Isn't it amazing the reality -- that conspiracy theorists are not just paranoid whackos -- is shown in this YouTube clip of an interview with a CIGNA communications director by Bill Moyers on PBS. Conspiracies are the reality in the corporate world and in government.
The evidence on screen showed communications among the health insurance industry -- in guarded phrasing -- to arrange political lobbying and public media influencing, as well as the admissions on the program by one of the organizers who formerly acted as CIGNA's henchman but saw the Sicko documentary as being valid originally.
We have been watching the consistently successful 'blunting' of the 9-11 'theorists' by the political media supporting Cheney's agenda and wondering how long it would take before the public would stumble over some exposed ragged edge of the operations behind the scenes in the corporate world or maybe slipping out from government.
Apparently the 'healthcare' pushing and shoving was intense enough -- and not as hideous as 9-11 -- to turn up such a voice in the safety of a milder publishing venue.
It's not that we're in favor of the Moyers's defended victim of 'blunting' -- namely Michael Moore's movie "Sicko".
We have lived in Canada for 10 years and used their government healthcare system for ordinary routine doctor's visits mostly, including their clinics. The problem with heaping up the tax burdens required to support such a system, as is advocated in "Sicko", is that the product -- allopathic drug pushing -- is so damaging while being promoted as 'healthy' and 'care-solutions' and blessedly normal.
Other than the obstetric alternative possibilities -- home-like birth, midwives, etc available in some Euro systems -- those people are not otherwise healthier with their government tax-funded health care. Even Australia's statistics show the same death-roulette being played with the drug-pushers and disease-treatment pushers.
American stats -- allopathic-medicine caused deaths -- were the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, just below heart disease and cancer. That's the death-roulette that's being foisted in the US 'healthcare' solutions. There's little difference elsewhere in the industrialized world, other than the Euro's being able to use midwives, and the availability in some European countries of hypnosis as an anesthetic now emerging as majorly better than the assortment of drugs pumped into surgery patients for anesthesia (and related) purposes.
The problem we are facing in the US 'healthcare' scene is the drug industry (and their pushers in the AMA and the FDA) -- not just the insurers. Yet the entire fiasco in Washington DC is focused only on the insurers -- and those Americans who have no insurance.
Don't be fooled by the flim-flam misrepresentation of opinion polls where the media tell you -- the supposed innumerate reader -- what the numbers mean, like we saw in the USA Today's Gallup results just recently, to support their own favored political futures. The key factor was when the poll asked the participants the crucial question of setting cost containment against universal inclusiveness. People did, sensibly recognize and choose, cost containment in the large majority. Intuitively people see the financial damaging that the allopathic system is inflicting, including the fact that a majority of mortgage defaults was due to unexpected medical bills.
Many people already know that it's not fair to force people to participate in a program in the name of bogus inclusiveness which is what the proponents of the current favored bill was doing. The tactic used by the promoters of the current bill: Blaming those who refuse to pay their medical bills as adding to the insurance costs of those inside the insured group, when in fact those inside the insured group get tax benefits denied to those who are outside. But that's not all the money gaming in this blaming as we shall shortly see.
Being among those who don't carry the usual sort of insurance -- we self-insure, we don't want allopathic treatments and even avoid the optional Medicare coverage opportunities -- we would like to clue the public into the reality of where the pea is hidden in these shellgames called medical insurance for the uninsured -- some of whom, like us, don't want 'health insurance'.
When you have no big insurer behind you at the bill-paying point, the killers among the 'medical community' do present you -- their patient -- with prices that are sometimes anywhere from triple to ten times the price they charge the big insurers. It's no wonder many people who are not buying 'insurance' fail to pay their bills.
It took several months, many letters, persistent phone calls, extensive research to document the price discrepancies, the invalid charges, plus applications for programs and certifying of financial resources -- and ultimately in one case, confrontations with the doctor himself and the harassment staffers his incompetant biller had hired -- before the gougers backed off. The anesthetist had no clue what his out-sourced billers were doing and was amenable to reason and evidence.
For the surgeon, who was an independent (not a hospital-office supported practitioner) and was among the few who offered the same prices to self-insureds as they offered to big insurers, they were satisfied with a longterm, no-interest payment schedule and are now paid-off. Surely that would be the way that decent payment for services could be handled by providers in the health industry, since those surgeons were doing it and were a successful group practice. The insurance problem would be truly solved.
Accident coverage is not part of the drug-pushing and disease-treatment extortionary torture-scene routines. That true 'emergency' sort of MASH-unit resource is the appropriate limit -- based on observation and research -- for the allopathic professionals. Their disease treatment is thoroughly tainted.
More on alternatives to fill the gap, and on self-insuring financial planning later, because nutritional solutions, midwifery, and hypnosis have proven themselves to be far better health care than the blessed allopathy system with its drug-blessers and pushers.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Darwinian Bigotry in Judicial Malfeasance in a Divorce Case
North Carolina Judge Mangum in Wake County has disgraced himself -- and the freedom loving, self-confident half of the scientific world -- by engaging in what looks like science-bigotry in none other than a divorce case.
Talk about history mirroring itself. It was in Tennessee that the South did disgrace itself many years ago by engaging in religious-bigotry to prevent a teacher from introducing a theory – Darwin's Evolution – into his own Tennessee classroom to challenge a legislated bigotry that was designed to establish Bible teachings as official doctrines for students to accept without 'confusion' of other ideas of where humans came from.
