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Monday, June 3, 2024
Leftist snobs will hate to hear it... but it's thanks to Trump and his Israel-Arab alliance that Iran's attack failed so miserably. Now, says ANDREW NEIL, Biden must hold his nose and build on Donald's success | Daily Mail Online
Sunday, June 2, 2024
The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2023-Xinhua
The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2023-Xinhua
The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2023
Abstract
The human rights situation in the United States continued to deteriorate in 2023. In the United States, human rights are becoming increasingly polarized. While a ruling minority holds political, economic, and social dominance, the majority of ordinary people are increasingly marginalized, with their basic rights and freedoms being disregarded.
Gun violence spills over, while the government's control policies are ineffective. There were at least 654 mass shootings in the United States in 2023. Approximately 43,000 people were killed by gun violence in 2023, averaging 117 deaths per day. Driven by partisan polarization and interest groups, a growing number of state governments have taken the initiative to push legislation to expand residents' rights to own and bear arms. In 2023, at least 27 states did not require a license to carry a handgun.
The government has abused its power to monitor citizens' privacy, suppressing freedom of speech and expression. The FBI redirected Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct domestic surveillance, "persistent and widespread" monitoring of the communications of members of the Congress, congressional campaign donors, and anti-racist protesters. A growing number of states have passed legislation banning public schools from using educational materials and books that address specific topics such as race, history and gender. The number of faculty members punished or fired for speech and expression on U.S. college campuses has reached a 20-year high.
Deaths from police brutality hit a record high, rendering the police enforcement accountability system virtually non-existent. Police brutality persisted and at least 1,247 deaths were attributed to police violence, an average of roughly three people killed by officers each day. Internal-affairs departments are often more interested in exonerating colleagues than investigating misconduct, making it difficult for police to be held accountable, and more than half of police killings were incorrectly labeled as "general homicide or suicide" in CDC's official death statistics database.
The prominent issues of mass incarceration and forced labor make it a "prison nation." The United States is home to 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prisoners, making it the country with the highest incarceration rate and the largest number of incarcerated individuals globally. Prisons force inmates to work for low or no pay, without benefits, while generating billions of dollars' worth of goods and services annually.
The two parties continue to manipulate the election. On the opening day of the 118th U.S. Congress in January 2023, the House of Representatives faced a "Speaker crisis," and 2023 was the lowest water mark for Congress' productivity ever since the American Civil War. The two parties continue to change their ways to manipulate the redistricting and distort public opinion for the sake of party self-interest. There are 16 states that have significant manipulation of congressional district boundaries, and 12 of them are states with serious manipulation of districts as a whole. The general public in the United States is extremely disappointed with the federal government and politics at all levels. A staggering 76 percent of Americans believe that their nation is in the wrong direction.
Ethnic minorities in the United States face systematic racial discrimination, as the chronic disease of racism persists. African American are three times more likely to be killed by police than whites, and 4.5 times more likely to be incarcerated. Nearly three quarters of Chinese Americans had experienced racial discrimination in the past year, and 55 percent feared that hate crimes or harassment would jeopardize their personal safety. Native Americans have lived in a constant state of cultural oppression, with their religious beliefs and traditional practices ruthlessly stifled. Racist ideology is spreading virulently in the United States and spilling across borders.
Growing economic and social inequality makes life extremely difficult for the poor. The United States has been refusing to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The wealth gap has hit a record high since the Great Depression of 1929 under systematic designs to exploit the poor, subsidize the rich, and segregate the classes. The "working poor" caught in structural poverty lack equal opportunities and are difficult to move upwards. The number of homeless people in the United States exceeds 650,000, the highest since reporting began in 2007. Drug and substance abuse keeps raging. Suicide rates continue to rise.
