Massacres and a failure of empathy

Liberals are describing the shooting at Newtown, Conn., as horrific, unimaginable until reality hits.  We are described as a nation in mourning. We are described as having a Culture of  Violence which must be checked.  Liberaals are right, but fail the test of empathy.

Conservatives prise what they think the 2nd Amendment means;  they include a justification for arsenals of assault weapons sas necessary to protect against a National government bent on taking away our freedom.  Conservatives may be right about the progressive loss of freedom but fail to  explain the utter futility of opposing, say, drones carrying tactual Atomic Bombs if a full-scale war were to break out against the superior Federal force.


Millions of children are massacred every year in every country except the Republic of Tuvan, Russia.  Millions more are left in shock, destitute, from the massacare of their parents.

Millions of replacement children are created every year; too many replacements, sad to say.

Millions of assault rifles and guns are used throughout the world to kill and would millions.  This chart, from

 http://www.juancole.com/2012/12/how-america-is-filling-up-itself-and-the-world-with-guns.html

shows where those weapons come from:

Made in the USA.  Home of the, er, brave.

Liberals focus only on American slaughter.   They ignore our contribution to the slaughter of the Not-Us.  If you care about anybody beyond your skin, there is no reason except an atavistic tribalism to limit the caring to one bit of land.

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge?

William Shakespeare, 

Merchant of Venice, Scene I  

And so it is with every race and nation.   Shakespeare wrote some years ago.  We have learned nothing.

I have been told to reason by the heart,

But heart, like head, leads helplessly;

I have been told to reason by the pulse,

And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace

Till field and roof lie level and the same

So fast I move defying time, the quiet gentleman

Whose beard wags in Egyptian wind.

I have heard may years of telling,

And many years should see some change.

The ball I threw while playing in the park

Has not yet reached the ground.

Dylan Thomas, Should Lanterns  Shine

There are a lot of shootings, torture, maiming, dismemberment, dead bodies in our popular entertainment.  We pay a lot of money to enjoy 'em.  Are we a violent nation?

There are, in the lives I know, a lot of love, joy, hear-break, sex, sunrises and sunsets to be enjoyed, good food and lots of it, anger, forgiveness, creativity, commerce, dreams of a better world.  We may be violent but we're not only violent.

For the drooping of homes
That did not nurse our bones,
Brave deaths of only ones but never found,
Now see, alone in us,
Our own true strangers’ dust
Ride through the doors of our unentered house.
Exiled in us we arouse the soft,
Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.

Dylan Thomas, There was a Saviour

Images of foreign children in war, to prick the shell of your indifference if any such shell have ye.  After the jump.

Knives or guns

Many innocents have been slaughtered in our history.  In more civilized eras -- say, in 4 BCE in King Herod's Jerusalem -- when it was deemed appropriate to slaughter a lot of children, knives were used. Times were slower back then, and this image of the event wan't painted for some 1,500 years later, so it may have missed some detail.

Cornelis Cornelisz Van Haarlem, 1590, Dutch Baroque painter

China remains relatively civilized.  Just now a man in China's southern province of Guangxi axed three school children to death and wounded 13; and at about the same time, a man in Chenpeng village in Henan province, wielding a knife, killed 2 elementary children and wounded 22.

Contemporaneously, in Newtown,Connecticut, Adam Lanza shot 20 elementary school children and six adults:  all are dead.

A few points, out of many possible points:

∼  We lead the world in mass shootings.  We also have more guns per capita than any other nation.  [A curious phenomenon:  the number of gun sales rise; the number of gun owners shrinks; perhaps arsenals are being built by fewer and fewer folks.] We are followed in gun ownership closely by poor, mad Yemen.  [Probably a non-sequitur, but I note that we also led the World in the number of folks, per capita, in jails and prisons, with Russia a close second.] 

∼  What we know or believe about the youngmen who kill dozens at a time is that they are severely depressed, suicidal,  and furious; that they mask their misery from their parents; that they will talk to a  non-censorious adult about feelings of depression and urges toward suicide; and that many can be helped with appropriate interventions.  Members of Congress have cut appropriations for appropriate interventions.

