Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done: except, perhaps, when a taxpayer tries to prosecute Kathleen Wynne – part 3

August 21, 2014 — xanthippa

In Part 1 of this series, I explained a little of the background of the ongoing Presto scandal, which has already cost Ontario taxpayers half-a-billion dollars – and how a concerned taxpayer (hereafter referred to as CT) had searched for who was behind this…and discovered the documents had been signed by none other than Kathleen Wynne, then Ontario Minister of Transportation and now the Premier of Ontario.

In Part 2 of this series, I explained a bit of how the Canadian/Ontario justice system function:  in order to safeguard from a government that will either fail to bring charges against certain individuals or will not uphold certain laws, each and every citizen has the power to, as a private person, lay criminal charges.  However, this safety-valve (a citizen-empowering protection against a corrupt government) is immediately eviscerated by permitting the government of the day, called ‘The Crown’ and represented by the office of the Attorney General of Ontario, who both employs all the crown prosecutors and is appointed by/serves at the pleasure of the Premier of Ontario, can take over any private prosecution and stay the charges for ever….and the example of Gary McHale in Caledonia was explained.  (This very legal precedent was cited heavily by The Crown representative in this court hearing.)

Which is what brings us to Monday’s court hearing:  The Municipal Taxpayer Advocacy Group founder (CT – conscientious taxpayer) had brought a private prosecution against Kathleen Wynne, due to her signature on the letter which seems (at least, to my untrained eye, as well as CT’s, I suspect) to be extorting the Jim Watson and the City of Ottawa, in order to force him to both accept the inferior and overpriced ‘Presto’ bid for introducing electronic payment on our public transit system as well as making it almost impossible to collect late/non-performance penalties from that particular contractor.  The Crown took over his case – and chose not to proceed with it – meaning the charges would never see the light of day.

So, CT challenged The Crown’s takeover of his case.

And lost….for various, not necessarily ‘farious’ (as opposed to ‘nefarious’) reasons.

CT had appealed that takeover – and The Crown brought about a motion to ‘summarily dismiss’ his appeal:  and this was the subject of Monday’s hearing.

 

In order to win and get his case back, The Crown argued, it was now necessary for CT to prove that there was some abuse of process in The Crown taking over his prosecution of Kathleen Wynne.

CT disagreed, saying he just had to prove that since the accused is the Attorney General’s employer, and by extension the employer of The Crown’s prosecutors, they are in a conflict of interest position in taking over his private criminal prosecution:  and therefore must recuse themselves from the case and turn it over to the Federal Director Public Prosecutions.

CT even cited an Alberta precedent for this – even the appearance of a potential conflict of interest requires The Crown to kick the case to a different level of goernment, like, say, the Feds (who do not, ultimately, answer to Kathleen Wynne, their current employer).

If you read my blog regularly, you may recall that ‘summary dismissal’ is a topic I have covered when reporting on the John Baglow vs Free Dominion and John Does.  In that case (a very, very important case about internet governance, the outcome of which will affect each and every internet-using Canadian and American – and one which is still ongoing), Dr. Baglow sued several posters on an internet political forum, Free Dominion, for having defamed him, as well as suing the administrators of the site for having facilitated the publication of those words (sort of like suing a printer for having printed a newspaper with an article that defamed someone).

In this ‘Baglow’ case, the defendants asked for the case to be summarily dismissed on the grounds that the words published were ‘common insults’ and thus not defamatory.

The hearing lasted a couple of days and the judge agreed that indeed, the words were not capable of being defamatory.  (At east – that is what I heard in the courtroom nd what I understood the final ruling to say – but I am not trained in legal matters, just a member of the ‘unwashed masses’, with a bit of peasant wisdom tossed in.)

Dr. Baglow appealed the summary dismissal – and the court of appeal agreed.  Not because they thought the case had merit – to the contrary, they agreed that they didn’t.  (Or, so I understand.)  But, they said, internet discourse lacks governance so there ought to be a legal precedent set!

So, a full trial is going on now.  First part took place in the spring, the second part will do so this fall.  With expert witness – as the judge chosen has no knowledge of the internet beyond using email (at least, that is what she declared).

