Moral and Political Degradation

There is an extraordinary essay over at Crooks & Liars by Ian Welsh on the current political and moral status of our neighbour down south.

He writes this:

It is also noteworthy that spending billions on turning brown people into a fine red mist (a.k.a. the Afghan war) is acceptable, but health care (a.k.a. saving actual American lives) is something which can't cost money. What an interesting--and clearly evil--set of priorities that reveals. I guarantee that real healthcare reform would save more American lives than the entire war on terror—assuming said "war" hasn't cost more American lives than it's saved, which is almost certainly the case.

and also of Gitmo North where prisoners who can't be convicted for lack of evidence are held without trial:

people whom the government judges there is not enough evidence to convict, will be held indefinitely without trial. This is the very definition of tyranny. Any nation which does this is a nation of men, not laws. America has forsaken its fundamental premise and proved its degradation. Yes, this started under Bush, but as Obama embraces this, it because a bipartisan project and the new elite consensus. This is now something which has been confirmed as US policy which is extremely unlikely to change no matter who is in power.

The whole article is well worth reading in full, along with the comments.

It is heartbreaking for so many, many Americans, who had the glimmering of hope and now see it utterly destroyed.

Posted subsequently:

My friend Annie writes of a child soldier (the first in the world being prosecuted for war crimes) being included in this obscene US travesty of justice. He has been held without trial since 2002. The Canadian government is complicit in this by its silence.

Cartoon of the Week

Another day, another genocide

So depleted uranium is now being used on the civilians of Gaza. DEPLETED. URANIUM. This can cause cancers and birth defects for generations to come.

Of course this was a learned atrocity. The effects of depleted uranium are still being manifested in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf Invasion. No, I will not call it a war. These are all illegal invasions of sovereign countries with horrific weapons of mass destruction. The same kind of WMDs that Bush The Dim Decider lied about the terrorists having and thus forcing an illegal invasion of his own into beleagured Iraq. So this invasion of Gaza is very small potatoes indeed when compared to the uncountable victims (some estimate over a million) of the Bush slaughters.

And then we have the attacks on the UN schools in Gaza, children shredded in front of their parents, seven children in one family blown apart. The children were sent to the school for safety but were located by GPS systems used by the Israelis. The UN stands by helplessly. The US silent. Outrage is too tame a word for these horrific events.

And next up to the plate is U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates bleating for more dollars for more WMDs (let's call it like it is, people) for even more genocides in Afghanistan and Iraq. To the tune of a total of 140 billion dollars for 2009. US$140,000,000,000. How much does that work out per dead body?

All this in an imploding US economy where the populace at the end of 2009 will all be rattling their tin cups under bridges.

Here in Toronto, we did have a mass protest against the Israeli invasion this past Saturday, and another in Montreal - two of the few in North America and the biggest.

But really, who cares about such protests? There could be a million of us marching up to the Israeli embassies all over the world, it would not stop the needless death of a single innocent child.

We will only wake up when such horror happens on our own shores.