on this? It sends a clear signal to Iran that contrary to what Obama says…the US does not have Israel’s back with regards to a preemptive strike. It leaves a larger more dangerous message hanging in mid air…does this President and this Democratic Party have Israel’s back at all such as in the event of an Iranian attack?
There are other reasons besides Israel that force me to the painful conclusion that I cannot support this President for re-election or remain in this party with far too many anti-Israel factions that are frankly a thinly disguised veneer for outright anti-Semitism. Democrats no longer want to teach men to fish so they can feed themselves. They espouse public charity by decree rather than by voluntary means. They have a clear and sometimes vicious animus toward G-D and all those who believe in G-D. They are no longer liberal in the classical sense. They don’t believe our unalienable rights come from G-D or nature as our founders believed and instead believe that our rights come from government. They don’t want equal opportunity…they want equal results. They don’t understand or believe in capitalism which is the freest system with all its imperfections, ever known to man.
This party of my father and mother, this party I have loved so much because it accepted us when we were truly “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” …this party of dreamers who did great things to make us a great and good people is gone for me. The sad fact is it is gone not because I have changed but because it has changed and changed so dramatically that it has all but disappeared.
As an American and a Jew I now go in search for a new political mishpocha and I welcome all with a good heart and an open mind to join me. After all A nahr bleibt a nahr − A fool remains a fool if he stays where he is not wanted.
AM ISREAL CHAI
MARK MEYER APPEL
NOTE: this is a personal story not the opinion of the
Thursday, July 5, 2012
NO TAXATION DUE TO MISREPRESENTATION
We live in revolutionary times... not the nostalgic grasping at linkage with the Patriots of 1776 that many have emotionally tried to attain during the last three and a half years, but a real and tangible moment of revolution where we may have to do unimaginable things to end the tyranny of a government with an insatiable appetite for power and a lust for control over every aspect of our lives. By courtesy of the chief justice and the Obama administration we now have attained the progressive Holy Grail...a tax for being born (or more starkly put... for breathing). To compliment this we also have a variety of "death panels" whose job it will be to decree anonymously from the shadows who gets what treatment (if at all) and when. This is what is known as being "had by the short hairs" coupled with a knife to the throat.
The new taxing power bestowed by the court now gives the government the ability to order us to do anything and if we don't, to be punished by a tax euphemistically labeled as a penalty. I yearn for the good old days when it was only the abuse of the commerce clause we had to worry about with regard to gutting the constitution.
The White House true to form (for having no class) ignored the fact the PPRACA was sold not as a tax and the first reaction was from Patrick Gaspard, white house political director who eloquently opined "it's constitutional bitches". This was followed by white house chief of staff Jack Lew and the always dependable Pelosi who said... not it's not a tax, it's a penalty... We didn't lie to you. All they left out was the upcoming executive order that the funeral industry will soon be nationalized.
It is equally to be deplored that the republicans, howling with fury over what they view as the treachery of John Roberts, had no coherent response when asked if you get rid of "ObamaCare/ObamaTax" what will you replace it with. We pay these people and they are to some degree more or less, incompetent, thuggish, corrupt, disingenuous, immoral and dangerous. These I may add are their good points. Oh yes they also steal!
We now live in revolutionary times. We have the right and the duty to resist tyranny. We must at all cost preserve our unalienable rights. These are what we got from being conceived and born... not taxes! These rights do not come from the state. They come from god and/or nature (take your pick. I don't want to have that argument at this time). These unalienable rights are what make us exceptional and while we should also follow the golden rule in pursuit of freedom, that does not mean we should have to distribute the fruits of our labors to those who refuse to work either for themselves or for the commonweal.
If this anti-American administration is not thrown out in November then all bets are off and this country will descend to a deep, dark and dangerous place. Obama will make his accommodation with Putin and China, cut the defense budget to shreds and leave us weak and vulnerable, bankrupt the social security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, curtail the second amendment via international treaties, drive up the costs of energy with punitive policies towards coal gas and oil, establish a permanent high rate of unemployment, create a permanent dependency class who gets most of what they need from the state and leave us with a debt that will send us over a fiscal cliff, perhaps never to return.
Justice Kennedy warned the nation when he opined in his questions to the solicitor general prior to the decision, that the law threatens to change the fundamental relation between the citizen and the state. If anything, he understated the situation. The revolution has begun.
