Reader’s links for Aug. 29, 2026
2 hours ago
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
It's about time. This needs to get out and expose the slavery of communism
Seven Cuban doctors sue Cuba and Venezuela over "modern slavery"
Politics Seven Cuban doctors and a nurse sued Cuba, Venezuela and the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) for alleged conspiracy to force them to work in conditions of "modern slaves" in order to pay off the Cuban debt with the Venezuelan government for oil supply.The defendants "intentionally and arbitrarily" held the health staff in "debt servitude" and the staff became "economic slaves" and "political advocates," according to the complaint filed in the United States, Efe reported.The charges were made last Friday in a Federal Court in Miami by doctors Julio César Lubian, Ileana Mastrapa, Miguel Majfud, María del Carmen Milanés, Frank Vargas, as well as John Doe and Julio César Dieguez, and the nurse Osmani Rebeaux.In the complaint, the leading defense attorney Arístides Cantón argued that the plaintiffs travelled to Venezuela in "deceit" and "threats," and were forced to work unlimited hours in a social welfare program known as "Mission Barrio Adentro," in areas with high rate of crime.
Politics Seven Cuban doctors and a nurse sued Cuba, Venezuela and the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) for alleged conspiracy to force them to work in conditions of "modern slaves" in order to pay off the Cuban debt with the Venezuelan government for oil supply.The defendants "intentionally and arbitrarily" held the health staff in "debt servitude" and the staff became "economic slaves" and "political advocates," according to the complaint filed in the United States, Efe reported.The charges were made last Friday in a Federal Court in Miami by doctors Julio César Lubian, Ileana Mastrapa, Miguel Majfud, María del Carmen Milanés, Frank Vargas, as well as John Doe and Julio César Dieguez, and the nurse Osmani Rebeaux.In the complaint, the leading defense attorney Arístides Cantón argued that the plaintiffs travelled to Venezuela in "deceit" and "threats," and were forced to work unlimited hours in a social welfare program known as "Mission Barrio Adentro," in areas with high rate of crime.
Shaming Toyota for political purposes.
Who do you trust more, the Congress critters perusing a "war crimes" trial against Toyota or driving a Toyota vehicle?
The Toyota people in Japan are going to take this shaming seriously. We used to call it "losing face". It's more then just about cars it's a foreign policy blunder.
The UAW puppets including Mr. LaHood will be seen for exactly what they are. Mr. LaHood statement the HE'S going to solve the problem is sophomoric solipsism. These corrupt legislators deserve flogging.
Race baiter Gates and friends in action
Can you image what these people would do to freedom of speech if they could.
Black Folks We'd Like to Remove From Black History
WaPo/Henry Louis Gates Website Wants to Write Black Conservatives Out of Black History By Bob Parks
Washington, DC: —As Black History Month draws to a close, the web site The Root has chosen to publish a hateful article that demeans black conservatives solely for their political views— grouping them with brutal dictators, convicted criminals and self-centered celebrities. This has drawn a stinging rebuke from Project 21 member Bob Parks.
“It doesn’t take much for liberals to call black conservatives ‘self-hating,’” noted Parks, “but what is it called when someone decides that blacks deemed inappropriate should be wholly removed from history? What kind of egos are we talking about here?”
The Root is operated by The Washington Post. Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. serves as The Root’s editor-in-chief.
In a recent posting, “Black Folks We’d Like to Remove From Black History” by Jada Smith, 21 blacks are singled out for being “embarrassing.” Smith wrote: “[W]hile we love our own, we sure do dream of erasing a few of them.”
“It’s not enough that progressives intentionally distort and rewrite black history to their political advantage, but now The Root, the Post and Professor Gates are showing additional contempt for black people by allowing open suggestions about who should be excluded from that rewritten history,” Parks pointed out.
Of the 21 blacks selected by Smith to purge from black memory, there are five American political figures, five infamous foreign dictators, two criminals and nine celebrities. The two liberal politicos—current D.C. councilman and former mayor Marion Barry and former Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon—earned their shame by being convicted of breaking the law.
