One of Two Rejected Columns

Last summer I tried to get a position as one of the Journal Sentinel's community columnists. Here is one of the two essays I submitted to the paper. Unfortunately I wasn't good enough to make the cut. Instead they chose a person who, in his essay on the death penalty, claimed that people who would be qualified for death are actually getting out of jail. Of course, we all know that people who the death penalty, especially in Wisconsin, is being suggested for will not get out of jail. Yet the Journal printed his crap. Maybe I shouldn't have called myself a Marxist Socialist in my cover letter. Oh well.



How is it that at a time when the entire world is moving in more humane directions Wisconsin has decided to join the ranks of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, Egypt, Sudan and Afghanistan? How has it come that keeping criminals locked up for good is no longer good enough? With everything facing us in the world today why are people clamoring to bring back the death penalty? Unless people see it as some sort of deterent there is no logic in bringing it back. The only problem is it isn’t a deterent.
The law that this referendum proposes we enact would require DNA evidence to support the conviction in order for the death penalty to be administered. Why is that? It is because both the authors of this bill, and the voting public, know that far too many people have been let off of death row due to DNA evidence. So by putting it into the bill they are admitting that in the past the death penalty had some major problems but this will “correct” those flaws. They also should have set it up in a way so that it wouldn’t be used against minorities in a disproportional way that it has been used in the past.
The law would be set up so only the vilest of murderers would be killed. The type of person who commits the crimes necessary of this threshold doesn’t think of anything reality based. It is ridiculous to think that someone who is getting ready to go out and act in such horrendous way thinks beforehand. The people who commit these hideous crimes don’t sit down before and make a pro and cons list. This law is designed for people who don’t think about consequences. So where is the deterent?
In the last several years we have seen a nationwide switch on the death penalty. Say what you want about Former Illinios Governor George Ryan but even he, a Republican, put a moratorium on the use of the death penalty because so many death row inmates had been exonerated. The Supreme Court has dealt with a number of cases involving the adminstration of the death penalty when the crime was committed by a child or of some one who is mentally handicapped. In both instance they sided with life.
On my walk home from work one day I saw a bumper sticker that stuck with me, it said, “Our Government kills people who kill people to show it is wrong to kill people.” That pretty much sums up the logic behind the death penalty. What really is the benefit of having the state kill some of the worst murderers, who obviously the death penalty was no deterrent, instead of keep them behind bars for life?
Often the same people who advocate using the state to kill people are the same ones who oppose allowing a person near death from taking their own life and/or believe aborting a zygote is murder. Many of them use the Bible as their moral justification by going back to Exodus, Leviticus or Duetoronomy, the law books, yet they do so in a disingenuous self-serving way. These people are called Christians presumably because they follow the teachings of Christ. Christ never called for this type of punishment to be handed out. He asked for the opposite. While it may be impossible to “turn the other cheek” with murderers like these, once they are locked up behind bars they no longer are a threat to humanity.
So if the death penalty doesn’t serve as a detterent and locking up people makes them no longer a threat to society then why the need to kill these people? It must be that they feel murdering a murderer is a just punishment. Murder is wrong plain and simple. Being a resident of Wisconsin I would feel more comfortable knowing my state isn’t taking part in the killing of another human being no matter how terrible.

Iran War Watch 1/30/07

Everyday the war drums seem to be getting louder and louder. Here is just a brief look into the stories of today.
US rejects call for timeout in Iran crisis
Bush 'spoiling for a fight' with Iran
Bush warns Iran against action in Iraq
We're on the edge of the abyss....

And then to top it all off, here we have Israeli apologist, plagerizer and Harvard Professor Dershowitz. You just have to watch to see whose interest he has at heart.

I Really Am Nervous or I.R.A.N.

