On Thursday, the BBC reported that the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva has passed a resolution expressing “grave concern at the violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli occupation, including the current extensive military operations.” According to the BBC, the Council also agreed to send “a fact-finding mission to investigate the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories." The mission will be headed by U.N. special rapporteur on human rights, John Dugard, who said (BBC): “Its military operation violates prohibitions on collective punishment, intimidation,” and the arrest of Palestinian leaders “appeared to constitute hostage-taking that was prohibited by the Geneva Conventions,” adding, “Israel is in violation of the most fundamental norms of humanitarian law and human rights law.”

What is this man talking about? Surely he’s not suggesting that knocking out power, water, and sewage for an already beleaguered population; that bombing bridges and schools; that continuous sonic booms (earlier this week Israeli PM Ehud Olmert boasted to his cabinet that he had given orders “to make sure no one sleeps at night in Gaza”); and, lest we forget, helicopter gunships and tanks spraying fire – surely Mr. Dugard doesn’t think that this is anything but the everyday business of a colonial power disciplining its incorrigible, racially inferior, indigenous population?

The Palestinian representative, Muhammed Abu Koash called it “a very mild and diluted resolution….While we gather here in this hall, Israeli tanks are moving and shelling Palestinians….”
Nonetheless, the resolution was opposed by the Europeans, including Germany, France, and England. They obviously agree with U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, who on Wednesday basically said that one soldier of an occupying power, captured in battle, is worth 1.4 million displaced persons, cooped up in the world’s largest-ever concentration camp. Clearly, she won’t be outdone by her predecessor, Madelaine Albright, who famously said that the cost of 500,000 Iraqi children’s lives under the sanctions up to that time was “worth it”. (One thing I’ve never understood is, what was “it” they were worth?) Anyhow, the European political leaders can rest easy tonight, knowing that somewhere, Adolf is smiling.
The U.S. does not participate in the Council (Bush thinks he can cheat justice this way…some of us shall live to see…) but the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Warren Tichenor, had the predictable response about “an unbalanced effort to single out…Israel alone.”

I appreciate all the comments. One, from ted, in response to my previous Gaza article, suggested that I should wait until Bush committed himself, before condemning him. In the first place, I wanted to go on record before the invasion took place. The Bush Administration has confirmed my prediction of, first silence, then full backing for the Zionists. I’ll make an equally bold prediction that the Dugard mission won’t get anywhere near Gaza, certainly not via Israel, nor even for a peek over the fence from Egypt, where the hopelessly corrupt Mubarak regime has sealed the border to prevent Gazans from fleeing the maelstrom.

Perhaps Bush will even make some mutterings about “restraint”, as the European Union did on Friday (“disproportionate force…humanitarian crisis”). Without serious trade sanctions against Israel and large-scale aid for the victims, these hypocritical posturings are nothing but transparent attempts to deceive Arabs, Muslims, and above all, their own outraged populations.

One final footnote, apropos the reference to the half-million Iraqi children killed during the nineties: as I recall, up until around two years ago, the “excess mortality” among Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since 1967 was 300,000, of whom 183,000 were children under five.

The Supreme Court decision last week on secret military tribunals of U.S. detainees at Guantanamo, Cuba rebuked the Bush administration for attempting to violate the Geneva Conventions, which the president is sworn to uphold. While the justices were not called upon to answer it, the decision begs the question: Should Bush, Rumsfeld, and company be classified as war criminals?
The decision makes reference to "Common Part III" - common to all four Geneva Conventions - which deals at length with "protected persons", defined earlier as persons "in the hands of a Party to the conflict...of which they are not nationals." One of the first articles of Common Part III states:
“The Party to the conflict in whose hands protected persons may be, is responsible for the treatment accorded to them by its agents, irrespective of any individual responsibility which may be incurred.”
In view of the all-too-well documented cases of degrading treatment, torture, and murder – all explicitly forbidden in Part III, along with preventing communication with family, disrespect for detainees' religious rights, etc., etc. - of detainees in U.S. hands, I see absolutely no defense for the gang of thugs that inhabit the White House. “A slam-dunk," as those boys like to say.
I won’t go into the atrocities perpetrated by the poorly trained soldiers and marines, many known to be psychologically unfit when sent over by Bush and Rumsfeld to visit havoc on a weak, innocent population, whose only crime is that they live in a land of vast reserves of oil. Suffice it to say, the answer to the question, “Are Bush and company war criminals?” is written on the wall, written in human blood, on the walls of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, of Haditha and Mahmoudiya.
The problem is, the Supreme Court will never draw the obvious conclusion, or it will take years at best, and Bush simply ignores any attempt to rein him in anyway. Neither the Supreme Court nor the moribund Congress of Democrats and Republicans have any intention of calling the Bush gang to account. It's going to take the movement of the people - working- and middle-class - to end the war, just as with Vietnam, where the movement also brought down two presidents.

