U.S. Moral Authority in the World

Although the US has a black President, the discrimination and subjugation of blacks and other minorities is not over.

You have to travel into the Southern US and you will see more blatant examples of such human rights violations. How can America tell other nations about human rights and democracy given its own past record of slavery and its ongoing human rights violations. Yes Hitler was evil and no one can, or should, condone his atrocities. However, dropping a bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not any less cruel. Unfortunately it is winners take all and winners are not made accountable. Now look at the atrocities committed in Iraq. Millions of men, women and children perished, millions others are refugees in neighbouring countries and still millions others live in squalor with no proper sanitary conditions or food. Is that the example of human rights and democracy? Similar atrocities are being carried out in Afghanistan and now are being extended to Pakistan. Is that spreading democracy?

Every effort is being made to disarm the Middle East and Iran. But what about arming Israel to the teeth with over 200 nuclear heads and drones. Drones which are regularly used to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel carries out the slaughter of its neighbours at will and takes Palestinian land on a daily basis, destroying their homes and building new settlements. Is that an example of democracy and human rights? To bring peace in the Middle East Israel must be disarmed too.

When US has that kind of brutal history then how can it tell other nations that they are unjust societies. Let justice begin at home. When it comes to the violations of human rights, nationally and internationally, US makes top of the list. As long as that continues we will see no peace. It is a very sad state of affairs. Injustice breeds more injustice.

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Richard Falk continues to speak out against Israel's war crimes in Gaza

"Richard A. Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer (the author or co-author of 20 books), speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories." (from Wikipedia)

Click here to read his latest statement on March 19, 2009.

And below is a video of an Israeli Soldier on the BBC talking about Israeli atrocities in Gaza:

More recently the Harper government has banned George Galloway, British MP, from coming to Canada to speak in Toronto. George Galloway is opposed to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and to Israeli atrocities in Gaza. It is interesting that Harper welcomes Bush who is alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity but would ban George Galloway.

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Richard A. Falk and Desmond Tutu were barred entery into Israel

In my previous post I pointed out that Richard A. Falk, a world renowned humanitarian and human rights activist, working for UN, was barred from entering Israel because he does not agree with the policies of Israel with regards to the Palestinians.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, also received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and the Gandhi Peace Prize. He fought against apartheid in South Africa alongside Nelson Mandela. He was denied entry into Israel as well by Israeli authorities. Apparently, the Israeli goverenment knew he does not like apartheid. What lengths will Israel go to hide its crimes against humanity and atrocities against the Palestinian people?

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Richard Falk barred from entering Israel and Gaza

As stated earlier, Richard Falk is a highly respected scholar, a professor emeritus of international law. He is also a human rights activist and works for the United Nations. More recently, he was barred from entering Israel and Gaza.

It seems that anyone who speaks against the atrocities of Israel's government is quickly labelled as anti-semite and even neo-nazi, thus bellitling the meaning of these words. Dr. Falk is an American and a Jew himself and he is dedicated to human rights internationally. So given all this, how can he be anti-semite? However that does not stop some to accuse him of this. Flabberghasting.

Richard Falk's Statement on Gaza:

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Israel-Palestine: Worse Than Apartheid According to Richard A. Falk of the United Nations

Richard A. Falk is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer (the author or co-author of 20 books), speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories (From Wikipedia).

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Israel and Apartheid

I saw this great write up on Dawg's blog: "Israeli apartheid: calumny or reality?" I wanted to leave a comment, but I could not. For some settings on my computer I am unable to leave a comment on many haloscan type settings so I have given up.

I do wish to point out that I agree with Dawg's reasoning. As a matter of fact, some observers have indicated that conditions in Palestinians areas, especially Gaza, are worse than they were in Apartheid South Africa because blacks in South Africa were at least able to work and earn their living. In Gaza, even that is hard to come by. There is simply too much to read and it is plain heart-wrenching. That we in Canada and the US support such apartheid is simply incredible – by "we" I mean our governments because the public in general, when they are aware of these apartheid conditions, will not support them.

Below is a video which speaks volumes. These are Australian folks who are opposed to this apartheid.

ISRAEL'S APARTHEID WALL

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Gaza, Israel and Apartheid: There's a Tear in my Heart

According to some observers, conditions in apartheid South Africa were better than in Gaza. Apartheid is criminal, so what should we call the position of Israel with regards to the Palestinians.