Holy fuck!!!
I swear I just read in the paper that the US has authorized the military to kill Iranians. At first I thought I was just seeing things but no. Then I heard it reported on the nightly news, top story. A few days back we had former NATO Supreme COmmander Gen. Wesley Clark say that he believed that the US was looking for a confrontation with Iran. Slowly we have been moving more and more warships into the Persian Gulf. IT is rumored we now have Nuclear Subs in the Gulf. My god these people are insane.
NOw today according to the Jerusalem Post, a right wing Israeli paper, is claiming that Iran is bringing in 3000 more centrifuges for their nuclear program. It has been reported much in the Israeli press their desire to have Iran confronted. We had the former Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyhu, sayinig we need to convince America of the threat. There was just a meeting in Israel with some former US officials where RIchard Perle, one of the cheif architechs of this latest war, was saying that the US will take military action to not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons.
This is just the shit I pulled out of my head without going back and doing even the most basic of research. I can remember many other pronouncements that soound a lot like war posturing but I can't remember them well enough to put them in. So I guess I will need to go back and find more.
From now on I will be on Iran War Watch. I will be reporting and repeating all the stories I see from the mainstream press that indicate a inevitable war. There has been a lot of propaganda lately and I will try to compile more.

The Restrictions Remain

There is still a lot of hoopla concerning Jimmy Carter's latest book, Palestine:Peace not Apartheid. Tomorrow he should be in the news again because he is slated to speak at Brandeis University about his book. Brandeis is a traditionally Jewish school founded by a group of mostly secular Jews. He was invited to speak but was told as a condition he would have to debate the plagerizer Alan Dershowitz, notice I will give credit to the author I reprinted. He said he wouldn't. A former President writes a book and in order to talk he must debate a plagerist from Harvard. Why not invite Prof. Chomsky everytime a Pro-Israel speaker comes to speak at Brandies? It would be a short trip for him.
The main crux of real, not fabricated, complaint is his use of the term apartheid in describing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, to say nothing of Israel proper. Many, only in America, are offended by the comparison. They claim that it isn't true and that it is an attempt to isolate them in the international community. If anyone is of interest in this debate you know that much is being made of the use of Apartheid. The Israelis could care less about the word because their major newspapers and various peace groups use the term frequently.
I have reprinted an article that I found reprinted on CounterPunch's web site. It is from an actual Israeli and not just some American Jew who lives in the comfort of their home in Brooklyn or Mequon.
Now just imagine readinig this in any american newspaper. You won't.

Life Under Prohibition in Palestine
By AMIRA HASS

All the promises to relax restrictions in the West Bank have obscured the true picture. A few roadblocks have been removed, but the following prohibitions have remained in place. (This information was gathered by Haaretz, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Machsom Watch)

Standing prohibitions
* Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are forbidden to stay in the West Bank.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter East Jerusalem.
* West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Jordan Valley.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter villages, lands, towns and neighborhoods along the "seam line" between the separation fence and the Green Line (some 10 percent of the West Bank).
* Palestinians who are not residents of the villages Beit Furik and Beit Dajan in the Nablus area, and Ramadin, south of Hebron, are forbidden entry.
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the settlements' area (even if their lands are inside the settlements' built area).
* Palestinians are forbidden to enter Nablus in a vehicle.
* Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden to enter area A (Palestinian towns in the West Bank).
* Gaza Strip residents are forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby crossing.
* Palestinians are forbidden to travel abroad via Ben-Gurion Airport.
* Children under age 16 are forbidden to leave Nablus without an original birth certificate and parental escort.
* Palestinians with permits to enter Israel are forbidden to enter through the crossings used by Israelis and tourists.
* Gaza residents are forbidden to establish residency in the West Bank.
* West Bank residents are forbidden to establish residency in the Jordan valley, seam line communities or the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan.
* Palestinians are forbidden to transfer merchandise and cargo through internal West Bank checkpoints.

Periodic prohibitions

* Residents of certain parts of the West Bank are forbidden to travel to the rest of the West Bank.
* People of a certain age group - mainly men from the age of 16 to 30, 35 or 40 - are forbidden to leave the areas where they reside (usually Nablus and other cities in the northern West Bank).
* Private cars may not pass the Swahara-Abu Dis checkpoint (which separates the northern and southern West Bank). This was cancelled for the first time two weeks ago under the easing of restrictions.