Erlandsson
Friday, February 24, 2012
IN HOMS, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM
IN HOMS, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM
Homs has been under siege for 19 days. The tanks and artillery of Bashir al-Assad have formed a ring of steel around the city where the revolt against the regime first drew breath. For most of this period as well as for most of the last year, the world has depended on amateur videos over the Inter Net for information on a war by a Government against its own people that appeared so vicious as to be beyond belief. Foreign journalists and media have been banned by Assad and his Alawite henchmen to keep the world ignorant of the atrocities that have sparred no one. In Homs in particular no one is immune from brutal extinction. Babies die as easily as adults and the old and the sick. There is no where to hide . No hospital…no mosque…no school. Sanctuary is a meaningless word as average people are exterminated as casually as ants at a picnic. The unthinkable had become the new normal and yet the world remained aloof and ignorant until Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were deliberately targeted via their cell phones signal by Syrian artillery and murdered for bearing witness to the latest genocide of the new millennium.
Thirty years ago Hafez al-Assad the father of Bashir, butchered the citizens of Hama in much the same way and for much the same reason. The rotten apple never falls far from the diseased tree. After at least 10,000 were slaughtered and the peace of the sword was imposed, this strategy for combating insurrection became known as “Hama Rules”.
The people of Syria, tired of being an Arab vassal to the mad Persians of Iran were not immune from the passions of the “Arab Spring” as it swept through the Maghreb and then the Levant. They saw change and wanted it. For most it was a chance to escape the claws of history in return for a normal life for themselves and their children. It was the possibility of change that didn’t demand blind hatred of all thing un-Islamic as a prerequisite for “normalcy”. It was a light at the end of a very long and very dangerous tunnel that has lasted 42 years. But Assad supported by Iran, Russia, China and Hezbollah defied both his people the world and his fellow Arabs and “Hama Rules” have now become “Homs Rules”
Into this cauldron came a small band of brave, intrepid journalists who used smuggler routes to enter and exit the city in order to report first hand what the citizen journalists with their cell phone cameras had been struggling to tell the world for months. French TV reporter, Gilles Jacquier was killed in January and two time Pulitzer winner Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died 10 days ago of natural causes brought on by the stress and lack of sanitation of a country ravaged by war.
Marie Colvin, an American born in Long Island but who reported for the London Sunday Times was in Homs for the second time. She was there with her photographer partner Paul Conroy, who was wounded by the 11 rockets that killed her and Ochlik. Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro was also gravely wounded and still awaits evacuation along with Conroy and the remains of Colvin and Ochlik. Only Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, photographer William Daniel and a Syrian journalist known only as Hussein managed to escape either death or injury.
Colvin was a veteran war correspondent of thirty years. She had seen action in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Chechnya and Sri Lanka where she was wounded in an grenade attack and lost the sight of her left eye due to shrapnel which she still carried in her head and torso. From that time forward she was instantly recognizable by the black eye patch she wore that colleagues said gave her a “pirate” aura that belied a natural warmness that made the most vulnerable trust her and confide in her.
Their make shift Press Center was located in the Baba Amr section of the city where the poorest of the poor lived and where the suffering and destruction was the worst. Colvin was supposed to have left Baba Amr the day before but she wanted to finish what was to be her final dispatch. As was usual with her work she highlighted the impact of the devastation upon the children, the women and the most vulnerable. It was going to become her masterpiece and was entitled ‘We live in fear of a massacre”. It began like this:
“They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.
Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.
“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.
“We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the last time she saw Maziad, 30, who had worked in a mobile phone repair shop. “He was torn to pieces by a mortar shell.”
For Noor, it was a double tragedy. Adnan, her 27-year-old brother, was killed at Maziad’s side.” She then went on to describe daily life in Baba Amr:
“Everyone in the cellar has a similar story of hardship or death. The refuge was chosen because it is one of the few basements in Baba Amr. Foam mattresses are piled against the walls and the children have not seen the light of day since the siege began on February 4. Most families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs.
The city is running perilously short of supplies and the only food here is rice, tea and some tins of tuna delivered by a local sheikh who looted them from a bombed-out supermarket.
A baby born in the basement last week looked as shell-shocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-storey house was obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so traumatised that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.
Fatima may or may not be a widow. Her husband, a shepherd, was in the countryside when the siege started with a ferocious barrage and she has heard no word of him since.
