Some days, you read the news headlines and just want to crawl back into bed. Sometimes, it’s because those news items are true but depressing and sometimes it is because they carry immoral whining or incorrect analysis. Today, we’ll offer three examples, two of the former and one of the latter before adding for good measure a sincerely distressing news.
After yesterday’s attacks in Denmark that saw a forum on art and liberty of expression and a synagog targeted, very reminiscent of the Charlie-Hebdo ones in Paris that opened 2015 with a bang, some folks pushed immoral comments to the max. Haaretz made this headline :
Copenhagen, Paris: Europe has failed its Jewish citizens again
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-features/.premium-1.642549
Utterly unacceptable! As the article itself reports, police protection was present at both locations and in Denmark as in France, police actions caught the perpetrator diligently. More importantly, in France, 10 000 military personnel have been deployed immediately afterwards to protect Jewish institutions and 3 soldiers injured in defending one! When Israel deploys that many in addition to standard measures of protection, it’s to kill Palestinians by the thousands! So now, judging by this piece, we could assume that nothing was done in either place, that the respective authorities are to blame for not having had a crystal ball or prescience and that the soldiers should have died to merit respect from Israel?
To which, PM Netanyahu added is usual meddling in other lands’ business by calling on the Danish Jews to flee to Israel as he had done in Paris last month :
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-urges-jews-move-israel-after-copenhagen-attacks-1086157391
Utterly unacceptable! Those are foreign citizens over whom you have no right. What if an NGO called for Jews to leave Israel in boycott of the massacre of innocent Palestinian kids? Jerusalem would log them as a terrorist organization ASAP. Well, reverse side of the coin, this kind of call should lead to Israel being branded as a terrorist State then!
Let me once more push the deficient Israeli logic to its extreme to show the folly of it : all Hebrews worldwide move to Israel; at which point, the states that used to be their homes would really be warranted to disregard Jewish safety on their territories and even abroad. If then someone, individuals or States took to attacking Israel, no one would care nor help since unconcerned. No reasonable Danish or French citizen would back action by their governments to side with a country that had undermined their national sovereignty, for instance. Chances are the whole Middle-East would be engulfed in war, possibly to the point of nuclear “self-defense” by the “Jewish” state. In which case no winner would be had.
Let me be blunt : Jews are a people, not The people. Those that persist in this latter view are the problem. I can say so honestly : when Jews are really victimized, I defend them. But when Jews are the tormentors, I condemn them. I recognize the right of Israel to exist but only as much and as long as it recognizes the same to others*. If however Jews want a special status, it’s a no go. When one sees themselves as above other, they negate the humanity of these others at least partially. Or to paraphrase one of Michel Tournier’s characters say : When a man puts himself above the law, he de facto extracts himself from its protection! The same is true for a people or a State.
In my World, all are welcome to be who they are as long as they don’t take that away from others. In my ideal world, there is thus place for all sensibilities ( race, creed, etc ) everywhere. If we separated the world according to these differences, the Earth would become a quilt of ghettoes which I would not accept easily. Modern Republics are based on this belief. Israel apparently is not, judging from the above and that’s sad! It then falls in the same category as any other archaic conception of the State, no better than say, any Islamic Republic.
Intolerance is always wrong, no matter whom it comes from or for what reason.
This one will be much shorter :
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/nigerian-president-calls-for-us-help-as-boko-haram-invade-city-1.1457408
Goodluck Jonathan, President of Nigeria, is calling for the USA to help him fight Boko Haram. Considering that Nigeria is Africa’s richest nation per capita, with a 2013 GDP ( PPP ) 33% bigger than that of Egypt and twice that of South Africa that follow it in 2nd and 3rd place, this is unacceptable. The only reason for US help to be necessary lays in recognizing his utter and complete inability to rule. In view of which, if I was an American Congressman, I’d only accept giving the President the right to act there at the condition that Goodluck Jonathan retired from politics immediately and definitively. Barring which he can play crybaby to no avail for as long as he wants. I dare say, I have rarely heard a clearer case of self-admission of complete incapacity to govern.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
On to incorrect analysis :
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/middleeast/clashes-continue-in-iraq-near-base-of-us-troops.html
Now the above piece by the NY Times is fine, it’s not their analysis that’s incorrect but rather once more that of long term views. A while back, I told the readers about the ISIL invasion that it showed how pulling back of Iraq by America was enacted too soon, i.e. before the Iraqi army was able to defend its land. Now, we know this to be a result of a bad decision by the Obama administration, more bent on ending an occupation because the war that brought it was incorrectly motivated than on ending it properly. Still, when the air campaign at those Da’esh terrorists begun, I warned that it would have to last at least a year, a year and a half because it would take at least that long to train these armed forces. As here on a sarcastic tone less than a month ago :
It still won’t … free Iraq wholly any time soon. For that to happen, the Iraqi armies would need more fighting skills and long-term assessment and planning capacities and abilities. This is the joint opinion of Canadian and British officers present and probably that of France as it prepares to send mentoring teams there. Estimate for readiness : up to a year! About the only military that seemed to think the Iraqis were ready to face the music was the Pentagon as troops left a while back. Although the orders may have come from above … who knows?
http://definitivelapseofreason.com/2015/01/23/charlie-hebdo-ukraine-isil-and-other-fun-news-follow-throughs/
Here is an earlier piece from the NYT that show it :
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/world/middleeast/clashes-continue-in-iraq-near-base-of-us-troops.html
“…Then early Saturday, in what has become a familiar routine, the soldiers suddenly withdrew, all but handing the town back to the militants, according to local security officials.
“I have no explanation,” Col. Shaaban al-Obeidi, a commander in a police combat unit in Baghdadi, said on Saturday afternoon, adding that the militants were surrounding a residential complex where hundreds of civilians were staying. “They have put all those families in danger,” Colonel Obeidi said.”
Simple enough, right? Those are not proper soldiers and the Iraqi forces are not a proper army. Which sadly proves my point a posteriori. Rest assured however that if the situation worsened enough, theses US advisors could be extracted and the planes overhead could stop the advance of the terrorists. Still, here’s one more case where I can’t derive any pleasure from being right, just a bit of anger at those that keep hiding their failures by lying to us.
And while we have to endure the above immoral calls and poor decisions, there are truly sad stories most of us miss.
http://earthsky.org/earth/oldest-albatross-wisdom-lost-her-egg
Photo : Pete Leary /USFWS Click for link.
Wisdom is, at 63 years of age, the oldest known wild albatross, a naturally dedicated mother on whom I reported before. Along with her mate, she has hatched over 30 chicks, her latest egg having come last December. Well, the good folks at Earthsky have transmitted the US Fish & Wildlife Service announcement that she sadly lost her egg. This is not uncommon. Albatrosses have predators, their eggs especially. When tragedy strikes, they do it again next year. While part of the natural cycle of life and death and not as important as the previous subjects and that Wisdom may not suffer the loss of a child as a human parent would, it still saddens me.
Wisdom did not try to use the tragedy to promote intolerance; Wisdom is a better mom than Goodluck is a president and Wisdom started, caused or prolonged no war. And if life is granted upon her for a year or two more, she’ll persevere to the best of her abilities to generate life selflessly.
Which is more than can be said of the above!
Peace out, Tay.
Definitive Lapse of Reason 