Sunday, November 29, 2009

Guest Author -- On Noise

THE ABSURD TIMES

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ON NOISE.

Kant has written a treatise on _The Vital Powers_; but I should like to

write a dirge on them, since their lavish use in the form of knocking,

hammering, and tumbling things about has made the whole of my life a

daily torment. Certainly there are people, nay, very many, who will

smile at this, because they are not sensitive to noise; it is precisely

these people, however, who are not sensitive to argument, thought,

poetry or art, in short, to any kind of intellectual impression: a fact

to be assigned to the coarse quality and strong texture of their brain

tissues. On the other hand, in the biographies or in other records of

the personal utterances of almost all great writers, I find complaints

of the pain that noise has occasioned to intellectual men. For example,

in the case of Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul; and indeed when no

mention is made of the matter it is merely because the context did not

lead up to it. I should explain the subject we are treating in this way:

If a big diamond is cut up into pieces, it immediately loses its value

as a whole; or if an army is scattered or divided into small bodies, it

loses all its power; and in the same way a great intellect has no more

power than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed,

distracted, or diverted; for its superiority entails that it

concentrates all its strength on one point and object, just as a concave

mirror concentrates all the rays of light thrown upon it. Noisy

interruption prevents this concentration. This is why the most eminent

intellects have always been strongly averse to any kind of disturbance,

interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent

interruption which is caused by noise; other people do not take any

particular notice of this sort of thing. The most intelligent of all the

European nations has called "Never interrupt" the eleventh commandment.

But noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, for it not only

interrupts our own thoughts but disperses them. Where, however, there is

nothing to interrupt, noise naturally will not be felt particularly.

Sometimes a trifling but incessant noise torments and disturbs me for a

time, and before I become distinctly conscious of it I feel it merely as

the effort of thinking becomes more difficult, just as I should feel a

weight on my foot; then I realise what it is.

But to pass from _genus_ to _species_, the truly infernal cracking of

whips in the narrow resounding streets of a town must be denounced as

the most unwarrantable and disgraceful of all noises. It deprives life

of all peace and sensibility. Nothing gives me so clear a grasp of the

stupidity and thoughtlessness of mankind as the tolerance of the

cracking of whips. This sudden, sharp crack which paralyses the brain,

destroys all meditation, and murders thought, must cause pain to any one

who has anything like an idea in his head. Hence every crack must

disturb a hundred people applying their minds to some activity, however

trivial it may be; while it disjoints and renders painful the

meditations of the thinker; just like the executioner's axe when it

severs the head from the body. No sound cuts so sharply into the brain

as this cursed cracking of whips; one feels the prick of the whip-cord

in one's brain, which is affected in the same way as the _mimosa pudica_

is by touch, and which lasts the same length of time. With all respect

for the most holy doctrine of utility, I do not see why a fellow who is

removing a load of sand or manure should obtain the privilege of killing

in the bud the thoughts that are springing up in the heads of about ten

thousand people successively. (He is only half-an-hour on the road.)

Hammering, the barking of dogs, and the screaming of children are

abominable; but it is _only_ the cracking of a whip that is the true

murderer of thought. Its object is to destroy every favourable moment

that one now and then may have for reflection. If there were no other

means of urging on an animal than by making this most disgraceful of all

noises, one would forgive its existence. But it is quite the contrary:

this cursed cracking of whips is not only unnecessary but even useless.

The effect that it is intended to have on the horse mentally becomes

quite blunted and ineffective; since the constant abuse of it has

accustomed the horse to the crack, he does not quicken his pace for it.

This is especially noticeable in the unceasing crack of the whip which

comes from an empty vehicle as it is being driven at its slowest rate to

pick up a fare. The slightest touch with the whip would be more

effective. Allowing, however, that it were absolutely necessary to

remind the horse of the presence of the whip by continually cracking it,

a crack that made one hundredth part of the noise would be sufficient.

It is well known that animals in regard to hearing and seeing notice the

slightest indications, even indications that are scarcely perceptible to

ourselves. Trained dogs and canary birds furnish astonishing examples of

this. Accordingly, this cracking of whips must be regarded as something

purely wanton; nay, as an impudent defiance, on the part of those who

work with their hands, offered to those who work with their heads. That

such infamy is endured in a town is a piece of barbarity and injustice,

the more so as it could be easily removed by a police notice requiring

every whip cord to have a knot at the end of it. It would do no harm to

draw the proletariat's attention to the classes above him who work with

their heads; for he has unbounded fear of any kind of head work. A

fellow who rides through the narrow streets of a populous town with

unemployed post-horses or cart-horses, unceasingly cracking with all his

strength a whip several yards long, instantly deserves to dismount and

receive five really good blows with a stick. If all the philanthropists

in the world, together with all the legislators, met in order to bring

forward their reasons for the total abolition of corporal punishment, I

would not be persuaded to the contrary.

But we can see often enough something that is even still worse. I mean a

carter walking alone, and without any horses, through the streets

incessantly cracking his whip. He has become so accustomed to the crack

in consequence of its unwarrantable toleration. Since one looks after

one's body and all its needs in a most tender fashion, is the thinking

mind to be the only thing that never experiences the slightest

consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect? Carters,

sack-bearers (porters), messengers, and such-like, are the beasts of

burden of humanity; they should be treated absolutely with justice,

fairness, forbearance and care, but they ought not to be allowed to

thwart the higher exertions of the human race by wantonly making a

noise. I should like to know how many great and splendid thoughts these

whips have cracked out of the world. If I had any authority, I should

soon produce in the heads of these carters an inseparable _nexus

idearum_ between cracking a whip and receiving a whipping.

Let us hope that those nations with more intelligence and refined

feelings will make a beginning, and then by force of example induce the

Germans to do the same.[8] Meanwhile, hear what Thomas Hood says of them

(_Up the Rhine)_: "_For a musical people they are the most noisy I ever

met with_" That they are so is not due to their being more prone to

making a noise than other people, but to their insensibility, which

springs from obtuseness; they are not disturbed by it in reading or

thinking, because they do not think; they only smoke, which is their

substitute for thought. The general toleration of unnecessary noise, for

instance, of the clashing of doors, which is so extremely ill-mannered

and vulgar, is a direct proof of the dulness and poverty of thought that

one meets with everywhere. In Germany it seems as though it were planned

that no one should think for noise; take the inane drumming that goes on

as an instance. Finally, as far as the literature treated of in this

chapter is concerned, I have only one work to recommend, but it is an

excellent one: I mean a poetical epistle in _terzo rimo_ by the famous

painter Bronzino, entitled "_De' Romori: a Messer Luca Martini_" It

describes fully and amusingly the torture to which one is put by the

many kinds of noises of a small Italian town. It is written in

tragicomic style. This epistle is to be found in _Opere burlesche del

Berni, Aretino ed altri,_ vol. ii. p. 258, apparently published in

Utrecht in 1771.