The three black conservatives are demeaned solely for their politics. Republican Party chairman Michael Steele is the “Bozo of politics.” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas allegedly lacks “standing” among blacks because “he looks to the Constitution as ‘colorblind.’” Former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, whose activism extols the values of the Declaration of Independence and the rights of the unborn, has “never managed to make a lick of sense.”
Project 21’s Parks added: “The Root meticulously nominated five political figures among narcissistic celebrities and murderous dictators. The two liberals broke written laws, while the others were convicted of the crime of being black and conservative. It’s ironic that the hyper-sensitive Professor Gates presided over this fantasy of removing certain onerous blacks from our history. Now that he’s got me riled up, I wonder if he and his bosses at the Washington Post will have me over for a beer to talk about their writer acting stupidly.”
Project 21, established in 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-profit foundation established in 1982 and funded primarily from the gifts of over 100,000 recent individual donors.
How the left distorts reality
Holder Was Right
What the author seems to neglect is that Mr. Zazi was a legal permanent resident and therefore entitled to constitutional protection.
What the author seems to neglect is that Mr. Zazi was a legal permanent resident and therefore entitled to constitutional protection.
Apparently he'll be right at home. Unbelievable
Van Jones, Obama czar forced to resign over being 9/11 'truther,' to teach at Princeton
By: Mark HemingwayCommentary
Van Jones, Obama's former "green energy czar" forced to resign over endorsing views that President George W. Bush may have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen as well as controversy over his past as a radical communist, appears to have landed on his feet. Many of his views may have been unacceptable to the vast majority of the American public, but he's more than welcome at an Ivy League university and one of D.C.'s most prominent liberal think tanks:
Van Jones, the environmental justice advocate who relinquished his post as a White House adviser five months ago after coming under fire from conservative activists, is reemerging on the public policy stage to push for green jobs.In his first interview since stepping down as President Obama's environmental adviser on Sept. 5, Jones said that a green jobs policy represents the best chance of both aiding poor Americans and bridging the political divide."When the food fight is over, there's one spot of clean common ground in American politics, and that is the need for us to be leading on energy, clean energy, and for us as a country to be more secure with all those jobs," Jones said Tuesday.Jones, who has been consulting for companies and nonprofits on environmental issues, will start teaching at Princeton University in June and is rejoining the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, next month. On Friday, he will receive the NAACP's President's Award, for achievement in public service, the organization announced Tuesday.
Also, is it standard practice for Washington Post reporters to uncritically use loaded terms such as "environmental justice advocate"?
By: Mark HemingwayCommentary
Van Jones, Obama's former "green energy czar" forced to resign over endorsing views that President George W. Bush may have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen as well as controversy over his past as a radical communist, appears to have landed on his feet. Many of his views may have been unacceptable to the vast majority of the American public, but he's more than welcome at an Ivy League university and one of D.C.'s most prominent liberal think tanks:
Van Jones, the environmental justice advocate who relinquished his post as a White House adviser five months ago after coming under fire from conservative activists, is reemerging on the public policy stage to push for green jobs.In his first interview since stepping down as President Obama's environmental adviser on Sept. 5, Jones said that a green jobs policy represents the best chance of both aiding poor Americans and bridging the political divide."When the food fight is over, there's one spot of clean common ground in American politics, and that is the need for us to be leading on energy, clean energy, and for us as a country to be more secure with all those jobs," Jones said Tuesday.Jones, who has been consulting for companies and nonprofits on environmental issues, will start teaching at Princeton University in June and is rejoining the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, next month. On Friday, he will receive the NAACP's President's Award, for achievement in public service, the organization announced Tuesday.
Also, is it standard practice for Washington Post reporters to uncritically use loaded terms such as "environmental justice advocate"?
Exposing the Left's urge to control you and impose tyranny
Better Here than There
The Left tends to get schoolgirl crushes on foreign regimes; alas, they usually end in heartbreak.