∼  The youngmen frequently wear black as if in uniform.

∼  The youngmen are not unusually skilled or strong.  Without the advantage guns afford they would be unable to kill many.

∼  As many are killed wit guns on the streets of our great cities and our around our bucolic prairies as are killed in our mass slaughters, but the individual deaths doe't draw much media attention except when famous athletes are involved.  There is a murderous culture of machismic [my word] violence going around that is pandemic.  Perhaps an over-reaction to the great successes of the feminist movements.

∼  My friends and their friends who favor the present interpretation of the Second Amendment are more likely to get beneficial changes in public policy than my friends who are already in favor of  increased gun safety.  Write your Congresspersons, please, and telephone them.  The Country needs your help. If you don't act, action that will be taken is likely to be ill-conceived and maybe harmful to the Body Politic.

Benghazi, Ansar al-Sharia, democracy supporters, confusion, and pathetic John McCain

To get some idea of the complexity of discovering what happened in the attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, read the Reuters' September 22, 2012, article, published after the jump.

It is thought that a militia, Ansar al-Shariah, headquartered in Benghazi, may have been responsible for the attack.  Benghazi citizens, angry at the attack on the US mission, stormed the two (or five) compounds of the militia and ran the militia membeers out of town.  Other militias were also attacked, including one pro-democracy one.

John McCain, who is lusting after the chairmanship of a special Benghazi committee (which will not be created) lest he fall irretrievably into a well-deserved obscurity, would have Americans untangle this mess.  Only one crazed by a lust for the public stage would make such a fuss.

A small illustration of the complexity:  A doctor in a hospital where Ansar al-Sharia had been providing security for the past six weeks is reported to have said the group had prevented anarchy. “I don’t know about their religion or ideology, but they solved problems,“ said Abdulmonin Salim. “I don’t care if they come from another planet. I want a secure hospital."

Ansar al-Sharia is one of many islamist brigades in Libya .  It opposes democracy as being contrary to Islamic principles.  Islamists in Turkey Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and other pro-democracy nations in which Islam is he principal religion, disagree.  Most Libyans support democracy and strongly and violently disagree.

Here are some images of the US investigating team and of Ansar al-Sharia:


If more need be aid about the difficulty of forensic discovery, here is a team of US investigators at work in Benghazi.

Demonstrators chanted "No more al Qaeda!" as they entered the Ansar al-Sharia compound on Friday night

Ansar al-Sharia brigade members guarding the hospital in Benghazi.

The city of Benghazi, as shown in Google:

 Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii, trnsported to Benghazi

 And, of course, football, eveerywhere in the world:

Present status of the Iran-Pakistan Pipeline

On March 5, 2012, I wrote a post on US efforts to prevent Iran and Pakistan from constructing the Iran-Pakistan Pipeline.  The effort focused on blocking sources of money for financing the pipeline.

The pipeline would start in he Pars natural gas field in Iran -- the largest in the world and currently blocked by US Warships -- and would bring a new energy source to Pakistan, which Pakistan desperately needs.  It would also provide Iran with cash, which it desperately needs because of Western efforts to starve it into agreeing not to construct an Atomic Bomb.  Such as Israel has.

The Western effort, now joined by Russia and China, has so far been a success:  there is no pipeline and there is no Bomb, and Iran has not been Bombed by anyone.  The effort is also wasteful and unstable, not nearly as good as working out an agreement with iran.

Here is a report on the current sate of developments:

From  The Express Tribune with the International Herald ATribune

Zardari visit delay raises questions over Iran-Pakistan project

By AFP

Published: December 11, 2012

ISLAMABAD: 

President Asif Ali Zardari has delayed a visit to Iran to discuss a huge gas deal despite Tehran’s offer of a loan to help finance a project which the US opposes, officials said Tuesday.