The nature of our intellect is such that _ideas_ are said to spring by

abstraction from _observations_, so that the latter are in existence

before the former. If this is really what takes place, as is the case

with a man who has merely his own experience as his teacher and book, he

knows quite well which of his observations belong to and are represented

by each of his ideas; he is perfectly acquainted with both, and

accordingly he treats everything correctly that comes before his notice.

We might call this the natural mode of education.

On the other hand, an artificial education is having one's head crammed

full of ideas, derived from hearing others talk, from learning and

reading, before one has anything like an extensive knowledge of the

world as it is and as one sees it. The observations which produce all

these ideas are said to come later on with experience; but until then

these ideas are applied wrongly, and accordingly both things and men are

judged wrongly, seen wrongly, and treated wrongly. And so it is that

education perverts the mind; and this is why, after a long spell of

learning and reading, we enter the world, in our youth, with views that

are partly simple, partly perverted; consequently we comport ourselves

with an air of anxiety at one time, at another of presumption. This is

because our head is full of ideas which we are now trying to make use

of, but almost always apply wrongly. This is the result of [Greek:

hysteron proteron] (putting the cart before the horse), since we are

directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas

first and observations last; for teachers, instead of developing in a

boy his faculties of discernment and judgment, and of thinking for

himself, merely strive to stuff his head full of other people's

thoughts. Subsequently, all the opinions that have sprung from

misapplied ideas have to be rectified by a lengthy experience; and it is

seldom that they are completely rectified. This is why so few men of

learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the

illiterate.

* * * * *

From what has been said, the principal point in education is that _one's

knowledge of the world begins at the right end;_ and the attainment of

which might be designated as the aim of all education. But, as has been

pointed out, this depends principally on the observation of each thing

preceding the idea one forms of it; further, that narrow ideas precede

broader; so that the whole of one's instruction is given in the order

that the ideas themselves during formation must have followed. But

directly this order is not strictly adhered to, imperfect and

subsequently wrong ideas spring up; and finally there arises a perverted

view of the world in keeping with the nature of the individual--a view

such as almost every one holds for a long time, and most people to the

end of their lives. If a man analyses his own character, he will find

that it was not until he reached a very ripe age, and in some cases

quite unexpectedly, that he was able to rightly and clearly understand

many matters of a quite simple nature.

Previously, there had been an obscure point in his knowledge of the

world which had arisen through his omitting something in his early

education, whether he had been either artificially educated by men or

just naturally by his own experience. Therefore one should try to find

out the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that by keeping

methodically to it children may become acquainted with the affairs of

the world, without getting false ideas into their heads, which

frequently cannot be driven out again. In carrying this out, one must

next take care that children do not use words with which they connect no

clear meaning. Even children have, as a rule, that unhappy tendency of

being satisfied with words instead of wishing to understand things, and

of learning words by heart, so that they may make use of them when they

are in a difficulty. This tendency clings to them afterwards, so that

the knowledge of many learned men becomes mere verbosity.

However, the principal thing must always be to let one's observations

precede one's ideas, and not the reverse as is usually and unfortunately

the case; which may be likened to a child coming into the world with its

feet foremost, or a rhyme begun before thinking of its reason. While the

child's mind has made a very few observations one inculcates it with

ideas and opinions, which are, strictly speaking, prejudices. His

observations and experience are developed through this ready-made

apparatus instead of his ideas being developed out of his own

observations. In viewing the world one sees many things from many sides,

consequently this is not such a short or quick way of learning as that

which makes use of abstract ideas, and quickly comes to a decision about

everything; therefore preconceived ideas will not be rectified until

late, or it may be they are never rectified. For, when a man's view

contradicts his ideas, he will reject at the outset what it renders

evident as one-sided, nay, he will deny it and shut his eyes to it, so

that his preconceived ideas may remain unaffected. And so it happens

that many men go through life full of oddities, caprices, fancies, and

prejudices, until they finally become fixed ideas. He has never

attempted to abstract fundamental ideas from his own observations and

experience, because he has got everything ready-made from other people;

and it is for this very reason that he and countless others are so

insipid and shallow. Instead of such a system, the natural system of

education should be employed in educating children. No idea should be

impregnated but what has come through the medium of observations, or at

any rate been verified by them. A child would have fewer ideas, but they

would be well-grounded and correct. It would learn to measure things

according to its own standard and not according to another's. It would

then never acquire a thousand whims and prejudices which must be

eradicated by the greater part of subsequent experience and education.

Its mind would henceforth be accustomed to thoroughness and clearness;

the child would rely on its own judgment, and be free from prejudices.

And, in general, children should not get to know life, in any aspect

whatever, from the copy before they have learnt it from the original.

Instead, therefore, of hastening to place mere books in their hands, one

should make them gradually acquainted with things and the circumstances

of human life, and above everything one should take care to guide them

to a clear grasp of reality, and to teach them to obtain their ideas

directly from the real world, and to form them in keeping with it--but

not to get them from elsewhere, as from books, fables, or what others

have said--and then later to make use of such ready-made ideas in real

life. The result will be that their heads are full of chimeras and that

some will have a wrong comprehension of things, and others will

fruitlessly endeavour to remodel the world according to those chimeras,

and so get on to wrong paths both in theory and practice. For it is

incredible how much harm is done by false notions which have been

implanted early in life, only to develop later on into prejudices; the

later education which we get from the world and real life must be

employed in eradicating these early ideas. And this is why, as is

related by Diogenes Laertius, Antisthenes gave the following answer:

[Greek: erotaetheis ti ton mathaematon anankaiotaton, ephae, "to kaka

apomathein."] (_Interrogatus quaenam esset disciplina maxime necessaria,

Mala, inquit, dediscere_.)

* * * * *

Children should be kept from all kinds of instruction that may make

errors possible until their sixteenth year, that is to say, from

philosophy, religion, and general views of every description; because it

is the errors that are acquired in early days that remain, as a rule,

ineradicable, and because the faculty of judgment is the last to arrive

at maturity. They should only be interested in such things that make

errors impossible, such as mathematics, in things which are not very

dangerous, such as languages, natural science, history, and so forth; in

general, the branches of knowledge which are to be taken up at any age

must be within reach of the intellect at that age and perfectly

comprehensible to it. Childhood and youth are the time for collecting

data and getting to know specially and thoroughly individual and

particular things. On the other hand, all judgment of a general nature

must at that time be suspended, and final explanations left alone. One

should leave the faculty of judgment alone, as it only comes with

maturity and experience, and also take care that one does not anticipate

it by inculcating prejudice, when it will be crippled for ever.