This year is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. In the aftermath of the science community's impotence in the face of GWBushism's imposition of his own brand of political Christianity – done to stifle the environmental and other dissenting science advising voices opposing his policies -- now the science magazines, the academic community and the media have been engaging in an orgy of articles, full magazine focused issues and celebratory events to flaunt Darwinism 'rightness' and to ridicule 'creationism'. Their goal is to combat the residual political doctrines that had so irritated the science and academic world -- Bushism's religious group paybacks to political supporters, that evolution be demoted to questioned theory level in student textbooks. The overriding strident attitude of these editorials and feature articles was to trumpet a hollow sounding success story that encourages bigotry among those whose grasp of freedom's essence and American rights -- not to mention genuine scientific confidence when questioned -- is slipping into the dustbin.
It appears to have permeated the mind of Judge Mangum whose blatantly prejudiced orders to strip a homeschooling mother of her parental rights to suit an overly adulterous spouse in order to 'challenge' her children's religious beliefs is making so much unfavorable news that he's revised his initial reliance on everything that happened -- and was exposed online -- in the courtroom documents that have been hashed over on the internet – print and broadcast media – and trying to justify his original injustice on the basis of other less public documents which he thinks will not be as easily accessed by the public online. But we shall see, it doesn't look like the internet's justice system is going to be deterred any time soon.
The controversy is still generating a lot of attention with little consensus on the issues except that
-- parents should have the right to guide and structure their children's education and upbringing
and that
-- the judge thoroughly was making a mess of the case by ordering the children to attend public schooling while allowing the adulterous husband to live in the common home that he's disgraced with his adulterous affairs which still continue publicly. And further insisting that only the mother be psychologically evaluated, for which she would be expected to pay in spite of her current stay-at-home mother status as basically a pauper with the absolute minimum childsupport allowable under the state's formula, ignoring the substantial $122,000/year income of the adulterous father.
Politically, their state senator condemned the judge's order as 'terrible' and North Carolina Governor Perdue had just reaffirmed her position as supporting homeschooling for its contribution to excellence and to diversity in the education efforts of the state. All of which criticisms are likely being brought to the judge's notice just as opinions are being formulated publicly. Clearly the adulterous husband has considerable influence in the minds of some officials but his behavior is despicable and we would suggest that there be another poll conducted to answer the following issue.
Kings and baronets have abdicated their rights as kings and elites in order to be with their true love, giving up all power over the country they were ruling or ceding their titles to younger brothers. This kingship right is a family right. As is a barony. What about parenthood, is it abdicatable? Can it be lost due to malfeasance?
Just how unending is parenthood? Is the holder of the title 'parent' able to lose all power over the family rights that they once held? In fact, parenthood claims cease because some are able to give up their children for adoption. Parenthood ends then, so clearly it's not a lifelong, inalienable right and is abdicatable. What about a child abuser claiming parenthood? Even a pedophile. Conviction of serious crimes – felonies and damaging criminal activity – that result in lengthy imprisonment -- for violence especially -- effectively terminate most family relationships for at least the incarceration period and sometimes forever. Just how inalienable, vulnerable to malfeasance evidence, are parenthood's rights?
Florida, and by now probably other states, have judged that a child who is of a certain knowledgeable age – about early teen age, just a couple years older than these children -- can divorce his or her father – or mother – so the parent-right can be terminated at will for malfeasance, hence it can also be lost for malfeasance and is not inalienable.
In this contest of wills between Vanessa Mills and Thomas Mills, his demand that his children should not be allowed to continue homeschooling under their mother's direction is the pivotal issue.
To evaluate the fitness of the defendant Thomas Mills to be a co-parent, we need to evaluate the judge's decided preference for Thomas Mills – since the judge's apparent bias could be serving as an indicative favorable character witness.
The judge has -- unexplainably in justice terms -- sided with this adulterous husband to the extent of actually having made biased references in the court proceedings including to the idea that he would be looking forward to how public schooling would "challenge" Vanessa's teaching of her rightfully-held and chosen faith in the minds of her children. Unexplainably because – for a judge's professional responsibility, he's supposed to be committed to fairness and impartiality and evidence and to protecting the innocent children in divorce cases, not treating them as rats in a maze. Instead his judicial favoritism pointedly sided with the public school option (cheapest for one party and on that party's demand list) -- not an alternate private schooling less disruptive to the children considering their religious background and more acceptable to the other party in this dispute who had removed her children specifically from public schools, as well as sensibly acceptable presumably to a well-to-do reasonable father, clue number one. This judge-person's professional sense of justice does willingly want to put the children's feet to the flames instead of protecting their fragile interests. How much do you trust someone's judgment who would harm small animals and children in crisis? How trustworthy is his character valuation?
Bias occurs when opinions get adopted in spite of evidence to the contrary, leading to clue number two. The judge's bias – yes bias because the judge's statements are in conflict with the evidence presented in this case -- is confirmed by other comments he made. Specifically, in one comment he disparaged these children's education for lack of socialization in their homeschooling – which was effectively disputed with extensive lists of the children's social activities within and outside their homeschooling community, which evidence he was fully aware of in the documents that the presiding judge has in preparation for a case like this. How trustworthy is the judgement of someone who selectively ignores facts of evidence and presents character support for false claims?
The list of demonstrations of bias continues. The children are doing well academically – judging by the state's testing – and this academic progress under Vanessa's guidance was openly acknowledged in the courtroom by all parties. Yet the judge steadfastly maintains his opposition which is solely focused on their unusual religious beliefs that make them different from the public school's mandated teachings. The judge's attack is against homeschooling's rightful role as a valued diversity component of the state's education programming and a stimulus for excellence in learning. This role is specifically stated in the Governor's proclamation honoring homeschooling's academic excellence and diversity value to the state just recently. This judge is ignorant of or disdainful of the importance of diversity -- strictly bigotry, in spite of the testimony and evidence of his peers and betters in North Carolina's government. Such a stance shows ugly bigotry instead of judicial fairness based on evidence. Judge Mangum's bigoted performance disqualifies his opinion of the defendant adulterous husband, and in fact suggests an unsavory truth about his favored party.
