ONE-LINER 0006 - Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

When talking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, which every few months brings another thousand or so of Palestinian, civilian casualties (as Israeli call it: ‘mowing the lawn’), every one, including the Israelis, loose completely in their minds, the ‘cause and result’ chain of events.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

Bibi Netanyahu - Israeli Prime Minister, has had a lot of air time on CNN and other channels of the American Television recently.  Every time he complains about Hamas threatening the normality of life of the Israeli citizens, with their rockets, and promising the escalation of campaign to rid Gaza of the Hamas, its militants, and its arsenal.  
We hear about thousands of the crude rockets sent into the Israel by Hamas, and we sympathize with the people, who are subjected to such a thread.  It’s inhumane.  That’s right.  
But we, and even the UN, center on the recent action-reaction cycle.  We have been manipulated by said Bibi Netanyahu into forgetting, that the recent rockets sent to Israel, and more than thousand of dead on the side of Palestinians is just the recent manifestation of the conflict - the recent reminder of the underlying issues.

The issue is that Israeli have converted the Gaza Strip into the OPEN AIR PRISON decades ago.

The Hamas was born to give some organized form to the resistance of the Palestinians - after the Second Intifada (1987).  However despicable practices they may employ, they are just the Israeli creation.

As a result of the Olso Accords (*) in 1993/1995 the borders of Gaza strip were closed.  The Palestinians who lived within these borders lost the main source of their income - day jobs in Israel.  The whole generation or 2 generations of young Palestinians never held a normal job, never had a normal life, never had the hope…

Let me repeat - as much as Hamas is wrong and their practices despicable - Israel is on the wrong side of HISTORY.  There is no way of wining with the ‘oppressed nation’.  Israeli may kill as many Palestinians as they succeed, and the remaining population just gets stronger.  

Hamas has to accept that Israel is there to stay.  Created in 1948 as a result of a real, and overdue need of the ‘homeless nation’ - is there to stay.  But all have to remember, and constantly bear in mind, that to create this state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been removed from their (for centuries) land and packed into a small strip of land called Gaza.  As if it, alone, was not enough, Israeli occupation and later the complete ‘blockade’ ruined the life of many generations of people whose only guilt was, being Palestinians.

When a couple of days ago, secretary Kerry on a ‘hot mike’ stated “Hell of the Pinpoint Operation…” the whole conservative media in the States, and Israeli press exploded.  But let’s look at it as it is: When 90% of the dead and wounded are civilians, and the number of the dead exceeded already 1100, it is a heavy handed, vicious attack on the population - and not a Pinpoint Operation.

The artillery rounds which fell on the courtyard of the UN led school, and today on the playground of the refugee camp, killed people, but almost didn’t make any dent in the pavement.  These rounds weren’t designed to destroy hard targets - infrastructure or tunnels, stockpiles of weapons - they were designed as ANTIPERSONNEL weapons.  This is why the only effect was thousands pieces of shrapnel flying around any killing people who tried to find some haven under the roof of the school.

Let’s face it.  Using the anti-personnell on a civilian population is not a legal form of the war conduct.

The UN is creating another fact-finding commission, to determine the abuses of the rules of war, on both sides.  Until the United States accepts that the findings may be quite damaging to the image of the occupant, there is no possible solution to this conflict.  After the ‘Cast Lead’ campaign the findings of the Goldstone Report was rejected by the US congress, although it accused both sides, not only Israelis, of the atrocities.  

We went too far already with the unfeathered support for the punishing campaigns of the IDF, instead of trying to influence our best Middle East friend to ease the blockade, and start building the conditions for the normal (as close to normal as possible) coexistence of the two peoples - within the same borders, or accepting two state solution.  

Something has to be done.   Something has to be done NOW.  And our country - the USA - the leader of the Free World, has the moral obligation to lead this process, and finally bring the PEACE to the tormented people.


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* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

ONE-LINER 0005 - Access to Information

One of the basic, and the most important tenets of democracy is ‘CRITICAL THINKING’.

Let me quote after one of our most influential (internationally) former US Presidents Jimmy Carter:

“Critical thinking is thinking that proceeds on the basis of careful evaluation of premises and evidence and comes to conclusions as objectively as possible through the consideration of all pertinent factors and the use of valid procedures from logic (Carter, 1973 - 1*).

In order to be able to perform these mental processes, one has to have enough of information on the subject.  ‘Enough of information’ doesn’t mean that the information coming from one source, no matter how extensively it may cover the subject, is sufficient.  A single source is doomed to have the non-objective fact references, and opinions. 

This is why in the Western Democracies the information flows freely, and all citizens have the same, non-impeded access to the various sources of information.

Contrary to the totalitarian systems (based on communism, or any other Orwellian society), where the information is censored, and the citizens are prohibited to access the information they seek - but they are fed with the government approved opinions, removing the critical thinking from the equation - we, in the Western democracies are free to seek, and examine the information, no matter where it comes from - and make our own determination as to what the truth really is.