On the contrary, the memory is to be specially exercised, as it has its

greatest strength and tenacity in youth; however, what has to be

retained must be chosen with the most careful and scrupulous

consideration. For as it is what we have learnt well in our youth that

lasts, we should take the greatest possible advantage of this precious

gift. If we picture to ourselves how deeply engraven on our memory the

people are whom we knew during the first twelve years of our life, and

how indelibly imprinted are also the events of that time, and most of

the things that we then experienced, heard, or learnt, the idea of

basing education on this susceptibility and tenacity of the youthful

mind will seem natural; in that the mind receives its impressions

according to a strict method and a regular system. But because the years

of youth that are assigned to man are only few, and the capacity for

remembering, in general, is always limited (and still more so the

capacity for remembering of the individual), everything depends on the

memory being filled with what is most essential and important in any

department of knowledge, to the exclusion of everything else. This

selection should be made by the most capable minds and masters in every

branch of knowledge after the most mature consideration, and the result

of it established. Such a selection must be based on a sifting of

matters which are necessary and important for a man to know in general,

and also for him to know in a particular profession or calling.

Knowledge of the first kind would have to be divided into graduated

courses, like an encyclopædia, corresponding to the degree of general

culture which each man has attained in his external circumstances; from

a course restricted to what is necessary for primary instruction up to

the matter contained in every branch of the philosophical faculty.

Knowledge of the second kind would, however, be reserved for him who had

really mastered the selection in all its branches. The whole would give

a canon specially devised for intellectual education, which naturally

would require revision every ten years. By such an arrangement the

youthful power of the memory would be put to the best advantage, and it

would furnish the faculty of judgment with excellent material when it

appeared later on.

* * * * *

What is meant by maturity of knowledge is that state of perfection to

which any one individual is able to bring it, when an exact

correspondence has been effected between the whole of his abstract ideas

and his own personal observations: whereby each of his ideas rests

directly or indirectly on a basis of observation, which alone gives it

any real value; and likewise he is able to place every observation that

he makes under the right idea corresponding to it.

_Maturity_ of knowledge is the work of experience alone, and

consequently of time. For the knowledge we acquire from our own

observation is, as a rule, distinct from that we get through abstract

ideas; the former is acquired in the natural way, while the latter comes

through good and bad instruction and what other people have told to us.

Consequently, in youth there is generally little harmony and connection

between our ideas, which mere expressions have fixed, and our real

knowledge, which has been acquired by observation. Later they both

gradually approach and correct each other; but maturity of knowledge

does not exist until they have become quite incorporated. This maturity

is quite independent of that other kind of perfection, the standard of

which may be high or low, I mean the perfection to which the capacities

of an individual may be brought; it is not based on a correspondence

between the abstract and intuitive knowledge, but on the degree of

intensity of each.

The most necessary thing for the practical man is the attainment of an

exact and thorough knowledge of _what is really going on in the world;_

but it is also the most irksome, for a man may continue studying until

old age without having learnt all that is to be learnt; while one can

master the most important things in the sciences in one's youth. In

getting such a knowledge of the world, it is as a novice that the boy

and youth have the first and most difficult lessons to learn; but

frequently even the matured man has still much to learn. The study is of

considerable difficulty in itself, but it is made doubly difficult by

_novels_, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist

in real life. But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and

become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely

negative ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are

positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of

experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light. If

the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a

will-o'-the-wisp: and with a girl this is still more frequently the

case. They have been deluded into an absolutely false view of life by

reading novels, and expectations have been raised that can never be

fulfilled. This generally has the most harmful effect on their whole

lives. Those men who had neither time nor opportunity to read novels in

their youth, such as those who work with their hands, have decided

advantage over them. Few of these novels are exempt from reproach--nay,

whose effect is contrary to bad. Before all others, for instance, _Gil

Blas_ and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish

originals); further, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and to some extent the

novels of Walter Scott. _Don Quixote_ may be regarded as a satirical

presentation of the error in question.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] According to a notice from the Munich Society for the Protection of

Animals, the superfluous whipping and cracking were strictly forbidden

in Nuremberg in December 1858.

Monday, November 23, 2009

How to Govern


THE ABSURD TIMES


THE DALEY
MAY HE REST IN PEACE



1
A religious episode in the USA:

Two men were on a plane on a business trip when a Muslim couple
boarded the plane and were seated right in front of them.

The two men eager to have some fun, started talking loudly..
"My boss is sending me to Saudi
Arabia ", the one said, "But I don't
want to go...too many Muslims there!"

The Muslim couple noticeably heard and grew uncomfortable.

The other guy laughed, "Oh, yeah, my boss wanted to send me to
Pakistan but I refused....WAY too many Muslims!"

Smiling, the first man said, "One time I was in Iran but
I HATED the fact that there were so many Muslims!"

The couple fidgeted.

The other guy responded, "Oh, yeah...you can't go ANYWHERE to
get away from them...the last time I was in FRANCE I ran into a bunch
of them too!"

The first guy was laughing hysterically as he added, "That is why
you'll never see me in Indonesia ...WAY too many Muslims!"

At this, the Muslim man turned around and responded politely,
"Why don't you go to Hell?" he asked,
"I heard there are NO Muslim THERE!"


2

The Muslim man must have grown up in Chicago because, as early life Cub Fans, they know scorn and failure all their life. Rather than be miserable, you learn to laugh and cope in other ways. That's what gave us Bob Newhart, Mike Nichols and Elane May, John Belushi, David Steinberg, and others. Thus one wonders why the rest of the country is so messed up.

3


As I watch the progress of the/a health-care bill, I'm reminded of how politicians should be able to govern. We seen Democrats deciding whether or not to even allow debate on health-care, much less actually vote for it. So, I have been remembering a time when some politicians seemed to actually get things done. There are some simple principles, or rules.

4

These rules come from watching the Daley practice them, a political figure from Chicago, perhaps the patron saint of politicians. People wonder how he actually ran a "city that worked," and was once described as one of "the two most powerful politicians in the country," the other being, sickly, J. Edgar Hoover. Presidents can and went, but those two stayed. Hoover was eventually too busy walking around in panty hose to be worthwhile, but the Daley practiced the art well and his methods could be followed today.

5

First of all, no politician every was successful without making sure the garbage gets picked up and the streets are shoveled, no matter what. In other words, basic needs must be met. If someone's son needed a job, and he was a member of your party, that son got a job -- doing whatever, or not. We see Obama's ratings go down now and that is because of unemployment, pure and simple. He needs to get the garbage picked up. Sure, Bush the Decider dumped it, but he has to get it picked up or shoveled away. Period. The Daley always made sure of that.

