Ooops, I just Committed a Thought Crime!
11/14/12
Israel Shells Syria and Gaza
11/14/12
Photo: Mortar shell marks are seen on a wall as a person closes a broken window of his house in a community along the Israel Gaza border, Israel, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit/Associated Press)
Previous articles said beware of false flags. For months throughout the Syrian conflict, possible full-scale Western intervention loomed. It still does. Post-US elections, it's more likely, not certain, but reports suggest expect it.
Several stray mortar shells from Syria struck occupied Golan. No injuries were reported. Israel holds Damascus responsible. On November 9, Israel warned Assad. Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon said,
"We see the regime in Syria as responsible for what is happening along the border." "If we see that it is spreading in our direction, we will know how to defend the citizens of the State of Israel and the State of Israel's sovereignty.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak added,
"We have made clear via UNDOF (Golan's United Nations Disengagement Observer Force) that we intend for there not to be shells falling on us." [Without elaborating, he added:] "I hope this will not continue, and that the rebels will win in Syria, that Assad will fall and that, at long last, a new stage in the life of Syria will begin."
It's hard imagining what he means or wants. Israel already has post-Mubarak Egypt to deal with. Mohamed Morsi is more outspoken on issues where both countries disagree. Similar or more extremist Syrian governance would substitute a peaceful opponent for one more adversarial. The adage about being careful for what you wish applies.
Dead Enough: The Reality of the "Lesser Evil"
11/14/12
To all those now hailing the re-election of Barack Obama as a triumph of decent, humane, liberal values over the oozing-postule perfidy of the Republicans, a simple question: Is this child dead enough for you?
This little boy was named Naeemullah. He was in his house -- maybe playing, maybe sleeping, maybe having a meal -- when an American drone missile was fired into the residential area where he lived and blew up the house next door.
As we all know, these drone missiles are, like the president who wields them, super-smart, a triumph of technology and technocratic expertise. We know, for the president and his aides have repeatedly told us, that these weapons -- launched only after careful consultation of the just-war strictures of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas -- strike nothing but their intended targets and kill no one but "bad guys." Indeed, the president's top aides have testified under oath that not a single innocent person has been among the thousands of Pakistani civilians -- that is, civilians of a sovereign nation that is not at war with the United States -- who have been killed by the drone missile campaign of the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Yet somehow, by some miracle, the missile that roared into the residential area where Naeemullah lived did not confine itself neatly to the house it struck. Somehow, inexplicably, the hunk of metal and wire and computer processors failed -- in this one instance -- to look into the souls of all the people in the village and ascertain, by magic, which ones were "bad guys" and then kill only them. Somehow -- perhaps the missile had been infected with Romney cooties? -- this supercharged hunk of high explosives simply, well, exploded with tremendous destructive power when it struck the residential area, blowing the neighborhood to smithereens.