‘I have been over into the future, and it works.”Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, offered that review of the Soviet Union on his return from a fact-finding mission there. For decades, conservatives invoked that line as proof that a generation of progressives were Soviet fellow-travelers. Conservatives were far from entirely wrong, but the focus on Communism obscured a more enduring dynamic: The Left loves to press its nose against the window on the world and talk about how things are better “over there.”Indeed, a year earlier, Steffens went to fascist Italy and came back praising Il Duce’s miraculous accomplishments. Before that, the cream of America’s intellectuals were obsessed with emulating the “top-down socialism” of Bismarck’s Prussia. Later, the New Deal was understood as part of the “Europeanization of America,” in historian William Leuchtenburg’s phrase. Liberal economist Stuart Chase, who coined the term “the New Deal,” remarked: “Why should the Russians have all the fun remaking the world?”In the 1980s, some economists, such as Lester Thurow, and non-economists, such as Robert Reich, Chalmers Johnson, and James Fallows, argued that we needed to emulate Germany or, even better, Japan. “The Cold War is over,” proclaimed Johnson. “Japan won.” American liberalism’s infatuation with Japan’s industrial policy — “Japan Inc.” — should be remembered as one of the great embarrassments of recent intellectual history.But no, like butterflies always looking for a prettier flower, these intellectuals keep flitting to the next “proof” of America’s shortcomings. For some, such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the prettiest flower out there right now is China. For others, it’s France or Canada. For the truly demented, it’s Cuba.The problem with all such efforts is that they look abroad solely for what they wish to see at home. For instance, in an effort to push its green agenda, the Obama administration likes to tout the farsighted vision of Spain, which has invested heavily in windmills and other renewable technology. Never mind that today, Spain’s economic crisis is just slightly less dire than Greece’s and politicized bets on green technology contributed to its problems.Meanwhile, France’s generous health-care system is widely hailed as so much more enlightened than America’s. What Francophiles usually leave out is the fact that France’s per capita income is 30 percent lower than America’s. Such a disparity, according to Nobel Prize–winning economist Ed Prescott, is the difference between economic prosperity and economic depression, and it’s explained by France’s much higher taxes. Tom Friedman has gone so far as to wish America could be “China for a day” and to suggest that its “enlightened” regime is preferable to our own. It’s not that Friedman wants to abolish democracy, jail dissidents, or force abortions. He’s more like a drunk looking for his car keys where the light is good. He sees a nation doing things he thinks America should be doing, but doesn’t look for what he doesn’t want to see: the pollution, the cruelty, the lies and basic evil that are just as central to China’s methods as its “enlightened” investments in this or that.What unites all of these people is a form of power worship. These foreign governments and their experts have control over citizens and economies — sometimes through democratic consent, sometimes not — that the state doesn’t have in America. Thus proving American backwardness.Perhaps we’re not backward at all. Maybe America simply values economic freedom over economic security more than most countries do.Regardless, the track record of such control, over the long haul, is abysmal, particularly in comparison with America’s more unplanned approach (indeed, the world’s planned economies often feed off American innovation to survive). The Soviets are in the dustbin of history; Japan Inc. is in its second “lost decade”; Europe is in an economic crisis; China’s problems are hard to see because Beijing likes it that way. We have our own problems, but history shows that the solution to them is not to be found in more centralized planning.Politicians and planners have a tendency to stay locked into their idea of what works long after it doesn’t work anymore. If our government had China-like power in the 1970s, we would have banned natural gas. If it had such powers in the 1830s, we would have stuck with canals long after railroads became viable.The future can’t be found on a junket, and it never works until you get there.
The Left tends to get schoolgirl crushes on foreign regimes; alas, they usually end in heartbreak.