6

Second, people who oppose you or the party do not get rewarded. Adlai Stevenson, a politician of the same time, learned this too late or he may have become president. Today, Senator Looserman is Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, a desirable position. He was appointed this after opposing the winner of the Democratic primary after which the Republicans dropped support for their own candidate. How and why is he able to talk about "joining the Republicans" in opposing even debate on the bill without any fear of loosing that chairmanship? Even though I have little respect for this Spector of Pennsylvania, at least he switched over and gave the finger to his Republican party. The Daley would make him chair of the Homeland Security Committee and let Looserman be Looserman. It would also serve as an example for others in the party. People wonder why Louisiana got so much money for Medicaid for voting the right way. In fact, The F* channel calls it corruption. Actually, why did Mississippi get so much help during Katrina and not Louisiana? Because the President was a. pardon the expression, Republican and the Governor was Republican. The governor of Louisiana was a Democrat. I don't see corruption here. Fitzgerald did not prosecute Cheney although we now find he had what he needed to do so. Why not? Both Republicans. He, however, is ready to prosecute Blagoyovitch, a Democrat.

7

He has the third rule down: lie when it is to your advantage. The Daley was actually against the Viet Nam war, but supported it publicly in order to get the convention held in Chicago. Well, that didn't work out very well, but you get the idea. The opposite is happening with Afghanistan.

8

Finally, bi-partisan is bad, not good. No matter what side you are one, it is watered down by bi-partisan. The only time it is good is when the R*s are in power.




Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Some Stray Observations


THE ABSURD TIMES


Well, I can't seem to get this to align left, so I'm just passing along a couple things I found of interest.

***********************

This Calm Will Not Last

Jon Elmer interviews Leila Khaled

AMMAN, Nov 4 (IPS) - Leila Khaled became an instant icon of the Palestinian struggle in 1969, when at 24 she was an operative in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacking of a Boeing 707, the first in a series of high-profile actions intended to put the Palestinians on the political map.

She was in a group that hijacked a TWA flight from Rome to Athens in 1969. No one was injured in the hijacking, but the plane was blown up later. She was then involved in a hijack attempt of an El Al flight the following year, but was caught and handed over to the British police after the flight from Amsterdam to New York was diverted to London. She was released later in a prisoner exchange.

A "guerrilla heroine," as Time magazine would call her in 1970, Khaled was driven from her home in Haifa during the creation of Israel. She has remained a prominent leader on the Palestinian left, and a determined spokesperson in the ongoing struggle for Palestinian rights. She spoke to IPS from her home in Amman.

IPS: Maybe we can begin with the Goldstone Report on the Gaza invasion and in particular the political fallout from (Palestinian Authority President) Mahmoud Abbas's role in delaying debate on the report in Geneva.

Leila Khaled: We have declared that it was a political mistake - a big one. It's not just a tactical mistake.

We've asked for a full investigation. Who gave the orders to postpone the debate?

This is a United Nations report. It took months to finalise. It should be directly accepted by us, because it is denouncing the invasion and all the acts that resulted - to the extent that Israel should be taken to the International Criminal Court to charge the war criminals, whether on the political level or the military level.

IPS: What's your reaction to the Gaza invasion in general?

LK: It's not new. This is not the first time. But now there is an opportunity for us to charge the war criminals.

IPS: In terms of the conflict between Fatah and Hamas, what's your response to what happened in Gaza in 2007, but also to what has been going on since in the West Bank under (caretaker Prime Minister Salam) Fayyad and Abbas.

LK: This is a very serious situation, because Palestinians are still under occupation. Our people are under siege in Gaza. In Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority doesn't have (sovereignty), whether on the land or the borders. The Israelis are still confiscating lands, they demolish houses, they arrest people at any time and in any place.

To have division among Palestinians, politically speaking, it affects our ability to face all these challenges from the Israelis. We and others are calling for reconciliation between these two factions because it is not in the interests of our people. It has weakened the Palestinians (vis-à-vis) Israel, and also weakened solidarity with Palestinian human rights on the international level.

We see it as a catastrophe.

IPS: Do you think the election of Hamas in 2006 gave it legitimacy to rule that was being challenged in Gaza by Abbas and (senior Fatah official Muhammad) Dahlan and the Israeli project to overthrow them? Both sides accuse the other of a coup. How do you see it?

LK: We don't think Hamas has used its legitimacy in the right way. They got a majority in the elections, but they shouldn't have gone to the extent of solving the contradictions between them and Fatah with the use of arms.

It didn't bring anything better to the Palestinians. Gaza is still under siege. Meanwhile, they have left the Palestinian Authority to do what they wanted in the West Bank.

They could have used dialogue and more discussion about the different issues, negotiations. This will show the society that we are democratic people. In our history we always had different ideas and different visions, but we never (resorted) to arms.

The main contradiction is with occupation, not among us.

IPS: U.S. General Keith Dayton is training a Palestinian security force which is openly targeting Hamas, but it's also targeting the Popular Front. How do you see the above contradictions in light of this?

LK: The Dayton plan builds an apparatus not to defend our people, but to prevent our people from the resistance. Which means not only training, but also facing the resistance cells - all factions, not only Hamas. Meanwhile, every day Israel is entering any city, arresting people, assassinating them.

Instead, the Palestinian Authority (should) strengthen those that are ready for resistance. Unfortunately this is one of the main contradictions on the Palestinian level: the Palestinian Authority, whether in government, or the security apparatus or the police, are built in the Dayton vision, and not for the benefit of our people.

IPS: How then do you see the next intifadah shaping up? With the wall encircling Palestinian communities, with the security forces trained by Dayton, many people in the West Bank are seeing that any kind of resistance to Israel is buffered by this project. Is this setting up a paradigm where the next intifadah is against the Palestinian Authority?

LK: Any intifadah should have its objective reasons. The situation is not ripe enough for a third intifadah, with all this pressure against our people, whether from the Palestinian side or from the Israeli side.

People have found that after the first and second intifadah, they sacrificed a lot, with their families, houses, children, whether they are martyrs or prisoners. We have now around 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails. Behind them there are 11,000 families.

I think first of all, we have to end this division. It will give more power to our people. We have seen at the time of the invasion of Gaza, the (demonstrations) were stopped by the Palestinian police and not the Israeli police.

Still, I think an intifadah is not near.

IPS: Where is the Popular Front, specifically and the left in general, on the scene right now, particularly in the division with Hamas and Fatah? The left is clearly at one of its lowest points in the history of the national movement.