Besides calling for removal of Bush and Cheney, my campaign is a positive one of hope. Let’s take one “small” problem, the inexcusably high drop-out rate among disadvantaged students, specifically Native-Americans. A complex issue, whose solution requires much more than better facilities and textbooks, more and better trained teachers.
Poverty and unemployment, inadequate housing and drug and alcohol abuse must also be addressed. The vast majority of the fast-growing prison population is there for crimes directly or indirectly related to alcohol or drugs. Counseling and treatment are wiser and more economical. Jobs could be provided in construction of housing, schools, and training more teachers.
How to pay for it? Take away the hundreds of billions (so far) for the Iraq war, take back the hundreds of billions in tax cuts (rejected even by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet but approved by Don Young) for the super-rich, and redirect the hundreds of millions dedicated to bridges to nowhere, and roads that despoil the environment and that the people don’t want. I think we would even have enough left over to restore our ferry system, and help places like Iraq and Afghanistan recover from the devastation and suffering that our government has inflicted.
Above all, restoring hope to the large numbers of disaffected is crucial for our entire society. We all pay a huge price for the crime, AIDS, homelessness, teen pregnancy, etc. resulting from the vicious cycle of poverty.
The parties of big business have absolutely no interest in seeing this program enacted. The Democrats – along with the Greens and Libertarians - don’t have the guts even to mention impeachment. Only the working-class, united with the progressive middle-class in a Labor Party dedicated to socialist policies, can carry this fight forward.

Israel is preparing a massive assault on the civilian population of Gaza, its rag-tag defenders, and its political leaders. “The time is approaching for a comprehensive, sharp, and severe Israeli operation,” according to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. After declaring that he held Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismael Haniya personally responsible for the safety of the captured Israeli soldier, Olmert stated: “I ordered…the army…to be ready for comprehensive and ongoing military action, in order to strike at the terror organizations, their commanders, and anyone involved in terror.” In case this might be understood as something less than a declaration of open season on the entire population locked up in the narrow patch known as the Gaza Strip, Olmert went on, “Let it be clear – we will find them all, wherever they are, and they know it. Let it be clear that no one will be immune.”

Before proceeding, let it be clear about how the Geneva Conventions define the Israeli threats: collective punishment by an occupying power against the civilian population.

The governments of Europe and the United States, the powers that shipped their problem of anti-Semitism onto the backs of the Palestinians during the twentieth century, can only urge their ravaged victims to cave in to the Zionist ultimatum. Of course, this should come as no surprise, since the same “statesmen” consider the courageous attack against an occupying army “terrorism”, while the bombing of a family spending a day on the beach is... well, that's just good clean warfare. At least twenty civilians in Gaza have been indiscriminately killed by Israeli bombing this month alone, with nary a peep from Western governments or press. Imagine the howl if one-tenth this number of Israelis were killed by a hand-carried bomb.

In spite of the propaganda disseminated in the Western press, Hamas has been exercising great restraint in observing a cease-fire for the past year and a half. As the world’s banks, including those in Arab countries, cave into U.S. brinkmanship and refuse to transfer money into Palestine, resulting in a “humanitarian crisis” (as if the Palestinian people have not been enduring a humanitarian crisis since 1967 and before); as the Israelis escalate their military attacks on leaders, fighters, and above all civilians, in Gaza, the Hamas leadership has continued to advocate a “cooling off period” until saner heads can prevail. Obviously, the Israeli leadership is intent on preventing this. Like the schoolyard bully warning the kindergartner to “put ‘em up or I’ll kill you”, the Palestinians are told, “You can fight or not, but either way, we’re going to kill you."

Since most of the Palestinian leadership is in the occupied West Bank, and the population there can hardly be expected to idly watch as their cousins are helplessly slaughtered, the conflict must inevitably spread. Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back – the camel being the cowardly ruling elites of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. – and finally lights off a conflagration throughout the region?

In a future article I hope to open a fuller discussion of the problem of Israel-Palestine, and its history. For now I only wish to address the urgent need for the “civilized world” to intervene to prevent the genocide against the powerless and innocent people of Gaza. Those who openly or tacitly approve the Israeli attack – and Bush will certainly be one of them – must share the verdict of history with those who approved of, or remained silent on, Hitler’s bombing of Guernica and Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia. What do the Democrats and Republicans have to say? What do my opponents in the Alaskan congressional race have to say?

In Anchorage.

Hard at work collecting signatures, so I haven’t had much time or energy for political statements. Thanks for the comments, especially phil, for carrying on. The signature gathering is going well, and I’m meeting lots of great people. Hard on the feet and head, though. Looking forward to rest and home-cooking in Juneau. I plan to make a road trip in late July, through Fairbanks, Anchorage, Homer, and points in between. I need to bring some help. Any volunteers for a Great Alaskan Adventure? I’m also looking for help elsewhere: Sitka, Ketchikan, and every other town in the state (and around the world!)