The United States has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and remains the only UN member state which has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.S. Constitution does not prohibit gender-based discrimination. It is also the only country in the world that sentences children to life in prison without parole. The number of people dying from pregnancy-related causes in the United States has more than doubled in the last 20 years. More than 2.2 million U.S. women of childbearing age do not have access to obstetric care. At least 21 states in the United States ban or severely restrict abortion, where safe abortion is largely unavailable. Pregnancy discrimination is widespread, forcing nearly 54,000 women in the United States to leave their jobs every year. Millions of children have been excluded from the federal government's Medicaid health insurance program. Thousands of foster children go missing every year. Audits found state agencies failed to report an estimated 34,800 cases of missing foster kids across 46 states.
The humanitarian crisis along the border has escalated, causing heart-wrenching struggles of undocumented migrants. The U.S.-Mexico border is the world's deadliest land migration route, according to the United Nations migration agency. At least 149 migrants perished in the El Paso border patrol region in the 12 months ending on Sep. 30, 2023. In the fiscal year 2023, the number of immigrants apprehended or deported at the U.S. southern border reached more than 2.4 million, another record high. Migrants are also subjected to torture and other forms of inhuman treatment. U.S. border policies facilitate modern slavery. The U.S. government's border policies exacerbate the problem of human trafficking. Unaccompanied migrant children suffer from brutal forced labor and exploitation.
The United States has long pursued hegemonism, practiced power politics, and created humanitarian crises. In the theaters of war where the United States conducted overseas "counter-terrorism" operations following the 9/11 attacks, the total death toll ranges from at least 4.5 to 4.7 million people. The U.S. military violates the sovereignty and human rights of other nations via "proxy forces" programs and continued providing arms to conflict zones, resulting in massive civilian casualties. The notorious Guantanamo prison which severely violates human rights is still in operation. Prolonged and indiscriminate use of unilateral sanctions has caused serious humanitarian consequences. The United States has used more sanctions than any other country in the world.
In the United States, human rights is essentially a privilege enjoyed only by a few. The country's various human rights problems seriously threaten and hinder the healthy development of the world human rights cause. ■
What are the 12 promises of the Sacred Heart? - Get Fed™
What are the 12 promises of the Sacred Heart? - Get Fed™
Revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 17th century, these promises show us in no uncertain terms just how much Our Lord desires that we devote ourselves to His loving Heart.
For those who do, He promised:
I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.
I will establish peace in their homes.
I will comfort them in all their afflictions.
I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all, in death.
I will bestow abundant blessings upon all their undertakings.
Sinners will find in my Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.
Lukewarm souls shall become fervent.
Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.
I will bless every place in which an image of my Heart is exposed and honored.
I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.
Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in my Heart.
I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving their sacraments. My divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.
The twelfth promise refers to the First Friday devotion—a very easy way to insert devotion to the Sacred Heart into our monthly routines. All we have to do is receive Holy Communion on nine consecutive First Fridays (ensuring we go to Confession beforehand if we are not in a state of grace), offering these Communions in reparation for the sins committed against the Sacred Heart.
Saturday, June 1, 2024
[Salon] THE BANALITY OF AUTOCRACY -
[Salon] THE BANALITY OF AUTOCRACY - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu
THE BANALITY OF AUTOCRACY
Every large, organized society is marked by lines of contention. The basis for that differentiation can be ethnic, religious, economic class, ascriptive status (caste), or ideological. Today, in America, we are observing a new modality. It takes the form of a line of contention between those who hold positions of power/authority and those subject to its application. So stated, there is nothing novel about this. The peculiar feature is a broad if loose sense of identification, and therefore, of empathy and support that cross all boundaries of organization: public or private, function/mandate, location in society. Simply put, there exists an implicit bond among those who exercise institutionalized power despite the absence of any designation, or even recognition of its existence.
