January 5th Senate Rules Opportunity

Due to abuse of the U.S. Senate filibuster procedure, any major issue now requires a 60% majority vote to pass (super-majority).

In the past, all Senate business would stop during a filibuster; however, some time ago the Senate adopted a two-track process that allows business to continue while a filibuster is occurring. This means that there is no price for conducting a filibuster, so it can be used willy nilly. This has to stop.

January 5th, the U.S. Senate adopts its rules for the next two years. It's critical that they fix this problem on that single day. Contact your Senators and insist that they support Colorado Sen. Mark Udall's proposed rules change, or similar measure, to fix the filibuster problem.

Thanks

For Your Convenience:

• Contact the US Senate

When Frat Boys Rule

A Texan cringes at her college son's contemplation of joining a fraternity. She ponders the history of past frat boys who work their way into the system, in her example,

In my mind, some of those assholes are very likely among the smug bastards sitting on the education commission dictating standards for Texas' text books. They were all particularly jolly when Ronald Reagan came to power - them in their Izods and Topsiders.

She takes some solace in her mother's motherly advice:

"give them enough rope."

True enough, I think.

We gave the pledge bros, who ended up on Wall Street, "enough rope," they drilled the economy into the ground, we bailed them out, and they still continue to spew worn out mantras about "less regulation," "lower taxes," and, get this, "free market"... and the pledge brothers and sisters who ended up as celebrity talking heads on the TV machine blather on in the same way.

But as the high school popularity contest, or should I say "college" popularity contest, has worked its way into the upper echelons of society, I had to wonder:

Lots of rope out there, but I'm not so sure the fraternity pledge-crowd isn't using it on us.

Sources:

Calling a Spade a Spade, Menopausal Stoner blog.

Israeli Military Admission Masks True Inentions

The acknowledgment, by a high-ranking Israeli officer, of violating rules of engagement during the January 2009 assault on Gaza is spin. In short, the Israelis know that they have been caught committing war crimes, so now they are trying to say it was merely a matter of exceeding a principle of military conduct in order to protect Israeli soldiers. But, while true on one level, the purpose of Israel's violation of military conduct went beyond protecting soldiers.

Israel's claim, released as if the general is speaking on his own, is that the military exceeded the principle of "means and intentions" during their Operation Cast Lead. The principle is that "a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon."[1] Instead, Israeli soldiers were told to shoot at anything, as was revealed by testimonials of Israeli soldiers documented by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence:

This is First Sergeant Amir, a reservist from the Armored Corps who served in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, as they call that, the Israeli assault on Gaza earlier this year. He’s describing the briefings his unit received during the training for the assault. [2]

FIRST SGT. AMIR: [translated] At any obstacle, any problem, we open fire and don’t ask questions, even if it’s firing in the dark, aimed at an unknown target. Fire when we don’t see, deterrent fire? No problem with that, etc. A vehicle that’s in the way? Crush it. A building in the way? Shell it. This was the spirit of things that was repeated throughout the training.


INTERVIEWER: Meaning that in briefings no one even mentions the issue of innocents?


FIRST SGT. AMIR: It is not mentioned. And if it is mentioned, it is only to say that there are no innocents, everyone there is enemy. That’s a phrase we kept hearing from that brigade commander, too, that wherever we would be, if there is anyone there, they must be the enemy.

INTERVIEWER: You had briefings before entering that included rules of engagement?


FIRST SGT. AMIR: Not that I recall. There were no rules of engagement. The rules of engagement were to shoot. Those were the rules of engagement. You see anything suspect? Shoot. [2][3]

The military code of conduct principle of "means and intentions" is that you don't shoot unless you can reasonably determine that your opponent has the "means and intention" of shooting you. In an ironic play on words, Israel's "intention" in violating this code of conduct wasn't simply to protect its soldiers.

