Gaza ghastliness . . .

SAD IRONY: children who were abused have a propensity to become abusers, and thus the misery proceeds into the future. Similarly, the survivors of the Holocaust have been working over the poor Palestinians in Gaza. The Israelis have been mendacious, to say the least, and today's web allows spin creation that's never been seen before.

The Iron Dome defense system fires
to intercept incoming missiles
from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod.

Juan Cole has a site, Informed Comment, where he lists the Top Ten Myths about Israeli Attack on Gaza, which sums up the state of things. The Israeli response to the Palestinian rocket attacks will fail in the long term, if only because the Israelis are seen as oppressors, because the Palestinian rocket attacks seem puny in comparison to the Godzilla-level Israeli response. Sorta like the Kaiser's feldgrau going through Belgium in 1914 got bad press. It's a 2GW solution to a 4GW problem, which means it's no solution.

Perhaps Egypt can make something happen within the next 72 hours, in the way of a cease-fire. Hamas might be ready to deal, as the imminent demise of the Syrian régime might result in a severe reduction in the supply of money and arms.

Nacht und nebel . . .

Tooba et al.

NIGHT AND FOG — and invisibility. What's up with Mo and Tooba? Along with their prize son Hamed, they felt the call of "honor" — and four women drowned on the night of June 30, 2009, Zainab Shafia, 19, Sahar Shafia, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, all sisters, as well as Rona Amir Mohammed, 50, their father's first wife.

TWENTY-FIVE months later, and the silence is deafening. That's justice in Ontario, it seems. But considering how Dalton plays fast and loose with legalities, like failing to publish laws in the Ontario Gazette BEFORE authorizing the police to use 'em, I guess this is par for the course. Can't seem to find any information about any trial or sentencing.

Bubble's Buddies strike again . . .

IF THE POLICE PERFORMANCE WITH THE G8/G20 was less than stellar, now the Ottawa police force is following up with equally egregious behaviour. Unlike the Toronto videos with which the "authorities" could not identify police officers in illegal disguise, Stacy Bonds' torment is something the police can't run away from.

And the best McGuinty can do is say he was "very, very troubled" by the incident. Let the shrugging and evasion begin!

40 years

For admitting to killing an invading soldier in a firefight. As a child soldier.

From Ian Welsh:

Others have covered this more than I have, but to me the initial charges were always absurd.  He killed a soldier in a firefight in a country that the US invaded.  The idea that doing so qualifies as murder is ridiculous, unless we also want to charge everyone who kills an invading soldier with murder?  And, I suppose, charge every American soldier in Iraq (a clear case of pre-emptive war, illegal under the Geneva conventions and exactly what Americans hung Germans for at Nuremburg) with murder?

Kangaroo court justice, the victors punishing the losers, for “crimes” far more minor than those the victors have committed.  Get back to me when George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Colin Powell are in the dock, and we’ll talk.

And don't expect a Khadr to be repatriated to Canada to serve out his sentence (after his initial year in solitary confinement). The Harper hillbillies are deep into punishment of anyone they don't like and happy to ignore the rule of law where such things are inconvenient to the pursuit of their rigid and thoughtless ideology. 

And Justice for All . . .

SLATE HAS AN OPINION ON THE US SUPREME COURT'S refusal to hear the appeal of Maher Arar, and it's not good for the Supremes and American jurisprudence: "Ignoring Maher Arar won't make his torture claims go away." The article, by Dahlia Lithwick, contends that

With the Supreme Court signing off on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to kick Arar to the curb, he has nowhere left to turn in the American courts. As Arar said in a statement issued by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the "decision eliminates my last bit of hope in the judicial system of the United States." Nor did it take any time at all for the Supreme Court's latest torture smoke signals to travel through the rest of the court system. The very same day the Supremes declined to hear Arar's case, a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing arguments about former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo and his alleged role in the state-sanctioned abuse of another accused terrorist, Jose Padilla. Already one of the appeals-court judges was likening the denial of certiorari in Arar's case to the problem in John Yoo's case, worrying aloud about the courts wading in and "imposing liability on a non-policymaking lawyer."

The Yoo and Arar cases thus became mirror images of each other in just a few hours: A torture lawyer cannot be held responsible for authorizing torture, and an innocent victim of torture cannot get restitution. Torture slowly becomes a singular act for which nobody will ever be held to account and nobody will ever be made whole.

Each time an American court declines to address this issue because it's novel, or complicated, or a matter best left to the elected branches, it reaffirms yet again that there is no precedent for doing justice in torture cases. By declining to find torture impermissible, they are helping to make it acceptable.

No wonder President George W. Bush can now openly brag about the water-boarding policy he once denied even existed. The courts have become complicit in the great American cop-out on torture. As Arar's attorney Cole explains, in a 2009 speech arguing against the creation of a commission to investigate torture, President Obama insisted that torture suits being filed in the courts would offer sufficient accountability. But since then his administration has acted to thwart every one of those lawsuits and weighed in on the side of the torturers. The courts now refuse to consider the torture issue because it's for the president and Congress to set policy. The president promises that vindication will come from the courts. Each branch of government hides behind the others. This is the separation of powers turned into a constitutional shell game that exists only to evade responsibility.

There will be interesting things that come of this, as the years pass.

The Trickle-Down Legacy, cont'd

THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE NEW YORKER is worthy of your attention, for an article, "Hellhole" by Atul Gawande, who looks at the problem of solitary confinement in US prisons, and asks, "The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?" While solitary has always been in use, its modern growth is a Reagan by-product.  The next time you hear Stevie ranting about sending everybody to prison for ever, consider Atul's take on crime and punishment.

In the past thirty years, the United States has quadrupled its incarceration rate but not its prison space. Work and education programs have been cancelled, out of a belief that the pursuit of rehabilitation is pointless. The result has been unprecedented overcrowding, along with unprecedented idleness—a nice formula for violence.

Remove a few prisoners to solitary confinement, and the violence doesn’t change. So you remove some more, and still nothing happens. Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.