The widows’ basement reflects the ordeal of 28,000 men, women and children clinging to existence in Baba Amr, a district of low concrete-block homes surrounded on all sides by Syrian forces. The army is launching Katyusha rockets, mortar shells and tank rounds at random.”
In Baba Amr and the rest of Homs death was a constant companion. Colvin went on describing it in graphic detail.
"Snipers on the rooftops of al-Ba’ath University and other high buildings surrounding Baba Amr shoot any civilian who comes into their sights. Residents were felled in droves in the first days of the siege but have now learnt where the snipers are and run across junctions where they know they can be seen. Few cars are left on the streets.
Almost every building is pock-marked after tank rounds punched through concrete walls or rockets blasted gaping holes in upper floors. The building I was staying in lost its upper floor to a rocket last Wednesday. On some streets whole buildings have collapsed — all there is to see are shredded clothes, broken pots and the shattered furniture of families destroyed.
It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbours. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food. Fearing the snipers’ merciless eyes, families resorted last week to throwing bread across rooftops, or breaking through communal walls to pass unseen.
The Syrians have dug a huge trench around most of the district, and let virtually nobody in or out. The army is pursuing a brutal campaign to quell the resistance of Homs, Hama and other cities that have risen up against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, whose family has been in power for 42 years. “
Colvin described the uneven nature of the battle and then most importantly became the voice for the average citizen of the abattoir that Homs had become
“In Baba Amr, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed face of opposition to Assad, has virtually unanimous support from civilians who see them as their defenders. It is an unequal battle: the tanks and heavy weaponry of Assad’s troops against the Kalashnikovs of the FSA.
About 5,000 Syrian soldiers are believed to be on the outskirts of Baba Amr, and the FSA received reports yesterday that they were preparing a ground assault. The residents dread the outcome.
“We live in fear the FSA will leave the city,” said Hamida, 43, hiding with her children and her sister’s family in an empty ground-floor apartment after their house was bombed. “There will be a massacre.”
On the lips of everyone was the question: “Why have we been abandoned by the world?”
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said last week: “We see neighbourhoods shelled indiscriminately, hospitals used as torture centres, children as young as 10 years old killed and abused. We see almost certainly crimes against humanity.” Yet the international community has not come to the aid of the innocent caught in this hell. Abdel Majid, 20, who was helping to rescue the wounded from bombed buildings, made a simple plea. “Please tell the world they must help us,” he said, shaking, with haunted eyes. “Just stop the bombing. Please, just stop the shelling.” …The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one.
Khaled Abu Salah, an activist who took part in the first demonstrations against Assad in Homs last March, sat on the floor of an office, his hand broken and bandages covering shrapnel wounds to his leg and shoulder. A 25-year-old university student, who risked his life filming videos of the slaughter of Baba Amr residents, he narrowly escaped when he tried to get two men wounded by mortar fire to a makeshift clinic.
He and three friends had just taken the wounded to the clinic, which was staffed by a doctor and a dentist, and stepped away from the door when “a shell landed right at the entrance”, he recalled last week.
“My three friends died immediately.” The two men they had helped were also killed.
Abu Ammar, 48, a taxi driver, went out to look for bread at 8am one day last week. He, his wife and their adopted daughter had taken refuge with two elderly sisters after their home was hit by shells.
“When I returned the house was obliterated,” he said, looking at all that remained of the one-storey building. Only a few pieces of wall still stood. In the ruins a woman’s red blouse was visible; bottles of home-made pickled vegetables were somehow unscathed. “Dr Ali”, a dentist working as a doctor, said one of the women from the house had arrived at the clinic alive, but both legs had been amputated and she died. “
Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik died to tell the world the graphic truth of the horror of Homs. If she and her colleagues had not put their lives on the line the world would still not clearly comprehend a human calamity that even Colvin who had been to some of the worst places on earth, said was the worst she had ever seen.
While politicians dither and the diplomats clear their throats and soldiers who know better talk about “rational actors”… the people of Homs feel alone and abandoned …unloved by a world that have “more important things” to worry about than the massacre of their fellow men. To a very great extent the difficulty in telling the story up until now allowed the rest of the world to close their eyes and cover their ears. But because of the sacrifice of Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik and their fellow journalists that luxury is no longer available. The ability to sweep the reality of Homs under the rug is no longer possible. If we turn away now it is a statement about us and not about the demonic Assads. Everyone should read Marie Colvins last dispatch and ask themselves what they can do to stop the cold blooded killing machine of the Ba’athist tyranny. And if that doesn’t move you to at least call your Congressman or your Senators, keep in mind that the removal of these murderers in Damascus will disrupt and perhaps stop Iran from pursuing their proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, thereby pulling the region back from the precipice of Armageddon .