LK: I think that the Oslo Accords was a turning point in the Palestinian struggle. A part of our people in Palestine supported negotiations with the Israelis. They thought it would bring them independence, it would bring them a national state. But after years (of achieving nothing), people realised it wasn't for their good. That's why the second intifadah broke out.

The left was affected by what happened, and it is weakened by its division. We've been trying for years to have the left as one front, not as one party but as a front with a (unified) political and resistance programme.

We feel that if we succeed it will create a third line. In the media, we only hear about Fatah and Hamas, but in fact it is not like that. This weakens the whole situation.

Specifically, the Popular Front has faced many challenges. Our general secretary, Abu Ali Mustafa, was assassinated. Ahmed Sa'adat is in prison. Many of our cadres have been arrested. Many have been killed by the Israelis. We have hundreds of our cadre and members in prison. This will weaken the Popular Front.

IPS: I spoke with general secretary Ahmed Sa'adat in 2003 about this question. He spoke about Israel using the intifadah to focus immediately on the PFLP, to break the organisation's back with assassination and arrests. Both because it saw the PFLP as a historical threat, but also because it had been weakened so significantly by the political climate throughout the 1990s - both locally and globally.

LK: Abu Ali Mustafa was assassinated because he immediately declared that (the PFLP) was here to resist and not to compromise our rights. This the Israelis understood very well. It was the first time the Israelis assassinated a personality on the political level like Abu Ali Mustafa.

Israel knew very well that the PFLP was in a position to resist. That it has its resistance programme which means they are not going to go for negotiations. They know that by either assassinating or putting the leadership in jail it will weaken the PFLP, and it did. But we could also go on rebuilding ourselves, and still we have a lot to do.

But the general situation is also not with the resistance - on the Palestinian level, (but especially) on the Arab level. This weakens the whole situation, not just the Popular Front.

IPS: I wonder if we can talk a bit about the trajectory of the Palestinian armed struggle: what are the possibilities and limits for armed struggle within the confines of the wall, and the new ghetto paradigm?

LK: In general, people always find the means of resistance. After 1967, we were using hijackings. Then our people used stones to express their resistance, then what is called suicide bombers, which have stopped. Then the use of rockets from Gaza, because the Israelis left and there were (new spaces opened up), while in the West Bank it is silenced.

You have used the term ghettoes - yes, our cities are like ghettoes now. They are surrounded by settlements, the wall, at all the gates to the cities we have checkpoints.

But people will find the means of their resistance in ways that I myself cannot think of. Nobody thought of intifadah of the stones: that children would use them also. It caused a lot of criticism to Israel and more solidarity for the Palestinians.

So, by all means. Where there is occupation, there is always resistance. This resistance every time has its own shape and its own means. I think this situation (of calm) will not last. Our people have a very long experience in struggle and cannot accept that this situation will go on. One day it will break out again. In what way, I cannot say. But it will come. (END/2009)


From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/23160


WHAT CAUSES ARTHRITIS?


A drunk man who smelled like beer sat down on a subway next to a priest.


The man's tie was stained, his face was plastered with red lipstick,
and
a half-empty bottle of gin was sticking out of his torn coat pocket.
He
opened his newspaper and began reading.


After a few minutes the man turned to the priest and asked,
"Say Father,
what causes arthritis?"


The priest replies, "My Son, it's caused by loose living, being with
Cheap, wicked women, too much alcohol, contempt for your fellow man,
Sleeping around with prostitutes and lack of a bath."


The drunk muttered in response, "Well, I'll be darned, "
Then returned to
his paper.


The priest, thinking about what he had said, nudged the man and
Apologized "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to come on so strong.
How long
Have you had arthritis?"


The drunk answered, "I don't have it, Father.
I was just reading here that the Pope does."


MORAL OF THE STORY: Make sure
you understand the question
before offering the answer.

Friday, November 06, 2009

PTSD OF THE PAST FEW DAYS


THE ABSURD TIMES




I feel I need to repeat the point: I did not make any of this up. All of these things happened.

Needless to say, this has been a time of cognitive dissonance where the thin line between the Absurd and the Ludicrous is suddenly erased.

We can start with some members of Congress who have outdone themselves in both ignorance and impudence. In fact, one hopes that they are only pretending to be so pitiful. We might expect such strange metphors as "Look them in the whites of their eyes" from a mentally challenged figure as Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, but the leader of her party was a genius of stupidity.

Boehner is his name. He does not look as if he needs to be committed for psychiatric evaluation, but some of these Republicans are deceptive. He stood in front of a pool of cameras and assorted refugees from Bedlam and pronounced that he was going to read from the "Preamble" to the Constitution. This was the first time in my all-too-long life that I had ever heard of that document. One reason for this fact is that there is not, nor has there ever been, a 'Preamble' to the Constitution. Perhaps he found a hitherto undiscovered document tucked away in the Library of Congress? Hardly. I believe he has more trouble in spelling library than I have in spelling his name.

However, he held up a pocket copy of the Constitution and spoke from memory: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are endowed . . . ." I remembered that as the Declaration of Independence. This man poses as a patriot. He is an embarrassment.

There was much talk by these Republican Representatives about the Bill being a "Holocaust." Given their sensitivity to anything described as such except their own, one wonders what has happened to the Jewish Lobby on this issue.

All of this was to prevent Healthcare reform, to slow it down. After all, we have only been considering that since Teddy Roosevelt. What's the hurry?



Christopher Hitchens wrote an excellently titled book: God is Not Great. Unfortunately, he took particular umbrage with Islam (for reasons that actually have more to do with his anger with the government of Saudi for expelling him during the First Gulf massacre under Bush 1). However, the title illustrates a major problem with all of the three monotheistic religions as they eventually wilt under analysis through their own internal contradictions. More to the point for our purposes is the incestuous sibling rivalry amongst them, with Islam being the only one of the three that accepts the other two as valid.

Just yesterday, in what should be called "occupied Texas" considering its desire for secession, an Army Psychiatrist started a shooting incident that left at least 13 dead and over 30 injured. The details are worth considering.

Major Nidal Hassan, the psychiatrist in question, specialized in treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The symptoms are the subject of our illustration above. However, they give scant insight into what is and can be involved in treating these patients. All the events mentioned here are true and since the patients are now dead, no confidence is being violated.

I was doing an initial evaluation with one who was diagnosed with Alcohol Dependence. While I was asking the routine questions and making notes, someone entered the adjacent office and slammed the door shut, making a loud, sharp, noise. The patient dropped to the floor and scurried under my desk, shivering. I joined him there to continue the evaluation and he eventually composed himself. He was a veteran of Viet Nam and had suffered from this condition ever since, managing to cope with life by deadening the memories with alcohol. He said that any time he saw an "oriental," he became frightened and guilt-ridden.