There was no evidence presented that showed that the children's rightful comfort in their current caregiving was in need of improvement, with the exception of the influence of the adulterous husband. The current pseudo-science-based-bigotry is being applied by an ignorant judge instead of professional judgment of rightness, otherwise these conflicts between evidence and bigotry-based orders could not have happened. The judge has been brainwashed into desecrating constitutional respect for religious freedom. His reliance on the general consensus of the establishment scientific community in favor of evolution is no excuse for desecrating his responsibility to American justice under constitutional law.
Furthermore, a general consensus by the scientific community doesn't make the status of theories invulnerable to change. In the beginning of the last century, it was the consensus of the physics community within the science world that they had fully identified the laws of physics and it was now merely a matter of refinement of the constants of their glorified physical laws. Then came Einstein, then came quantum theory, then the physics community exploded with new ideas never dreamed of before in their earlier complacency. Genuine science doesn't quail before questioning people and instead demand that they salute. Personally I tend to think the evolution evidence – though not the science evidence on consciousness nor life -- will hold up to the ongoing exploration of the intricacies of how evolution works in the myriad situations where it must be operating. But that doesn't preclude honoring another's sincerely held ideas that hurt no one, including Thomas Mills nor the judge, and may in fact hold the key to understanding consciousness or life.
Hence we shall consider the Judge's opinion of the situation and his favored defendant to be faulty and shall disqualify that judge as a reliable character reference for the defendant. In fact we shall be leery of this defendant because the favorable opinion of his examining character witness – the court's judge -- is based on that witness blocking out evidence, which is a bad sign. However, we shall start again from scratch and examine the existing evidence and see what it shall indicate about whether Thomas Mills would be a fit co-parent or has abdicated his parental rights.
What evidence of parental aptitude has Thomas Mills shown or has he shown evidence of significant malfeasance and callous abusiveness in his dealings with these children and dishonesty in his claims of caring?
We begin by looking at his claims of caring and what they show about his motivations and priorities. He claims his success as a co-parent is dependent on Vanessa's ceasing to homeschool their children and that their children must attend public school. This is his priority demand so he can have equal co-custody. Some people would agree that his rights were being violated if his wife's chosen method of educating their children was to be continued at his expense. But what about the children's wellbeing since this is a priority in fairly adjudicating a divorce where children are involved. Otherwise the children's wellbeing is being set aside in favor of one demander – as are the parental rights of the other party being unjustly set aside.
Our precondition for even considering his demand should be that the children would be enrolled in a Montessori or Quaker private school which would be necessary to protect children being uprooted and shuffled around like property between hostile parties. And further it would be a precondition that the demander shall be responsible for all tuition since this change is at his own demand.
Thomas Mills' only reason available for making such a demand is so he can be fully involved in their children's education while they are in his custody. But has he demonstrated that this involvement is how he will operate when he is no longer under duress of court judgment? The children's wellbeing is at risk here as well as the imposition of a possible injustice to their mother's own rights to control her children's education and upbringing. That upbringing and education has been acknowledged by both the defendant and the judge -- in the courtroom -- to be fine mothering and to show proficiency in her handling her children's education. So we must not allow the children's welfare to be disrespected.
We shall not tolerate any cessation of homeschooling that does not meet the private schooling requirement. Should Thomas Mills insist that his requirement of public schooling is a precondition in order for him to agree to other settlement terms. We shall point out that this homeschooling arrangement was in place for the LAST FOUR YEARS during which it was never disputed UNTIL Vanessa filed for divorce after finding out about Thomas Mills' adulterous affairs. Somehow this his current demand suggests something other than genuine disputed parenthood rights on Thomas Mills' side, more like paybacks for divorcing him. This is what he would be revealing about his parenting motivations.
In addition it reveals that he gets other benefits from such a demand of insisting on public schooling. First of all, he avoids the expenses that she is incurring as part of her homeschooling processes. And public schooling is cheap by any financial standards and even moreso for him because his income would allow private schooling in the venues we have selected for their philosophy where children are respected.
With acceptance of our precondition of appropriate private schooling which he would pay for, we can now examine his track record of parenting under previous circumstances.
Thomas Mills' own proven acceptance for four years of Vanessa's religious-based homeschooling -- into which his contribution of time and attention was likely absent due to his philandering with a mistress -- suggests that his newfound upright-concern that his wife and children are 'IN A CULT' is fraudulent play-acting, indicating that he is fully capable of attempting to swindle the court, disrespecting the oath he took to tell the truth while telling a lie under oath. That alone would disqualify his pledges of caring co-parenting as reliable in our opinion.
But there's more to this strange lying than just reliability in pledging caregiving.
What sort of genuine parent would be pleased FOR FOUR YEARS-- including statements to that effect in his court testimony while simultaneously expecting the court to believe that the homeschooling of his children was an arrangement he genuinely considered to be 'BRAINWASHING' of those children 'IN A CULT' of Vanessa's choosing, making her the scapegoat of his displeasure??
Which leaves the alternative explanation standing that his demand is abusive in the extreme. Abusers' main weapon in holding their victims from relief and from escaping further abuse is to isolate them from friends and family. This tactic is recognized as a defining characteristic of abusers. Thomas Mill's phony concern – to which the judge is providing malfeasant support – does precisely this. Specifically, Vanessa's homeschooling friends and her church 'family' are in support of her rightful freedom from a terminated relationship with an adulterous husband and he knows his scapegoating claims will cut those ties better than he is otherwise able, especially if he and his lawyer can dupe the judge into enforcing Vanessa's separation from her support groups' mutual ongoing children's activities and social/religious events where divorced women are less welcome in most circles.
We may not be able to look over their shoulders in their private life – past – but we can measure some behaviors in their present circumstances and compare them to standards. Other signs of abusive mentality that are emerging include the suggestion for Vanessa to undergo demeaning evaluation as an unstable mother and his personal vendetta is to denigrate her publicly before her friends and church membership.