The $7.5 billion pipeline project has run into repeated difficulties – over US opposition because of Iran’s nuclear activities and Pakistan’s difficulty in finding funds.

It was originally reported that Zardari would visit Iran last Friday and that the final agreement would be likely signed during the visit.

Pakistani officials denied that the visit had been cancelled, claiming it had never been officially scheduled due to Zardari’s engagements in London and Paris.

“The visit may materialise on his way back from the ongoing foreign tour or he may visit Tehran after coming back home,” a petroleum ministry official told AFP.

Iranian officials said that the visit had been postponed at Pakistan’s request and would happen “soon”.

“It has been agreed that the visit would take place with a bit of change. Iranian assistance to build the peace pipeline in Pakistan will be one of the issues on the visit’s agenda,” said Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mahmanparast.

Negotiations are reaching a critical point, the Financial Times said, because it will take two years to build Pakistan’s sections of the pipeline and Islamabad would have to start paying Tehran for the gas two years from now.

The newspaper said an increasingly desperate Pakistan is struggling to overcome strong opposition to the project from the United States, which has clamped economic sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear programme.

In 2010 Iran and Pakistan agreed that Iran would supply between 750 million cubic feet and one billion cubic feet per day of natural gas by mid-2015.

Islamabad has said that it will pursue the project regardless of US pressure, calling it vital to overcome the country’s energy crisis that has led to debilitating blackouts and suffocated industry.

But in March, it was forced to review sources of funding after newspapers said a Chinese bank pulled out over fears that firms involved will face sanctions.

Pakistani officials said Tuesday that Iran had promised a $500 million loan and that Islamabad would meet the rest of its $1.6 billion share.

“There are impediments in view of the US opposition to the project but we are determined to complete it to meet our fast-growing energy requirements,” said one government official on condition of anonymity.

But the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said Iran has confirmed it can finance at least $250 million, despite Pakistan asking for $500 million.

“This is a technical issue,” Mahmanparast said.

Analyst Imtiaz Gul said the deal would probably be signed only if the United States backs down over its opposition to the deal, possibly in exchange for Pakistani cooperation on Afghan peace efforts. [Emphasis added.]

So Pakistan has something we want and we have something Pakistan wants.  An agreement might lead to a broader agreement with Iran that would end the present stalemate.  That larger agreement might make all nations but Israel, currently controlled by mad hawks, happy.  A change in the Israeli government might result in a two-state solution, which would make Palestinians happy; which would mak Egypt happy.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast."  Alexander Pope.

Happy Palestinians:

Kurds-Arab Islamists clash in Syria, tension mounts between Turkey and Russia

The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports:

Syria's Arab-led rebels seized new territory in the eastern Euphrates valley from government forces on Thursday but ran into resistance from Kurdish militia on the Turkish border in a potential new security concern for the key NATO member.

Rebel fighters captured the Euphrates town of Mayadeen in a drive up the strategic valley from the Iraqi border, bringing the largest single swathe of territory in the country under their control, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

But farther north, in the battlefield town of Ras al-Ain on the Turkish border, mainly jihadist rebel forces were in a standoff with Kurdish militia with links to Ankara's longtime foe, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the largest such confrontation so far in the 20-month uprising.

The dispute is bring Russia and NATO into conflict  because Turkey, a NAATO member, is asking for Patriot missels to protect its borders, and Russia objects.  Tension mounts.

article AFP article is republished after the jump.

Here are three photographs and a map that accompanied the article:

Damage at a house in the Damascus district of Mazzeh 

is pictured after it was target by mortar fire 

(SANA/AFP)

Syrian women bake bread in a clay oven

 in the town of Maraat al-Numan 

in the southern Idlib province on November 21

 (AFP/File, John Cantlie)

A Syrian rebel mourns the death of a comrade in the town of

 Maraat al-Numan in Idlib province on

 November 20 (AFP/File, John Cantlie)

Defiant Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan Economic Cooperation

To be taken with a grin of salt, since the newspaper is the official publication of the Islamic Republic of iran and isn't picked up by any other that I can see.  Still, it appears to be The Bushco Gift that Keeps on Giving:

FARS News Agency

Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan to Further Expand Economic Cooperation

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Friday agreed on a protocol for the expansion of mutual cooperation in economic fields.