But there is also now one true certainty, because of their courage and sacrifice, the world is now forced to hear the screams of Homs.
ERLANDSSON 02/24/2012
Homs has been under siege for 19 days. The tanks and artillery of Bashir al-Assad have formed a ring of steel around the city where the revolt against the regime first drew breath. For most of this period as well as for most of the last year, the world has depended on amateur videos over the Inter Net for information on a war by a Government against its own people that appeared so vicious as to be beyond belief. Foreign journalists and media have been banned by Assad and his Alawite henchmen to keep the world ignorant of the atrocities that have sparred no one. In Homs in particular no one is immune from brutal extinction. Babies die as easily as adults and the old and the sick. There is no where to hide . No hospital…no mosque…no school. Sanctuary is a meaningless word as average people are exterminated as casually as ants at a picnic. The unthinkable had become the new normal and yet the world remained aloof and ignorant until Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were deliberately targeted via their cell phones signal by Syrian artillery and murdered for bearing witness to the latest genocide of the new millennium.
Thirty years ago Hafez al-Assad the father of Bashir, butchered the citizens of Hama in much the same way and for much the same reason. The rotten apple never falls far from the diseased tree. After at least 10,000 were slaughtered and the peace of the sword was imposed, this strategy for combating insurrection became known as “Hama Rules”.
The people of Syria, tired of being an Arab vassal to the mad Persians of Iran were not immune from the passions of the “Arab Spring” as it swept through the Maghreb and then the Levant. They saw change and wanted it. For most it was a chance to escape the claws of history in return for a normal life for themselves and their children. It was the possibility of change that didn’t demand blind hatred of all thing un-Islamic as a prerequisite for “normalcy”. It was a light at the end of a very long and very dangerous tunnel that has lasted 42 years. But Assad supported by Iran, Russia, China and Hezbollah defied both his people the world and his fellow Arabs and “Hama Rules” have now become “Homs Rules”
Into this cauldron came a small band of brave, intrepid journalists who used smuggler routes to enter and exit the city in order to report first hand what the citizen journalists with their cell phone cameras had been struggling to tell the world for months. French TV reporter, Gilles Jacquier was killed in January and two time Pulitzer winner Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died 10 days ago of natural causes brought on by the stress and lack of sanitation of a country ravaged by war.
Marie Colvin, an American born in Long Island but who reported for the London Sunday Times was in Homs for the second time. She was there with her photographer partner Paul Conroy, who was wounded by the 11 rockets that killed her and Ochlik. Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro was also gravely wounded and still awaits evacuation along with Conroy and the remains of Colvin and Ochlik. Only Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, photographer William Daniel and a Syrian journalist known only as Hussein managed to escape either death or injury.
Colvin was a veteran war correspondent of thirty years. She had seen action in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Chechnya and Sri Lanka where she was wounded in an grenade attack and lost the sight of her left eye due to shrapnel which she still carried in her head and torso. From that time forward she was instantly recognizable by the black eye patch she wore that colleagues said gave her a “pirate” aura that belied a natural warmness that made the most vulnerable trust her and confide in her.
Their make shift Press Center was located in the Baba Amr section of the city where the poorest of the poor lived and where the suffering and destruction was the worst. Colvin was supposed to have left Baba Amr the day before but she wanted to finish what was to be her final dispatch. As was usual with her work she highlighted the impact of the devastation upon the children, the women and the most vulnerable. It was going to become her masterpiece and was entitled ‘We live in fear of a massacre”. It began like this:
“They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.
Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.
“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.
“We had had nothing but sugar and water for two days and my husband went to try to find food.” It was the last time she saw Maziad, 30, who had worked in a mobile phone repair shop. “He was torn to pieces by a mortar shell.”
For Noor, it was a double tragedy. Adnan, her 27-year-old brother, was killed at Maziad’s side.” She then went on to describe daily life in Baba Amr:
“Everyone in the cellar has a similar story of hardship or death. The refuge was chosen because it is one of the few basements in Baba Amr. Foam mattresses are piled against the walls and the children have not seen the light of day since the siege began on February 4. Most families fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs.