This is a generalized phenomenon that has become pervasive throughout American society. Individual manifestations of growing resort to arbitrary action by persons in leadership positions have not gone unrecognized by discerning observers. The scope and depth of this trend, however, eluded us. Now, shaken by the ruthless display of institutionalized force on the part of those suppressing dissent at our country’s complicity in a state’s mass murder, the scales are dropping. Reaction is still at the foghorn stage: something dangerous is out there. We need to focus the searchlight to get a fix on its qualities and meaning. Two features immediately stand out: the uniformity in diverse places of the reactions to a surprising, bold type event; and the spontaneity of those reactions. They are not scripted or orchestrated by some superior person or authority. While the tone may be set by political elites, there is no centrally designed plan being implemented. Nor do these institutional leaders constitute a community in any conventional sense.
So, what is the common denominator among university authorities at different levels, politicos, media honchos, think tank commentators, Evangelical churches, police departments, and business moguls? That is a tricky question to answer. The heteroclite persons and groups noted share little – or anything - in the way of ideology, political program, ascriptive features, financial interests or partisan allegiance. In specific regard to the student demonstrations, most don’t even have pronounced views on the controversial matters at hand. Whatever identifications or sympathies individual actors might have, they are less than compelling. We have no evidence of their being personally absorbed with Israel’s ambitions or the status of Jews in American society. As for the plight of Palestinians: “That’s no concern of mine.” The irreparable damage done to the United States’ standing in the world? “That’s a complex issue, above my pay grade.”
As for alleged anti-Semitism, it is the reddest of red herrings. Apart from the few predictable creeps, it hardly exists in today’s America. Jews integration into all spheres of American life is the cardinal truth. To speak of anti-Semitism at universities like Harvard or Columbia or NYU is the ultimate absurdity. To put it crudely, they are as “Jew-friendly” as you can imagine – outside of Brandeis and Yeshiva universities. Anyone who has had association with one of the aforementioned institutions is fully aware of that. Harvard, for its part, has had three (and a half) recent Jewish Presidents (including the current hardline interim President) along with Jewish Provosts and Deans. At Columbia, it is estimated that roughly 40% of the student protestors were Jewish – engaging in actions that a majority of the House of Representatives among other of our elites, nonetheless, officially have denounced as anti-Semitic.
[The issue of anti-Semitism has been grossly distorted by the successful campaign of Israel and its blind backers to instill the idea that criticism of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. The ancillary proposition that all true Jews are unwaveringly loyal to the Israeli state reinforces that canard. Unsurprisingly under these circumstance, there is an increase in the incidents of vulgar expression of antipathy toward one or another.]
The inescapable conclusion is that the wielders of institutional power are moved by a deep need to protect their personal position of authority per se. Everything else is secondary. Whatever the matter at issue, whatever their individual traits, they are driven to secure that status – all else is contingent. Even the oaths of office taken by those holding governmental positions are subordinate. Free Speech and Free Assembly may be rights engraved in the Constitution they are sworn to uphold, but those are abstract principles eclipsed by what they feel strongly is the imperative to conserve the discretionary power to act arbitrarily – a prerogative that is at the heart of their sense of worth.
To reiterate: in aggregate, these persons have no common cause, no common interest, no sense of community. They do serve as models for each other – wittingly or not, they do emulate each other, they encourage each other, they facilitate the acceptance of each other’s arbitrary behavior every time one of them “gets away with it.” However, their actions are individual. In short, the narcissistic behavior of a nihilistic society.
These persons know neither guilt nor shame; in this sense, they acknowledge no social norms whatsoever. What they do recognize is the power of others (e.g. Boards of Trustees/Regents, big donors, legislators) to inflict pain on them. They yield to external pressure as subordinates to dominants. But not to inner conscience or out of concern for whether they are respected by wider society. Hence, formal condemnation by a majority of faculty is brushed off like dandruff. Hence, a university President can be rebuked to his face at a commencement ceremony by mass walkouts, by the vociferous condemnation of a student speaker, without blinking an eye. Indeed, proceeding according to the sterile script as if nothing is happening.* Oblivious to their public demeaning; for the only thing that counts is maintaining their grip on authority without countenancing dissent – dissent that by definition is illegitimate and lacking intrinsic meaning.