Similarly, the MTAG founder (our dear protagonist, CT) had challenged The Crown’s takeover of his case.

He lost, appealed, and The Crown sought to have his appeal ‘summarily dismissed’.

Which is where we found ourselves on that fateful morning of August the 18th, 2014!!!

More to follow in Part 4 of this narrative.

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Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done: except, perhaps, when a taxpayer tries to prosecute Kathleen Wynne – part 2

August 21, 2014 — xanthippa

In Part 1 of this series, I explained a little of the background of the ongoing Presto scandal, which has already cost Ontario taxpayers half-a-billion dollars – and how a concerned taxpayer (hereafter referred to as CT) had searched for who was behind this…and discovered the documents had been signed by none other than Kathleen Wynne, then Ontario Minister of Transportation and now the Premier of Ontario.

So far so good.

Before I proceed with the narrative of this particular case and need to give you, my dear reader, a bit of background about our Ontario legal system.  I would hesitate before I would call it a ‘justice’ system, because I have rarely seen the legal processes in Ontario result in actual ‘justice’:  it is so convoluted and painful that the process itself is a deep injury…If it arrives at a ‘just’ ruling….which happens less often than most of us would like to believe.

In Ontario, most of the criminal prosecutions are laid and conducted by ‘The Crown’.  And ‘The Crown (in this sense) falls under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General of Ontario.  All the prosecution lawyers and so on are employed by the Attorney General of Ontario.

And the Attorney General of Ontario is an elected member of the Provincial Legislature, an MPP, who is a member of the Cabinet and is appointed into the role of Attorney General by the Premier of Ontario.

However, it is also possible for a private citizen of Ontario to bring about a criminal prosecution against a person or an organization:  in this case, the prosecutor would not be a lawyer working for the Attorney General (who serves at the pleasure of the Premier), but that private citizen.  This is important, as it will permit citizens to bring to justice even villains that the government of the day chooses not to prosecute and to uphold the laws of the land where the government of the day fails to.

And that is as it should be.

Except that…

The Crown (headed by the Attorney General who serves at the pleasure of the Premier) has the right to, at any point, take over a private criminal prosecution whenever it wants to.

And it usually wants to.

And the private person who originally brought the criminal charges does not get a say in this matter.

In the near past, this has, indeed, happened.

One case of which I am aware of (and which was, by the way, cited as precedent by the Crown lawyer in the Monday court hearing) is that of Gary McHale.

Gary McHale is one of our modern-day heroes.

He has dedicated his life to fighting against racism.

For those who are not aware of it, it is difficult to believe that in Ontario in 2013, it was possible for a person to be prevented from walking down a city (township) street – simply because the residents living on that street did not want a person of  Gary McHale’s race on ‘their street’.

Yet, this is true.

And not only did the police not help Gary McHale, they arrested him.

On what grounds?

They explained that their job was not to ‘uphold the law’ but to ‘maintain public peace’.  Since the racists threatened violence if Gary McHale continued to walk on a public street, the police reasoned that Gary McHale’s action of walking down a public street constituted a threat to public peace and promptly arrested him and his fellow freedom lovers.

That is how things had been in Caledonia, Ontario, for many years.

And not just in Caledonia – when Ezra Levant went to interview some people who were protesting against him, personally, in front of Sun TV offices, the police officers told him in no uncertain terms that his very presence could spark violence from the protesters and since it is easier to remove him than to uphold the law, he must move or they will arrest him…  This ‘heckler’s veto’ is the new rule the police have taken to protecting, instead of protecting those who are non-violent and upholding the laws of our land.

In the past, the situation in Caledonia was even worse – the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) (who were contracted for policing the area) would not intervene when racists would violently assault and batter people whose presence they were unwilling to tolerate due to these people’s race, resulting in serious injuries and property damage/loss.

At one point, Gary McHale had started a private criminal prosecution of the then head of the OPP, Julian Fantino, for ordering this race-based policing.

No sooner had Gary McHale laid the charges than The Crown stepped in and took over his case – and shelved it.

As in, decided not to proceed with it – a so called ‘stay of the charges’.

A nice little loophole, isn’t it?

We have a safety-valve built in to our laws so that citizens would have a legal recourse when the government failed to live up to their responsibility to uphold the laws of the land.