The city is running perilously short of supplies and the only food here is rice, tea and some tins of tuna delivered by a local sheikh who looted them from a bombed-out supermarket.
A baby born in the basement last week looked as shell-shocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-storey house was obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so traumatised that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.
Fatima may or may not be a widow. Her husband, a shepherd, was in the countryside when the siege started with a ferocious barrage and she has heard no word of him since.
The widows’ basement reflects the ordeal of 28,000 men, women and children clinging to existence in Baba Amr, a district of low concrete-block homes surrounded on all sides by Syrian forces. The army is launching Katyusha rockets, mortar shells and tank rounds at random.”
In Baba Amr and the rest of Homs death was a constant companion. Colvin went on describing it in graphic detail.
"Snipers on the rooftops of al-Ba’ath University and other high buildings surrounding Baba Amr shoot any civilian who comes into their sights. Residents were felled in droves in the first days of the siege but have now learnt where the snipers are and run across junctions where they know they can be seen. Few cars are left on the streets.
Almost every building is pock-marked after tank rounds punched through concrete walls or rockets blasted gaping holes in upper floors. The building I was staying in lost its upper floor to a rocket last Wednesday. On some streets whole buildings have collapsed — all there is to see are shredded clothes, broken pots and the shattered furniture of families destroyed.
It is a city of the cold and hungry, echoing to exploding shells and bursts of gunfire. There are no telephones and the electricity has been cut off. Few homes have diesel for the tin stoves they rely on for heat in the coldest winter that anyone can remember. Freezing rain fills potholes and snow drifts in through windows empty of glass. No shops are open, so families are sharing what they have with relatives and neighbours. Many of the dead and injured are those who risked foraging for food. Fearing the snipers’ merciless eyes, families resorted last week to throwing bread across rooftops, or breaking through communal walls to pass unseen.
The Syrians have dug a huge trench around most of the district, and let virtually nobody in or out. The army is pursuing a brutal campaign to quell the resistance of Homs, Hama and other cities that have risen up against Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, whose family has been in power for 42 years. “
Colvin described the uneven nature of the battle and then most importantly became the voice for the average citizen of the abattoir that Homs had become
“In Baba Amr, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed face of opposition to Assad, has virtually unanimous support from civilians who see them as their defenders. It is an unequal battle: the tanks and heavy weaponry of Assad’s troops against the Kalashnikovs of the FSA.
About 5,000 Syrian soldiers are believed to be on the outskirts of Baba Amr, and the FSA received reports yesterday that they were preparing a ground assault. The residents dread the outcome.
“We live in fear the FSA will leave the city,” said Hamida, 43, hiding with her children and her sister’s family in an empty ground-floor apartment after their house was bombed. “There will be a massacre.”
On the lips of everyone was the question: “Why have we been abandoned by the world?”
Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, said last week: “We see neighbourhoods shelled indiscriminately, hospitals used as torture centres, children as young as 10 years old killed and abused. We see almost certainly crimes against humanity.” Yet the international community has not come to the aid of the innocent caught in this hell. Abdel Majid, 20, who was helping to rescue the wounded from bombed buildings, made a simple plea. “Please tell the world they must help us,” he said, shaking, with haunted eyes. “Just stop the bombing. Please, just stop the shelling.” …The scale of human tragedy in the city is immense. The inhabitants are living in terror. Almost every family seems to have suffered the death or injury of a loved one.
Khaled Abu Salah, an activist who took part in the first demonstrations against Assad in Homs last March, sat on the floor of an office, his hand broken and bandages covering shrapnel wounds to his leg and shoulder. A 25-year-old university student, who risked his life filming videos of the slaughter of Baba Amr residents, he narrowly escaped when he tried to get two men wounded by mortar fire to a makeshift clinic.
He and three friends had just taken the wounded to the clinic, which was staffed by a doctor and a dentist, and stepped away from the door when “a shell landed right at the entrance”, he recalled last week.
“My three friends died immediately.” The two men they had helped were also killed.
Abu Ammar, 48, a taxi driver, went out to look for bread at 8am one day last week. He, his wife and their adopted daughter had taken refuge with two elderly sisters after their home was hit by shells.
