Monday This and That

Gonna freeze my butt off this afternoon. Still below freezing here at 1030 in morning and I am scheduled to be the garden cashier this afternoon 1 until close at 9p. Normally the store doesn't open the garden registers when it is this cold but the tree lot is now open so the dead trees must be sold. I'll layer up but after a few hours in the cold and wind nothing stops the cold from seeping down to the bones. The big storm is supposed to move in later this afternoon as well so I may get the added bonus of rain, sleet and freezing rain. Can't wait.

The store is gearing up for Black Friday and it is really depressing. The shelves are always lines with Chinese made garbage dump fodder but with the big shopping holiday approaching the aisles are getting filled with even more. Virtually every box is prominently labeled with CHINA and there are mountains of worthless, cheaply made crap for the suckers to buy. I for one have made it a personal goal not to buy anything from anyone on Thursday or Friday...it just encourages them. Just remember that every dollar you spend is a vote for the world you want to live in. Consider joining me in not shopping Thanksgiving or on Black Friday. There is absolutely nothing you can't live without out there and for Goddess' sake don't patronize Wally World or any other retailer that is opening on Thanksgiving. Trust me....you don't need what they are selling.

It was going to be a quiet holiday around here but Madam has invited some friends who are in the process of moving over for the Thanksgiving Day. I don't mind and I at least have some warning. I do have Wednesday and Thursday off so I will have time to put it all together. The Depot did give us all a frozen turkey so there is that. I am still trying not to think about having to be there at  445am on Friday...Goddess that is going to suck.

All the idiots that hoorayed the Iraq debacle are pshawing the Iran agreements..whoda thunk? In my view anything that doesn't involve bullets and bombs is a good thing. It's not 'world peace' by a long shot but it is a step in the right direction.

Now that the Senate has the opportunity to actually become a functioning part of government I expect something to actually happen. I'm getting a little impatient.

I'm thinking pumpkin, pecan and buttermilk pies for Thanksgiving. Does anyone have any other requests? Apple maybe? How about lemon meringue?

The menu is lining up as pretty standard fare:
Dry brined turkey
Cornbread dressing
Gravy
Mashed Spuds (homegrown)
Candied Sweet potatoes (homegrown)
Succotash (homegrown)
green vege - undecided
cranberry-orange relish
Assorted pickles (beets, okra, cukes, etc.)
Fresh yeast rolls

Above mentioned pies and whatever else strikes me. Any of your favorites I should add?

Dead Is Dead

It sure looks like the moneyed elite are going to get their way and have as commit war crimes again. It doesn't look good for us pacifists. They've dragged out the old lie that getting dead from poison gas is so much worse and some kind of "red line" that it just absolutely requires us to kill some more. You know it's a lie and a damned silly one at that. All the people dead from the alleged poison gas are just as dead as if they were blown up by a car bomb or shot point blank with a handgun or picked off at 400 yards by a sniper. Dead is dead and they don't care how they died.

The reality is that it is too late to make whimpering noises about how awful it was that these poor folks died by poison gas and not by a bullet. Is it going to make it all better if some more of them die at the hands of a Tomahawk cruise missile or an F-16 strafing run? The time for action was some 100,000 Syrians ago when there was some chance of heading off a generation of hate. We're pretty much too late now.

An accurate "test" of any action and especially any action that will likely result in the loss of innocent lives is to assess who will benefit from the action and who will benefit if there is no action. From my perspective the only folks that will benefit from spending 20 or more million dollars "making a statement" are those selling cruise missiles and other weaponry and it should go without saying that this includes those elected using copious amounts of money from the "bomb and gun sellers". I sure can't see how anyone(except maybe grave diggers) are going to benefit from more of the same crap that has killed so many of them over the last few years. Show me where I am wrong here.

In the end we'll just have another Middle Eastern population that justifiably hates us and is an active recruiting ground for terrorists. On the bright side, that many more haters will give the NSA and CIA all the more reason to listen to every grunt you make on the toilet. Freedom!

Just The First of Many

A little more is coming out about the tragic murder of civilians in Afghanistan by an American serviceman. It turns out the guy is on his 4th rotation only this time it was Afghanistan and he was not happy about the deployment. The military/government are trying to hype this as a soldier becoming deranged and the rampage the result. The probable truth is that the guy was frustrated, mentally exhausted and lashing out. If he was actually "deranged" then he would have probably turned his weapon on his buddies. It happened in Vietnam and even after deployment to Vietnam was over in places like Hawaii. I know because I was there and witnessed it first hand. It is just one of the symptoms of "battle fatigue".