It follows that persons in authority distance themselves from criticism directed at other authoritative figures – except, of course, where there is a direct competition as among politicos. Appeals to conscience fall on deaf ears; an ethic of responsibility to the public good exists only in the vapid rhetoric of hortatory speeches to alumni or to potential sources of financial largesse.
University Presidents refrain from pronouncing on judgments on anyone or anything, with the exception of DEI issues. Leaders of the American Medical Association speak not a word about how the abusive practices of our for-profit medical system are denying access to or degrading health care. Leaders of the American Bar Association (and its strong state associations) are silent as the federal and states courts engage in grossly unprofessional and/or unconstitutional behavior. Mainline religious denominations ignore compelling ethical questions raised by private or public actors at home and abroad (except for a select number of hobby horse issues). For all of these holders of positions of authority, leaving their comfortable institutional cocoons where self-regarding behavior rules and is certified is no longer a natural action.
This trend will be accentuated and accelerated. It already is receiving powerful impetus from illicit doings at the highest political levels. There, audacious actions that know no limits or restraints are unravelling the fabric of our constitutional republic. Large segments of the Republican Party now reject the core precept that we abide by the outcome of elections. They declare themselves as bound only by their subjective judgments as to whether the process conforms with their biased view of ‘fairness’. Senior judges arrogate to themselves wide powers to tip the scales of justice in favor of their preferred parties.** States pass a myriad of legislation that is unconstitutional on the face of it but manage to enforce it as the law of the land while the burden falls on plaintiffs to challenge it. The owners of social media forge a comprehensive apparatus that censors messaging – stigmatizing or banning outright even distinguished public figures who happen to violate the strict algorithm set boundaries of permissible speech, as set with the clandestine guidance of Washington security agencies. This self-granted mandate is accepted passively by our enfeebled civic community.
These practices in the abuse of authority, in the arbitrary application of institutional power, reverberate throughout society. Habituation to them works upwards as well as downwards. That is to say, persons whose life experience and observation are dominated by small bore instances of these abuses will find it normal to do the same when they attain high positions. At the moment, a generation of students’ encounter with the abusive use of arbitrary power is affecting how they will conduct themselves years from now – admittedly, some for the better; many for the worse.
[**The harsh reality is that some judges, from the Supreme Court downwards, are starting to resemble the stereotypical Southern magistrates of yesteryear who used the law as a tool for suppression and for entitlement].
The most consequential effects will not be structural - all the forms must appear to be the same so that the serious changes are veiled (to paraphrase The Leopard). Rather, it is the political culture that is undergoing radical transformation in the direction of unconstrained actions taken with impunity in a setting where accountability becomes more and more problematic. The software of our constitutional democracy is being hacked.
P.S. * Here is a video of that dramatic moment at the Harvard Commencement when the impressively articulate Valedictorian tore to shreds the interim President and other university dignitaries. While she herself cuts a very impressive figure, the most revealing feature of the video is the reaction of those very people seated a few feet behind her. Inert and unperturbed, they were numb. The only sign of animation is one of the worthies fiddling with the pages of the ring binder holding his speech - perhaps checking to make sure that it contains nothing that might be used against him by a Congressional Committee or the Corporation Governors. That picture of the vibrant young student juxtaposed to the uncomprehending visages of the Dead Souls says it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXRYUEBtvCE
[Salon] SOUTH AFRICA AND ISRAEL: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
to salon
SOUTH AFRICA AND ISRAEL: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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Increasingly, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is being compared to South Africa’s treatment of its black population in the years of apartheid. In fact, such groups as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem have used the term “apartheid” to characterize Israel’s treatment of its indigenous Palestinian population.