Add to that the monetary issues of their marital circumstances, where she must effectively submit individual requests for HIS approval of hers and the children's and household expenses before he will release the money. His financial status revealed his rather lavishly well-endowed income of over $9,000 PER MONTH with a house mortgage of only about $1,100 per month. What exactly is his other use of funds that he must be so completely tight-fisted and stingy, unless it's the need to pamper one or more mistresses, some of whom he still plays tennis with, openly embarrassing his wife and children in front of their friends and neighbors. Otherwise his money practices are simply another abusive tactic.
Nor has there been any claim by Thomas Mills that his personal and emotional needs were not met by his wife, nor that she is irresponsible with money. Nor is there any sign of some other source of income in Vanessa's past, such as an endowment or trustfund that she would be expected -- even obligated to consider -- to be using for her and her children's needs and expenses.
Can someone who has so many indicative behaviors that fit the description of an abuser actually be expected to be a caring co-parent?
What's the prospect for success as a co-parent in domestic relations experience?
My former brother-in-law was a decent co-parent but he was also a decent parent. Conversely, my own ex-husband immediately ceased to pay the minimum child support and was eventually excluded from further contact under risk of arrest for non-support of my children should he show up. That minimal amount was so low because my lawyer and my-now-ex's lawyer could not get agreement from him on any other higher amount and this was the rock bottom permissible amount in domestic relations rules -- even for minimal income situations -- even though my-now-ex was quite well off where he was and I was making the transition to new employment in my family's new home. When – in court -- the judge considered $25/month/child in 1983 to be unacceptably low, my own lawyer – who had spent many years in domestic relations court as judge as well as many years as a lawyer – cautioned the judge not to disallow this settlement and predicted that the child support would likely not be paid in any case since my lawyer's experience as a judge had shown him that there are men who do not perform as fathers and, in my case, my now-ex would never be a father to my children in any capacity in the lawyers' opinion because my now-ex was already reneging on his lawyer's billing and had an impressive lack of interest in his own young daughter to the extent that he had never held her for any longer than one picture taking moment or two since she was born 12 months before our divorce was filed. In my lawyer's own experience as a judge there was no point in expecting co-parenting when the individual was not a decent parent in the home before the disruption. Which my-now-ex wasn't and my sister's now-ex was. Rule applies across genders.
So now let's add up the evidence and figure out just whether co-parenting is a reasonable expectation or if Thomas Mills has abdicated his fatherhood of Vanessa's children and has criminally terminated their family-identity for his own pleasure.
Thomas Mills now claims that his children have been laboring under brainwashing influence as part of a cult religion that his wife did join FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS... while his father-role was what? Was he getting involved in 'his' children's educational activities, not likely, mistresses tend to complicate group activities? Was he so concerned about THE CULT that he was reaching out to change 'his' children's education arrangements, not according to his records. He was pleased with their academic progress. He considered his wife's homeschooling to be within his level of acceptability during the period while he was adulterous. Conveniently for his purposes in adultery. Obviously he not only had the time to do things, he had the money – AND THE CONTROL OF THAT MONEY'S EXPENDITURES ON HOMESCHOOLING – to make his wishes wellknown if they were in any conflict with hers. HIS NOW-CLAIMS ARE SEEN CLEARLY AS UNTRUE. His concern was to find and entertain a mistress or more than one, using his lavish income, boat, tennis and other apparently extensive free-time -- sufficient to do these things. We do judge him accordingly as having abdicated his fatherhood of Vanessa's children on the basis of malfeasance as a parent to those children and as having terminated his marital relationship with Vanessa, publicly.
Therefore we do find Thomas Mills in contempt of court for lying – under oath likely – about his parental role and about his concerns for his wife's sanity and her church relationship. He is merely abusing Vanessa and destroying the peaceful homeschooling lives of 'his' children -- now still successful academically and still socially involved with the wider public in their routine homeschooling events than they would otherwise be in public school – for his own pleasure and sadistic attempts to damage his wife who dared to divorce him for his criminal adultery.
We further maintain that his demands be dismissed and that the children's wellbeing be allowed to go undisturbed as much as possible.
Nor should he be able to fail to pay for the mortgage that he agreed to as the earning member of an economic union with Vanessa, minus an allowance for salary of his own personal housekeeper. However due to the unlikelihood of this ever reaching completion of this mortgage's terms since this arrangement will be seen as disagreeable to anybody in this divorcing situation, the house should be sold and the proceeds split, with an adequate portion set aside from Thomas Mills 50% share to cover the normal realignment of the stay-at-home partner's earning prospects. Thomas Mills – as the financial manager of the economic union he and Vanessa set up -- is obligated to honor the normal employment realignment requirements for Vanessa just as he would for himself if he had lost his income temporarily. An economic union is an economic union – evenfor those couples where they have arranged for one party to be a stay-at-home parent to the exclusion of that party's continued development of a career. Financial planning usually advises a 6 month savings account be established to cover the eventuality of a 'job-loss' requiring the finding and the beginning of new employment as available because this job-seeking is basically what he has caused. This implies a transition payment upfront to fund such six-month savings account for such an eventuality now occurring, even though -- or because -- Thomas Mills was the one whose earning career was enabled to thrive above his own individual powers because of full support at home. Taking the funding for this six-month savings account to support Vanessa's job transition out of the house sales proceeds is sensible because it is unlikely – though it is possible -- that he would have been agreeable without oversight. No further demands for her support shall be honored should they be made by Vanessa Mills.