Another patient had been captured in Cambodia as a "Contract Agent." He had been strapped to a table as his toenails were slowly pulled out of his toes with pliers and that was only one of the treatments he was subjected to. He was forbidden to talk about it to anyone and, so far as I know, me and his psychiatrist were the only ones who did know. I managed to keep him alive for another four years, but only through indulging his alcoholism and xanax abuse and asking him to please put down the gun he was holding to his temple. He was then institutionalized to the facility where I worked and assigned to another therapist. As soon as he returned home, he blew his brains out. It is impossible to treat these patients with any positive effect without being affected yourself, even if it is to become jaded and indulge in "gallows humor."

Major Nidal had been treating this kind of patient intensively for a number of years. He was born in Virginia and was NOT a concert to Islam -- he had always been a Moslem. He was in ROTC during high school and went to Virginia Tech. His medical training was done exclusively by the Army. He was an intern at Walter Reid and, supposedly, received a negative evaluation. He was scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan. He had repeatedly asked to be excused. He was also subject to extensive harrassment for being a Moslem.

There had been several attempts to categorize this incident. "Terrorism," although a popular word in contemporary discourse, does not apply as the killed were soldiers. He did not "snap," an interesting psychological category that is not listed in the DSM-IV. He actually had prepared by giving away his furniture and Koran prior to leaving for the base.

All I can say is that we might consider the possibility that he was simply practicing preventitive medicine. [That is, in case you were wondering, "gallows humor," and it is quite routine in the profession with anyone capable of doing even a merely competent job.]

Following is more information:

In Worst-Ever Shooting of Its Kind, 13 Dead, 30 Wounded at Ft. Hood Military Base; Suspect Had Reportedly Complained of Anti-Muslim Bias

Fort-hood-web

In the worst mass killing at a military base in the nation’s history, thirteen people have been killed and another thirty wounded at Fort Hood, Texas. The suspect, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had reportedly complained of being harassed for being a Muslim and had tried to leave the military. It was the second such attack in the past six months, following the May shooting deaths of five US soldiers at Camp Liberty in Iraq. We speak to Qaseem Uqdah of American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and independent journalist Aaron Glantz, author of The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. [includes rush transcript]

Qaseem Uqdah, former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

Aaron Glantz, editor at New America Media. His latest book is The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.

Rush Transcript

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JUAN GONZALEZ: The Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have launched a major investigation into Thursday’s shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. Military officials have identified an Army psychiatrist named Major Nidal Malik Hasan as the suspected shooter. Hasan was originally reported to have been shot dead, but officials now say he is hospitalized in stable condition.

Thirteen people were killed at the base, and another thirty people were wounded. Military officials have acknowledged that some of the dead may have been killed by friendly fire during a shootout after the gunman opened fire.

Lieutenant General Bob Cone, the base commander at Fort Hood, spoke to reporters last night.

    LT. GEN. ROBERT CONE: This has been a tragic incident, and our hearts and prayers go out to those who have been impacted here today. I’ve personally spoken with the President, and he has extended his condolences and offered his support to the Fort Hood and surrounding community.

    The investigation is ongoing, but preliminary reports indicate there was a single shooter that was shot multiple times at the scene. However, he was not killed, as previously reported. He is currently in custody and in stable condition. I say again: the shooter is not dead, but in custody and in stable condition.


JUAN GONZALEZ: The shooting has been described as the worst soldier-on-soldier mass killing on a US military base in the nation’s history. But it is the second such attack on a base in the past six months. In May, five US soldiers were shot dead at a combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty in Iraq. The military arrested Sergeant John Russell in that shooting afterwards. A report released last month faulted the Army for its handling of Russell, who had a mental breakdown in the weeks before the shootings.

The shooting on Thursday at Fort Hood occurred at the Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening.

AMY GOODMAN: Some details have emerged about Major Nidal Hasan, the suspected shooter. He was born in Virginia, has been in the military since just after high school. For the past six years, Hasan has worked as a military psychiatrist, first at Walter Reed and then at Fort Hood. He went to Virginia Tech. He worked with soldiers who were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan dealing with the mental stress of combat. It’s been reported he was scheduled to soon deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.

On Thursday, a relative, Nader Hasan, told news outlets his cousin had complained of being harassed for being a Muslim and had tried to leave the military.

We’re joined right now in Washington, DC by Qaseem Uqdah. two guests. He is the former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the response to the shooting and your concerns, this catastrophe that took place at Fort Hood?

QASEEM UQDAH: Well, good morning. Thank you very much for having us on.

First of all, I would like to state that our hearts and our prayers go out to the family members and the victim, as well as the Fort Hood community, in this unfortunate tragic event that has occurred yesterday.

Some of our chief concerns are the potential backlash with respect to our soldiers, sailors and airmen that are within the armed forces, because this is an incident that was labeled as Muslim or Islam.

AMY GOODMAN: What kind of response have you gotten at your organization?

QASEEM UQDAH: Thus far, for the various bases that I’ve surveyed, there has not—there hasn’t been any incidents reported. In fact, down at Fort Bragg, for example, the command has reached out to the community, the Islamic community that’s stationed there. So it’s been a very favorable response. But that doesn’t negate what possibly could occur within the next several days and weeks and months.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, some of the press reports and interviews with the family members of Major Hasan, they have said that he had complained in the past about mistreatment or discrimination because he was a Muslim. Your sense of how Muslims who are in the United States military are faring these days?

QASEEM UQDAH: My sense is that, yes, there—this has been occurring. And what I really want to stress here is that it’s not just with Muslims. You could have incidents with gay soldiers or Christian soldiers, Jewish soldiers. These things do occur. And the military has resources and mechanism to address it.

With this incident, as far as him indicating that he had been harassed, my question would go out to what action did he take with respect to informing his command? The commanding officer, his commanding officer, was responsible for ensuring that that ceased. When we are involved with cases in which individuals have brought to our attention that they are being harassed, I would say overwhelmingly that the commanding officer would take immediate action to resolve it.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s quite stunning that this man is an Army psychiatrist, ironically, went to Virginia Tech, interestingly enough, was at Walter Reed dealing with—dealing with soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

We’re joined also on the telephone right now by Aaron Glantz, longtime Pacifica reporter who’s now a fellow, a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center. He is author of the book The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans.

Aaron, talk about the information we have so far, though it is sketchy and everything does seem to be changing as we speak right through from the beginning.

AARON GLANTZ: Well, you’re exactly right, Amy, that we have an Army psychiatrist who listened to many, many stories—[no audio]

AMY GOODMAN: Looks like we just lost him. Sorry, folks. We’ll try to get him right back on the phone.