The thing is, it doesn't matter how professional, elite, or well-disciplined your army is, if you put them in theaters like Iraq, Afghanistan and yes, Vietnam for 10 years with an open ended and undefined  mission  mixed with an indigenous population where you can't tell the good guys from the bad you're going to have trouble. Add rotations of four, five, or six tours to the mix and you have a recipe for disaster.  Afghanistan is not materially different from Vietnam in this respect and until the generals and chicken hawks admit it, this kind of thing will continue to happen and even escalate.

In case I wasn't clear...this guy wasn't "deranged" or just all of a sudden went off the deep end. His actions were a product of this environment and completely the result of his repeated deployment into what I am sure he realized was a "no win" situation. Frustration, anger, resentment and a sense of powerlessness to control his own destiny were the triggers. It is tragic that a bunch of civilians got in his way of venting his anger. Just as tragic, however, is for us to buy into the military/government hype that this guy was "deranged" thereby removing any responsibility for the soldier's actions. They will try very hard to distance themselves from the reality that this whole tragic affair is because of their poor or nonexistent management of this whole Afghanistan thing and the terrible burdens that they are putting on our men and women in uniform.

Murder By Any Name

There has been quite a dust up regarding the Attorney General's comments on the Executive branch's need and justification for killing American citizens without "due process". Let me just start out by saying that I don't agree that "due process" justifies killing anybody whether friend or foe. I do, however, want to try and bring some perspective to the issue.

The harsh reality is that our government has been killing American citizens without "due process" since before it was actually our government and that has been through the inhuman act of war. Thousands and thousands of American soldiers have been killed since our country's founding in war without "due process". You can argue that a Declaration of War by the Congress is "due process" but I beg to differ. Regardless of whether an official Declaration of War is, in fact, "due process" the point becomes effectively mute when you consider the actions of our government since the Authorization to Use Military Force was granted after 9/11. You can argue until you are blue in the face that the AUMF was "due process" but the fact remains that thousands of American lives were lost and are still being lost based on lies and without "due process".

The idea that killing/murder/death of your own or others for any reason that you might decided upon is wrong, regardless of reason whether it be for revenge, oil, politics or religion. Nothing justifies it.

So here is the deal. It is wrong for the Executive branch to effect this power but let's be real...it is just another flavor of government sanctioned killing/murder/death. If we are going to get our skivvies in a knot let's, at least, get them in a knot over the whole enchilada and not as some half-baked excuse to accuse this President of some grievous crime against the Constitution.

While I am at it I might as well go the next step and mention that our current sanctions against Iran are just another way of killing/murder/death without the bullets. Just like the sanctions we imposed on Iraq, these sanctions are going to kill the poor, the children and the least able to protect themselves. None of the powerful in Iran will suffer just like none of the powerful in Iraq suffered. The sanctions will, just like Iraq, kill thousands of the least able to protect themselves and it will all be without "due process".

What's Over?

How can the "war" in Iraq be over when we never declared "war" in the first place? Just asking.

D-Day

You can go here for some images for this very important anniversary but I must say that the hat must be tipped to Paul Krugman for the pun of the day

It's Not About the People

Once again we are being fed the lie that our intervention in Libya is about the poor "freedom fighters" if it really was about the people then we would  intervene in places like Bahrain and Cote D'Ivoire where there has been violence at least or maybe worse than that in Libya. Never, ever forget that Libya has oil and that is what this is really about.

Oil reserves in Libya are the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world with 41.5 billion barrels (6.60×10^9 m3) as of 2007. Oil production was 1.8 million barrels per day (290×10^3 m3/d) as of 2006, giving Libya 63 years of reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found. Libya is considered a highly attractive oil area due to its low cost of oil production (as low as $1 per barrel at some fields), and proximity to European markets. Libya would like to increase production from 1.8 Mbbl/d (290×10^3 m3/d) in 2006 to 3 Mbbl/d (480×10^3 m3/d) by 2010–13 but with existing oil fields undergoing a 7–8% decline rate, Libya's challenge is maintaining production at mature fields, while finding and developing new oil fields. Most of Libya remains unexplored as a result of past sanctions and disagreements with foreign oil companies.

We are once again going to war based on bullshit and we doing it because some of our masters (Exxon and BP for starters) want the oil. This exercise has nothing to do with humanitarianism and people need to disabuse themselves of this crap.