As for child support, Thomas Mills will probably welch on that after the dust has settled so that child support amount should be alleviated or reduced to some safety minimum. Such precaution of establishing a defaulting figure is necessary in order to protect the children and Vanessa from later disruption of their post-divorce relief by an unsavory re-intrusion of an emotionally charged ex-husband in the future -- after never supporting the children as is frequently and tragically seen in general domestic relations practice. We do not recommend any but overseen visitation for Thomas Mills since he has displayed abusiveness in his personal relationship and neglect when it was to his advantage.
Vanessa now is responsible for her own children and her own wellbeing. Judging from the mortgage payment, the current home – at interest rates recently available for ordinary payment terms to credibly employed married men – could supply enough equity by now to adequately pay for a small, decent doublewide in the country, free and clear, assuming Thomas Mills was even a halfway decent manager of his own finances. With enough creativity, it's still possible to homeschool three well supplied responsible children – one at least 12 years old -- in Ohio using OHDELA -- Ohio Distance Education and Learning Academy which is quite friendly to homeschoolers -- and parttime work for Vanessa. Governor Perdue, how about in North Carolina?
Case closed. Court adjourned, we wish.
Talk about history mirroring itself. It was in Tennessee that the South did disgrace itself many years ago by engaging in religious-bigotry to prevent a teacher from introducing a theory – Darwin's Evolution – into his own Tennessee classroom to challenge a legislated bigotry that was designed to establish Bible teachings as official doctrines for students to accept without 'confusion' of other ideas of where humans came from.
This year is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. In the aftermath of the science community's impotence in the face of GWBushism's imposition of his own brand of political Christianity – done to stifle the environmental and other dissenting science advising voices opposing his policies -- now the science magazines, the academic community and the media have been engaging in an orgy of articles, full magazine focused issues and celebratory events to flaunt Darwinism 'rightness' and to ridicule 'creationism'. Their goal is to combat the residual political doctrines that had so irritated the science and academic world -- Bushism's religious group paybacks to political supporters, that evolution be demoted to questioned theory level in student textbooks. The overriding strident attitude of these editorials and feature articles was to trumpet a hollow sounding success story that encourages bigotry among those whose grasp of freedom's essence and American rights -- not to mention genuine scientific confidence when questioned -- is slipping into the dustbin.
It appears to have permeated the mind of Judge Mangum whose blatantly prejudiced orders to strip a homeschooling mother of her parental rights to suit an overly adulterous spouse in order to 'challenge' her children's religious beliefs is making so much unfavorable news that he's revised his initial reliance on everything that happened -- and was exposed online -- in the courtroom documents that have been hashed over on the internet – print and broadcast media – and trying to justify his original injustice on the basis of other less public documents which he thinks will not be as easily accessed by the public online. But we shall see, it doesn't look like the internet's justice system is going to be deterred any time soon.
The controversy is still generating a lot of attention with little consensus on the issues except that
-- parents should have the right to guide and structure their children's education and upbringing
and that
-- the judge thoroughly was making a mess of the case by ordering the children to attend public schooling while allowing the adulterous husband to live in the common home that he's disgraced with his adulterous affairs which still continue publicly. And further insisting that only the mother be psychologically evaluated, for which she would be expected to pay in spite of her current stay-at-home mother status as basically a pauper with the absolute minimum childsupport allowable under the state's formula, ignoring the substantial $122,000/year income of the adulterous father.
Politically, their state senator condemned the judge's order as 'terrible' and North Carolina Governor Perdue had just reaffirmed her position as supporting homeschooling for its contribution to excellence and to diversity in the education efforts of the state. All of which criticisms are likely being brought to the judge's notice just as opinions are being formulated publicly. Clearly the adulterous husband has considerable influence in the minds of some officials but his behavior is despicable and we would suggest that there be another poll conducted to answer the following issue.
Kings and baronets have abdicated their rights as kings and elites in order to be with their true love, giving up all power over the country they were ruling or ceding their titles to younger brothers. This kingship right is a family right. As is a barony. What about parenthood, is it abdicatable? Can it be lost due to malfeasance?
Just how unending is parenthood? Is the holder of the title 'parent' able to lose all power over the family rights that they once held? In fact, parenthood claims cease because some are able to give up their children for adoption. Parenthood ends then, so clearly it's not a lifelong, inalienable right and is abdicatable. What about a child abuser claiming parenthood? Even a pedophile. Conviction of serious crimes – felonies and damaging criminal activity – that result in lengthy imprisonment -- for violence especially -- effectively terminate most family relationships for at least the incarceration period and sometimes forever. Just how inalienable, vulnerable to malfeasance evidence, are parenthood's rights?
Florida, and by now probably other states, have judged that a child who is of a certain knowledgeable age – about early teen age, just a couple years older than these children -- can divorce his or her father – or mother – so the parent-right can be terminated at will for malfeasance, hence it can also be lost for malfeasance and is not inalienable.
In this contest of wills between Vanessa Mills and Thomas Mills, his demand that his children should not be allowed to continue homeschooling under their mother's direction is the pivotal issue.
To evaluate the fitness of the defendant Thomas Mills to be a co-parent, we need to evaluate the judge's decided preference for Thomas Mills – since the judge's apparent bias could be serving as an indicative favorable character witness.
The judge has -- unexplainably in justice terms -- sided with this adulterous husband to the extent of actually having made biased references in the court proceedings including to the idea that he would be looking forward to how public schooling would "challenge" Vanessa's teaching of her rightfully-held and chosen faith in the minds of her children. Unexplainably because – for a judge's professional responsibility, he's supposed to be committed to fairness and impartiality and evidence and to protecting the innocent children in divorce cases, not treating them as rats in a maze. Instead his judicial favoritism pointedly sided with the public school option (cheapest for one party and on that party's demand list) -- not an alternate private schooling less disruptive to the children considering their religious background and more acceptable to the other party in this dispute who had removed her children specifically from public schools, as well as sensibly acceptable presumably to a well-to-do reasonable father, clue number one. This judge-person's professional sense of justice does willingly want to put the children's feet to the flames instead of protecting their fragile interests. How much do you trust someone's judgment who would harm small animals and children in crisis? How trustworthy is his character valuation?