How can the US and Canada support such apartheid which is considered worse, by some, than the one which existed in South Africa. One has to admire Brian Mulroney who, contrary to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, opposed apartheid in South Africa. What is wrong with Stephen Harper and the so-called "Liberal" leader Michael Ignatieff? Michael Ignatieff does not come across as human. He is more like a robot who wants to be Prime Minister at any cost. The leadership situation in Canada is depressing. At least Obama recognizes the suffering of people in Gaza. Time will tell how his policies will materialize. There is no such hope from Harper and Iggy.

Now with Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel, will things get any better? Does not look it? However, he and Obama may have serious enough differences that there may be a turn around for the better... maybe.

Here is a song, "There's a Tear in my Heart" which depicts the Gaza situation quite well.

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Dreams of Gaza

I will start this post with a song called "Imagine" from my favourite singer John Lennon which relates to Gaza/Israel.

Imagine, song by john Lenon about Palestine and Israel

A fellow blogger "Gene" warned me that reading about Gaza could become quite self-absorbing and can take a lot of one's energies. He is quite right. After reading plenty of material, seeing the pictures of destrution in Gaza, dead women, children and residents in general, it is hard to get those images out of my mind.

I even seem to dream about it now, though you could say these dreams are more nightmares. In my dream, I saw a little child with a glass of very muddied water. I took the glass and spilled the water in order to give him fresh water. He started crying uncontrollaby. I said why are you crying little one. He said that was the only water he had and I spilled it. I woke up after that. It is horrible what is happening in Gaza. It is an apartheid of the worst kind. I will be writing about apartheid in a later post.

Here is another video about destrution in Gaza:

A Genocide is taking place in Gaza!

I do not understand what is wrong with the Israeli government. It is clear that they are conscience dead. Is it possible that they are brain-dead too? How long will they hide all this from the world. What is being done in Gaza are indeed crimes against humanity and war crimes.

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Jimmy Carter on Gaza

I do not believe in personality cults. Thank God I never suffered from Trudeaumania or now Obamamania. All leaders have strengths and weakness as they are all humans. The balance is different for different leaders. Carter is one of those leaders I do admire. He lost the 1980 election not because he was less qualified, but because he was up against a Hollywood actor. Ronald Reagan gave some of his best acting performances during the Presidential election and when he was president - not when he was actually in Hollywood.

Jimmy Carter is a great humanitarian and has done impressive work internationally. He speaks from his heart.

Then there is this fellow who calls himself C-Nuck who visits my blog and defends Israel's atrocities in the occupied areas with flimsy arguments. When I wrote in one of my previous posts that there have been hundreds of Israeli military personnel who are objectors to the invasion in the occupied territories, he said that was not true.

http://ledaro.blogspot.com/2009/02/holocaust-lest-we-forget.html - see the comments section.

Maybe this video will convince C-Nuck otherwise:

I believe there are good people in every society, and no matter how hard politicians try to brain wash the public these people are not fooled.

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The Holocaust: Lest we Forget

Whenever I write about Gaza, I never say that Jews are killing Palestinian women and children, because that would be wrong. It is the Government leaders who give such orders with the aim of clinging to power, and it is the IDF who carries out such killings. Now to be fair to the IDF, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in such missions and they were punished for that, one must admire these people who are driven by conscience.

Now about the Holocaust. It is one of the worst and ghastly chapters in human history. It was one of the worst examples of inhumnanity towards fellow human beings. We must never forget this horrific chapter in world history and we must make every effort to ensure it does not happen again. During this grisly chapter, there were certain people who put their lives on the line to save the victims of the Holocaust. There are many examples of that. Books have been written and movies made documenting this. In the face of atrocities, if we remain silent then it is an evil in itself and blatantly immoral behaviour. The following video sheds some light on this subject matter.

ZEGOTA saved 50000 Jews from the Holocaust.

We must celebrate the lives of such hereos and do whatever we can in our humble way to follow in their footsteps. What the Israeli government is doing in Gaza and the West Bank is intolerable by any civilized standards. Killing and slaughtering of women and children is simply not acceptable and the people in Gaza are living in conditions of a concentration camp, as many World authorities have pointed out. It must be stopped and all nations must condemn it and do everything to stop it. Here is a video about Gaza which sheds some light on the plight of Palestinians.

Gaza: The sound of reason:

We must speak out against this carnage regardless of our religion, nationality or ethnic background. First and foremost we are all human. As the speaker in the first video says, not doing anything in case of extreme need is already an act of evil.

