Dangerous territory, but I’m going there…

NOTE: Let it be known that I’m pretty much a heathen.  My father and grandfather were pulpit pounding, Bible thumping hell fire and brimstone preachers, and I got more Jesus and God pounded into me before I was 6 than most people get in a lifetime.  In my early adulthood, I took a hard look at Christianity, even taking classes in theology for my own edification.  The conclusion I came to in my early 30s was that deity-based faiths are pretty much mythology wrapped in threats of fiery death if one didn’t comply with certain precepts in those faiths.  I rejected this mythology in favor of a more tolerant approach to all faiths (and no faith).  Since then, I’ve followed my own path, studying everyone from Thomas Merton to Shunryu Suzuki, who brought Japanese Soto Zen buddhism to the US in the 1950s.  This is the perspective I bring to this discussion of the decades long conflict in Palestine, now commonly known as Israel.

I bring this up as I have had a number of conversations this past week or so after violence erupted in Israel again, where Israel is using war planes and missiles to indiscriminately kill Palestinians in Gaza as Hamas retaliates by firing uncontrolled rockets back at Israel.  Depending on who you talk to, Israel is simply defending itself or committing genocide, and to say it out loud, those opinions are pretty much divided between Jewish and non-Jewish.  Also, social conservatives almost always land on the side of Israel, some because they’re Bible thumpers, too, or just taking everlasting Republican positions.

The Israeli government always talks about how complicated all this is and they’re simply trying to stop terrorists from attacking them.  They like it complicated, because what they are really doing is committing genocide, and they don’t want you to see that.  That’s right; the very people who suffered mightily in the European holocaust are doing exactly the same thing to the Palestinians and have been for decades.  Before you go hair on fire, here’s the definition of genocide as defined in 1944 by a Jewish Polish legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin:

“More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong.”

This definition has been widely adopted and refined by legal and historical scholars and referenced in international law.  The court that has jurisdiction over Palestine/Israel is the International Criminal Court, and the definition of genocide in Article VI of their governing statute is:

“…includes various acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” as such, including:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

By this definition, the Israeli government is, and has been, committing genocide against the Palestinian people by taking their property and ghettoizing where they remain, restricting movement, limiting employment, viciously enforcing draconian laws, indiscriminate killing, and even restricting their access to water.  That’s right, since 1967 it is illegal for Palestinians to access any water from the Jordan or the West Bank or even to collect rain water. The Israeli courts twist the laws against the Palestinians and are tools for taking property from them.  The more I study this issue, the more outraged I become.

In this last week, I’ve had some pretty tense discussions on social media and other forums, and I’m shocked at how so many of the people I’ve engaged simply parrot Israeli talking points.  Let’s be clear here.  Israel, with the backing of the United States and Britain, have annexed 100% of Palestinian lands since 1948, killing untold thousands, and committed atrocities that rival those of World War II and other violent conflicts.  The US sends about $4.5 billion a year to Israel, over 90% of which is for war making.  In contrast, the US sends the Palestinian Authority $500 million, over 75% of which is for humanitarian purposes.  Oh, and Trump even cut that off for the 4 years he infested the Oval Office; that order was reversed in April of this year. Since they started taking land in 1948, over 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes into refugee camps in Jordan and elsewhere.  In 1948 alone, Israelis destroyed and depopulated 700 Palestinian villages.  Israel has never, despite the UN declaration they used to take Palestine, officially recognized a Palestinian state or the right of Palestinians to live within its borders.

The excuses I’ve heard?  “Oh, those people in East Jerusalem are being evicted over a real estate dispute,” and, “The Arab world is huge; they can just move to another country,” and, “Israel is simply defending itself,” and “Hamas are terrorists firing rockets supplied by Iran,” and “So and so broke into a Jewish family’s house and murdered all of them.”  Oh, and then there’s this nugget, “There’s no such thing as Palestine; Palestine is the invention of the British.”  That’s pretty rich, since the name Palestine is derived from the Greek Philistia, which was the term used to describe these lands by Greek writers 3,000 YEARS AGO. It goes on and on, with excuse after excuse, most word for word propaganda from the Israeli government and its mouthpieces.  Essentially, normally good people rationalize the genocide happening in Israel by cherry picking information or outright lying to support their predispositions.  It’s pretty amazing.

“There’s no doubt again here this is ‘incremental genocide,’ as Ilan Pappé says. It’s been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life, the expulsions that have gone on from Lydda in 1947 and ‘48, when 700 or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that continued from that time until today. It’s correct and important to label it for what it is. I want to emphasize today [that] these killings are part of a broader set of inhuman acts by Israel constituting international crimes, carried out by Israel over many years, going back to at least 1947 and 1948. They include crimes that aren’t talked about that much in the media or the press, the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and apartheid. These crimes can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court and are defined there.”

