goodbye 2008

Let's hope the new year is better.

Happy Hanukkah

Shock, Awe and Lies:
The Truth Behind the Israeli Attack on Gaza
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 29 December 2008
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1666-shock-awe-and-lies-the-truth-behind-the-israeli-attack-on-gaza.html

Here is a simple, stone cold fact. You cannot read or hear the truth about what is happening in Gaza from any corporate media in the United States. The only thing you will find there are regurgitations of Israeli spin, which are themselves only regurgitations of the kind of spin that American militarists have put on their own depredations -- for centuries now. Up and down the American media and political establishments, you will find nothing but bleatings about Israel being "forced" to launch its vicious blunderbuss attacks against heavily populated Gaza because of the "recent spate of Hamas bombings" since the end of a six-month ceasefire.

This is of course a damnable and deliberate lie. Papers in Israel -- in Israel, but not the United States -- are reporting the truth: the murderous assault on Gaza was planned not only before the six-month ceasefire ended -- it was planned before the cease-fire even took effect. Indeed, the cease-fire was part of the military plan to decimate the civilian areas of Gaza; it was a hoax, a scam, a deliberate feint to buy time for military preparations -- precisely the same strategy followed by the Bush Regime (and its bipartisan Establishment supporters) in "going to the UN" to seek a "peaceful solution" to the "Iraqi crisis" -- when the invasion was already in the works.

Haaretz reports on the Israel's deceit in the latest outrage, in the aptly titled piece, "Disinformation, secrecy and lies: How the Gaza offensive came about:

"Long-term preparation, careful gathering of information, secret discussions, operational deception and the misleading of the public - all these stood behind the Israel Defense Forces "Cast Lead" operation against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, which began Saturday morning. he disinformation effort, according to defense officials, took Hamas by surprise and served to significantly increase the number of its casualties in the strike.

Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.."

The story also notes that the recent racheting of tension was sparked, deliberately, by a heavy-handed Israeli incursion into Gaza:

"The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops...."

While Barak was working out the final details with the officers responsible for the operation, Livni went to Cairo to inform Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, that Israel had decided to strike at Hamas. In parallel, Israel continued to send out disinformation in announcing it would open the crossings to the Gaza Strip and that Olmert would decide whether to launch the strike following three more deliberations on Sunday - one day after the actual order to launch the operation was issued.

"Hamas evacuated all its headquarter personnel after the cabinet meeting on Wednesday," one defense official said, "but the organization sent its people back in when they heard that everything was put on hold until Sunday."

Not only did this deception lead Hamas to send its officials back to work -- it also meant that there was no general warning to the masses of civilians packed like sardines into Gaza's hellish confines. It meant that civilian casualties would be maximized -- especially when the initial assault was launched in the middle of the day, with thousands of schoolchildren out at their lesson.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas -- even if couched in terms of "retaliation" for scattershot strikes on Israeli territory by a political faction -- constitutes "a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions." Greenwald also adroitly turns Barack Obama's campaign kowtowing to Israeli militarism on its head:

[Obama on the campaign trail]: "The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if -- I don't even care if I was a politician -- if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

Can't the exact same mentality be deployed to justify everything Hamas has done and is doing, to wit: "if a foreign power were brutally occupying my country for four decades -- or blockading my country and denying my children medical needs and nutrition and the ability even to exit -- I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing"? But the last thing that our political class ever extends is reciprocal, two-sided analysis to this dispute.

What is the ultimate context of this carnage? The fact that the Arab inhabitants of Palestine had their land taken away from them by force -- not in some ancient, historic era, but within the lifetime of many thousands of Palestinians still living. I hold no brief for Hamas; like the Angry Arab, whose coverage of the conflict has been relentless and penetrating, I don't care for any party based on religious extremism. But as Greenwald notes, every action taken by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups could be characterized as "retaliation" for the theft of their land, not to mention the war crime of collective punishment and genocidal blockades visited upon the Occupied Territories for years.

But there is not a single peep of this perspective from America's ruling class and its media courtiers. Of course, it is a bit much to expect a nation which itself was built on land theft, repression and slaughter to see anything wrong or "disproportionate" in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. What else are you supposed to do when those dang heathen savages come around with their war parties and tomahawks, trying to get back the land that God Almighty has granted to good white folk?