The binding document was prepared and agreed upon at the 1st Iran-KRG Economic Cooperation Expansion Session and will be signed by Secretary of Iran-KRG Joint Economic Commission Kamran Ahmad and Secretary of Iran-Iraq Joint Economic Commission, Hassan Kazzemi Qomi. 

Iran's Vice-President for International Affaires Ali Saeedlu and the KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani voiced their agreement to provisions of the document at the 1st Iran-KRG Economic Cooperation Expansion Session. 

Secretary General of Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines, Jahanbakhsh Sanjabi Shirazi told the Islamic republic news agency that the agreement envisions mobilization of common borders, officially recognition of Siranband-Baneh border, straight carriage of Iranian goods to Iraq, expansion of cooperation between Iran's Standard Organization and the KRG, setting up joint insurance, forming an arbitration body to settle possible legal and judicial cases, expansion of banking cooperation and legalization of companies' registration. 

He said that the Islamic Republic of Iran earned $6.8 billion out of commercial transactions with Iraq in the first half of the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 21). 

Iran and the Iraqi Kurdistan region have enjoyed growing ties ever since the overthrow of the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, during the 2003 US invasion. 

Barzani paid a visit to Tehran at the head of a high-ranking trade delegation last Saturday. 

There is little information on the Web about the Siranband-Baneh border  As near as I can figur out, Baneh lies on the border of the Kurdish province of Iraq and North Azerbaijan province of Iran.  The Web describes it as an Iranian and as a Kurdish city.  It  is widely used as a smuggling haven for goods that pass illegally between Kurdistan and Iran, and the new accord normalize the situation  which has been the location of fighting between Kurds and Iranians in the past.

Here is a Wikipedia narrative and a Corbis image and narrative of a young shop keeper in Baneh:

An Iranian Kurdish owner of a shop talks on his mobile phone on 29 June 2011 in the city of Baneh, western Iran. Illegal border trade between Kurds in Iran and northern Iraq have drastically improved the economic situation in Baneh and other Kurdish cities. Baneh, which is very close to the Iraqi border, had for many years been considered by the Iranian government as one of the most deprived areas in the country. The Kurdish populated city in the Kurdistan province had almost been devastated by the regime of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and nearby cities were even attacked by Iraqi chemical bombs. Baneh has become a shopping paradise for Iranians nationwide.

Why not Bomb Iran?

DON'T

BOMB

IRAN

If you would like to know why
you shouldn't even if you could,
read for a Western and scholaarly perspective,
 read the Council on Foreign Relations,
 Oxford Research Group: 
Iran: Consequences of a War 

For a Sunni Arab perspective, read Aljazeera,
Why war with Iran would spell disaster

For A reasoned Pakistani view of the
War proposed by Neocons, read Haaretz,
What an Israeli attack on Iran 
will mean for the Muslims

Christian Republicans: "Stone the children"

The Huffington Post :

Charlie Fuqua, the Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives who called for expelling Muslims from the United States in his book, also wrote in support for instituting the death penalty for "rebellious children."

In "God's Law," Fuqua's 2012 book, the candidate wrote that while parents love their children, a process could be set up to allow for the institution of the death penalty for "rebellious children," according to the Arkansas Times. Fuqua, who is anti-abortion, points out that the course of action involved in sentencing a child to death is described in the Bible and would involve judicial approval. While it is unlikely that many parents would seek to have their children killed by the government, Fuqua wrote, such power would serve as a way to stop rebellious children.

Putin supports Obama's reelection, or does he? Whither Georgia?