In the West Bank, which Israel has occupied in violation of international law for more than 50 years, Palestinians have almost no legal rights and no opportunity to vote for the government under which they are compelled to live. They live side by side with Israeli settlers, who have full legal rights—-and the right to vote. Members of the current Israeli government speak of expanding Jewish settlements and of annexing the entire area and removing its Palestinian population. President Biden continues to speak of a “two-state solution,” which members of the Netanyahu government say will never be permitted.
During the years of apartheid, I was a frequent visitor to South Africa. I wrote a column from Washington that appeared in the widely read Afrikaans language newspapers Die Burger in Cape Town and Beeld in Johannesburg as well as the English-language news magazine To The Point. I got to know many South Africans, both Afrikaans and English speaking. As racial tensions in the country grew, the basic response of those with whom I became friends was, “We know apartheid is wrong. We are Western Christian people who believe in freedom. This contradicts our values. If we do not abandon apartheid, our children will leave. They will go to America, Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The question we have is, how can we abandon apartheid without becoming like the one-party dictatorships which surround us in Africa?” Then, they took a chance to do the right thing.
White South Africans, recognizing that their treatment of black South Africans violated their basic values, abandoned apartheid. In 1989 Frederik Willem de Klerk became president. He freed Nelson Mandela from 27 years imprisonment and transformed South Africa into a constitutional democracy. In 1993, de Klerk along with Nelson Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for dismantling apartheid.
I keep hoping that a leader like President de Klerk will emerge in Israel and bring the mistreatment of Palestinians to an end. Many Israelis recognize that an injustice has been done. Consider the words of Prof. David Shulman of the Hebrew University: “No matter how we look at it, unless our minds have been poisoned by the ideologies of the religious right, the occupation is a crime. It is first of all based on the permanent disenfranchisement of a huge population…In the end, it is the ongoing moral failure of the country as a whole that is most consequential, most dangerous, most unacceptable. This failure weighs…heavily on our humanity. We are, so we claim, the children of the prophets. Once, they say, we were slaves in Egypt. We know all that can be known about slavery, suffering, prejudice, ghettos, hate, expulsion, exile. I find it astonishing that we, of all people, have reinvented apartheid in the West Bank.”
More and more Jewish Americans are speaking out against Israel’s war in Gaza. While everyone was outraged at the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, the Israeli response, and the killing of at least 35,000 Palestinians so far, including large numbers of women and children, has outraged many as well. Aryeh Neier, whose Jewish family left Nazi Germany to escape the Holocaust, is one. A founder of Human Rights Watch and a long time leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, he says that he has reluctantly concluded that the Israeli government is engaged in genocide. He said he cannot understand why the Israeli government does not arrest extremist settlers who destroy trucks bringing food and medicine to the starving people of Gaza. Permitting such behavior, in his view, can be considered the kind of behavior meriting the designation as “genocide.”
The Jewish newspaper The Forward (May 6, 2024) featured a story about Vermont Jewish activist Jules Rabin who demonstrated on the streets of Montpelier, Vermont on his 100th birthday. A World War 11 veteran, a graduate of Harvard and a former Goddard College professor, he called the tragedy of Gaza “a piecemeal Holocaust.” He appeared on a Vermont podcast and told host David Goodman that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians resembles what the Germans did to Jews “in the Warsaw ghetto and everywhere else in history.”
In Rabin’s view, the Holocaust is one of the horrors in history. But, he points out, the Palestinians had nothing to do with it. Yet their country was turned over to European Jews to make up for the destruction of Jews by Nazi Germany. He asks, “How could the Nazi genocide of Jews from 1933-1945 be followed by the Israeli genocide of Palestinians today?” If the world wanted to provide restitution to the Jews after World War 11, Rabin declares, it should have given them Prussia or Bavaria. That might have involved a bit of justice. But, instead, the Palestinians were displaced from their country.