And right away, we eviscerate it – giving the government the power to prevent this recourse from ever actually happening.

Neat little package!

By now, you probably know which way this narrative evolves:  as soon as he brought criminal charges against Kathleen Wynne, The Crown took over the prosecution.

And promptly ‘stayed the charges’!!!

As in, nothing to see here, nothing to hear here – just crickets!

 Aside:  did you know they don’t have crickets in Newfoundland?  I may move there – I can’t stand them buggers!

 

More to follow in Part 3  and Part 4 of this narrative.

 

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Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done: except, perhaps, when a taxpayer tries to prosecute Kathleen Wynne – part 1

August 20, 2014 — xanthippa
This will be a multi-part post.  As additional bits are up, I’ll edit to include the links to them at the end.

Yes, I was, yet again hanging out at the Elgin St. Court House in Ottawa on Monday, 18th of August, 2014.

No, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.  But, as a citizen of this great country of ours, I am seriously concerned about the erosion of our inalienable rights and freedoms and the ever-increasing government encroachment on these rights and freedoms and its accompanying rise in corruption.

So, when a friend emailed me to let me know that the founder of the Municipal Taxpayer  Advocacy Group, will be in court regarding Kathleen Wynne and the whole Presto mess, I was eager to go and learn for myself exactly what is going on.

As usual, it is difficult to follow what happens in court if you walk in ‘cold’ – without knowing any of the background.  Thus, I would like to present you how I see the case – what the crux of the matter is according to my never-humble-opinion, before I delve into the narration of what occurred in the courtroom.

Currently, Kathleen Wynne is the Premier of Ontario.

I know – I find it difficult to believe as well, but that is what happens when the group-think Cultural Marxist indoctrinated media does not inform the public about the real-life actions of their elected politicians.  Without accurate, impartially presented information, the voting public cannot possibly make an informed choice in the voting booth:  and we end up with people like [insert insult of choice] Kathleen Wynne as the Premier of Ontario.  But, that is a rant for another day.

Prior to being the Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne was the Ontario Minister of Transportation in the Dalton McGuilty Cabinet.

While she was the Minister of Transportation, Kathleen Wynne had presided over the whole Presto mess.

What is the Presto mess?

The way it looks to me (and I could, of course be mistaken:  this is not a statement of fact but solely my imperfect opinion) is that a bunch of the municipalities in Ontario needed to step into the 21st century and introduce a way to pay for public transit electronically.  So, they did what they ought to have:  they opened it up to private companies to propose solutions and bid for the contract.  So far, so good.  Except that some liberal insiders decided that taxpayer funds is their personal piggy bank, so they forced TTC and OC Transpo to buy a highly inferior – but much more expensive (all those pockets don’t just grease themselves, you know) solution.  Since it was shoddy and expensive, nobody wanted it – so, the Liberal government had no choice but to threaten municipalities like Ottawa and Toronto that unless they do go with Presto, the Liberal Government will not pay them the tax money they collect on their behalf from the gas taxes nor will they forward onto them the money they promised them for subways, light rail and other such little matters.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think it is inappropriate for any level of government to provide a private service, such as transportation (much less to usurp onto themselves a monopoly over it).  That having been said, we do live in a world where government-run public transit is a reality, so we must ensure that the process is as least corrupt as it can possibly be, given this sad state of affairs.

So, when one level of government collects non-voluntarily paid taxes (itself a form of slavery – but that, too, is another rant) on behalf of another, then threatens to withhold these funds unless the recipient levels of government enter into binding contracts forcing them to accept inferior goods at inflated prices – I am not exactly…happy.

And that is exactly what I think happened here.  Not only have OC Transpo and the Toronto Transit been forced into accepting presto, the ‘deal’ forces the municipalities to pay its bill on time – without being able to invoke penalties for late delivery or equipment failure.  Or, so a little bird told me…  This is insult on top of injury and millions more lost, wasted…

But, what is one to do about this?

Well, one concerned taxpayer (let’s call him CT) DID do something about it.

He went on a hunt for the culprit – and found an official letter sent to the Ottawa Mayor, Jim Watson, from the Ontario Government, pretty much making that threat:  accept the Presto system or you’ll not get the money we are legally obligated to transfer to you.