Let's hope that Qaddafi is sufficiently cowed and that he backs down quickly. If he doesn't then we middle class and poor are going to have to come up with a little more of that good old fashioned "sacrifice" that we have been so good at providing.  Maybe we don't really need public education after all and all those people getting Medicare will just end up dying in the end anyway.

A Trillion There A Trillion There

The House had no problem with deficit spending today and voted to approve another emergency supplemental appropriation to fund the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This appropriation takes the total Congress has allotted for these cluster fucks at over $1 Trillion with a capital T.

Among the countless tragedies both in cost and in human suffering is the reality that if the action in Iraq had not happened(and it shouldn't have) and distracted us from the 'real' mission we might actually have been out of the quagmire in Afghanistan by now. The minor trillion dollar distraction in Iraq has cost us failure in Afghanistan and nine years laters, it's still a mess with no foreseeable resolution.

Now that the GOP is busily trying to polish the turd of  George Bush and Dick Cheney's rule we should all remember one thing ... that $1 trillion is all deficit spending and it's money we could surely find a better use for if it is on the plastic.

Milestone Tragedy

The Pentagon now reports that 1,000 of our sons and daughters have died in Afghanistan. This is not a good milestone and certainly not one to celebrate. I only ask what benefit we will gather for this high price?
I'll steal a paragraph from Derrick Crowe at FDL:

Here is this wide altar, Afghanistan, on which our empire leaves its tribute to the true god of all empires. One thousand of the young, blown apart by rough-made bombs buried on roads to nowhere, shot by snipers, or worse, by their own. One thousand sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, neighbors, mentors, students, friends, husbands, wives, lovers. A thousand goats led into the wild to appease the spirit of the wilderness, the maker of weapons, sent to the desert for our impurities.

More here 

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Jim DeRosa has a post up this morning A Great Society or a Great War. You Can't Have Both.

I too, have been thinking a lot about the weight of the decision President Obama is having to make. While President Obama was left with hundreds of tough problems by the preceding administration none are more critical to the future of what America will become than the lingering disasters of these two wars. Millions upon millions of people both here and there will have to live with the consequences of our next steps.

The always eloquent Bill Moyers had this to say about where we are:

BILL MOYERS: Now in a different world, at a different time, and with a different president, we face the prospect of enlarging a different war. But once again we're fighting in remote provinces against an enemy who can bleed us slowly and wait us out, because he will still be there when we are gone.

Once again, we are caught between warring factions in a country where other foreign powers fail before us. Once again, every setback brings a call for more troops, although no one can say how long they will be there or what it means to win. Once again, the government we are trying to help is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent.

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart.

And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision.

We will never know what would have happened if Lyndon Johnson had said no to more war. We know what happened because he said yes.

Aside from the fact that there are thousands, if not millions of lives at stake there is also a terrible political impact to the impending decision. There is a very strong likelihood that should President Obama choose to not escalate the conflict in Afghanistan and, in effect, walk away he will most likely be a one term president. If the President chooses, instead of war, the almost impossible domestic problems which he inherited, he will pay for it with his Presidency. The charges from the war mongers and wingnut right will be poisonous. He will be labeled as weak and unpatriotic. He will be accused of betraying our dead and casting aside all of the lives and treasure we have invested in these misguided wars and it will be relentless. Trust me, it won't matter one whit to the mouthbreathers if we move toward energy independence, reduce the deficit, enact health reform or any other of the myriad opportunities we have to improve life in America. The only thing that will matter is that Obama quit. It won't matter that it was fruitless to continue. It won't matter that we were crushing ourselves under mountains of debt for no reason. The only thing they will see is quitting which they will see a losing.

This is the choice President Obama faces and it is a mighty dilemma. Is there a way to end the quagmire that was deliberately left for him in Afghansitan and still serve two terms? I, for one, believe the choice should be to end our engagement in a conflict we cannot and never will win even it means a return to power of the right. As much as I hate the idea of a return to incompetence of the GOP I have come to the conclusion that we can't, as a nation, continue on our present course. Escalating the Afghanistan conflict will just amplify the disaster. Abandoning it will be the political ruin of Obama and the Democratic party. Withdrawing from Afghanistan will add high octane fuel to the efforts of the extreme right to tear this country apart. If you think the insanity displayed since the election has been spectacular just wait until they have this to batter the President with.

The sad thing is that President Obama will probably bow to the pressure and escalate in some fashion and, in effect, turn his back on the mountain of domestic problems we face. Thousands more American and Afghan lives will be sacrificed until someone comes along and makes the right decision. I just hope that if and when the escalation comes it is wrapped in clear and decisive terms with respect to goals and exit strategy. I think it is a mistake to kick the ball down the field one more time no matter how the process is defined but it will probably happen.