None of what is happening today could take place without massive U.S. military aid to Israel. President Biden says he supports a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian state. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says there will never be a Palestinian state while he is in office. Members of his cabinet speak of filling the West Bank with Jewish settlements, annexing the territory and expelling its indigenous population. Sadly, the U.S. seems to be on the wrong side of history.
Respected Jewish voices were concerned about where Zionism would lead from its very beginning in the 19th century. Albert Einstein, alluding to Nazism in a 1938 talk, warned an audience of Zionist activists against the temptation to create a state imbued “with a narrow nationalism within our own ranks against which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.”
In his book “What Is Modern Israel?,” Professor Yakov Rabkin of the University of Montreal, an Orthodox Jew, shows that Zionism was conceived as a clear break with Judaism and the Jewish religious tradition. In his view, it must be seen in the context of of European ethnic nationalism, colonial expansion and geopolitical interests rather than as an incarnation of Biblical prophecies or a culmination of Jewish history. The religious idea of a Jewish return to Palestine had nothing to do with the political enterprise of Zionism.
“Jewish tradition,” writes Rabkin, “holds that the idea of return must be part of a messianic project rather than the human initiative of migration to the Holy Land…There was little room for Jewish tradition in the Zionist scheme…It is not the physical geography of the Biblical land of Israel which is essential for Jews but the obligation to follow the commandments of the Torah.”
Where all of this will end, none of us can know. What we do know is that the Palestinians are the final victims of the Holocaust, an extraordinary crime committed by others. Our own country is playing a negative role by providing aid and the most advanced arms to an Israeli government determined to terrorize Palestinians out of the country and committed to treating those who remain as second-class citizens, what has been widely described as apartheid.
I remember apartheid in South Africa and the brave men and women who abandoned it. Let us hope that similar men and women will arise in Israel.
##
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Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally syndicated columnist and is editor of ISSUES, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism (www.acjna.org)
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Netanyahu Invited to Address Congress Amid Division Over Israel-Hamas War - The New York Times
Netanyahu Invited to Address Congress Amid Division Over Israel-Hamas War - The New York Times
FM: John Whitbeck
It's official now.
As reported in the NEW YORK TIMES article transmitted below, the top four congessional leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, in order to "build on our enduring relationship and to highlight America's solidarity with Israel," have formally invited Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress "to share the Israeli government's vision for defending democracy, combating terror and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region."
While no date for Netanyahu's address has been set, one may hope that the International Criminal Court will have issued the requested arrest warrant against him for some of his war crimes and crimes against humanity before Israel's loyal and obedient servants starting bobbing up and down in exalted standing ovations for the leader of the genocidal apartheid state to which they owe their primary allegiance.
If this self-humiliating spectacle does occur, future historians may cite it as the moment when American aspirations to global "leadership" (a/k/a "full-spectrum dominance") died and the United States definitively ceased, in the eyes of most of mankind, to be respected out of admiration rather than purely out of fear.
Joe Biden announces new Israel-Hamas peace proposals
Joe Biden announces new Israel-Hamas peace proposals
This is apparently not a proposal from the Israeli government but from some Israelis . Who are they? Do they include Netanyahu or is this a thinly disguised effort to encourage a coup against him? It is not clear to what extent this alleged "Israeli" proposal represents more than wishful thinking by a US administration that has lost control of both the situation in Palestine and domestically. What are the prospects that Hamas will accept a proposal that appears to be premised on its own disenfranchisement and the continued denial of self-determination to Palestinians? How does the perpetuation of internationally recognized injustice lead to "peace? How does sidestepping multiple UN Security Council resolutions or the notion of a two-state solution produce reconciliation and security for Israelis, Palestinians, or the neighbors of Israel in West Asia? What, if any, buy-in from those neighbors and the broader Arab and Muslim worlds is there to this American effort to reassert US primacy in Israel-Palestine affairs? Does the Biden administration have buy-in from the powers that be in American politics?
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