Meanwhile, here's what Israel's "Manifest Destiny" looks like on the ground in Gaza. From the Maan News Agency (via the Angry Arab, as was the photo above):

"Death shrouds the hallways of Gaza City's Ash-Shifa medical compound Saturday, its smell creeping in from all corners. Amputated bodies are strewn throughout hallways because morgues in the city can no longer accommodate the dead. In one corner a man stands with his seven year old son in a cardboard box because the hospital ran out of sheets to cover the dead with. This is how he will carry him home and bury him. Another man stands dazed, in shock after watching his son Mohammed killed during his graduation ceremony at the de facto police headquarters. The father of one of Mohammed's classmates stood next to his son as he was decapitated. The man is still screaming.

In the packed hospital waiting room a mother sits silently staring into the distance; her son was pronounced dead shortly after she brought him in... Forty-year-old mother Nawal Al-Lad'a did not find the bodies of her two sons in the medical compound, so she left to look amid the rubble.

Husam Farajallah, a university student, was at the hospital collecting the body of his relative. He called what happened in Gaza a "black day" in the lives of all Palestinians, and wondered how the world could watch and do nothing.

Medics in Gaza confirmed that the majority of those killed in the day's attacks were civilians, including men, women and children. Most were cut to pieces, making the job of doctors and medics difficult, and the task of giving bodies back to families painful and gruesome. The medics working in the field continue to dig up bodies from the densely populated urban areas of Gaza City.

The scenes remind many Palestinians of the images that came out of the Sabra and Shatila massacres from Beirut in 1982, when thousands of Palestinians were killed by the Lebanese Phalangist militia.

As the death toll climbs and no word on a halt to the attacks has come from Israel, Gazans fear for their lives and loved ones."

A New Wind Blowing

by Mary Pitt
12/22/08

The whole country is agog with the news of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and the billions he scammed from big investors, but nobody appears to realize that it is only the tip of a huge iceberg. There are other so-called legitimate institutions afloat in the private sector that are profiting from similar scams with the heartfelt approval of the raging capitalists in government as well as private individuals.

Foremost among these are the insurance companies as they have become established in America. Even the government social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are administered by the accounting departments of insurance companies. The regulations regarding these programs were written in large part by the insurance companies and, as the result, even the very poor are not getting the services they need under their provisions.

Look at the case of a lady I will call Suzy, a middle-aged lady who, though mentally retarded, had worked as a bus person in a hospital cafeteria until her vision deteriorated so badly that she became qualified for Social Security Disability Support. Since she was not yet 65 years old, she was not initially eligible for Medicare and so became dependent on Medicaid for two years for her health care. At the age of forty years, she was found to have serious heart trouble and required a quadruple bypass surgery. Then she required a medical regimen that would last for all her life. Among the many medications upon which her life depended was the blood thinner, Coumadin, a patented and quite expensive tablet. She thrived amazingly well and recovered nicely.

Though her vision was her "primary disability", the coverage provided for her eyes was minimal and she struggled to pay for the necessary replacement of her lenses as that condition continued to progress. Eventually, a surgical procedure was developed which would help to recover a portion of her vision. She had become eligible for Medicare and the surgery was covered but the new lenses were something that she had to pay for herself from her limited income. Gone were the "Coke-bottle" glasses due to the addition of the implanted lenses. She could stop practicing with the white cane and see well enough to be able to cross a street without assistance.

Then Medicare Part D was instituted and she had to look to an insurance company for the medications. This became a near disaster which was to threaten her life. The insurance company would pay only for generic medications and so she had to exchange the highly successful regimen of Coumadin for the generic Warfarin, commonly known for its primary use as a rat poison. As her pharmacist later explained, Warfarin is not "dosage stable", meaning that the strength is known to vary from batch to batch and she was receiving a "bad batch"! She became covered with black-and-blue patches as the capillaries leaked under her skin and a medical examination disclosed the fact that she was also bleeding internally.

The Warfarin dosage was adjusted but, as she improved, she still complained of "floaties" in her vision. The ophthalmologic surgeons found that she had bled inside her eyes and the "floaties" were specks of blood and it would take time for them to resorb. Eventually this occurred. However, the implanted lenses had become permanently clouded and so a second surgery was necessary to replace them, and of course, new glasses were necessary since there was additional permanent damage to her vision. It makes one wonder whether the money saved by "buying generics" was equal to the cost of the second surgery and the after-care, not to mention the added suffering of the patient and the sacrifices for her to have to pay for the second pair of glasses.