Now that Putin supports Obama over Romney, do TRUE AMERICANS support Romney?  Can a True American possibly support a candidate supported by Putin?  Or is Putin only pretending to support Obama, to help Romney?  Or are we supposed to think that Putin’s support for Obama is a ruse to make us think that he merely pretends to like Romney, hoping for an Obama victory.  Or . . . .

I’ll take him at his word.  Russia’s Caucasus problems with Islamist militants are real.  Obama is more likely to be helpful than the inflexible Romney.  I don’t like some of Obama’s anti-terrrorist policies, but I like them better than Bushco’s, which Romney’s election would see reborn.

I worry about Georgia and the new revelations of Abu Garbe-like prisoner abuse in the prison system there.  The present Georgian administration is close to the Obama administration.

"When, O When, will the world turn sane?”, the old man laments.

Note:  The Moscow Times is owned by the Finnish publishing group Sanoma. Wikipedia says that the Times frequently is critical of the Russian administtation.

Why Putin Wants Obama to Win

27 September 2012
By Andrei Tsygankov


The 2012 U.S. presidential election presents a contrast to the 2008 election in terms of their perceptions by the Russian elite.
In 2008, then-President Dmitry Medvedev expressed a desire to work with a "modern" U.S. leader rather than one "whose eyes are turned back to the past." He was referring to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. But influential Russian elites voiced their support for the Republican candidate, John McCain, despite McCain calling President Vladimir Putin a KGB spy who has no soul and calling to expel Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrial nations.
Even though McCain was more critical of the Kremlin, some members of Putin's entourage favored McCain because they believed he was more predictable than Obama. They insisted that Russia was doing well economically, whereas the United States was losing one position in the world after another. Therefore, when confronted with the U.S. threat, Russia might only get stronger and consolidate its status as a great sovereign power. The elite's main concern is with rebuilding power and geopolitical influence. If McCain were in the White House, the thinking went, Putin would have a convenient anti-Russian bogeyman whom the Kremlin could exploit for domestic political reasons, giving it another pretext to ratchet up its anti-Americanism, increase defense expenditures and crack down on the opposition.
Yet it seems that the Kremlin's support for U.S. hawks is shifting. In March, Medvedev took issue with U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney's characterization of Russia as the "No. 1 geopolitical foe." He said the view "smelled of Hollywood stereotypes" and suggested that it was rooted in the Cold War.
But it wasn't only Medvedev and his pro-Western supporters who became critical of the Republican's views. Although President Vladimir Putin recently thanked Romney for his openness regarding the "No.1 foe" comment, he also indicated that it would be hard for the Kremlin to work with Romney as president, especially on sensitive security issues such as the missile defense system. During Putin's interview with RT state television, he also called Obama an "honest man who really wants to change much for the better." This comment was widely viewed as Putin's most direct endorsement of Obama in the presidential race.
The change in Russia's perception can be explained by the sobering effects of the global financial crisis and progress that Russia and the United States have made since 2009. The crisis ended Russia's era of 7 percent average annual growth from 1999 to 2008. Russia, which is overly dependent on energy exports, was hit particularly hard by the 2008 crisis. Its gross domestic product fell about 8.5 percent in 2009, while China and India continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace.
It took Russia's leadership some time to adjust its foreign policy to the new global conditions. Obama's decision to improve relations with the country and establish strong ties with Medvedev despite Russia's war with Georgia in August 2008 was essential. The diplomacy of pressing the "reset" button with Russia proved important for alleviating the Kremlin's fear of NATO expansion and the region's destabilization in response to Washington's strategy of regime change in several countries.
Since 2009, the two sides have cooperated by signing and then ratifying the new START treaty, imposing tougher sanctions on Iran and working to stabilize Afghanistan. Not only did the Kremlin provide overflights and overland transportation, but it also recently approved NATO's use of the Ulyanovsk airport as a transit point for soldiers and cargo to and from Afghanistan. Russia also renewed a strong interest in developing economic relations with the United States and completed negotiations over its membership in the World Trade Organization.
The progress in U.S.-Russian relations since 2009 does not mean that Russians are entirely satisfied with their relations with the U.S. Russia remains critical of the U.S. proposal to develop the missile defense system jointly with the Europeans without Russia's participation. At the end of 2010, Moscow had to swallow its pride by shelving Medvedev's proposal to create a pan-European security treaty after getting an ice-cold reaction from the U.S. and NATO. Furthermore, NATO remains supportive of Georgia's eventual membership in the alliance, a particularly sore point in U.S.-Russian relations. Finally, the Kremlin's stubborn support of Syria in the United Nations Security Council remains an irritant for Obama and even more so for Romney.
Despite all the Kremlin's frustrations, it remains hopeful that Obama will be re-elected and that he will help to move U.S.-Russian relations forward. The stronger dialogue and engagement that may result from an Obama presidency is an opportunity to weaken nationalist phobias in both Russia and the U.S. This opportunity must be seized.
Andrei Tsygankov is professor of international relations and political science at San Francisco State University.