None of us should delude ourselves about the reasons either. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is strictly about politics and the President's desire to not be a one term President. It will be about not ceding political power to the extreme right in the next presidential election. We have been here before and to paraphrase Bill Moyers, it is "de ja vu all over again". President Obama is in the same position as President Johnson when it came to Vietnam. Johnson chose war out of political expediency even though he chose not to run for a second term. Would that President Obama take a lesson from that dilemma and the results of the wrong decision.

Those of you that have been coming around here for any length of time know how much I loathe the far right and what they have done and are doing to our country. As much as I hate to say it, I would rather see them return to power than see us spend any more lives and treasure in the pointless conflicts in the Middle East. It was a mistake in the beginning and it is even more of a mistake now. If ending this costs us a return to the fascism of the right then so be it.

Don't get me wrong. I do believe that we should be engaged in the world and especially the potential hell hole that could erupt in the Middle East. I just don't think we should be doing it with bombs and bullets. Pakistan is trouble squared and Iran could be as well. Palestine and Israel will ever be a sucking wound on the world until we settle the issue of the West Bank and settlements. Who knows what will become of Iraq and Afghanistan if we disengage militarily. We and many before us have proven conclusively that bombs and bullets don't work in Afghanistan and the same can be said for the rest. We can't ignore the hole but we should at least stop digging.

Frightening Statistic

From TPM.

The 140 Army suicides so far this year equal the total from all of 2008 -- and almost equal the 142 U.S. troops from all the services killed in Iraq so far this year.

There is something seriously wrong when our soldiers are killing themselves as fast as the enemy is killing them.

More Hungry

According to this piece in The Washington Post:

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

Absolutely shameful!

This country needs to seriously reconsider the amount of money we are investing in war in light of the growing number of hungry people. The proposed 2010 budget for the DOD is 664 billion dollars and represents a 7% increase(you do the math) over 2009. WTF?

Before my recent 'early retirement' I was trying to make monthly contributions to the Atlanta Community Food Bank but I had to stop for obvious reasons and while such contributions are good and help they are not the answer. I am probably not the only one that has had to trim my charitable contributions and regardless, community food banks are not the solution and only meager stopgap. This shouldn't be happening in the greatest economy in the world, deficits or not. Hungry adults are one thing but children going hungry or being undernourished is criminal. Children deprived of proper nutrition will impact the qualityof the next generation in many ways and while we may not be able to give every child everything they need to "be the best they can be" we can at least not challenge them with hunger on top of the other problems we are 'gifting' them with.

Two Faced

What a bastard. Sen. Tom Coburn, the ultra right GOP jerk from Oklahoma doesn't have any trouble at all throwing money at the sundry unnecessary wars and likewise doesn't appear to lose a wink of sleep whilst sending American soldiers to be killed or maimed in far away places for dubious reasons. He does have a problem when it comes to dealing with the results of his warmongering though.

Even though the bill to consolidate veterans benefits passed through committee unanimously Mr. Coburn singlehandedly is blocking allowing it to come to a vote. He thinks the 3.7 billion over 5 years should be offset by reducing other spending. All the money for war but nothing for its aftermath.

The Republican Senator from Oklahoma is one sick puppy.

h/t Steve

Change in the Air?

There have been scores of anonymously-sourced reports alleging one thing or another about President Obama's next step with respect to the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. I may be completely wrong but it seems to me as if the President is finally beginning to realize that he is in a 'no win' situation and that the old axiom that says "Afghanistan is where empires go to die" is the hard truth and throwing more American blood and treasure onto the sands there is not the answer. Couple this with the latest 'leaked' cable from Ret. Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who has put in writing his "reservations about deploying additional troops to the country." Eikenberry is not just some diplomatic functionary, he was recently the top American military commander in the country and his concern lends credence to the this AP report suggesting that the president has been presented with a series of options, none of which he finds compelling.

President Barack Obama won't accept any of the Afghanistan war options before him without changes, a senior administration official said, as concerns soar over the ability of the Afghan government to secure its own country one day. [...]

He remains close to announcing his revamped war strategy -- troops are just one component -- and probably will do so shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends Nov. 19.

Yet in Wednesday's pivotal war council meeting, Obama wasn't satisfied with any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, one official said.

The president instead pushed for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. In turn, that could change the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official.