This is typical of the quality of care that is provided by Medicare, which is merely a copy of the insurance company standards. The health of the patient takes a back seat to the pennies which are saved by the mandatory designation of which meds are covered. Suzy is not an anomaly but merely an example of the many shortcomings that are occurring on a daily basis. None of the plans are adequate to the needs. Mothers of young children who become ill are forced to wait until they have the money for the "co-payment" before taking them to the doctor. People who have survived surgery for life-threatening conditions are forced to delay or cancel appointments for after-care because they cannot afford the co-payments. The result is that they wait and become more ill, requiring more care than if they had been able to have their care directed by their physician rather than by an insurance clerk or by their need to pay their rent and utilities.

On the other hand, the insurance companies become more prosperous and even more greedy. They live by the bottom line, some even consolidating into "investment groups" that can later be saved from their own folly by government bailouts. One company had a CEO who embezzled a couple of million dollars but the newspapers have not carried a story about his punishment, if any. Perhaps they consider that the loss of his cushy, high-dollar job was sufficient. They live in an entirely different world from those for whose health they have assumed responsibility and about whose welfare they couldn't care less. It's all about the bottom line to them.

Now we are promised "change" which will "reform" the health care system. What we see discussed is a further subsidy to insurance companies or a plan to "assist" poor people in the payment of their premiums, all of which will only aggravate the problem. Even the computerizing of all medical records and the facilitation of their more rapid sharing will not cut much from the cost of health care delivery. It is only by the removal of power over our most personal care from the hands of the money-grubbing "private enterprise" that this can be accomplished. It is not "socialist" to propose a single-payer plan. The government would not own the hospitals and doctors would not be government employees. They would continue to do business as usual and they and the patients would still make decisions as to the necessary care and procedures. And they would save money by being able to follow a simpler billing procedure.

As the old war-protest song told us, "The answer is written in the wind". There is no way to remedy the problem of public health and its burgeoning costs other than to accept it as a public problem. The cost of health care is threatening all of America's industrial base, though the workers have the ever-increasing premiums withheld from their paychecks in varying percentages and still must cope with the omni-present "deductibles and co-payments". If the same amounts were withheld and paid into a public fund, health care would improve and the cost could be contained. Even those who presently carry individual health insurance would find the costs to be even less than they are currently paying. Physicians' costs would drop due to the lack of necessity to bill various companies and to comply with the pertinent and diverse forms and regulations of those companies. And, incidentally, the corporations would be relieved of the burgeoning costs of providing health care for employees and retirees.

A wise man, Henry Kaiser, once said, "It costs less to keep people healthy than to make them well." It is time for us, as a nation, to recognize that wisdom and to turn our attention to the provision of all types of health care to all our citizens, not just those who can afford to carry insurance or have the few dollars in their pockets to get past the front desk to obtain the care that they need. The dyed-in-the-wool capitalists will bellow that we would be killing the insurance companies. We can only reply that they are killing us, may they rest in peace. Our out-going President touts "responsibility" and indicates that "it is every man for himself". We see no acceptance of responsibility from the insurance companies and we are determined to defend ourselves from the many-tentacled monster that has us by the throat.

The citizens of the United States need universal health care and they need it now. What they do NOT need is yet another commission" of very important people who will sit around for a year or two listening to lectures and instruction by a crew of insurance company officials and announce at last another plan to lubricate those same insurance companies with more of the taxpayers' money. The predictable result would be to throw still more stumbling blocks between the American citizen and his physician.

We must allow the new wind to blow away the cobwebs of complacency and allow our leaders to consider the common sense in moving health care from the profit-making industries and place it where it belongs, in the hands of the health care professionals and the scientific community. Only with a realistic assessment from this point of view can we understand and find the best answer to the problem. We must allow no more low-income workers to fall through the huge cracks in our medical system and no more children to depend on the skillful manipulation of the family budge to provide the care that they need. No more must our elderly be required to subsist on meager rations in order to pay for their medications, becoming ever more frail as they march to a hospice. Only when these problems are faced head-on can the American Dream get back on the road to reality.

We have a nation that must be rebuilt; we have a democracy to be set back on the right track; we have a national debt that will be with us for generations, and an economy that is depleted of resources. This cannot be accomplished by a nation of ill, handicapped people with neglected children and working adults who are needlessly worried about the welfare of their families. For our nation and our own future, we must correct this situation and we must do it now.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

Fearing the Frightful Filibuster

by Mary Pitt
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Republicans are already indicating their intent to use the same tactics that they used in the past two years in the minority to block many of the programs that are vital to the plans of President-elect Obama. They cling to the "sixty-vote cloture" rule as if it were the Holy Grail and intend to exercise it at every turn in the deliberations of the upcoming Congressional session.