Qaseem Uqdah, this man was a doctor treating these soldiers who were suffering himself. And I’m wondering, from your own experience—I mean, you’re a former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. Talk about your own experiences in the military.

QASEEM UQDAH: Well, if I may, before I mention my experience, I’d like to ensure that this incident is a—what has occurred here was a criminal act and to remove any correlation or connection between Islam. If this soldier was a Christian, we wouldn’t be saying that the Christian soldier or blaming Christianity.

Back to my experience within the Marine Corps, whenever I had a situation that I felt was a religious bias, I brought it to the immediate attention of my chaplain. When I served, there weren’t any Islamic chaplains on active duty. They were predominantly Jewish and Christian chaplains, and they were my advocates, as they are still our advocates today.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I want to play for you both an interview Major Hasan’s cousin, Nader Hasan, gave last night on Fox News. He was interviewed by Shepard Smith.

    NADER HASAN: And I want to make sure everybody understands, he is a good American, and we are shocked. We just found out on the news that he was being deployed. He never even told us, because we’ve known for the last five years that was probably his worst nightmare. He deals with stories. He would tell us how he would hear things, horrific things.

    But even before things from the war that was probably affecting him psychologically, he was dealing with some harassment in some of his—with some of his military colleagues and, you know, to the extent where he was—he hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government to get out of the military, if that was it. But he was at the end of—you know, trying everything to try to make everybody fair and reasonable and him get out of the situation. So I’m really—you know, I’m shocked, and I’m baffled. And if anybody wants to try to suggest it has something else to do with being afraid of wanting to go to war, that’s—that’s it.

    SHEPARD SMITH: And when was it that he became disenchanted with the idea of being in the military?

    NADER HASAN: You know, I don’t think he was ever disenchanted with being in the military. I think he loved, and he was the one, like I said, who insisted on going into the military, even against his parents’ wishes. It was the harassment that I think was getting—was what got to him, was him being referenced from his Middle Eastern ethnicity, even though he was born and raised here and went to high school here in northern Virginia in Roanoke, Virginia, and went to Virginia Tech and, you know, never been in trouble. You know, just normal, played sports and, you know, never got in any trouble.


AMY GOODMAN: That was Nader Hasan, who is the cousin of the major who’s believed to have opened fire and killed a number of people at Fort Hood, injured many others.

Qaseem Uqdah, as you listen to that and hear his cousin, talk about harassment and how he was actually—according to his cousin, hired a lawyer to try to get out of the military.

QASEEM UQDAH: Yes, in hearing that he hired an attorney to separate himself from the military, that’s a separate issue. That would not give rise to what occurred. As I mentioned before, this was something—what he has done is a criminal act. He murdered people. He killed people. So that does not justify for his wanting to leave the service.

The harassment, in terms of that, that’s through command. When the investigation is concluded with respect to this, then that will come out. No matter what happens within the armed forces, there are mechanism and resources that are available for our service members to address any of their concerns, whether it’s religious harassment, gender harassment, whatever the case may be. And that’s something that we have to focus on here, as with removing any doubt on anyone’s mind that this is something that’s dealing with Islam. It’s not with Islam. This soldier committed a criminal act.

The harassment, yes, I have received numerous reports with respect to soldiers and various service members experiencing harassments at their commands. When I’ve gotten involved with this, the command works with me to resolve it. I have not experienced any situation. Most recent cases were in Great Lakes Naval Base, we had an incident. We had an incident with the Air Force, I want to say, in Georgia. But here, the command was extremely proactive with respect to resolving it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Aaron Glantz, we have you back on the phone now. What has been your experience in terms of those mechanisms functioning with soldiers within the military who have—who have problems in terms of their—the ability of their commands to address those?

AARON GLANTZ: Well, I think that there’s no question that the Army is incredibly stressed and at the breaking point, after six years of war in Iraq and eight years of war in Afghanistan. And one thing that we see again and again and that I think we’re going to see more and more of is distressing incidents, where people have served multiple tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, and then they turn to violence, more likely against themselves and then occasionally against others.

I wrote a story about a guy named Specialist John Fish, who was stationed at Fort Hood, who served a tour in Iraq and then was being deployed for a second tour to Afghanistan. And he complained after his first tour to Iraq that he was suicidal, that he was thinking of taking his own life, and his command didn’t believe him. And then when he was in training for the second tour, he walked out into the desert in New Mexico and shot himself in the head with a military-issued machine gun.

It’s difficult to put this incident that we see now in that type of box, though. It’s difficult because this major who committed the shooting spree at Fort Hood had not been deployed to the war. But I think that we can say that it’s yet another example of a violence that comes from the war that the Pentagon would rather not discuss openly, but will come to the surface as the war goes on and on.

AMY GOODMAN: Aaron, I wanted to ask you about a shooting the New York Times had reported October 21st, 2009. An American soldier accused of killing five other service members in a base in Iraq in May had been behaving erratically for weeks, even threatening to commit suicide, but a lack of adequate guidelines on how to handle his case allowed it to get out of control. US military investigators said this in a report. And the Times went on to say the shootings took place at Camp Liberty combat stress clinic, where the soldier, Sergeant John M. Russell, was being counseled. Can you talk about that shooting?

AARON GLANTZ: Well, I mean, you may remember that Sergeant Russell was on—I don’t remember exactly how many tours now, but he had been in Yugoslavia and was on not his first tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, when he walked into this combat stress clinic in Baghdad in May and shot it up and killed many people inside the combat stress clinic.

We also need to look at incidents that happen stateside, when people involve themselves in altercations with local law enforcement and crack under post-traumatic stress disorder. We call this “suicide by cop.” We had a case in 2005 in California, Andres Raya, who walked up to a liquor store and tried to rob the liquor store for no apparent reason and ended up dying in a hail of bullets with local police. We saw that in Maryland, where James Dean, after serving a tour in the war in Afghanistan, was being mobilized again for another deployment and didn’t want to go and barricaded himself in his father’s farmhouse out in the countryside. And then the police laid siege and ultimately killed him with a sniper’s bullet.

What’s different, though, again, about all of these cases are these are all people who had been deployed, and Major Hasan had not been deployed. But it is possible that having been at Walter Reed and having heard all these stories and been an Army psychiatrist and then knowing that he was going to deploy, that all of that caused him to snap.

AMY GOODMAN: Aaron Glantz, we want to thank you for being with us, Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center. His book is The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans. And we want to thank, as well, Qaseem Uqdah, the former Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who heads the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, speaking to us from Washington, DC.




Tuesday, November 03, 2009

UN Reports and bye for now


THE ABSURD TIMES



Illustration: From www.whatnowtoons.com, Keith Tucker sums up the entire argument.