Bias occurs when opinions get adopted in spite of evidence to the contrary, leading to clue number two. The judge's bias – yes bias because the judge's statements are in conflict with the evidence presented in this case -- is confirmed by other comments he made. Specifically, in one comment he disparaged these children's education for lack of socialization in their homeschooling – which was effectively disputed with extensive lists of the children's social activities within and outside their homeschooling community, which evidence he was fully aware of in the documents that the presiding judge has in preparation for a case like this. How trustworthy is the judgement of someone who selectively ignores facts of evidence and presents character support for false claims?
The list of demonstrations of bias continues. The children are doing well academically – judging by the state's testing – and this academic progress under Vanessa's guidance was openly acknowledged in the courtroom by all parties. Yet the judge steadfastly maintains his opposition which is solely focused on their unusual religious beliefs that make them different from the public school's mandated teachings. The judge's attack is against homeschooling's rightful role as a valued diversity component of the state's education programming and a stimulus for excellence in learning. This role is specifically stated in the Governor's proclamation honoring homeschooling's academic excellence and diversity value to the state just recently. This judge is ignorant of or disdainful of the importance of diversity -- strictly bigotry, in spite of the testimony and evidence of his peers and betters in North Carolina's government. Such a stance shows ugly bigotry instead of judicial fairness based on evidence. Judge Mangum's bigoted performance disqualifies his opinion of the defendant adulterous husband, and in fact suggests an unsavory truth about his favored party.
There was no evidence presented that showed that the children's rightful comfort in their current caregiving was in need of improvement, with the exception of the influence of the adulterous husband. The current pseudo-science-based-bigotry is being applied by an ignorant judge instead of professional judgment of rightness, otherwise these conflicts between evidence and bigotry-based orders could not have happened. The judge has been brainwashed into desecrating constitutional respect for religious freedom. His reliance on the general consensus of the establishment scientific community in favor of evolution is no excuse for desecrating his responsibility to American justice under constitutional law.
Furthermore, a general consensus by the scientific community doesn't make the status of theories invulnerable to change. In the beginning of the last century, it was the consensus of the physics community within the science world that they had fully identified the laws of physics and it was now merely a matter of refinement of the constants of their glorified physical laws. Then came Einstein, then came quantum theory, then the physics community exploded with new ideas never dreamed of before in their earlier complacency. Genuine science doesn't quail before questioning people and instead demand that they salute. Personally I tend to think the evolution evidence – though not the science evidence on consciousness nor life -- will hold up to the ongoing exploration of the intricacies of how evolution works in the myriad situations where it must be operating. But that doesn't preclude honoring another's sincerely held ideas that hurt no one, including Thomas Mills nor the judge, and may in fact hold the key to understanding consciousness or life.
Hence we shall consider the Judge's opinion of the situation and his favored defendant to be faulty and shall disqualify that judge as a reliable character reference for the defendant. In fact we shall be leery of this defendant because the favorable opinion of his examining character witness – the court's judge -- is based on that witness blocking out evidence, which is a bad sign. However, we shall start again from scratch and examine the existing evidence and see what it shall indicate about whether Thomas Mills would be a fit co-parent or has abdicated his parental rights.
What evidence of parental aptitude has Thomas Mills shown or has he shown evidence of significant malfeasance and callous abusiveness in his dealings with these children and dishonesty in his claims of caring?
We begin by looking at his claims of caring and what they show about his motivations and priorities. He claims his success as a co-parent is dependent on Vanessa's ceasing to homeschool their children and that their children must attend public school. This is his priority demand so he can have equal co-custody. Some people would agree that his rights were being violated if his wife's chosen method of educating their children was to be continued at his expense. But what about the children's wellbeing since this is a priority in fairly adjudicating a divorce where children are involved. Otherwise the children's wellbeing is being set aside in favor of one demander – as are the parental rights of the other party being unjustly set aside.
Our precondition for even considering his demand should be that the children would be enrolled in a Montessori or Quaker private school which would be necessary to protect children being uprooted and shuffled around like property between hostile parties. And further it would be a precondition that the demander shall be responsible for all tuition since this change is at his own demand.
Thomas Mills' only reason available for making such a demand is so he can be fully involved in their children's education while they are in his custody. But has he demonstrated that this involvement is how he will operate when he is no longer under duress of court judgment? The children's wellbeing is at risk here as well as the imposition of a possible injustice to their mother's own rights to control her children's education and upbringing. That upbringing and education has been acknowledged by both the defendant and the judge -- in the courtroom -- to be fine mothering and to show proficiency in her handling her children's education. So we must not allow the children's welfare to be disrespected.
We shall not tolerate any cessation of homeschooling that does not meet the private schooling requirement. Should Thomas Mills insist that his requirement of public schooling is a precondition in order for him to agree to other settlement terms. We shall point out that this homeschooling arrangement was in place for the LAST FOUR YEARS during which it was never disputed UNTIL Vanessa filed for divorce after finding out about Thomas Mills' adulterous affairs. Somehow this his current demand suggests something other than genuine disputed parenthood rights on Thomas Mills' side, more like paybacks for divorcing him. This is what he would be revealing about his parenting motivations.
In addition it reveals that he gets other benefits from such a demand of insisting on public schooling. First of all, he avoids the expenses that she is incurring as part of her homeschooling processes. And public schooling is cheap by any financial standards and even moreso for him because his income would allow private schooling in the venues we have selected for their philosophy where children are respected.
With acceptance of our precondition of appropriate private schooling which he would pay for, we can now examine his track record of parenting under previous circumstances.