The DoD is trying to push the president into escalating the U.S. presence with help from Clinton, Gates and others. President Obama seems to realize that he is being rushed and he is pushing back and that is a good thing. Somewhere I read that the President is seriously concerned with seeing results and getting out or put another way "wants to know where the off-ramps are."

The Pentagon and 'chickenhawks' aren't going to like this and you are going to see another round of complaints about 'dithering'. So be it. I am firmly convinced that Afghanistan is a lost cause and that we should be pulling out as fast as we can. Our efforts in the area should be at stabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear threat, and leaving Afghanistan to its own miserable devices. It's nice to be the 'Lone Ranger' to the world when there is hope of accomplishing something positive but a lost cause is a lost cause and the sooner you stop digging the better.

Can you Say Quagmire?

I'm beginnning to have serious doubts:

Reporting from Washington – U.S. officials are planning to add as many as 14,000 combat troops to the American force in Afghanistan by sending home support units and replacing them with “trigger-pullers,” Defense officials say.

The move would beef up the combat force in the country without increasing the overall number of U.S. troops, a contentious issue as public support for the war slips. But many of the noncombat jobs are likely be filled by private contractors, who have proved to be a source of controversy in Iraq and a growing issue in Afghanistan.

I was originally kind of "OK" with our presence in Afghanistan but I am beginning to think we have lost our way. I can't really discern exactly what our strategy in Afghanistan is anymore? What is it, exactly, that we are trying to accomplish? Add to this that I think increasing the number of private contractors is ridiculous and has proved over and over again to be a waste of money and dangerous for the actual military. Electrocution in the shower anyone? How about a little sewage in your iced tea?

The War After "The War to End All Wars"

Jim DeRosa reminds us that today it is the 70th anniversary of the start of WWII.

At 0445 (0245 GMT) 1 September 1939 a German battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire at point-blank range on a Polish fort on Westerplatte peninsula near Gdansk.These were the first shots fired in WWII.

Update: And so does Bryan at Why Now!

That's a LOT of Money

Blue Texan at FDL has some absolutely disgusting numbers for us to peruse...

Of all the wasted money spent on the defense around the world last year we Americans accounted for a whopping 42% of the total tab. In spite of that horrible fact we still hear

endless concern trolling about how Obama's destroying the military.

The U.S. is, as expected, by far the world's biggest arms spender, according to the think tank. It represented almost 42% of the 2008 total, more than the 14 other top countries combined in what SIPRI described as a legacy from former presidentGeorge W. Bush.

Since 1999, U.S. defense spending has soared 67% in real terms to $607 billion last year.

As a comparison, the non-tax cut portion of the Porkulus Generational Theft Stimulus Bill that so outraged the Teabaggers was a mere $499B. And yet, for some of those very same Teabaggers, $607 billion just isn't cutting it.

"Reducing Alaska's defense readiness in these perilous times is a show of weakness, it is not a sign of strength," Palin said during a celebration in upstate New York honoring native son William Seward, who negotiated the purchase of Alaska in 1867 as Secretary of State.

In light of the fact that the US only spent more than four times what Russia and China committed to defense -- combined -- it's easy to see why Palin's so concerned.

Is it just me or does anyone else think that maybe we ought to rethink this whole military thing or at least move the spending into the ballpark with the rest of the world. I understand the need for a strong military given our position in the world but really!

Here and There

A fifth day of rain here in soggy Atlanta. We need the rain but I'm starting to feel a real urge for 'fish and chips" if you know what I mean. The Congress is back in session and my optimism for a "wonderful new world" and "change I can believe in" is rapidly declining. Looks like politics and partisan gamesmanship are still the order of the day. Taking a quick break from the routine to hit the "tubes". Here is some of what I noticed.

Paul Krugman has some math on the stimulus package that seems to be forming. Not very encouraging if you ask me. These are bad times and going to get worse and this situation calls for bold action. It doesn't look very bold to me.
The thing is Obama seems to be doing a lot to get the GOP to climb on board. Recent history shows that trying to work with the GOP for the common good merely gets the Dems screwed. If that is what Obama wants then I guess he is going in the right direction but everything tells me it is a mistake. They(the GOP) don't care about anything but keeping their power and rich contributors happy. Government spending is fine and dandy when they or their wealth friends benefit but wasteful government intrusion and pandering to the neer do wells otherwise. Their Hoover economics got us where we are today and I am, for one, really tired of it.