If I remember correctly, we went to Afghanistan because the Taliban were not capturing Bin Laden for us. A secondary consideration was to eliminate Al-Qaeda. I do not claim to know where Bin Laden is, but I am certain he is not in Helmand Province. In fact, the consensus seems to be he is not anywhere in the country. I have also heard evidence to the fact that there are more Al-Qaeda in New York City than in all of Afghanistan. Frankly, I think it is time for Gulliani and Bloomberg to get their acts together and crack down on these terrorists in New York.

I'm not sure why Obama wants to have his own war. Maybe every President has to have a war (that may be the secret note that each President leaves for the next one to find just after inauguration).


Well, it's as good an explanation as you have heard so for, no?

Some have asked what has happened to the times, why hasn't it come out more frequently? Well, for one thing, Thoreau was right when he said "Once you know the pattern, what need is there of more examples?"

Another is that about the only things that Obama did that we can be thankful for is not to name a Legal Neanderthal to the Supreme Court. There will probably be other appointments to be made, but they will just hold the line, not make progress.

His Mid East policy, frankly, seems like a war on Islam. Just recently, Hillary told the Palestinians to "get a grip." Preposterous.

The United Nations Report on Israel's violations of International Law, written by a Zionist, is under attack despite how mild it is. The following gives you a stark example of the power of the Israel Lobby here and should serve as an example of what goes on in just about any other area as well.

His main virtue is that he is not Bush. Why bother?

House to Vote on Resolution to Reject Goldstone Report Findings and Recommendations

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora."

Headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the U.N. report found that evidence indicates both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during Israel's 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead", which began on December 27, 2008.

The report recommended that allegations of war crimes by both parties be investigated.

The current text of the proposed Congressional resolution, H. Res. 867, contains numerous factual inaccuracies, beginning with the assertion that the U.N. inquiry had "pre-judged" its findings and was "one-sidedly" mandated to "investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression".

The actual mandate adopted on April 3 was "to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after."

The quoted text is not from the April 3 mandate, but from U.N. General Assembly resolution S-9/1 on January 12, 2009, which resulted in the later appointment of the mission by the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Also, omitted in the draft resolution's reproduction of the text are the words "occupying Power" before "Israel". Under international law, the occupying power is in fact obligated to investigate allegations of war crimes and violations of human rights.

The draft U.S. resolution states that the Goldstone report "makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel's defensive measures".

But this criticism itself ignores the fact that even if Israel's military operations were justifiable as "defensive measures", Israel would still be legally obligated to conduct its operations in accordance with international law, and to conduct investigations into alleged war crimes conducted by its own forces.

The draft resolution also makes no mention of the relentless siege of Gaza by Israel, or the fact that Hamas had been strictly observing a cease-fire agreed to in June, only firing rockets after Israel had first violated that truce with repeated attacks against Gazans, a continuation of the crippling siege, and an airstrike and invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces on November 4 that ultimately resulted in the complete breakdown of the truce.

It also makes no mention of the fact that the Goldstone report contains a section dedicated to examining the impact of rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants on southern Israel, or that mission's efforts to do so were impeded by Israel's refusal to cooperate.

The draft resolution states that the U.N. mission "included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel's actions ‘war crimes'".

That letter to the Sunday Times also stated, "We condemn the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel and suicide bombings which are also contrary to international humanitarian law and are war crimes."

But criticism of the Goldstone report on the similar basis that one of its members had beforehand declared Hamas guilty of war crimes is lacking in the draft resolution.

It calls the Goldstone report's findings "that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead" "unsubstantiated". In fact, the 575 page report provides extensive documentation for its findings.

The draft resolution states that "the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that ‘we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding officers ‘ in the fog of war.'"

This is an outright fabrication. Those words do not in fact appear in the body of the actual report.

Those words actually come from an alleged e-mail from Richard Goldstone in which he explained why the U.N. report did not rely on a Colonel Kemp for its inquiry. The full text of the statement from that e-mail, replacing the part omitted in the draft resolution, reads "we did not deal with the issues he raised regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas..." (emphasis added).

The draft resolution states that Richard Goldstone had been quoted in the October 16 edition of the Jewish daily Forward as saying, "If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven".

But omitted is the further context of that remark in the same article, which added, "He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza.

"'We couldn't use that report as evidence at all,' Goldstone said. ‘But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that's the purpose of this sort of report."

The draft resolution asserts that the Goldstone report "in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense", but offers no supporting evidence for this.

The Goldstone report found that "While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defence, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole."

The draft resolution states that "the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the ‘Gaza authorities', i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas", but offers no examples from the report.

The report does, in fact, question the credibility of Israeli officials. It notes in one instance that "it considers the credibility of Israel's position damaged by the series of inconsistencies, contradictions and factual inaccuracies in the statements justifying the attack."

In another example illustrating Israel's lack of credibility, it "acknowledges that significant efforts [were] made by Israel to issue warnings", but that "The credibility of instructions to move to city centres for safety was also diminished by the fact that the city centres themselves had been the subject of intense attacks".

The Goldstone report also observed that "By refusing to cooperate with the Mission, the Government of Israel prevented it from meeting Israeli Government officials, but also from travelling to Israel to meet Israeli victims and to the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority representatives and Palestinian victims."

The U.N. report also noted that "In establishing its findings, the Mission sought to rely primarily and whenever possible on information it gathered first-hand. Information produced by others, including reports, affidavits and media reports, was used primarily as corroboration."

The draft resolution asserts that "notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim".

The "great body of evidence" is an apparent reference to remarks from Israeli officials found to be demonstrably lacking in credibility, which were commonly simply repeated by U.S. officials and the mainstream media.

The U.N. mission did examine "whether and to what extent the Palestinian armed groups violated their obligation to exercise care and take all feasible precaution to protect the civilian population in Gaza" and found that "Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas".

But it "found no evidence, however, to suggest that Palestinian armed groups either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or that they forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks."

While there is no evidence that Hamas deliberately used civilians as human shields, the Goldstone report "investigated four incidents in which the Israeli armed forces coerced Palestinian civilian men at gunpoint to take part in house searches during the military operations" and concluded "that this practice amounts to the Use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law."

The draft resolution, besides calling upon the White House and State Department to reject the Goldstone report and its recommendations, also "reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish State of Israel, for Israel's security and right to self-defense, and, specifically for Israel's right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors."

It makes no similar mention of the right of Palestinians to security and self-defense from Israel and its U.S. sponsor.

Human rights groups, including the Israeli organization B'Tselem, have called upon the international community to implement its recommendation that suspected violations of international law be investigated.