Thomas Mills' own proven acceptance for four years of Vanessa's religious-based homeschooling -- into which his contribution of time and attention was likely absent due to his philandering with a mistress -- suggests that his newfound upright-concern that his wife and children are 'IN A CULT' is fraudulent play-acting, indicating that he is fully capable of attempting to swindle the court, disrespecting the oath he took to tell the truth while telling a lie under oath. That alone would disqualify his pledges of caring co-parenting as reliable in our opinion.
But there's more to this strange lying than just reliability in pledging caregiving.
What sort of genuine parent would be pleased FOR FOUR YEARS-- including statements to that effect in his court testimony while simultaneously expecting the court to believe that the homeschooling of his children was an arrangement he genuinely considered to be 'BRAINWASHING' of those children 'IN A CULT' of Vanessa's choosing, making her the scapegoat of his displeasure??
Which leaves the alternative explanation standing that his demand is abusive in the extreme. Abusers' main weapon in holding their victims from relief and from escaping further abuse is to isolate them from friends and family. This tactic is recognized as a defining characteristic of abusers. Thomas Mill's phony concern – to which the judge is providing malfeasant support – does precisely this. Specifically, Vanessa's homeschooling friends and her church 'family' are in support of her rightful freedom from a terminated relationship with an adulterous husband and he knows his scapegoating claims will cut those ties better than he is otherwise able, especially if he and his lawyer can dupe the judge into enforcing Vanessa's separation from her support groups' mutual ongoing children's activities and social/religious events where divorced women are less welcome in most circles.
We may not be able to look over their shoulders in their private life – past – but we can measure some behaviors in their present circumstances and compare them to standards. Other signs of abusive mentality that are emerging include the suggestion for Vanessa to undergo demeaning evaluation as an unstable mother and his personal vendetta is to denigrate her publicly before her friends and church membership.
Add to that the monetary issues of their marital circumstances, where she must effectively submit individual requests for HIS approval of hers and the children's and household expenses before he will release the money. His financial status revealed his rather lavishly well-endowed income of over $9,000 PER MONTH with a house mortgage of only about $1,100 per month. What exactly is his other use of funds that he must be so completely tight-fisted and stingy, unless it's the need to pamper one or more mistresses, some of whom he still plays tennis with, openly embarrassing his wife and children in front of their friends and neighbors. Otherwise his money practices are simply another abusive tactic.
Nor has there been any claim by Thomas Mills that his personal and emotional needs were not met by his wife, nor that she is irresponsible with money. Nor is there any sign of some other source of income in Vanessa's past, such as an endowment or trustfund that she would be expected -- even obligated to consider -- to be using for her and her children's needs and expenses.
Can someone who has so many indicative behaviors that fit the description of an abuser actually be expected to be a caring co-parent?
What's the prospect for success as a co-parent in domestic relations experience?
My former brother-in-law was a decent co-parent but he was also a decent parent. Conversely, my own ex-husband immediately ceased to pay the minimum child support and was eventually excluded from further contact under risk of arrest for non-support of my children should he show up. That minimal amount was so low because my lawyer and my-now-ex's lawyer could not get agreement from him on any other higher amount and this was the rock bottom permissible amount in domestic relations rules -- even for minimal income situations -- even though my-now-ex was quite well off where he was and I was making the transition to new employment in my family's new home. When – in court -- the judge considered $25/month/child in 1983 to be unacceptably low, my own lawyer – who had spent many years in domestic relations court as judge as well as many years as a lawyer – cautioned the judge not to disallow this settlement and predicted that the child support would likely not be paid in any case since my lawyer's experience as a judge had shown him that there are men who do not perform as fathers and, in my case, my now-ex would never be a father to my children in any capacity in the lawyers' opinion because my now-ex was already reneging on his lawyer's billing and had an impressive lack of interest in his own young daughter to the extent that he had never held her for any longer than one picture taking moment or two since she was born 12 months before our divorce was filed. In my lawyer's own experience as a judge there was no point in expecting co-parenting when the individual was not a decent parent in the home before the disruption. Which my-now-ex wasn't and my sister's now-ex was. Rule applies across genders.
So now let's add up the evidence and figure out just whether co-parenting is a reasonable expectation or if Thomas Mills has abdicated his fatherhood of Vanessa's children and has criminally terminated their family-identity for his own pleasure.
Thomas Mills now claims that his children have been laboring under brainwashing influence as part of a cult religion that his wife did join FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARS... while his father-role was what? Was he getting involved in 'his' children's educational activities, not likely, mistresses tend to complicate group activities? Was he so concerned about THE CULT that he was reaching out to change 'his' children's education arrangements, not according to his records. He was pleased with their academic progress. He considered his wife's homeschooling to be within his level of acceptability during the period while he was adulterous. Conveniently for his purposes in adultery. Obviously he not only had the time to do things, he had the money – AND THE CONTROL OF THAT MONEY'S EXPENDITURES ON HOMESCHOOLING – to make his wishes wellknown if they were in any conflict with hers. HIS NOW-CLAIMS ARE SEEN CLEARLY AS UNTRUE. His concern was to find and entertain a mistress or more than one, using his lavish income, boat, tennis and other apparently extensive free-time -- sufficient to do these things. We do judge him accordingly as having abdicated his fatherhood of Vanessa's children on the basis of malfeasance as a parent to those children and as having terminated his marital relationship with Vanessa, publicly.
Therefore we do find Thomas Mills in contempt of court for lying – under oath likely – about his parental role and about his concerns for his wife's sanity and her church relationship. He is merely abusing Vanessa and destroying the peaceful homeschooling lives of 'his' children -- now still successful academically and still socially involved with the wider public in their routine homeschooling events than they would otherwise be in public school – for his own pleasure and sadistic attempts to damage his wife who dared to divorce him for his criminal adultery.
We further maintain that his demands be dismissed and that the children's wellbeing be allowed to go undisturbed as much as possible.