Happy news:Arab Spring comes to Saudi Arabia?

First hint of trouble on national news media:  From Tom Brokaw:  Saudi leadership is aging; caught between Wahabis and a rising population of unemployed young folks. I'll look for more.

Why Muslims Think Muslims Riot

The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published a series of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad. . .

. . . including two showing him naked.  An obscure US film insulting the Prophet was translated into Arabic and circulate throughout the Arabic world (but not in Saudi Arabia) by the Saudis,.

Following, there have been some demonstrations in 20 Muslim countries, and some people, including a US ambassador, have been killed.

These two insults to the prophet are said  have produced the demonstrations.

From The Guardian, September 12, 2012:

Condemning the publication of the cartoons in France as an act verging on incitement, Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, said on Thursday it showed how polarized the west and the Muslim world had become.

Muhammad and his companions had endured "the worst insults from the non-believers of his time", he wrote on the Reuters blog Faith World.

"Not only was his message routinely rejected, but he was often chased out of town, cursed and physically assaulted on numerous occasions.

"But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort. There is no doubt that, since the prophet is our greatest example in this life, this should also be the reaction of all Muslims."

•  •  •  •

Gomaa said insults to Islam and the response, including the killing of the US ambassador in Libya and attacks on other western embassies in the region, could not be dissociated from other points of conflict between the west and the Muslim world.

He cited the treatment of Muslims at the US detention centre in Guantánamo Bay  the US-led war in Iraq, drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, and the denomination  of Muslims by far-right European parties as "underlying factors" for the tension. [Emphasis added]

Well, maybe so.   You have to love a country deeply to be truly angry with it.  Folks in Cairo don't know the US, they know a cartoon of it; the anger reflected in the Muslim demonstations have a theatrical quality, and were easily put down by authorities. (The well-executed attack on our consulate in Benghazi is another matter.)

I, am a Unites States citizen: I denounce the horrendous prison at Guantanamo Bay and also the one at Pelican Bay, just sas bad, with its non-judicial solitary confinement for life; the cruel and blunderous Iraq war that hurt Iraqis so badly and even now harms US interests. Drone strike in Yemen are another matter; not as bad as an innovation of Yemen, which we could still do, and not as good as cooperating with the Southern Secessionist Movement

So I don't  accept the good Worthy's assessment uncritically.

Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa was appointed to his high position by the dictator and friend of the US, Hosni Mubarak, in September 2003.  Google does not report anti-West sentiments by Gomaa until it became obvious that his patron would fall.  Then he became sympathetic with the "youthful demonstrators".  Gomaa focuses on Western flaws and faials to mention Mulim ones:  the grossly unfair treatment of it's women and the murder by hanging of  Gay men; depositing horded billions of dollars "safely" rather than investing them in jobs that could feed their people; the ungracious ignoring of billions of aid the West has praovide to the Muslim world.

We all see the world through prisoms; no reason to expect a High Religious Eminence to be better than the average run of mankind.

∼  ∼  ∼

The Web images, in the main, remind me of youthful pranks I might have  joined with glee when I was 18.