Travel permits required

* A magnetic card (intended for entrance to Israel, but eases the passage through checkpoints within the West Bank).
* A work permit for Israel (the employer must come to the civil administration offices and apply for one).
* A permit for medical treatment in Israel and Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem (The applicant must produce an invitation from the hospital, his complete medical background and proof that the treatment he is seeking cannot be provided in the occupied territories).
* A travel permit to pass through Jordan valley checkpoints.
* A merchant's permit to transfer goods.
* A permit to farm along the seam line requires a form from the land registry office, a title deed, and proof of first-degree relations to the registered property owner.
* Entry permit for the seam line (for relatives, medical teams, construction workers, etc. Those with permits must enter and leave via the same crossing even if it is far away or closing early).
* Permits to pass from Gaza, through Israel to the West Bank.
* A birth certificate for children under 16.
* A long-standing resident identity card for those who live in seam-line enclaves.

Checkpoints and barriers
* There were 75 manned checkpoints in the West Bank as of January 9, 2007.
* There are on average 150 mobile checkpoints a week (as of September 2006).
* There are 446 obstacles placed between roads and villages, including concrete cubes, earth ramparts, 88 iron gates and 74 kilometers of fences along main roads.
* There are 83 iron gates along the separation fence, dividing lands from their owners. Only 25 of the gates open occasionally.

Amira Hass writes for Ha'aretz. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza

Surge Protector

Okay so the President has come out and said we need more troops sent into Baghdad. He is calling it a surge, which implies that it will be a short-lived increase, which it won’t be. The Democrats have come out against this intentionally misnamed “surge” and have been calling it an “escalation”. Escalation is the correct term for what the President and the media are calling for. Yet their own Presidential candidate was proposing an escalation of the War in Iraq during his run up to the Presidential election. When I would refer to Kerry’s plan as an escalation, and would instead argue for troop removal, I was met with all these altruistic reasons why we should send more troops. Again this is another example of the bullshit of partisanship. In other words, “Its okay when my guy suggests it but not when the other side does because they are just plain evil.” Unfortunately both sides have been and are wrong about sending more troops into Baghdad.
The President has been saying for years now that this war must be won. He is using terrifying rhetoric about the fate of world resting on the outcome of this war. He talks about how if we fail the forces of evil will haunt us forever. Evil and good make sense in children’s books and the Bible but not in intelligent debate. Killing 3000 innocent civilians or killing 650,000 innocent civilians, which is evil? If one is the other certainly is.
So here we have the President claiming that we cannot lose this war. If we do, basically, our existence as a nation is threatened. Lets just say that he believes what he says and, lets go a step further, actually is right. So we have established for the sake of argument that Bush truly wants to win the war. Fine. If Bush truly wants to win this war, it begs to ask, ‘Why isn’t he fighting it to win?” Generals told him, that in order to win this war and keep the peace, since it is easy to destroy stuff but hard to stop anarchy, we would need hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. Yet he chose not to listen and now we have utter chaos in Iraq, which is leading to the civil war and disintegration of the country.
So if we are to believe that if we don’t win this war, when we don’t even know what that means, that our country is in danger of being wiped off the face of the map, then why isn’t he trying to “win”. Why isn’t he bringing in the Turks, Iranians and Syrians? If this war is so important for the future of our country then why the hell isn’t he sending 100,000 more troops to Baghdad. Instead he is sending in 20,000 of which maybe 7000 are combat troops.
Another question is why the use of the term “surge”. We all know now that the Right is very careful about the words they use and try to use words to change the debate. For instance, the estate tax, which affects a tiny group of the ultra rich families in this country, is now the “death tax”. Why, because poor people die too and they don’t want to be taxed. Dilation and Extraction abortion becomes “partial birth abortion”. Just image that whore of a women, because women who get abortions are all whores who need to punished by bearing a child, grunting, breathing and pushing in the delivery room. Suddenly the doctor says, “Oh here comes the head,” and the women saying all of a sudden “quick Doc, I changed my mind. Please chop off the baby’s head.”
So why surge? Because a surge is short and escalation reminds people of Vietnam and the lasts election showed that Americans want out of Iraq not more Iraq. Of course, escalating the war was right when John Kerry proposed it last Presidential election; of course he too chose not to use the term “escalation.” The Democrats all went along with it, for one, because they fell into the “anybody but Bush” crowd, and two, because those poor Iraqis need our help to form a country. Which was nothing short of a modern day “white man’s burden”.
Even though the American public wants out and Bush knew that his plan would be unpopular, he still is going ahead with it. This leads me to believe that he really thinks that he is doing the right thing. Of course, the cynical side of me says that he wants the Democrats to be the ones tarnished with the accusation that they lost the war and be able to say that at least he tried. Obviously the architects of the war, the Neo-Conservatives, will be able to claim that they suggested far more troops and the President didn’t listen to them, so then they can try to wipe their hands clean of the whole thing.
In the end though the US will leave Iraq. It may be able to find some face saving measure like having the Iraqi government to ask us to leave or it will start to blame the Iraqis for their problems as if those problems are completely unrelated to the fact that we blew up their country into little pieces. Either way Bush is escalating the war and/or, my biggest fear, he is ramping up for some confrontation with Iran (see my first post on Iran). We are truly in trouble. If we are lucky we will have Ann Coulter around to tell us how the Democrats are to blame for Iraq and how they hate Jesus.