“When I returned the house was obliterated,” he said, looking at all that remained of the one-storey building. Only a few pieces of wall still stood. In the ruins a woman’s red blouse was visible; bottles of home-made pickled vegetables were somehow unscathed. “Dr Ali”, a dentist working as a doctor, said one of the women from the house had arrived at the clinic alive, but both legs had been amputated and she died. “
Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik died to tell the world the graphic truth of the horror of Homs. If she and her colleagues had not put their lives on the line the world would still not clearly comprehend a human calamity that even Colvin who had been to some of the worst places on earth, said was the worst she had ever seen.
While politicians dither and the diplomats clear their throats and soldiers who know better talk about “rational actors”… the people of Homs feel alone and abandoned …unloved by a world that have “more important things” to worry about than the massacre of their fellow men. To a very great extent the difficulty in telling the story up until now allowed the rest of the world to close their eyes and cover their ears. But because of the sacrifice of Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik and their fellow journalists that luxury is no longer available. The ability to sweep the reality of Homs under the rug is no longer possible. If we turn away now it is a statement about us and not about the demonic Assads. Everyone should read Marie Colvins last dispatch and ask themselves what they can do to stop the cold blooded killing machine of the Ba’athist tyranny. And if that doesn’t move you to at least call your Congressman or your Senators, keep in mind that the removal of these murderers in Damascus will disrupt and perhaps stop Iran from pursuing their proxy wars in Lebanon and Gaza, thereby pulling the region back from the precipice of Armageddon .
But there is also now one true certainty, because of their courage and sacrifice, the world is now forced to hear the screams of Homs.
ERLANDSSON 02/24/2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
VADA A BORDO GOP
VADA A BORDO GOP!!!!
Right now the American ship of state resembles the Costa Concordia more than it does “a shining city on the hill”. Our economy is in shambles despite small decreases in unemployment due to people leaving the workforce altogether. Our national debt is 102% of our GDP putting us in a class with Greece and Italy. Our uncontrolled government spending is around 25% of GDP when it should be between 18% to 20% . The Congress has not passed a budget in over a thousand days and over 25 budget and jobs bills passed by the House of Representatives have been pronounced dead on arrival by Harry Reid when they land in the Senate. President Obama vetoes the XL Keystone pipeline after all environmental tests have been met… killing 20,000 jobs or more and his out of control EPA threatens the most prosperous state in the nation…North Dakota… with regulations that will stop oil fracking in it’s tracks. The Executive branch decides the Legislative branch is in recess even as it passes an extension of the Payroll Tax Cut for two months during the very period that it is not supposed to be able to pass anything. The Executive branch then establishes a new level of chutzpah by appointing new members to the NLRB and a new Director to the controversial CFBP with sweeping powers and little if any congressional oversight.
Then the President, in the form of the always dour Katherine Sebelius of the Dept of HHS, announces that Catholic Institutions will have a year to adjust their most profound religious beliefs in order to accommodate the ukase of the First Secular Church of the United States with regard to what their Health Insurance coverage must contain …i.e. morning after pill…contraception etc thereby declaring war on the First amendment and the nation’s almost 80 million Catholics.
But wait …it gets worse! The US Department of Justice not satisfied with selling guns through straw buyers to the Mexican Drug cartels without anyone in the leadership of DoJ being aware of it, has instead decided to double down on states that pass laws requiring voters to prove who they are via Photo Ids. Keep in mind this does not necessarily prove if they are eligible to vote…just that they are who they say they are and are a living corporeal being. This in the fertile mind of Eric Holder is discriminatory. To who…cartoon characters, lycanthropes and the undead???
The EPA not content with their hosing North Dakota threatens to fine the producers of motor fuel for not using cellulosic ethanol a fuel substitute that does not exist. This is happening right after they threatened a Priest Lake Idaho couple named Sackett with $38,500 daily fines for building a house on wetlands that were not wet to begin with and then ordering them to restore their property to “wetland” condition which in point of fact would mean “creating “ wetlands for the first time. Are you confused yet? The Supreme Court is now looking at this case very carefully and court observers are saying off the record that the continuous shaking of the nine justice’s heads as they read through the transcript, is making observers take copious amounts of Dramamine.
On the international front, the military is being hollowed out to celebrate a peace “dividend” without a peace… a world where a militant China is determined to project power far into the western Pacific…an irredentist Russia seeking to regain superpower status at the expense of the west…a clinically insane Iran that desires Armageddon to fulfill the prophetic promise of a world wide Caliphate …terrorists now so embedded with the drug trade that it becomes difficult at times to decide which threat they pose is the most dangerous and a North Korea resembling “Wonderland” with nuclear war heads.