And CT found a signature at the bottom of this letter.

Whose signature was it?

None other than Kathleen Wynne’s, the then Minister of Transportation and the now Premier of Ontario!!!

To me, this seems like the proverbial ‘smoking gun’.

I suspect that CT thought so as well, since he started a private citizen’s prosecution of Kathleen Wynne.

 

More to follow PART 2 , PART 3 and PART 4 of this narrative.

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Support for Israel from around the world

August 19, 2014 — xanthippa

India

 

Japan

 

England

 

France

 

For hundreds more, just look up pro-Israel Rally on YouTube.

The pro-Israel protesters are acting well, supporting peace and freedom for all in the Middle East.

Contrast that with the violence – both in words and actions – that accompanies the anti-Israel protests:  shouts of ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Hitler was right!’ and calls for ethnic cleansing of the whole world to commit a genocide against Jews…  Here is just one example from hundreds:

The violence that is committed against Jewish targets outside of Israel, against people who may or may not be Zionists themselves but are definitely Jews demonstrates beyond any doubt that these are not anti-Zionists or people who are critical of the policies of the nation state of Israel:  this is anti-Semitic Jew hatred, pure and unadulterated by compassion or reason.

 

 

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Baglow v Free Dominion has become an Internet test case!

August 14, 2014 — xanthippa

From Connie and Mark Fournier:

 

New news in the Baglow Trial

The court has now appointed an expert witness (that the parties have to pay for), and the “three-day” trial that turned into seven, now has seven additional daysscheduled in September!!

It is obvious that the court is serious about wanting to make case law regarding internet defamation, and that Baglow vs Free Dominion is now the test case.  We are doing our best to make sure that the decision is one that will help put an end to frivolous internet defamation lawsuits for good!

We’ve started a fundraiser to help pay for the court-appointed expert and for the additional court days.

You can help us by making a donation and/or by sharing our fundraiser link on your social networks!

The outcome of this case is important to all of us!

We can add offline donations to our fundraiser total now, so, if you prefer:

You can use PayPal by clicking this link:  Donate
 
or

If you feel more inclined, you can also help out using an Interac Email Money Transfer to connie@freedominion.ca .

Alternatively, our mailing address is:

Connie Fournier
2000 Unity Rd
Elginburg, ON  K0H 1M0

As always, your thoughts and prayers are appreciated more than anything else!  Thank you so much for your faithful support! 

Fondest Regards,
  
Connie and Mark

 

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Living under terror is no life for children

August 13, 2014 — xanthippa

A large number of the civilian casualties in Gaza did not die as a result of the Israeli response to the unprovoked acts of war by Hamas (both rocket fire and territorial invasion via underground tunnels):   they have died of the Hamas rockets themselves.

Do not be fooled into thinking these  rockets to be ‘mere firecrackers’:  without the Israeli defensive Iron Dome and the many bomb-shelters in Israel, the Israeli civilian casualties would be much, much higher.

This is no mere conjecture but a statement of fact.

How do I know this?

From the extensive deaths caused by these rockets when they accidentally land inside Gaza itself!

Certainly, non-Israeli reports of this are scarce because even though they don’t admit this, the reporters in Gaza are reporting under duress and thus act (willingly or not) as accomplices of Hamas:  repeating in their reports only the numbers and things that Hamas wants reported, showing only the images that Hamas wants shown.  Hardly ‘journalism’…

And if that is not enough, here is an excerpt from Wikipedia (hardly a Zionist source):

“The weapons, often generically referred to as Qassams, were initially crude and short-range, mainly affecting Sderot and other communities bordering the Gaza Strip. However, in 2006 more sophisticated rockets began to be deployed, reaching the larger coastal city of Ashkelon, and by early 2009 major cities Ashdod andBeersheba had been hit by Katyusha, WS-1B[8] and Grad rockets.[9] In 2012, Jerusalem and Israel’s commercial center Tel Aviv were targeted with locally made “M-75” and Iranian Fajr-5 rockets, respectively,[10] and in July 2014, the northern city of Haifa was targeted for the first time.[11] A few projectiles have contained white phosphorus.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]“

Hardly ‘firecrackers’!