"The most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietman, if it's carried out!"

I was about to write about the President's plan for Iraq and the rest but instead stumbled upon Mr. Cockburn's analysis. It is reprinted here in full. The orginal can be seen at CounterPunch's Web Site

Nomads Beware!

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

A make-or-break speech by a beleagured American president is usually preceded by a demonstration of American might somewhere on the planet and the run-up to Bush’s address Wednesday night was no exception. The AC-130 U.S. gunship that massacred a convoy of fleeing Islamists on Somalia’s southwestern border, apparently along with dozens of nomads, their families and livestock, was deployed on its mission on Sunday, to make timely newspaper headlines indicative of Bush’s determination to strike at terror wherever it may lurk. Moral to nomads: when the US president schedules a speech, don’t herd, don’t go to wedding parties, head for the nearest cave.

President Bush stuck to his expected script and said he plans to boost America’s forces in Iraq by 4,000 Marines to Anbar province and 5 combat brigades -- 17,500 troops -- to Baghdad, in a new scheme to regain control of the city. Past strategies to do this had failed, Bush explained, because of insufficient numbers. He added ominously, “Also, there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.”

In other words, the gloves will now be off in the impending onslaught on the areas of Baghdad controlled by Muktada al Sadr and his Mehdi army. In urban counter-insurgency – the specialty of the politically agile and ambitious new US commander Gen. David Petraeus – the unrestricted U.S. response to a sniper attack or a street corner ambush will be to level the block and if necessary, the entire neighborhood, in a reprise of the destruction of much of Fallujah at the end of 2004.

But Baghdad is a vast city, and the actual fighting component of the beefed up US force in the whole of Iraq won’t be more than 30,000 – and probably less, so it’s impossible to see the new plan as anything other than stupid and cruel, destined only to deepen sectarian hatreds, and to kill, wound and render homeless very large numbers of Iraqis crammed in the slum areas -- i.e., very crowded houses -- which are Muktada’s base.

Within ten minutes of Bush’s half-hour address, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois made an unusually spirited rebuttal on behalf of his party, (far better than the usual slither from Obama ) saying military strategies had failed, and that it was time to bring the troops home and tell the Iraqis to figure it out for themselves. But such bluntness won’t translate into the only way the Democrats could end the war, which is to refuse to okay the money to pay for it. This is something the Democrats could do, since they now control Congress.

But despite the urgings of Senator Ted Kennedy, Rep. Jack Murtha and some others, they shirk the opportunity the voters gave them last November 7. Although heavily pressured by their constituents, a majority of the Democrats in Congress dread White House accusations that to nix the funds would be to leave US troops in Iraq defenseless. So instead they will contrive symbolic votes in protest against Bush’s escalation, okay the money and then spend the run-up to the presidential election in 2008, piously saying “We told you so” as the bad news and the bodies come home from Iraq.

Hagel says Can't

Seeking to explain why the Democrats wouldn’t do anything so bold as to seriously try to stop the war, one Democrat on TV said smugly to an incredulous Pat Buchanan, that after all it was a Republican war, “they started it”. Is there a more ludicrous simulacrum of inanity and misplaced self-conceit than Senator Joe Biden, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? Questioning Condoleezza Rice Biden rambled through a thicket of platitudes, leaving the perennially silly Secretary of State unscathed.