Some of the images below are tragic, some are hurtful, some defiantly disrespectful of the all-powerful West and Israel (What fun that must be, and at what little personal cost to most!), some are dignified, some are of bravery, but mostly they are of youngmen letting offf long-pent-up steam.

Here are some of riot images I like, mostly from Cairo.  I like them for a variety of reasons, some artistic, and some you won't like, for reasons of misplaced patriotism:

Male bonding, Cairo

From The Guardian:  Pakistani soldiers hold back 

Muslim protesters shouting anti-US slogans 

as they attempt to reach the US embassy 

during a demonstration against

 the anti-Islam film 

in Islamabad. 

Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Image

Outside the US Embassy in Yemen.  From VIN, The Voice of the Jewish  Orthodox Community."  

Yemeni hvve a special 

reason for disliking the US 

which hass to do with 

tribes, abuse of power,  

and an instinct for democracy.  

More in a different  blog.

Pakistan

Sudan

Outside the US Consultate in Libya.  

Some, like this image, have been blogged so many times 

that I can't tell its origin.

Sudan.  Someone is  preparing to burn someone's flag, 

and others are intent on stopping him.  

Explain, please.

Pakistani lawyers, no doubt.

India.  Don't know who is depicted with Hussein.  

Looks artificial and posed.

Said to be Bagdad or in Pakistan.  

My kinda guys.  I loved climbing flag poles. . . when I was young.

Cairo

Cairo

Pakistan

London.  Perhaps a Londoner standing near by would hold a sign:

"Muslims, Keep out of  English lands",

but that would be boorish.  I have a button from the 60s:  

"US Out of North America."  

I guess is was only partly a  joke.

Cairo.  A Baroque image.

Mannerly Irrnians

Yemen at our embassy gates.  

Note that there are no images from

 the Horrible Saudis, 

because public displays of  anything at all 

are prohibited.

Bad boys playing with fire.

Somalia.  Somebody is abut to burn a flag,

 others are bent on stopping him.  

What's going on here?

In my dreams,

this would be me.

Heart-sick

Heart-sick.  If Bushco had been responsible, rage would know no bounds;  there is rage against Hussein Obama for our treatment of this young Yemeni.  I admit to being partial in the distribution of my rage, for there are many things I like about Obama; few abut Bushco.  In this matter, they stand equally condemned.

The worst of the horrors of this detailed in The Times article below is force-feeding a bound, helpless man, entrusted to our care, who wanted only to die.  We -- you and I, our Nation -- denied him that Liberty by tying him up and forcing tubes through his nostrils into his stomach, to give him food he didn’t want.  Try being force-fed through your nostrils; see how you like it.  Try having it done to you against your will.  

Tomás de Torquemada was a mere child when it comes to torture.  Burning at a stake would be a blessed relief, compared to our -- our -- obstinate refusal to allow this this suffering young man even to have the peace of a death he desired.  Surcease from sorrow, indeed.

I pity, too, the military men who had to guard and injure and humiliate this man through all the years of his detention.  I do not envy them their old age.  I know a little about memory and old age.

Men and women are storming the US embassy gates in Yemen.  We supported a ruthless dictator in Yemen for years; we now support his hand-picked successor.  If Yemeni treated a US citizen this way, systematically, for years, would we tolerate it?  Why the hell shouldn’t Yemeni hate the United States? 

Can we, in time, right some of these wrongs?  It doesn’t seem likely.  And we are said to be the Beckon of Liberty for the World.  Liberty’s light is burning low.

September 15, 2012Death at Guantánamo Bay

Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni citizen and one of the first detai

nees sent to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002, died thereearlier this month. There is no official autopsy report yet, but in his decade in prison he had gone on hunger strikes and made several suicide attempts.

In 2006 and 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, and again in 2010, during the Obama administration, government officials recommended Mr. Latif for transfer out of Guantánamo as a low-level threat. But he was kept behind bars — though no formal charges were brought against him — because both administrations were wary of sending detainees back to Yemen for security reasons, and other countries were wary of accepting them.