‘I have been over into the future, and it works.”Lincoln Steffens, the muckraking journalist, offered that review of the Soviet Union on his return from a fact-finding mission there. For decades, conservatives invoked that line as proof that a generation of progressives were Soviet fellow-travelers. Conservatives were far from entirely wrong, but the focus on Communism obscured a more enduring dynamic: The Left loves to press its nose against the window on the world and talk about how things are better “over there.”Indeed, a year earlier, Steffens went to fascist Italy and came back praising Il Duce’s miraculous accomplishments. Before that, the cream of America’s intellectuals were obsessed with emulating the “top-down socialism” of Bismarck’s Prussia. Later, the New Deal was understood as part of the “Europeanization of America,” in historian William Leuchtenburg’s phrase. Liberal economist Stuart Chase, who coined the term “the New Deal,” remarked: “Why should the Russians have all the fun remaking the world?”In the 1980s, some economists, such as Lester Thurow, and non-economists, such as Robert Reich, Chalmers Johnson, and James Fallows, argued that we needed to emulate Germany or, even better, Japan. “The Cold War is over,” proclaimed Johnson. “Japan won.” American liberalism’s infatuation with Japan’s industrial policy — “Japan Inc.” — should be remembered as one of the great embarrassments of recent intellectual history.But no, like butterflies always looking for a prettier flower, these intellectuals keep flitting to the next “proof” of America’s shortcomings. For some, such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, the prettiest flower out there right now is China. For others, it’s France or Canada. For the truly demented, it’s Cuba.The problem with all such efforts is that they look abroad solely for what they wish to see at home. For instance, in an effort to push its green agenda, the Obama administration likes to tout the farsighted vision of Spain, which has invested heavily in windmills and other renewable technology. Never mind that today, Spain’s economic crisis is just slightly less dire than Greece’s and politicized bets on green technology contributed to its problems.Meanwhile, France’s generous health-care system is widely hailed as so much more enlightened than America’s. What Francophiles usually leave out is the fact that France’s per capita income is 30 percent lower than America’s. Such a disparity, according to Nobel Prize–winning economist Ed Prescott, is the difference between economic prosperity and economic depression, and it’s explained by France’s much higher taxes. Tom Friedman has gone so far as to wish America could be “China for a day” and to suggest that its “enlightened” regime is preferable to our own. It’s not that Friedman wants to abolish democracy, jail dissidents, or force abortions. He’s more like a drunk looking for his car keys where the light is good. He sees a nation doing things he thinks America should be doing, but doesn’t look for what he doesn’t want to see: the pollution, the cruelty, the lies and basic evil that are just as central to China’s methods as its “enlightened” investments in this or that.What unites all of these people is a form of power worship. These foreign governments and their experts have control over citizens and economies — sometimes through democratic consent, sometimes not — that the state doesn’t have in America. Thus proving American backwardness.Perhaps we’re not backward at all. Maybe America simply values economic freedom over economic security more than most countries do.Regardless, the track record of such control, over the long haul, is abysmal, particularly in comparison with America’s more unplanned approach (indeed, the world’s planned economies often feed off American innovation to survive). The Soviets are in the dustbin of history; Japan Inc. is in its second “lost decade”; Europe is in an economic crisis; China’s problems are hard to see because Beijing likes it that way. We have our own problems, but history shows that the solution to them is not to be found in more centralized planning.Politicians and planners have a tendency to stay locked into their idea of what works long after it doesn’t work anymore. If our government had China-like power in the 1970s, we would have banned natural gas. If it had such powers in the 1830s, we would have stuck with canals long after railroads became viable.The future can’t be found on a junket, and it never works until you get there.
Read this and tell me it's not Homer Simpson logic
San Francisco the ultimate nanny state except when it comes to protecting your life. It's
just too inconvenient.
Judge tosses sanctuary suit in S.F. killings
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO -- The family of a father and two sons who were shot dead on a San Francisco street in 2008 can't hold the city responsible for failing to turn their alleged killer over to immigration authorities after earlier arrests, a judge has ruled.
The city isn't legally to blame for any crimes Edwin Ramos, a suspected illegal immigrant from El Salvador, committed after his release for the offenses he committed as a juvenile, Judge Charlotte Woolard of San Francisco Superior Court said Monday.
Cities "generally are not liable for failing to protect individuals against crime," Woolard said.
She dismissed a damage suit by the widow and daughter of Tony Bologna, 48, who was shot to death in his car near the family's home in the Excelsior district in June 2008. His sons Michael Bologna, 20, and Matthew Bologna, 16, were also killed.
Their brother, who survived the attack, identified Ramos, then 21, as the man who fired the fatal shots from a passing car. Police said the gunman may have mistaken the younger Bolognas for gang members.
Ramos told police that he had been driving the car but that another man had fired the shots. He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder and faces life in prison without parole if convicted.