I grew up in a country, where the government minders, for decades, were letting in, only a small amount of the Western information, so the population might have been fooled in believing in their truthful approach.  It was the communist Poland.  Not like in Russia (then USSR), some of the information was getting through.  The proximity of the West, and the active informational campaign by the US, undeniably made an impact on the level of political education in the general population.  So, the ‘critical thinking’ had some real basis, although manipulated by both sides of the political barricade.  We all know the history - in the early nineties, the country which tried to control the information the most, fell apart.  The USSR was no more, and a host of the new ‘democratically minded’ new countries came into being, and some others (like Poland, or East Germany) removed the shackles put on them by the USSR as a result of the WWII.

With a few instances of the modern history where even in the States, some critical thinking was strictly prohibited (McCarthyism of the fifties) - Americans enjoyed completely free and not-impeded

access to various sources of the news, limited only by the languages they were transmitted.

Although the majority of the Americans have been completely disinterested in the World’s affairs, and the un-impeded access to the knowledge hasn’t translated itself in the political knowledge of the most of the US population, some cherish the possibilities, and use them to better their ability to have the well-balanced and just opinion on the events which force themselves into our lives.

No matter how isolationist one may be - there is no denying - that the events, like the Putin’s annexation of Crimea, or Israeli incursion into Gaza, affect all of us, directly or indirectly.

I have always searched for the different news sources.  It is BBC, which for years has been a great source of slightly alternative point of view form the American media.  There is French24, another great source of the alternative views…  There is RAI – the Italian TV Channel with their excellent news segments (only in Italian).  Since 2003, there was another player on the information market - AlJazeera English.  The news organization founded and owned by the ruling family of Qatar.

We all have been very skeptical of the possibly biased and skewed picture coming from this network…  And then, in time the AlJazeera English has proven indispensable to create the full picture of the events.  It brought to the computer screen the most prominent journalists from various countries of the World.  We all admire Sir David Frost (2*)- the author of the incredibly blunt and probing series of interviews with former President Nixon.  This giant of the journalism run in AlJazeera English a segment airing the interviews with many great, and sometimes controversial figures of the world’s politics, and culture.  ‘Frost all over the World’ was the program I tried never to miss… 

This network brought a number of the world renowned journalist to our computers.  A Palestinian born Marwan Bishara with his ‘Empire’ - often controversial program dissecting the current affairs.

Many field reporters I grew to like and appreciate - like an Australian Peter Greste, who provided great reporting from the crisis stricken areas of the world - until was imprisoned by Egyptian Regime on false charges of ‘aiding and abetting the terrorist organization - Muslim Brotherhood’.

For years while working on my computer, a small window with the AlJazeera live stream was a part of my MO.

However everything ended in 2013, when Qatar based AlJazeera network bought Al Gore’s Current Network (*3).

When it was announced, I couldn’t understand why anyone would allow for such deal.  One thing was to listen, and watch AlJazeera English as an alternative news station - from the outside of the US, completely another was to allow a foreign forces broadcast from our soil.  It was, in my opinion, unwise, and simply dangerous, because of the possible wrong message…  For many, the information coming from the outside sources is scrutinized much more than from the American Network.  And so, it happened.  AlJazeera America was created and became carried by the most of the Cable companies in the country.

However, the thing which I haven’t anticipated was that at that same time the original AlJazeera English live stream became UNAVAILABLE IN THE USA.  Anybody trying to dial on their computers http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/ receives in the middle of the screen a black-boxed message: ‘THE VIDEO YOU ARE TRYING TO WATCH CANNOT BE VIEWED FROM YOUR CURRENT LOCATION.  VISIT ALJAZEERA.COM/AMERICA TO VIEW CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE USA’.

Unfortunately, the Aljazeera America is a boring, digested, resembling-other-american-channels news station.  No controversy, no deeply probing editorials - it smells censorship.

I would never thing that I would be limited in my news sources in America.  Access to the information, and the critical thinking are the basis of the Democracy.

And yet - someone decided, that American Public is NOT AUTHORIZED to make a choice to watch the AlJezeera English and its stream and videos.  You can access the Internet channel, but all the videos bear the same censorship message.

So, what is the difference between the Internet blocking in China, and Internet blocking in America?

This incident (and I hope it is isolated incident) is at least worrying.  What is the state of our Democracy if the News are government minded?  It was explained that the stream is limited (prohibited) because of the licensing limitations - after inception of the American based AlJazeera America.  But is it a commercial, or political decision?  Or a political usage of the commercial regulation…

Can anybody answer these questions?

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*1 - http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/democracy/crit.html

*2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frost

*3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV

farther reading: http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/democracy/demo.html