Obama's team has leaked that Leon Panetta is the new man at the CIA and Dianne Feinstein and John Rockefeller have their shorts in a wad over it. DiFi is soon to be head of the Intelligence committee and thinks she should have been consulted. From everything I have read most people in the know think Panetta is a good choice. Personally, I think DiFi and the other naysayers are upset that the game is going to change and don't like it because both DiFi and JDR have much to answer for in how the CIA and the intelligence community as a whole have performed in the last 8 years. DiFi voted to confirm the idiot Porter Goss so we know her judgement is flawed in this area.

Cookie Jill over at Skippy's place is giving us some great news. For those of us worrying about presciption drug costs all we have to do is eat more vegetables. Seems that if you grow your vegetables using manure from cows/chickens that have had antibiotics and other drugs that the veges are just passing them along.

vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the university of minnesota. - environmental health news

Just the news I needed.

If you are a Hemingway fan Jim DeRosa is pleased to let us know that thousands of his writings are now available via the internet. Cool!

Things are going from bad to worse in Gaza. CNN is reporting that IDF artillery fire has fallen near a UN school in Northern Gaza killing at least 30 and wounding many more.

Three artillery shells believed to have been fired by Israeli forces struck near the perimeter of a U.N. school in northern Gaza today, killing at least 30 people and wounding 55, a United Nations official said. Most of the casualties were outside the school in the Jabalya refugee camp, the official said.

Reports are that the Palestinian death toll since the start of this tragedy is now at 555.

Finally, just in case you haven't noticed...that light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

More On Gaza

There has been some lively discussion on my previous post It's Begun. Toward furthering that discussion I would like to bring your attention to a post at Salon by Glenn Greenwald. The entire post needs reading but I will excerpt two very important things.

The first is in regards to perspective on what the situation is really all about from a Palestinian point of view.

More to the point: for those who insist that others put themselves in the position of a resident of Sderot -- as though that will, by itself, prove the justifiability of the Israeli attack -- the idea literally never occurs to them that they ought to imagine what it's like to live under foreign occupation for 4 decades (and, despite the 2005 "withdrawal from Gaza," Israel continues to occupy and expand its settlements on Palestinian land and to control and severely restrict many key aspects of Gazan life). No thought is given to what it is like, what emotions it generates, what horrible acts start to appear justifiable, when you have a hostile foreign army control your borders and airspace and internal affairs for 40 years, one which builds walls around you, imposes the most intensely humiliating conditions on your daily life, blockades your land so that you're barred from exiting and prevented from accessing basic nutrition and medical needs for your children to the point where a substantial portion of the underage population suffers from stunted growth.

The second is a reference to George Orwell's Notes on Nationalism, which as Glenn notes is rather prescient when it comes to recent events.

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side ... The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

AN UPDATE TO GLENN'S POST: The Israeli Supreme Court several days ago ordered the Government to allow reporters into Gaza, yet Israel continues to block all journalists from entering. The reason, as casual_observer notes in comments, is clear:

The reason Israel has done this must be that they will do whatever they must--including ignoring their own high court--to limit evidence that Gazans are indeed human beings and that they are suffering the horrors that occur when war is unleashed on densely-packed urban civilians.

Israel knows full well that reporting from Gaza turns Gazans from vague abstractions to suffering human beings. And they will not allow that reality to be communicated to the world.

It's Begun

Israeli forces have begun the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. AFP and others are reporting that Israel has begun heavy shelling of the northern sections of Gaza and there are unconfirmed reports that the tanks are rolling. There are reports that the area was blanketed with leaflets earlier warning residents to "leave the area immediately" to ensure their safety.

The Israel's seem to be effectively ignoring the UN and the thousands protesting around the world calling for a cease fire. The White House has signaled that they have no problem with the ground attack.

The Israeli press has reported that this action has been planned and underway since March of 2006 following a visit from Condi Rice. The plan is evidently to end the Qassam rocket attacks by the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip, the region that the resistance uses for the launch of these rockets, and to move them toward Gaza City and to confine them there. If this is the case, and it is looking more and more like it is, and couple the recent two months of forced starvation for the people of Gaza then you are looking at another Israeli violation of the Geneva Convention (pdf) that "Parties to a conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants in order to spare civilian population and property. Neither the civilian population as such nor civilian persons shall be the object of attack. Attacks shall be directed solely against military objectives."

Such a plan of forced evacuation could also be defined as ethnic cleansing:

The United Nations Commission of Experts, in a January 1993 report to the Security Council, defined “ethnic cleansing” as “rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.”

The casualty count in Gaza is already at 425, possibly more. How many more innocents on both sides are going to die before this ends?