The Bologna family's lawyer, Matthew Davis, said they would appeal Woolard's ruling. Davis said he agrees that a city usually can't be held responsible for failing to prevent a crime, but he contended that the shield of immunity shouldn't protect San Francisco because by failing to turn over Ramos to immigration authorities, it was "flat-out violating the law."
Matt Dorsey, spokesman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said Woolard had relied on well-established law in deciding that San Francisco was not liable for Ramos' actions.
Ramos, whom prosecutors describe as a member of the MS-13 gang, was arrested as a juvenile for an assault in October 2003 and an attempted purse-snatching in 2004. Juvenile courts sent him to a shelter after the first incident and to the city-run Log Cabin Ranch in the Peninsula hills after the second.
Case records don't show whether police or juvenile courts suspected that Ramos had entered the United States illegally. But under the city's sanctuary policy, as juvenile authorities then interpreted it, they would not have passed along that information to federal immigration officials.
Mayor Gavin Newsom reversed that practice in 2008 and ordered city employees to report suspected illegal immigrant youths to federal authorities after felony arrests. City supervisors passed an ordinance over Newsom's veto that delayed reporting until a youth is found to have committed a felony, but the mayor is refusing to enforce it, saying it violates federal law.
After Ramos' release, federal authorities learned of his immigration status but did not take him into custody. The family's lawsuit contended, however, that the city was responsible for the shootings because its policy had allowed Ramos to go free.
In her ruling, Woolard said San Francisco had no duty to protect the Bolognas or anyone else from Ramos unless city officials had information that he posed a specific danger to them. There was no such evidence in this case, she said.
Davis also argued that San Francisco had violated a federal law prohibiting local authorities from interfering in immigration enforcement and should be held responsible for any resulting harm. The judge, however, questioned whether the law applied to the city's actions.
She said the law couldn't be a basis for finding the city liable because it was intended to improve immigration controls, not to prevent crime.
Democrat, you bet!
Indicted City Councilman Larry Seabrook said he has no plans to resign and laughed at the notion that he took a $50,000 bribe, in his first comments since being charged with fraud, money laundering and accepting a bribe.
When asked whether he accepted a bribe from boiler company executive Leon Eastmond, Seabrook, a Bronx Democrat, said "absolutely not" four times and laughed.
The 66-page indictment made public earlier this month alleges Seabrook took Eastmonds handout in exchange for helping him win a contract for the new Yankees Stadium.
Seabrook insisted he will fight the charges and implied the indictment actually proves his innocence.
"I think if you read it, you'll see for yourself from that," he said when asked about the accuracy and fairness of the charges.
When asked whether he accepted a bribe from boiler company executive Leon Eastmond, Seabrook, a Bronx Democrat, said "absolutely not" four times and laughed.
The 66-page indictment made public earlier this month alleges Seabrook took Eastmonds handout in exchange for helping him win a contract for the new Yankees Stadium.
Seabrook insisted he will fight the charges and implied the indictment actually proves his innocence.
"I think if you read it, you'll see for yourself from that," he said when asked about the accuracy and fairness of the charges.
Sign of the Double Dip Coming?
So I took a look at the New Home Sales number that was released today by the Census Bureau. Since seasonal adjustments just often adds noise to the number due to statistical machinations that take place, I looked at the seasonally unadjusted number. I also took a look at the year over year change in new homes sales as my own way of seasonally adjusting (as it is usually cold every January, for example). What I see does not look good, it looks like we may be starting another leg down. The first chart graphs actual monthly new home sales since 1964:
In the graph above you can clearly see the magnitude of the bubble, which was forming for about a decade before it popped. You also can see how we had a bit of a rebound, or bottoming, but now are at new lows. Now take a look at the following graph of the year over year change in new home sales, over the last 10 years.
Here you can really see the magnitude of the bubble bursting, with a few years of double digit declines in transactions, as well as the rapid bottoming in 2009. Unfortunately, it looks like New Home Sales have once again started to rapidly fall on a year over year basis, which is especially disconcerting since we all remember how bad January 2009 felt.
This is really not a good sign and unfortunately none of the schmucks in power are doing anyting meaningful about this. It's all about pet projects for them (healthcare, cap and trade) even though the reality of a double dip may be staring them in the face.