Estimates of PTSD among Israeli children living under constant threat of being targetted by these Qassam rockets is estimated at over 50% – yet these long-lasting scars are not included in the injuries incurred by Israeli civilians…

Of course, I pity the Gazan children no less – they suffer greatly and in more ways than the Israeli children…and will continue to suffer as long as Hamas is in power in Gaza and perhaps longer:  until religious hatred of ‘the other’ stops destroying their young lives before they have a chance to get started!!!

A week ago today, there was a pro-Israel rally in Ottawa.  I would really have liked to have attended, but, alas, I was out of town and out of internet reach, and thus did not get a word of it until after it happened.  During this rally, an Israeli mother describes the effect living under constant fear of rocket attacks has had on her young family:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9kJaqlpYvE  *

The world will not be a better place until we learn to set all dogmatic beliefs and irrational faiths aside and begin to live like moral human beings!

*sorry – WordPress just updated their ‘look’ and this seems to have broken the embedding mechanism – please, follow the link!

 

EDIT:  More evidence of Hamas rockets being the source of Gazan child casualties is here.

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So what, specifically, would you have the Israelis do?

August 11, 2014 — xanthippa

That was a question CodeSlinger asked me.

I replied in a comprehensive manner, explaining my reasoning:  but thought it worthy of a post of its own.  So, here it is:

CodeSlinger,

I really, really don’t know that I would have them do anything other than what they are doing now.

The Israelis are in a very, very difficult position: the UN is stacked with anti-Semites, the Europeans are afraid to upset their anti-Semitic Islamist colonists (and yes – the Muslims who are true immigrants are integrating as best as they can – it is the Islamists who are entering Europe who are colonists, not immigrants who are preventing them), and the US is more anti-Semitic than ever. It seems that Canada is the only major ally of Israel – and we are small potatoes on the world stage.

So, the Israelis are stuck in a highly unenviable situation.

Israeli civilians are bombarded by rockets fired from Hospitals and UN schools within Gaza. It is only because of their investment in bomb shelters that the Israeli casualties are minimal.

But, the Hamas ruled Gazans have taken billions in ‘humanitarian aid’ and instead of bomb shelters and the equivalent to the iron dome, they built underground tunnels into Israel, often undermining kindergartens as particular targets in order to add shock value to their anticipated attack during a Jewish holiday. They have even worked several hundred Gazan children to death in mining these tunnels…

The Israelis MUST do something to primarily stop these tunnels which are extensive and through which Gazans dressed in Israeli military uniforms have snuck into Isrel and murdered people, secondarily to stop the rocket fire because a civilian population cannot indefinitely function under such conditions.

But, if the Israelis do not take extreme care to do what they are doing – dropping leaflets to warn people, phoning them to let them know an attack is coming, sending a harmless, warning shot against a building with enough time for civilians to evacuate before the real missile which will demolish the building is fired, if they did not call off air strikes when children are in the target area….they would be sinking beneath their own level of civilization!!!

After all, some of these Gazans may have voted in Hamas, but others did not and the children, of course, are innocent. Brainwashed – yes, but killing them would be barbaric. Israelis would be abandoning their own civilized state – not in the past, but now.

But if this were not a sufficient reason, if you wanted a purely pragmatic one, I can supply one of those as well.

Israel cannot survive if the whole world – with the exception of Canada and a few other little nations, like the Czech Republic – refuses to trade with them and completely isolates them.

And every dead Palestinian child – whether killed by Israeli weapons or by Palestinian rockets aimed at Israel and accidentally landing in Gaza – is a source of money for Hamas. So, Hamas will make sure that each and every real and imagined dead Palestinian child makes headlines. (And, yes – they have been caught not only passing off scenes from a horror movie as ‘Palestinian children killed by Israel’ – but also passing the photographs of the Isaeli Fogel children(including a suckling infant) who were murdered by a Palestinian terrorists as they slept in their beds, these too are being passed off as ‘Palestinian children killed by the Israelis’!!!

The Israelis – both Jewish and non-Jewish – may have much going for them, but they are a tiny country surrounded by nation states that share an ideological imperative to destroy Israel as a State AND to kill every Jew alive on this tiny little planet. And if the Jews pack up and colonize another planet, the Islamists will follow them to that planet nd try to murder them there.

