Well, That's a Relief!

Israel has officially absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the murder of four Palestinian kids killed on a Gaza beach last summer.

The kids - they were children - had a soccer ball in play when an Israeli patrol boat opened fire on them with explosive shells. Unfortunately, for the Israelis, foreign journalists witnessed the slaughter.

The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.

“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.” 

Oh well, it was only four kids and, besides, they were Palestinian kids, worse yet they were Gazans.  All three Canadian parties supported Israel's "Dahiyeh" campaign against Gaza that saw civilians butchered by the hundreds so what's four kids in the greater scheme of things?

And, yes, those are news photos of those kids (the three who survived the first round) running for safety just seconds before they too were killed.  

Fair and Balanced? Of Course, It's Israel!

Let's keep this in perspective.  That takes us back to 2010 when an Israeli court acquitted an army captain of all charges related to his slaughter of a 13-year old Palestinian school girl.  It's too obscene to recite.  You can follow the link to get the details.

So consider, in the context of that atrocity, a new Israeli law intended to crack down on Palestinian kids who are in the habit of throwing stones at Israeli forces and settlers.

There would be two major sentences for stone throwers - those who endanger the safety of someone inside a vehicle could be jailed for 10-years without proof there was intention to harm; those throwing stones at people could be sentenced to 20-years in prison without the need to prove they intended to cause serious bodily harm.

I suppose it all makes sense in the fascist state of Israel or in the inner sanctum of Canada's Conservative and Liberal leadership.

The Butcher's Price of the War on Drugs

Mexico's drug wars have been brutal.   Upwards of 70,000 have been killed, often brutally, usually near the U.S. border.

Now it's emerging that another 27,000 have simply disappeared.  

Combined with the 70,000 dead acknowledged recently by the new administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who succeeded Calderon on Dec. 1, the number of the disappeared makes the Calderon tenure the bloodiest period in Mexican history since the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.

On Thursday, human rights campaigners said the numbers place Mexico far above some of the better-known Latin American human catastrophes of decades past, including the rule of military regimes in Argentina, Chile and Brazil and civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Lia Limon, Mexico’s deputy interior secretary for human rights and legal affairs, acknowledged on Wednesday that the government had compiled a list of 27,000 missing people after meeting with representatives of the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong on Thursday promised to “look for all of them.” But he also warned there were no guarantees. “We start from a fundamental fact,” he said, “little information, little evidence and no rules.”

We're not winning this war on drugs.  We're losing, badly, and tens of thousands of people are paying for it with their lives.   Hundreds of thousands more

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/21/183820/mexicos-war-on-crime-now-ranks.html#storylink=cpy