Meanwhile the Bush fear-mongering grows apace. A handful of morons are provoked by a federal agent into “aspiring” to commit terrorist acts, and all the real news – the continuing bloodbath in Iraq and Afghanistan, the creation of a new domestic spy agency, etc. – suddenly loses importance, as the mainstream media discovers they can grovel at a still lower depth.

Ciao for now.

One of my favorite contemporary authors is Frank McCourt. In his latest book, "Teacher Man", he recalls an incident from his impoverished Irish childhood. Asked to leave a bookshop (where he'd gone to find out the ending of "Julius Caesar") he writes, "I backed into the street embarrassed and blushing and wondering at the same time why people won't stop bothering people. Even when I was small, eight or nine, I wondered why people won't stop bothering people and I've been wondering ever since."

President Bush's current attempt to resuscitate an anti-gay marriage amendment is so obviously a pathetic attempt to resuscitate his floundering presidency, it hardly merits comment. But it did capture headlines for a few days, and it should be called by its true name, as Coretta Scott King did: "gay-bashing". You may recall that Bush nominated for the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS a man who had described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" and AIDS as "gay plague". This homophobe quickly withdrew once he was "outed", but what does it say about the man who nominated him? Psychoanalyst Justin Frank has written a fascinating - if scary - book, "Bush on the Couch", which attempts to answer this and other questions.
While the amendment quickly went down in flames, the true purpose of the Bush initiative is to rally the religious right for the November election. We can expect similar ballot initiatives to pop up in key states to get out the vote, a tactic that worked very well in the last election, notably in Ohio. Whether it will work as well this time remains to be seen, as there are signs that fundamentalist Christians are more and more coming to view Bush as immoral, un-Christian, and "leading the country in the wrong direction". Perhaps they will also recall one of the principles for which our ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War: "A man's home is his castle."

On another "family value", my position on abortion is that as long as women require this procedure, it should be available to all, in a safe and clean environment. Like everyone else on this side of the question, I think, I would love to see the number of abortions reduced, and the obvious way to achieve this is by reducing unwanted pregnancies, and just as obvious, this goal depends on making all forms of safe birth control, including emergency contraception, readily available to all who need it.
So far as is known (research is scant due to "moral problems") Plan B works in exactly the same ways as the birth control pill, and if it prevents implantation of a fertilized egg, its effect also resembles breast-feeding. Plan B is a "win-win situation, something that everyone on both sides of the abortion issue could support." So said the director of the Office of Women's Health at the F.D.A., where a joint advisory panel voted 23-4 to make Plan B available over-the-counter. And yet Bush's political appointees have refused to sign the order. The president has refused to answer questions from a Congresswoman and reporters on whether he supports the right to use any contraception at all, so I guess we know his answer. And what does this moral eunuch think of breast-feeding? (The cover story of "The New York Times Magazine", May 7, 2006 is a good source here.)

Then there's Terri Schiavo. I hate to drag the poor woman out of her grave, but there's a bit of news you may have missed, since it was largely ignored. The "Miami Herald" reported on March 12 and 14 that due to cost-cutting, Florida's Medicaid Plan was no longer covering nutritional formula for people who require tube feeding, such as children with cystic fibrosis or HIV wasting. Gov. Jeb Bush's plan for the overhaul of Medicaid in Florida, including privatization, has the enthusiastic support of Washington. Just over a year ago, the Bush brothers were busy pushing through laws - both summarily tossed out of court as patently unconstitutional - to force a woman to be tube-fed against her will. This is the right-wing "culture of life".

When these questions are cloaked in "Christian values", the separation of church and state, guaranteed by the first amendment, is in jeopardy. When tax-payer money is used for the attack on fundamental democratic rights, as when Bush flew in Congressmen for his brazen assault on the independence of the judiciary during Terri Schiavo's last days, the offense becomes one more ground for impeachment.

Another thing these issues have in common is their economic - i.e. class - nature. Clearly, well-off patients will be fed, while those who can't afford it will just have to suffer all the complications of malnutrition, including starvation. The well-to-do will find access to safe, clinical abortion, just as they always have, while the poor and middle-class are left to grope in the dark. Many women of child-bearing age will follow the advice of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and have Plan B in their medicine cabinet, or a prescription for it ready at hand, while those most likely to need it - the poor and poorly-informed - are denied access. Marriage is certainly an economic institution, among other things, and health insurance, estate planning, etc. are concerns only to those who aren't wealthy. The rich - gay or straight - have lawyers to make sure that their estates are passed on in accordance with their wishes, and the rich generally don't even have health insurance since it's more economical to pay cash (at a rate steeply discounted from what the poor and middle-class are expected to pay.)
Undoubtedly, the reactionary wish-list also includes making divorce available only to the wealthy, as it was fifty years ago.

What it all boils down to is this: the government has no more business in our bedrooms than they do in our telephones or computers. While I fully support the right of church members and others to live as God or their conscience directs them, they have no right to impose their views on every other member of society.