Israel's recent admission is a preemptive attempt to mask their true "intention" of collectively punishing the Palestinians in Gaza as Israel did the country of Lebanon in 2006. It's instructive to look back at Israel's track record in Lebanon, as described in a 2009 P.U.-Litzer Award written up by Fair and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):

In a January 14 column, New York Times superstar pundit Tom Friedman explained Israel's war on Lebanon as an attempt to "educate" the enemy by killing civilians: The Israeli strategy was to "inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical." Friedman added, "The only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians--the families and employers of the militants--to restrain Hezbollah in the future." That strategy of targeting civilians to advance a political agenda is usually known as terrorism; Osama bin Laden couldn't have explained it much better. [4] - Thanks to GLH Blog for the tip on this.

Israel's intentional destruction of civilian areas in Beirut Lebanon has become military doctrine, now named the Dahiya doctrine. Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli Northern Command chief, expressed the premise of the Dahiya doctrine:

What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. […] This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved. [5]

What happened in the Dahiya quarter is reflected in "before" and "after" photos below.


Israel's policy of targeting violence towards civilians to achieve political goals, also known as terrorism, has been documented in the Goldstone investigation of war crimes surrounding the 2009 Gaza events. Just another of several examples,

Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland has argued that, in the event of another war with Hizbullah, the target must not be the defeat of Hizbullah but “the destruction of the national infrastructure and intense suffering among the population… Serious damage to the Republic of Lebanon, the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people are consequences that can influence Hizbollah’s behaviour more than anything else”.[5]

Goldstone cites similar language used by General Eisenkot "while he was in active service in a senior command position and clarified that this was not a theoretical idea but an approved plan." [5]

Israeli politicians and cabinet members voiced similar intentions in advance of Israel's assault on Gaza. One example, of many, voices the intention of collective punishment against civilians and disproportionate use of force:

On 6 January 2009, during the military operations in Gaza, [Israeli] Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai stated: "It [should be] possible to destroy Gaza, so they will understand not to mess with us”.

On 2 February 2009, after the end of the military operations, Eli Yishai went on: “Even if the rockets fall in an open air or to the sea, we should hit their infrastructure, and destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired.”[5]

Thus, for the Israeli military to simply admit that they merely broached military codes of conduct to minimize risk to their soldiers, while having a grain of truth, isn't the whole truth.

Sources:

1. The Independent, Israeli commander: 'We rewrote the rules of war for Gaza', February 3, 2010.

2. DemocracyNow!, "Israeli Activists Criticize US House for Considering Resolution Condemning Goldstone Report on Israeli War Crimes in Gaza," November 3, 2009.

3. Breaking the Silence web site.

4. Fair and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) 2009 P.U.-Litzer Awards.

5. References to Goldstone Report, Mondoweiss.

6. Photo Credit, A comparison of the Dahiya neighborhood before and after Israel attacks in 2006 Gorillas Guides.

7. Graphic Credit: Blockade After Gaza Victory, by Zealousof Peace.

Desire to Hold Detainees Motivates Torture

The US military in Iraq has rules. For example, there were apparently rules against having non-trained interrogators conduct interrogations. So, according to pfc. Evan Knappenberger...

We didn’t call them interrogations. The terminology had to be changed, as is the case with many things we do in the military that we’re not really allowed to do. If you change the name, you can – you are allowed to do it but, because it’s not – it’s the same action, a different name. We call them tactical questionings.

Another set of military rules determines how to handle detainees. In a response to a question from DemocracyNow's Amy Goodman about who's in the room during a "tactical questioning" session, Knappenberger describes his experience:

Well, I can’t really go into specifics, but typically there would be one or two soldiers. At times it would be nobody more than two junior enlisted soldiers, and an Iraqi interpreter, and the suspect.

When asked about the kinds of questions asked he replied by describing the 24-hour rule:

the rule was we could hold these guys for 24 hours without doing any paperwork on them. And at the end of that 24 hours, if we had enough on them,... we’d keep them in. Otherwise we had to release them.

Basically, it's a rule that keeps one-day detentions secret by having no paper work. But, Knappenbergers' next statement that is even more troubling:

The problem then became getting something out of them to keep them.

Hmmm.... Imagine young, junior enlisted soldiers, who likely feel angry about their situation, trying to "get something" on a detainee to "justify" holding them longer. It's a formula for abusive treatment, that is, torture.

Take Action:

If you feel a responsibility to bring this flawed situation to someone's attention, you might consider contacting the US Department of Defense.