She got far rougher treatment from the lion of Nebraska, Senator Chuck Hagel as well as other Republicans like George Voinovich. Hagel: “You cannot sit here today -- not because you're dishonest or you don't understand -- but no one in our government can sit here today and tell Americans that we won't engage the Iranians and the Syrians cross-border. Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary, and that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, ‘We didn't cross the border going into Cambodia,’ in fact, we did. I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee. So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it's very, very dangerous. As a matter of fact, I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out. I will resist it.”

"I don't see it, and the President doesn't see it, as an escalation," Rice stuttered. "Would you call it a decrease?" asked Hagel . "I would call it, Senator, an augmentation."

At least a dozen Republican senators, some of them expecting tight races in 2008, like Senator Norman Coleman of Minnesota, were denouncing Bush’s plan even before he stepped in front of the cameras to announce it.

At least Senator Russ Feingold brought up the obvious object lesson, regarding what Congress can do, namely the Boland Amendment, passed by Democrats back in Reagan time, forbidding the administration to send material support to the Nicaraguan Contras. Efforts by the Reagan administration to circumvent this law – organized in part by the present Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, led to the Iran-Contra scandal, which badly dented Reagan in his final years.But Feingold got not support on a new Boland Amendment from his Democratic colleagues.

Some 80 per cent of Americans think Bush has made a hash of things in Iraq and it’s a fair bet to say that the President’s speech won’t have done much to reverse that assessment. Perhaps it was the shift of setting for his broadcast to the nation to the White House library that made the president seem uncomfortable. With the exception of Laura, the former librarian, the Bush clan are not a bookish lot. The late Brendan Gill reported that having stayed at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, he scoured the premises late one night in search of something with which to read himself to asleep and could only find “The Fart Book”.

If Bush did like to get his nose into a book instead of over the handlebars of his mountain bike he could glance at Sun Tzu who, (as Chuck Spinney reminded us recently on this site) , said, Avoid protracted war and attack cities as a last resort.

After the speech Frank Bardacke wrote to me from Watsonville:

“Alex, One good thing about the surge that I haven't seen or heard anyone say (not that I've searched) is that it will ruin McCain's chance at the Presidency. It in't gonna work, and it will make it impossible to run for President on a slogan of more troops to Iraq. So maybe when more troops just means more bloodshed the whole adventure will have to be called off. The next President will close it out, it will be historically summed up as the Boy Emperor's War, and most folks here will do their very best to forget the whole damn thing.”

I wrote back: “Good point. I thought McCain looked very groggy in the post speech analysis. But can they call it all off? I mean, at what point did a Roman emperor say, "Screw it, give them goddam Dacia. We don't need it. Parthia too." No, never. It was surge surge surge until finally the overtaxed citizenry of the Roman Empire hung out signs saying "Goths Welcome! 15 per cent off for Parthians!" The Brits were still battling for south Yemen in the 1960s when they hadn't a dime in the bank. In those days Aden was a "crucial entrepot", now days, it's a "backwater", just like Grenada which, when the New Jewel movement briefly gleamed, was "athwart our vital sea lanes".

Final word from Frank: “The Romans built aqueducts, law, peace,you know, the Life of Brian list. What do we build? Nothing. Here is the way I have been putting it to my dog Nellie as we walk along the levy: We have the power to destroy everything, and the authority to build nothing.”

Apartheid in Israel? "The lady doth protest....."

Wow. Jimmy Carter the Antisemite. Look at the wrath his book has conjured. Why, I wonder?


Christ, Even Bill O'Reilly defended him.


Here is a Jewish American defending Carter.


What it is about this book that upsets everyone so much?


Here we have Trent Lott telling us that he's been to the territories and it isn't, oh wait, he's only been to illegal Jewish settlements. Man they are coming out of the woodwork.


This is what your tax dollars pay for. Ya, this isn't aparthied. My ass. Look it up.


I have to say that this seems very much like what one sees in Palestine. Both Israel and South Africa were founded in 1948. One of them had a much better lobbying.


Oh man I totally forgot about this one. I wish that today artists would speak up against injustice, oh well.