The tragedy of this conflict is that the very people who suffered such mammoth atrocities and genocide at the hands of the Nazis are doing, and have been doing for decades, the same thing to the Palestinians.  AND, they’re doing that with American tax dollars.  That simply has to stop, and I’m going to keep talking about it.

Mariselle Quijano was running for reelection to our school board in position two. As an employee of the district we are somewhat dialed in to these things, but I don’t live in the district where I work. So, I try not to get involved. Quijano had served for 12 years, but it appears that the term is coming to an end. At least that is what we thought.

It was a 51/49 percentage account, so by all accounts it was close. Now, the school board president is refusing to seat the winner. The district has an official statement I have highlighted below, but it has turned nasty. Crystal Davila (the winner) has complained publicly about the process and if you simply read the statement below it would seem that the issue shouldn’t be in doubt.

When you go to the official school district website this is what they have on the election results. They have already had two meetings since the election. In one of those meetings the board voted to give all of us a three percent across the board raise. So, in other words, they are doing some pretty significant stuff.

This is where we get into the politics of it. Davila ran as part of a cohort of current and former educators that thought there should be more teacher representation on the board. Beyond that, labels of liberal and conservative rarely ever enter into it on this level. At least that’s true in Pasadena. Candidates never have a letter by their name and few mention anything that would hint of larger political issues. That changed during this race.

The school board president lobbied hard for the three incumbents in the race and labeled the three challengers as wanting to install a socialist agenda. I’m not exactly sure how one does that on a school board, but who knows. While she did not specifically label Davila as a socialist I suppose the implication was clear enough. Now, she is refusing to seat her. I can only wonder where they are getting this idea from about recounts. Is there anyone out there that they are deriving their inspiration from to stonewall the process? Can anyone think of anyone? Obviously, I don’t know if the current board are Trump supporters and that’s not my implication.

The implication is simple. When you see someone do something and it seems to be successful then it gives you rise to do it. That might be the most dangerous outcome from the 2020 election. Now, everyone has cause to challenge an election when the results come back differently they think they should have. Again, I’m an innocent bystander here. I didn’t vote in the election and really didn’t have an opinion until I was bombarded with talk about socialism. Now, it seems the citizens of Pasadena are not being adequately represented because a few on the board don’t like the results. That’s not how America works. At least that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Maybe the last presidential election will change all of that.

Georgia Republican Congressvermin Andrew Clyde got plenty of air time over his claim that January 6th was like “a normal tourist day” at the capitol. Someone got a picture of Clyde as the tourists arrived.

https://twitter.com/bryrsmith/status/1394470243544838151

And the he ran downstairs to help block the door so they couldn’t even get to the gift shop.

The Rep. Clyde news reminded me of this: 

UNITED STATES – JANUARY 6: Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., second from top left, helps barricade the House chamber door as rioters disrupt the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/ewizgiuwLn

— Tom Williams (@pennstatetom) May 15, 2021

I think we should make him the official tourist greeter from now on.  He’s got lots of practice at it.

It’s all out war right now in Arizona, specifically Maricopa County, where Republicans have been presiding over an audit shitshow of the 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election.  We’ve talked about the sham that was cooked up by the Arizona State Senate, where they decided that it would be a really good idea to pander to Trump by pretending to count ballots and look for Chinese bamboo in the paper.  The Arizona secretary of state has opposed the audit from the beginning, and now the Maricopa Board of Elections has weighed in with an open letter to the senate demanding that the audit be halted immediately.  The letter was sent after Karen Fann, president of the senate, accused the board on Twitter of deleting the entire data base from the 2020 election, which, of course, is completely false.

Jack Sellers, the chairman of the elections board, both in public statements and in the letter ripped Fann, senate Republicans, and especially the “auditor”, Cyber Ninjas, for their incompetence.  He also has refused to answer any more questions and demands.  Here’s a quote from Sellers in that regard:

Jack Sellers, chair of Maricopa county board of supervisors, ends meeting by saying he is not responding to any more requests from state senate on Arizona audit. "Finish your report and be ready to defend it in a court of law," he says.

— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021

I had the opportunity to read the letter today and it’s a long, but fantastic read.  Once choice paragraph I reproduce here:

Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud.  He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed.  Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive.  What’s telling, though, have been his actions.  How do we know?  Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door.  I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.

On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day,  from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany.  Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier.  This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field.  A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops  from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th.  It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble.  The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives.  This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.

At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign.  Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense.  Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration.  In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.

It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt.  Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.

These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies.  Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks.  Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.