So how are the leaders of the Grand Old Party, in the midst of what each candidate says “is the most important election of our life time”, responding to this catalogue of horrors? Why they are in full throated “Gingrich derangement syndrome”. They are determined to force Mitt Romney down the throats of Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Party members, Independents, Reagan Democrats and any other group of voters they can identify. All this despite the fact that anywhere from two thirds to three fourth of primary voters to date simply don’t want him after six years of running for President.
I don’t have anything against Mitt Romney. If he becomes the nominee I will gladly vote for him but not because the so called “leadership” wants him but because on some days my despair at the destruction of this country makes me I believe that even the first name in the phone book would be a better and less dangerous President than Barak Obama.
Having said this, the leadership of Republican Party is being offered what to them is the worst of all possible choices. A candidate who thinks…a candidate with ideas…a candidate who wants a fundamental transformative restoration of American Exceptionalism. And it scares the hell out of them!
There is a reason that you rarely if ever hear the phrase “Republican thinker”. Even Republicans who actually fit this description such as Paul Ryan or Jim Jordan are usually viewed as “conservative thinkers”.. Are there any “Republican Think Tanks”? All that come to mind seem to be Conservative” or “Libertarian” as opposed to any entity identified as being the intellectual muscle behind a major party that seeks to govern with …exactly what principals???
Entre Gingrich with ideas percolating and bubbling in a frothy stew of proposals designed to right the ship of state and take it off the shoals of destruction and the leadership says “no thanks we’ll wait for the rescue boat that may never come rather than have to deal with someone we can’t control!”
The dirty little secret of mainstream Republicanism is that it is timid and weak and far too accommodating of Democrat displeasure out of a subliminal fear that making money and being successful is wrong and they therefore must be in a constant defensive posture. They have come to believe what the other guys say about them and their reflexive political correctness strangles every analytical impulse they have.
Curiosity is viewed as a flaw to these people and those who challenge the status quo in ways the public yearns for and applauds, are dangerous apostates to those who believe change means nibbling around the edges not sending the meal back and demanding real food.
Much of the Republican leadership has lost all contact with the people they claim to represent. Severe economic hardship coupled with cultural chaos has a way of making those who suffer undergo a “Conversion on the road to Damascus” when it comes to those whom they will choose to follow. When Newt Gingrich takes on the media that has protected and celebrated the cultural and political icons of the left… those who have to live in the everyday world and have to contend with the destruction they have left in their wake…cheer. We cheer because at long last someone has heard us…someone is speaking for us…someone is fighting for us. Someone wants to save our country . So I have a very simple message for Governor Chris Christie, who today said of Newt Gingrich that he 'Has Been An Embarrassment To The Party' and to the rest of the leadership of the Republican Party. You are out of touch. Vada a bordo cazzo!!!!
ERLANDSSON
Right now the American ship of state resembles the Costa Concordia more than it does “a shining city on the hill”. Our economy is in shambles despite small decreases in unemployment due to people leaving the workforce altogether. Our national debt is 102% of our GDP putting us in a class with Greece and Italy. Our uncontrolled government spending is around 25% of GDP when it should be between 18% to 20% . The Congress has not passed a budget in over a thousand days and over 25 budget and jobs bills passed by the House of Representatives have been pronounced dead on arrival by Harry Reid when they land in the Senate. President Obama vetoes the XL Keystone pipeline after all environmental tests have been met… killing 20,000 jobs or more and his out of control EPA threatens the most prosperous state in the nation…North Dakota… with regulations that will stop oil fracking in it’s tracks. The Executive branch decides the Legislative branch is in recess even as it passes an extension of the Payroll Tax Cut for two months during the very period that it is not supposed to be able to pass anything. The Executive branch then establishes a new level of chutzpah by appointing new members to the NLRB and a new Director to the controversial CFBP with sweeping powers and little if any congressional oversight.
Then the President, in the form of the always dour Katherine Sebelius of the Dept of HHS, announces that Catholic Institutions will have a year to adjust their most profound religious beliefs in order to accommodate the ukase of the First Secular Church of the United States with regard to what their Health Insurance coverage must contain …i.e. morning after pill…contraception etc thereby declaring war on the First amendment and the nation’s almost 80 million Catholics.