In the graph above you can clearly see the magnitude of the bubble, which was forming for about a decade before it popped. You also can see how we had a bit of a rebound, or bottoming, but now are at new lows. Now take a look at the following graph of the year over year change in new home sales, over the last 10 years.
Here you can really see the magnitude of the bubble bursting, with a few years of double digit declines in transactions, as well as the rapid bottoming in 2009. Unfortunately, it looks like New Home Sales have once again started to rapidly fall on a year over year basis, which is especially disconcerting since we all remember how bad January 2009 felt.
This is really not a good sign and unfortunately none of the schmucks in power are doing anyting meaningful about this. It's all about pet projects for them (healthcare, cap and trade) even though the reality of a double dip may be staring them in the face.
Put Insurance Back Into Health Insurance
A good common sense piece on healthcare:
Having businesses offer full health coverage almost from the first dollar spent is phenomenally inefficient. Health care is over-consumed because it is essentially, at the margin, free to employees and too cheap -- fully deductible -- to the company. All incentive for the consumer to control costs is abandoned. Furthermore, the system is nonportable and famously bureaucratic, with the associated costs in time, money and frustration.
To put the “insurance” back in health insurance, we need to remove the tax deduction for routine health-care expenses, whether the coverage is purchased by employers or individuals. If we choose to retain a deduction for insurance against large losses, it should apply equally to plans bought by individuals directly and those provided by employers.
Among other benefits, this would remove a large tax deduction and the savings could be used to reduce other tax burdens. It would also solve the portability problem because without a tax advantage at work most individuals would purchase their own insurance. Most importantly, by buying their own insurance, designed to protect against only relatively large losses, individuals would become conscious of medical costs.
Assessment of Risk
Now let’s discuss risk assessment. Ignoring pre-existing conditions might sound compassionate, but it is equivalent to declaring that a fire-insurance company must charge the same amount for a modern house with smoke detectors and interior fireproofing as for a century-old, wooden-frame former stable, complete with some hay left over, and a basement full of painting supplies. Taking the analogy further, the same premium must be charged for a well-protected, unscathed house as for one that is already on fire.
The business of insurance is about determining risk and charging accordingly. It’s why insurance companies exist. If we eliminate that, medical insurers are just form-processing companies for the government. Worse, we lose a valuable economic input: that of accurate risk assessment and pricing, without which sensible management of medical expenses is impossible.
‘Don’t Ask’
The desire to help those with pre-existing conditions is laudable. The way to do this is to help. If someone needs more medical care than he or she can pay for, direct state subsidy is far more efficient than making insurance companies pretend that the patient isn’t ill or at high risk of becoming ill. We can separately debate the degree of generosity of this subsidy, but it is efficient and honest. Making insurance companies play “don’t ask, don’t tell” with health status is neither.
Though you wouldn’t know it from the headlines, our system today, and our discussion of reform, isn’t about insurance. It’s about the total provision of health care, largely by employers, with costs hidden from individuals. Furthermore, much of the proposed reform is about eliminating the main function of an insurance company: the assessment and pricing of risk.
Was the Mabhouh Killing Legal?
Alan Dershowitz at his best. The bolded section is the part where he says that Goldstone told Israel to conduct operations such as these. Beautiful:
But not all extrajudicial killings are unlawful. Every soldier who kills an enemy combatant engages in an extrajudicial killing, as does every policeman who shoots a fleeing felon. There are several complex legal questions involved in assessing these situations.
First, was the person who was killed a combatant, in relation to those who killed him? If Israel killed Mabhouh, there can be absolutely no doubt that he was a combatant. He was actively participating in an ongoing war by Hamas against Israeli civilians. Indeed, it is likely that he was killed while on a military mission to Iran in order to secure unlawful, anti-personnel rockets that target Israeli civilians.
Both the United States and Great Britain routinely killed such combatants during the Second World War, whether they were in uniform or not. Moreover, Hamas combatants deliberately remove their uniforms while engaged in combat.