Let them!

Let them filibuster! That can be done by refusing to sit back and whimper as has the past Congress under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. The Legislature can pass all the programs of the President but the Democrats in the Senate need to grow a spine and stand up to the filibuster threat by pushing those programs despite them. What's the worst that could happen?

Under the rules of the filibuster, one speaker must continue to argue until the opposition surrenders and decides to let the bill in question die. This becomes a mental and physical marathon and I don't believe there is an orator in today's Senate who can sustain it. Over the years past, some very colorful characters have arisen who used the filibuster successfully and provided much entertainment for the public in the process. Some have collapsed in the attempt to block a vote but many have succeeded in continuing for a number of days and nights in standing on their feet and keeping up the flow of words. If the opposition surrenders, they are henceforth known as heroes but, if they fail, the bill goes to a vote and may become law.

Now, in a filibuster, it simply doesn't matter what the Senator says so long as he continues talking. History is replete with examples of these legendary orators who gave their all for the party. Senator Robert Byrd was noted for reading the Constitution aloud, over...and over...and over, until the opposition folded. Senator Everett Dirkson, he of the silver tongue, was an inspiration as he spoke about the values or lack thereof of the motion in question. However, I think it is time to discover whether there are any current Senators who are truly willing and able to engage in such physically and mentally grueling exercise in support of their political opinion.

During the last Congressional session, all the Republicans had to do was to threaten filibuster and Speaker Pelosi would not even allow a vote in the House because the Senate could not muster the required sixty-vote majority for cloture. She would announce that, "We just don't have the votes in the Senate", roll over like a spanked puppy, and pee on the floor!

It's time to call their bluff. We all know that Republicans are bullies and will use any minor advantage they can find in order to advance their own agenda or to stymie that of their opponents. If they want to filibuster, let them! When their champion tires and falls over, they can then resume business as usual and vote on the measure in question. It is long and tiring but it is still possible and "possible" is what America needs at this time. The voters are tired of their very lifeblood being drained by the machinations of bullies and we should allow no more of it.

If the current occupants of the chairs in the Senate have not the courage and determination to stand up for us, then perhaps those chairs should be occupied by people with more of what we Americans call "guts". President Obama has been charged with performing nothing less than a series of miracles in order to restore democracy but he cannot do it alone. The Congress is going to have to reach deep down and discover the strength and the courage that is necessary to accomplish any of them. If they do not, the United States is doomed to become just another historic legend along with Athens and Rome.

The author is a very "with-it" old lady who aspires to bring a bit of truth, justice, and common sense to a nation that has lost touch with its humanity in the search for "societal perfection".

more from Redneck City

I'm tellin' ya. Livin' here's a trip.

Hendry Sheriff Sells Car To Georgia Town
Transferring Assets To Keep New Sheriff From Getting Them Says Story
Don Browne
Thursday, November 27, 2008
http://swflorida.blogspot.com:80/2008/11/hendry-sheriff-sells-car-to-georgia.html

LABELLE, FL. -- A news story in the Cordele Dispatch in Georgia says Hendry County Sheriff Ronnie Lee is selling his 2007 Dodge Charger police cruiser to a Vienna, Georgia Police Department to keep Sheriff-Elect Steve Whidden from getting it. The issue came to light according to the story when the Vienna Mayor questioned the purchase at a city council meeting Monday.

According to the story Vienna Police Chief Jamey Reed bought the vehicle without notifying the Mayor. According to the story "Reed said a sheriff in Hendry County, Fla. had lost his bid for re-election and had a black 2007 Dodge Charger he did not want the new sheriff to get."

The Vienna Mayor was disappointed that he wasn't notified of the deal made by the Vienna Police Chief.

"Reed said the total price for the Charger was $18,950. He informed council that he had a quote, also from Brannen, on a new Crown Victoria like the ones currently in use by the department. The quote for the Crown Victoria was $28,285. The purchase of the Charger saves taxpayers almost $10,000 and payment for the vehicle is not due until January 2009 when it was originally approved for, Reed said."

The cruiser is already fully equipped with lights, siren, and radio and had been traded to Brannen Motor Company in Unadilla, according to the story. Although it is unknown from where the Dodge Charger police vehicle was purchased originally, Sheriff Lee's son Ronnie Jr. worked for a local LaBelle Dodge dealer. Nearly all of the other Hendry Sheriff's department vehicles are Fords.

more at: http://www.cordeledispatch.com/archivesearch/local_story_330203043.html