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Keith Olbermann's Interview with Jimmy Carter on Gaza and Other Issues

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Gaza: Lest we forget

"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." - John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

History shows that atrocities were committed because someone or some society got too much power. Whether it was the Roman Empire or, in more recent history, the British Empire or other colonizers. They committed inhumane acts from which we should have learned.

Hitler got too much power and the atrocities he committed puts horror in our hearts to this day. Then there was the communist regime in the USSR which murdered millions of people under Stalin alone - 20 million according to some estimates. The USA has caused horror in the world too, for instance the way the American government treated US citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War. Then of course there were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks which killed hundreds of thousands and maimed hundreds of thousands more, with some deformities being passed on through generations. Yes nuclear attacks brought an end to the Second World War, but at what cost?

Now that I have been studying the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is becoming more and more obvious to me that Israel has one of the very powerful militaries in the world and in the Middle East, and it has carried out its own atrocities. We came to know about the slaughter of women and children in Gaza in January 2009, but it has gone on for years before and in the West we had very little information. All we hear is that Palestinians fired rockets and 'poor' Israel invaded neighbouring countries to defend itself. It has been one atrocity after another by successive Israeli governments.

Here is a video. A Western reporter gives some idea of the atrocities as far back as 2000 to 2003.

Surely there must be more information about the years since 1948.

The following is a video which is a great example how power can be corrupting, on how George W. Bush abused power.

Then of course there are the atrocities committed by the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Benjamin Netanyahu: A loose canon literally?

Media reports suggest that Benjamin Netanyahu will win the February 10th election in Israel and become the new Prime Minister. This is bad news for Israel and for the rest of the region. Netanyahu is a right-wing nut who is trigger happy. He wants to expand Israeli settlements into Gaza and the West Bank and won't be looking for peace and compromise anytime soon. His other obsession is to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. He has been repeatedly advocating it and telling the US to forget about the economy and other woes, as Iran is a bigger problem according to him.

Can you visualize Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in that region dealing with each other? It gives one the creeps. Netanyahu bombing Iran and Ahmadinejad reacting to it could engulf the whole world in the perils of a devastating war. So much for Obama's diplomacy. US got rid of Bush and Cheney but Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad could be a bigger hurdle to world peace. They both could be characterized as fanatics. One wants to wipe out Iran from the map and the other wants to wipe out Israel from the map – mama mia where would that lead rest of the world. Gaza and Palestinian issues may become miniscule and ignored if all these flare-ups take place

One thing you have to give to Ahmadinejad is that he has invaded no one. On the other hand Israel is addicted to invasions, Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, Syria and in the past Egypt and Jordan as well as bombing Iraq. And Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the major addicts of such gun slinging. We need more than Obama - maybe we need divine intervention (after all, all the prophets came from the Middle East). We need this divine intervention to have a meeting to bring these people together in a peace treaty.

Here is what the Arab World thinks of Netanyahu.

And here is what the rest of the World thinks of him.

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Gaza Tragedy: Israel routinely breaks international laws

As soon as I am ready to move on to something else, there come these clowns on my blog who try to convince me and my readers that Israel is within its rights to butcher and slaughter Palestinians. See this earlier blog of mine and scroll down to the comments section.

The ignorance and cold-bloodedness of these people is alarming. As the quote at the beginning of this video says:

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: People must arm themselves with the power of which knowledge gives."

This says it all.



It is obvious who is breaking international law and who is committing crimes against humanity. Sooner than later the international community must intervene to stop this slaughter and inhumanity.

Now look at this map here:



What did Palestinians do to bear all this punishment for over 60 years now? The European powers, in order to wash their sins against Jews, created Israel and made millions of Palestinians homeless or living in "concentration camps" as one Vatican official called Gaza. In case you do not understand "Aujourd'hui" on the map, it means "today."

Another song on Gaza:

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President Barack Obama Providing Relief for the People of Gaza

One feels impressed by Barack Obama that he cares, and that he is a humanitarian. He has signed a memorandum to help the people of Gaza.

Would Harper do the same?

You can click here to read the text of the memorandum.

Also, I hope that Obama will push forward with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process - now more than ever it is urgent for him to do so.

