Left I on the News  

For the Nth consecutive time, a bombing at a Syrian military intelligence facility, this one killing nine and wounding another hundred, is ritually and almost comically blamed by Al Jazeera on the Syrian government:

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from the Turkish city of Antakya, along the border with Syria, said that opposition groups accuse the government of staging the blasts as a ploy to make the country's protest movement appear violent...The Syrian National Council (SNC), the country's main political opposition group, also blamed the government for the blast.

Evidence for these preposterous claims? Nil, of course. And, in the entire article, not even a hint or suggestion that it might have been the Syrian opposition who did it. You know, the ones with an actual motive to kill members of the Syrian military. Not even a pretense of "he said, she said" reporting from Al Jazeera in this case.

Even Reuters knows better than to go that far; they lead with the completely believable Syrian government claim that the opposition was responsible for the bombing, and their inclusion of the opposite claim by the Syrian National Congress seems almost pro forma rather than meant to be taken seriously, although that they include such an absurd claim at all, given the complete lack of evidence and motive, still disqualifies even them from a claim of being serious journalists.

Al Jazeera, by contrast continues its descent into zero credibility.

George Zimmerman "apologized" today for killing Trayvon Martin. That's how the media treated the story. None seemed to notice the content of the apology: "I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not." What is he saying there? He's sorry he killed a 17-year old, but wouldn't be if Trayvon were 25? It's ok to kill someone in "self-defense" if you don't know if they're armed, and therefore are justified to assume that they are?

Interestingly, the last assumption would put Zimmerman right in line both with U.S. foreign policy and with U.S. military tactics. Because both use the assumption that if there is some finite, albeit minuscule, chance that some "enemy" will do "us" harm, then "we" are justified in killing them.

Viktor Bout, who the media calls the "Merchant of Death," just got 25 years for attempting to sell weapons to anti-government rebels in Colombia (actually these particular "rebels" were U.S. agents). Meanwhile, the U.S. and the Arab kings and sheiks who are its allies openly discuss arming anti-government rebels in Syria. Hardly the first such occurrence, of course, since the U.S. armed and funded anti-government rebels in Afghanistan and Nicaragua as well, not to mention Libya, where they not only armed and funded the rebels, they did their bombing for them.

Ruling that the Constitution allows strip searches even for the most minor offenses, Justice Kennedy "wrote that courts are in no position to second-guess the judgments of correctional officials," exposing the right-wing judicial activism of the Supreme Court. Not only are the courts in "no position" to do so, it is not their job. Their job is to decide if actions are Constitutional, not to decide on the usefulness or practicality of laws, or whether they keep us "safe" or not. That is the job of the other two branches of government. That the Court even "went there" illustrates that for these alleged "originalists" and other "defenders of the Constitution," the Constitution is actually the farthest thing from their minds.

Two weeks ago, Abel Gutierrez, suffering from (and showing obvious signs of) PTSD as a result of multiple tours of duty in Iraq, killed his mother, his sister, and then himself. Today's San Jose Mercury News notes the following interesting observations:

Carlos Anaya, who had known Gutierrez since elementary school..."he was not a sociopath. He was a good person."

And

"He didn't join the Army because he wanted to kill people," Ramon Bustamante said. "He wanted to do something with his life and help take care of his mom and sister."

And finallly

"To me," Bustamante said, "they're all victims of Iraq."

Indeed. And, we might add, of the capitalist economy which essentially forces people like Gutierrez into the military as the only viable employment option.

An Iraqi woman was beaten to death [death occurred after publication of this news article] in Southern California after receiving hate-based threats. A double victim of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. First, because she was only in the U.S. in the first place because of having fled her country after the invasion. And second, because she moved to a country where there is casual acceptance of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis (and they were all innocent, even the soldiers and resistance fighters who fought back against the invasion), on the bogus justification that "we have to fight them over there to keep them from fighting us here" or the equally bogus "they might get a weapon which might be used against us so we'd better kill them first," a country where the President declared a "Day of Honor" to mark the anniversary of that invasion. Is it little wonder that official disregard of human life infects individuals and ends up with hate crimes like this?

After resisting for the longest time, I've started tweeting, since I don't seem to be able to find the time to write long posts. Check it out: @leftiblog

Feb. 22, 2012:

“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons,” said Ayatollah Khamenei.

“There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”

“If nations are allowed to independently make progress in the fields of nuclear energy, aerospace, science, technology and industry, there will be no room left for the tyrannical dominance of world powers,” said the Leader.

He's only the "Supreme [religious] Leader" in a country where religion plays an integral part. Why would we pay any attention to what he says? A better question, to which we know the answer, is "why not?" Because if we did, there would go the U.S./Israeli push to (re)install a subservient government in Tehran.