Because their desire to kill every Jew in general and destroy Israel in particular is dogmatic, rooted both in the Koran and in the Hadith.

Regarding Israel:

The Islamic prophet Muhammad had sheltered with both Jewish and Christian communities while he was, for reasons not known to history, excommunicated from Mecca. Both the Jewish and the Christian communities excommunicated him in their turn, also for reasons unknown. At least, that is what I was taught at Carleton University many decades ago when I took a course on Arab history.

While with the ‘People of the Book’ (Christians and Muslims), he learned a lot of their mythology. In particular, he latched on to the idea that the Jews had been God’s chosen people – which is why all the Old Testament killing and raping and genocide to get the Jews their ‘promised land’ was OK. God was fine with genocide – as long as the genociders were God’s ‘chosen people’. But, according to Muhammad, the Jews got too comfortable and broke their covenant with God (the whole Jesus thing, money-changers in the Temple and all that stuff) – which is why God punished them by kicking them out of the magical promised land, Israel.

Because, if Israel is ‘the promised land’, then only God’s chosen people get to live there – right?

And, the punishment that Muhammed is said for God to have inflicted on the Jews – to prove they were no longer his favourite people – was to deny them a homeland at all. As in – no matter where the Jews would have set up their new nation state, it would have made Muhammed wrong for saying they will never have a homeland as divine punishment. That is, the moment the Jews have a nation state of their own, Muhammed is proven wrong and all of Islam is proven to be a false religion…

But, setting it up in the promised land is an order of magnitude worse, because that is reserved for God’s favourites. And if the Jews get a homeland there, that means that they ARE God’s favourites…which means the Muslims are not, which means that Islam is not 100% correct….which it claims to be, so if one part is falsified, then all of it is….which is why them Jews have got to be kept out of Israel.

As do the Christians and everybody else.

Because if the Muslims are not God’s favourite people, then their whole religion is proven to be false…

So, now that we know why only the Muslims may live in Israel, we get to the secondary reason: all the Jews, including children, must be killed.

Why?

Because the Koran says that only when all the Jews are exterminated will the day of judgment (and paradise on Earth) take place.

So, you see, the Palestinian Islamists have very logical reasons for not wanting peace with Israel:

1) More dead Palestinian babies = more money for Hamas

2) Permitting Jews in ‘the promised land’ would bestow the title of ‘God’s favourite people’ on them and not Muslims, falsifying Islam

3) Killing all the Jews will bring Paradise to Earth and ought to be accelerated

Thus, Israel has no hope of a peace treaty with Hamas.

If Israel acts as any other country would to protect its people, the international community (weighted by Muslim and Islamist-fearing State votes) will destroy it through isolation.

Therefore, doing what they are doing now – pursuing their objectives while taking every possible precaution to save civilian lives is the only reasonable course of action open to the Israelis.

 

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John Robson on Mideast media coverage bias

July 31, 2014 — xanthippa

John Robson is as close to Godhood as a human being can possibly get:

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‘Moral equivalence’ and other myths

July 30, 2014 — xanthippa

A lot of writers and thinkers, much smarter and more educated than I, have written about this – so, I cannot help but feel that I am being redundant when I write what I am about to write.

Still, the vast majority of the mainstream media keep on presenting this issue in such glaringly prejudiced and prejudicial manner that I consider it morally necessary to add my voice.

My friend Elsa is doing an interview series during which she raises some less common, but immensely interesting questions. Like, what is the origin of one’s morality, how one arrived at what is right and wrong.  It seems to me long ago now that the Western world – led by the USA – held as one of its core moral precepts that ‘one does not negotiate with terrorists’.

Obviously, we have lost our moral compass now, because negotiating with terrorists is now considered to be ‘the moral, balanced approach’!!!

Whether these be the terrorists in Afghanistan or Somalia or Gaza, our media and intellectual and political elites seem to take it for granted that refusing to negotiate with terrorists is immoral and evil and ‘war-mongering’.  Am I the only one who finds this change in attitude appalling?