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Gaza: Rick Sanchez exposes the truth about Gaza and Israeli Aggression

I have to give thanks to a certain bozo who started censoring my posts on a certain aggregate. He then kicked off some very good bloggers because they did not agree with him on the Israel-Gaza conflict. As I protested, I was expelled too. That motivated me to do research on the Gaza/Israel conflict. I found out that we were fed a lot of baloney by our Western media.

But once in while some good souls give great information. Rick Sanchez of CNN is one of them. He exposed the truth that it was indeed Israel who was responsible for the current aggression in Gaza and indeed it was Israel who broke the cease-fire and not Hamas. Israel considers it its right to go into Gaza and attack at will.

Here is the CNN video:



You may also like to listen to this song, by The Dark Bob, on Gaza:

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Turkish Prime Minister to Israeli President: "You Kill People"

Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdoga gave it to Israeli President Shimon Peres. All the power to the Turkish Prime Minister who showed backbone which a lot of world leaders lack – especially Iggy and Harpo who were born without one. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last Thursday January 29, he told Peres as it is and then got up and left the forum and flew back home. I heard that he received a hero's welcome in Turkey. That is the way to go.

You can click here and here to read the rest of the story.

Pretty well whole world has either condemned the carnage in Gaza or expressed concern about the Palestinians in Gaza. Only Harpo and Iggy endorsed Israel unconditionally to carry out the carnage (well Bush too, but he's out of office now). I feel ashamed to be Canadian after the way these two, Harpo and Iggy, reacted to this carnage giving us the bull that "Israel has right to self-defense." Some self-defense! If all the mass murderers were able to get away with such self-defense then our justice system and world justice system has not moved an iota from barbarianism.

Iggy and Harper not only are allies on the flawed budget that ignores hardworking Canadians losing their jobs (not to mention on voting down pay equity for women) but they also endorsed unconditionally the massacre in Gaza.

Below are some examples of what Iggy and Harpo have supported.

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Gaza: An Appeal by George Galloway to Help

George Galloway is an impressive man. You can click here to read his bio which I wrote up and posted earlier. Now, he is appealing for aid and help to victims in Gaza. Please click here to read and see if you can help in any way.

The more one reads about Gaza, the more dreadful facts one finds out. It is not easy to watch these videos. Here is one from series of videos posted on the Youtube.

This is the brutality that Iggy and Harper support.

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Sarah Teather, another UK MP against the Massacre in Gaza

Many UK MPs spoke out against the slaughter in Gaza, George Galloway, Sir Gerald Kaufman (who is Jewish), Sarah Teather ,and many others. Why are our MPs muzzled? The slaughter in Gaza is unacceptable by any standard. No civilized society or people can condone such butchery. The Israeli government cannot be considered civilized. It is barbarian. And I will include Harper, Iggy and Bush in that pack for being enablers. The sooner the world realizes the plight of Gaza and the atrocities of Israeli authorities, the better it will be for World peace.

There are many videos on the plight of Gaza. This one below, entitled Cry for Gaza, is quite moving.

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George Galloway - Palestinian Rights and Israel

George Galloway is a man who speaks the truth. After reading about the Palestine-Israel issue, I have reached exactly the same conclusions as him. There is a need that our conscience in the West is shaken up real hard. Slaughter and butchery is reprehensible no matter who commits it. It is our moral duty to fight against such injustices.

UPDATE: Brief Biography of George Galloway:

George Galloway was born and raised in Dundee Scotland. He is from a family of devout Roman Catholics and non-drinkers and himself developed a strong admiration for the Kennedy family in the US, fellow Catholics. At the young age of thirteen, he became involved with the Labour Party quickly distinguishing himself as a local party activist. He won his first election to Parliament in 1987 representing the riding of Glasgow Hillhead. He became an outspoken Member of Parliament, standing up for issues that were important to him, including the cause of Palestinians. In 1997, after redistricting, he was elected as representative for the riding of Glasgow Kelvin.

With the Labour government's support of Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq, George Galloway quickly became an outspoken critic of that war, directly confronting the leader of his party, Tony Blair. For his outspoken opposition to the war, Mr. Galloway was expelled from the Labour Party.

In 2005, Galloway ran as a candidate for the newly formed RESPECT coalition - an anti-war political party that was to the left of Labour. He was elected to represent the London riding of Bethnal Green and Bow in that year. He has since continued his advocacy work for the Palestinian people and against the War in Iraq. As well, he is a strong supporter of other progressive and social democratic causes such as combatting poverty, and supporting the rights of trade unions.

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