So if the Israeli Air Force had killed Mabhouh while he was in Gaza, there would be absolutely no doubt that their action would be lawful. It does not violate international law to kill a combatant, regardless of where the combatant is found, whether or not he is engaged in active combat at the moment of his demise.
This is where things get more complex. Mabhouh was not killed in Gaza but in Dubai. It is against the law of the United Arab Emirates for an Israeli agent to kill a combatant against Israel while he is in Dubai. So the people who engaged in the killing presumptively violated a domestic law, unless there is a defense to such a killing based on international principles regarding enemy combatants. It is unlikely that any defense would be available to someone working on behalf of Israel, since Dubai does not recognize Israel's right to kill enemy combatants on its territory.
So then, if it can be proved that Israel committed the hit, only Dubai could lawfully bring the Israelis to trial. They would not be properly subjected to prosecution before an international tribunal.
But what if a suspect was arrested in England or some other western country and Dubai sought his extradition? That would pose an interesting legal and moral dilemma. Traditional extradition treaties do not explicitly cover situations of this kind.
This was not an ordinary murder. It was carried out as a matter of state policy as part of an ongoing war. A western democracy would certainly have the right and the power to refuse to extradite. But they might decide, for political or diplomatic reasons, to turn the person over to Dubai.
Turning now to the moral considerations which might influence a decision on whether to extradite, the situation is even murkier. The Goldstone Report ordered by the UN Human Rights Council suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate retail measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists.
Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate and focused attack on a combatant who was deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel, than the killing of Mabhouh. Not only was he the commander in charge of Hamas' unlawful military actions, he was also personally responsible for the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers several years earlier.
Obviously it would have been better if he could have been captured and subjected to judicial justice. But it was impossible to capture him, especially when he was in Dubai.
If Israel was responsible for the killing, it had only two options: to let him go on his way and continue to endanger Israeli civilian lives by transferring unlawful weapons from Iran to Gaza, or to kill him. There was no third alternative. Given those two options, killing seems like the least tragic choice available.
We'll Cross That Bridge When We Come To It
Evelyn Gordon has a great piece in Commentary's blog where she points out how a recent argument against the Israeli-Evangelical Christian alliance (on the grounds that the Evangelical Christians are only friends of Israel because they believe that Jews need to control Israel for the second coming of Christ to occur and when that happens, will try to convert the Jews), makes no sense:
But in this case, the eventual conflict is a trumped-up bogeyman that has no chance of ever occurring in reality — because according to evangelical theology, it is due to take place only at the end of days. There are only two possible scenarios for what this end of days can look like, and contrary to the doomsday crowd, neither leads to Jewish-Christian conflict.
The first scenario is that the Jews are right and Jesus is not the Messiah. In that case, there will be no second coming, so the end-of-days demand that the Jews convert will never arrive, and fruitful cooperation between Jews and evangelicals can continue for all eternity.
The second is that the Christians are right, and Jesus is the Messiah. In that case, when he comes again, the Jews should all convert. After all, if they’re right, they’re right.
Needless to say, I believe the first, and my evangelical friends believe the second. But as long we can agree to disagree until the end of days arrives to settle the question, there is no conflict, and no potential for one.
Clearly, that would not be true if evangelicals wanted to forcibly convert the Jews before the end of days arrives. But so far, not even their harshest critics have found any grounds for suspecting them of that.
Even if Israel were awash with allies, it would be foolish to spurn friends as loyal as the evangelicals have proved to be over a trumped-up conflict that will never actually materialize. But to do so when Israel is besieged on all sides, with supporters few and far between, is nothing short of suicidal insanity. Israelis ought to have better sense — and so should their American Jewish supporters.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The essential difference between the Democrats and Republicans
The Democrats believe everything is accomplished by mandates and coercive threats.
Republicans (though not all) believe things are accomplished through incentives.
The left is allowed to use any racially charged comment with impunity
CNBC's Donny Deutsch Slams Marco Rubio With Racially Charged Attack: He's a 'Coconut' Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2010/02/23/cnbcs-donny-deutsch-slams-marco-rubio-racially-charged-attack-hes-co#ixzz0gO8ZouCH
Anybody remember the stink made about a Congressman who used the word "macaca" and how he was treated by the media afterwards?
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