It is precisely because we give moral equivalence to violent thugs and terrorists, that we have empowered and legitimized these enemies of law and order and respect of human rights, that so much of our world is going up in flames.  And, unless we change our course, and quickly, it will only get worse.

Oh sure – there are many oppressed peoples in the world.  There are people living under military occupation, their rights and dignity stripped away at gunpoint. And yes, there is poverty and lack of opportunity and political oppression.

In all kinds of places.

And no, this is not fair or good, nor should we pretend that it is.

But, no amount of suffering, no amount of oppression, justifies terrorism!!!

How do I know?

I’ve lived it!!!

I grew up the daughter of a political dissident in country under a military occupation by foreigners.  As such, I was socially shunned from fear that associating with me would lead to political oppression of those who dared not shun me.  My prospects for secondary, much less post-secondary education were non-existent.  I was singled out, publicly humiliated by political apartchicks because they could get away with it….let’s just say that growing up me was not all ‘butterflies and rainbows’.

Yet…

To claim that having grown up oppressed and/or under a foreign occupation somehow entitles a person to commit violence, to resort to terrorism, is a slap in the face to all of us decent human beings who have lived through it bu have never lost sight of our humanity!!!

So it is with Gaza.

Strictly and accurately speaking, Gaza is not an ‘Occupied territory’ – nor has it been for a long, long time.  And when it was occupied, it was occupied by Egypt, not Israel.

Once the Israelis freed Gaza from its Egyptian occupation, it became a ‘disputed territory’ as several different groups claimed it as their own.  This, however, came to an end in 2005 when Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, leaving it to self-govern.

That is right – the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005.  They loaded up all the Jewish settlers who lived there and moved them out, leaving their homes and functioning businesses behind – not asking for (much less receiving) anything from Gaza in return.

Yet, Israel still supplied electricity and clean water and all kinds of other things to Gaza, from food to medical supplies, plus, plus, plus.

And the ‘world community’ criticized Israel for ‘blockading Gaza’!!!

This is so patently wrong:  Israel could never physically ‘blockade’ Gaza because Gaza has a border with Egypt – a border that Israel has no control over.  Therefore, Israel could not possibly unilaterally place Gaza under a blockade!!!  Egypt ALWAYS had the power to trade with Gaza, without any regard to what Israel may or may not have been doing.

It is not controversial to acknowledge that the people of Gaza are suffering.  Of course they are!!!

But, it it incorrect to assert that Israel is the cause of this suffering.

Even as Gaza is in the middle of a war between the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas and Israel, it is NOT Israel who is causing the most civilian casualties in Gaza!!!

Many of the (Iran-originating) rockets that Hamas fires towards Israel are so poorly aimed, they land in Gaza itself – causing large-scale casualties.

Of course, some of the rockets do hit Israel – but hit targets like the power station that sends electricity to Gaza….

And – many of the rockets misfire – killing the civilians in the schools and hospitals from which Hamas had fired them.  And, Hamas has repeatedly refused Israeli offers of humanitarian help in the form of medical aid to civilians caught in this war between the terrorist Hamas and the rest of civilization!  They would rather see Palestinian civilians die than live  – because the publicity of ‘dead Palestinians’ brings money to their coffers!!!

What ads insult to injury is that the Palestinian propaganda machine – something taken as unquestionable truth by much of the mainstream media – present Israeli victims of this was as ‘Palestinian casualties’!

I speak of none other than the Fogel family!!!

An Israeli Jewish family that was slaughtered by a ‘Palestinian patriot’ – including an infant, nursing at a mother’s breast!

The photos of this very Israeli family slaughtered by a Palestinian Muslim Arab terrorist have been published as photos of a Muslim Palestinian family slaughtered by Israel Defense Forces….

The words fail me….

This is so despicable – yet credulous people all over the world believe it and condemn the very people who were victimized – demanding they meet and negotiate as with equals with the perpetrators of this violence.

Sad – so sad…

I, for one, stand with Israel!!!!

 

 

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Excellent interview series

July 28, 2014 — xanthippa

The first one in the series went up tonight – Robert Spencer.

Three  more are coming up this week, more coming later.

Each interview will be free for the first 48 hours (they go up at 8pm EDT), then a pay-wall pops up.

Enjoy!

 

 

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