But wait …it gets worse! The US Department of Justice not satisfied with selling guns through straw buyers to the Mexican Drug cartels without anyone in the leadership of DoJ being aware of it, has instead decided to double down on states that pass laws requiring voters to prove who they are via Photo Ids. Keep in mind this does not necessarily prove if they are eligible to vote…just that they are who they say they are and are a living corporeal being. This in the fertile mind of Eric Holder is discriminatory. To who…cartoon characters, lycanthropes and the undead???
The EPA not content with their hosing North Dakota threatens to fine the producers of motor fuel for not using cellulosic ethanol a fuel substitute that does not exist. This is happening right after they threatened a Priest Lake Idaho couple named Sackett with $38,500 daily fines for building a house on wetlands that were not wet to begin with and then ordering them to restore their property to “wetland” condition which in point of fact would mean “creating “ wetlands for the first time. Are you confused yet? The Supreme Court is now looking at this case very carefully and court observers are saying off the record that the continuous shaking of the nine justice’s heads as they read through the transcript, is making observers take copious amounts of Dramamine.
On the international front, the military is being hollowed out to celebrate a peace “dividend” without a peace… a world where a militant China is determined to project power far into the western Pacific…an irredentist Russia seeking to regain superpower status at the expense of the west…a clinically insane Iran that desires Armageddon to fulfill the prophetic promise of a world wide Caliphate …terrorists now so embedded with the drug trade that it becomes difficult at times to decide which threat they pose is the most dangerous and a North Korea resembling “Wonderland” with nuclear war heads.
So how are the leaders of the Grand Old Party, in the midst of what each candidate says “is the most important election of our life time”, responding to this catalogue of horrors? Why they are in full throated “Gingrich derangement syndrome”. They are determined to force Mitt Romney down the throats of Republicans, Conservatives, Tea Party members, Independents, Reagan Democrats and any other group of voters they can identify. All this despite the fact that anywhere from two thirds to three fourth of primary voters to date simply don’t want him after six years of running for President.
I don’t have anything against Mitt Romney. If he becomes the nominee I will gladly vote for him but not because the so called “leadership” wants him but because on some days my despair at the destruction of this country makes me I believe that even the first name in the phone book would be a better and less dangerous President than Barak Obama.
Having said this, the leadership of Republican Party is being offered what to them is the worst of all possible choices. A candidate who thinks…a candidate with ideas…a candidate who wants a fundamental transformative restoration of American Exceptionalism. And it scares the hell out of them!
There is a reason that you rarely if ever hear the phrase “Republican thinker”. Even Republicans who actually fit this description such as Paul Ryan or Jim Jordan are usually viewed as “conservative thinkers”.. Are there any “Republican Think Tanks”? All that come to mind seem to be Conservative” or “Libertarian” as opposed to any entity identified as being the intellectual muscle behind a major party that seeks to govern with …exactly what principals???
Entre Gingrich with ideas percolating and bubbling in a frothy stew of proposals designed to right the ship of state and take it off the shoals of destruction and the leadership says “no thanks we’ll wait for the rescue boat that may never come rather than have to deal with someone we can’t control!”
The dirty little secret of mainstream Republicanism is that it is timid and weak and far too accommodating of Democrat displeasure out of a subliminal fear that making money and being successful is wrong and they therefore must be in a constant defensive posture. They have come to believe what the other guys say about them and their reflexive political correctness strangles every analytical impulse they have.
Curiosity is viewed as a flaw to these people and those who challenge the status quo in ways the public yearns for and applauds, are dangerous apostates to those who believe change means nibbling around the edges not sending the meal back and demanding real food.
Much of the Republican leadership has lost all contact with the people they claim to represent. Severe economic hardship coupled with cultural chaos has a way of making those who suffer undergo a “Conversion on the road to Damascus” when it comes to those whom they will choose to follow. When Newt Gingrich takes on the media that has protected and celebrated the cultural and political icons of the left… those who have to live in the everyday world and have to contend with the destruction they have left in their wake…cheer. We cheer because at long last someone has heard us…someone is speaking for us…someone is fighting for us. Someone wants to save our country . So I have a very simple message for Governor Chris Christie, who today said of Newt Gingrich that he 'Has Been An Embarrassment To The Party' and to the rest of the leadership of the Republican Party. You are out of touch. Vada a bordo cazzo!!!!
ERLANDSSON
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