Mr. Latif’s lawyers battled for his freedom in federal court, making him a test case for the rule of law at Guantánamo, which has been notably deficient.

In 1994, when he was 18, Mr. Latif sustained injuries to his skull and ear in a car accident in Yemen, and he went to Jordan for treatment. Seven years later, he went to Pakistan, he said, to get additional medical treatment. The Pakistani police seized him near the Afghanistan border, and he was transferred to American custody. The United States government contended that he was an Al Qaeda recruit who trained and fought with the Taliban.

In 2010, he was ordered freed from Guantánamo by Federal District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr., who ruled that Mr. Latif’s detention was unlawful because the government had not shown that he was part of Al Qaeda or any associated force. But last October, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Judge Kennedy’s ruling.

The appeals court majority, in a manifestly incorrect decision, said that the government’s dubious and uncorroborated intelligence report about Mr. Latif had to be treated as reliable and accurate, like official tax receipts, unless there was “clear evidence to the contrary” — shifting the burden of proof to the detainee.

The Supreme Court did not take the Latif case for review, despite its promise in its 2008 decision in the Boumediene case that prisoners were entitled to a “meaningful opportunity” to challenge the lawfulness of their detention.

For much of the time in custody, Mr. Latif was in solitary confinement, often with his hands in cuffs and his arms pinned by a body cuff. He was also housed in a psychiatric ward and force-fed through tubes in his nose because of his hunger strikes.

When he died he had not been charged with any crime or legal violation, as is the case for most of the 167 prisoners remaining at Guantánamo. This brutal outpost has tarnished American justice every day of its existence.

Our mess in Iraq -- still

We made a mess in Iraq.  We  -- the United Sates of America.  Bushco is the proximate cause, and we elected it.  Twice.  Our bad.  Yours and mie, if you can vote in the United States.  "Their" pain.

Those of us who opposed Bushco should have worked harder; resisted more strongly; risked more.  That goes double for Romney the Good Mormon Bully.


"Unintended" consequences.  For some of the unintended consequences  from Iraq -- what we now blithely call "collateral damage" -- see here.

The latest report of Bushco's Gift that Keeps On Giving comes from The Guardian:  the Iraqi government -- our Iraqi government -- is torturing and killing gays: gay men and boys, men and boys suspected of  being gay; men and boys who look as if thy might be gay.

Killing gays, governments torturing, raping, hanging us, will not long last. The practice will disappear in a mere two or three generations.  Millions of five-year-olds throughout the world may freely view images of extraordinary sexual explicitness of every variety there is  -- save only necrophilia, bestiality, and sex with children -- on the Web, and mores will change even in the Shiite, Mormon, and Roman Catholic traditions. Salafists, now enjoying a revival fueled by Saudi money, will be a thing of the past, though I suppose we, "this busy monster Man unkind" will invent new horrors.


A blog I posted a few days ago is of images of gay men.  The images are taken from blogs published freely in many counties and are available for viewing by the world's five-year-olds.  My blog is read -- or at looked at -- in many lands, including Muslim and Roman Catholic lands.  Yes, even in Utah.


Here are a few of the international images of gay men and boys available on the Web.  A great blog, another country, has an impassioned plea that all nations stop killing gays.

Innocent.  Sweet.  Naive, even.  And I would be killed in our Iraq.  Here, there has been no midnight knock on the door; my friends have not been interrogated; my internet has not been blocked.

While we await the a more accepting future, I would that our Secretary of State, with the hugh contingent of Mercenaries in Iraq at her disposal,  insist on some corrective action by the Iraqi government!


Write or call anyone you know or know about (Hillary Clinton, even if you don't know her) who has the authority to rescue our friends in Iraq from the doom we visit upon our friends.  Do it now.  

Please.

Durell


kP.a., Don't Bomb Iran.  Do encourage it to be more humane than its enemy, the Horrible Saudis.  Or thy Bad-enough Mormons.