Nor should he be able to fail to pay for the mortgage that he agreed to as the earning member of an economic union with Vanessa, minus an allowance for salary of his own personal housekeeper. However due to the unlikelihood of this ever reaching completion of this mortgage's terms since this arrangement will be seen as disagreeable to anybody in this divorcing situation, the house should be sold and the proceeds split, with an adequate portion set aside from Thomas Mills 50% share to cover the normal realignment of the stay-at-home partner's earning prospects. Thomas Mills – as the financial manager of the economic union he and Vanessa set up -- is obligated to honor the normal employment realignment requirements for Vanessa just as he would for himself if he had lost his income temporarily. An economic union is an economic union – evenfor those couples where they have arranged for one party to be a stay-at-home parent to the exclusion of that party's continued development of a career. Financial planning usually advises a 6 month savings account be established to cover the eventuality of a 'job-loss' requiring the finding and the beginning of new employment as available because this job-seeking is basically what he has caused. This implies a transition payment upfront to fund such six-month savings account for such an eventuality now occurring, even though -- or because -- Thomas Mills was the one whose earning career was enabled to thrive above his own individual powers because of full support at home. Taking the funding for this six-month savings account to support Vanessa's job transition out of the house sales proceeds is sensible because it is unlikely – though it is possible -- that he would have been agreeable without oversight. No further demands for her support shall be honored should they be made by Vanessa Mills.
As for child support, Thomas Mills will probably welch on that after the dust has settled so that child support amount should be alleviated or reduced to some safety minimum. Such precaution of establishing a defaulting figure is necessary in order to protect the children and Vanessa from later disruption of their post-divorce relief by an unsavory re-intrusion of an emotionally charged ex-husband in the future -- after never supporting the children as is frequently and tragically seen in general domestic relations practice. We do not recommend any but overseen visitation for Thomas Mills since he has displayed abusiveness in his personal relationship and neglect when it was to his advantage.
Vanessa now is responsible for her own children and her own wellbeing. Judging from the mortgage payment, the current home – at interest rates recently available for ordinary payment terms to credibly employed married men – could supply enough equity by now to adequately pay for a small, decent doublewide in the country, free and clear, assuming Thomas Mills was even a halfway decent manager of his own finances. With enough creativity, it's still possible to homeschool three well supplied responsible children – one at least 12 years old -- in Ohio using OHDELA -- Ohio Distance Education and Learning Academy which is quite friendly to homeschoolers -- and parttime work for Vanessa. Governor Perdue, how about in North Carolina?
Case closed. Court adjourned, we wish.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
CBS 60Minutes Disgraced: Caught Mouthing Hamas Propaganda
Recently, the word was spreading around that the Israelis were proving that the Palestinian Hamas "warriors" were definitely using UN schools, hospitals, as well as their own mosque sites and their people in them as human shields for Hamas' rocket launching equipment and operations. The broadcast proof was said to be on YouTube. Those who had recommended this YouTube channel do specialize in monitoring videographic presentations for signs of doctored photographics so the trip to have a look seemed warranted inn order to see the reality from a cockpit at the combat site. I went to Google to find it:
Israel Air Force Precision Strike on Qassam Rocket Launcher 30 Dec. 2008 From IDFNADesk
The images on this and other clips from IDF flight videos showed targets being hit and moments later massive explosions when the initial strike ignited munitions hidden in or adjacent to those buildings. Effectively the Hamas "warriors" were hiding their artillery behind the skirts of women and children, behind the wounded in medical facilities, behind the religious peoples there.
But I also noticed a link among the Google references that showed that CBS -- that major trusted TV broadcaster in the US -- had reported on the YouTube effort by the Israeli's. This was -- I thought -- amazingly good news because it would mean that the constant stories of atrocities would now focus on the use of non-combatants as human shields. So I went to see what CBS had discovered:
Israeli Military Pounds Gaza, On YouTube Posted by Khaled Wassef, an analyst and producer with the CBS News Internet terrorism monitoring team.
The article was unbelievably misrepresenting the reality of what the videos had shown. The initial paragraphs were straight factual:
But the conclusion of the CBS report -- for the non-benefit of those who would probably never go surfing over to YouTube for their own look, possibly since the factual portion had made the point that some clips supposedly showed carnage (which was not in any of the footage that I had seen) -- completely misled readers as to the important content. Hiding the reality of the Hamas abuse of non-combatants, CBS stated that the footage showed that the IAF was not as accurate as they'd like the public to believe! Specifically:
What, a lie? Was CBS simply hiring unscrupulous writers with their own personal bias on display and strangely no editor curious enough to check the article? Was there a larger group -- including editors and fact-checkers -- who were covering the conflict in the middle east at the moment and were consciously doctoring data? Maybe some large stockholders had bought major segments of CBS ownership issues and undeniably had influenced the hiring practices or just editorial judgment?
Ordinarily, I wouldn't even have been interested in foreign affairs, much less digging further, but the idea that the once revered venue that produced Walter Kronkite had such a twisted propaganda arm in place was puzzling. I personally would not qualify for any favoritism by Israeli government acceptance as an immigrant. To the Jewish world, I've been labeled a 'shicksa' and my son was called a 'sheigitz' (spelling unknown) by my former mother-in-law. Not that I was ever interested in going to Israel. But my instinctive alarm over such a misrepresentation of reality by a major source of trusted information was ignited. So I looked around for other CBS coverage.
It didn't take long to find that the article hiding the Hamas cowardice and abusiveness of their own people was part of a much larger CBS fantasy production. Video after video was up at the CBS online site whose headlines fit the same picture of Israeli troublemaking and Hamas/Palestinian victimization, with peace as lost and hopeless. Check these examples:
So we did, check them, and this is what we found in the one titled "Time Running Out for a Two-State Solution". For your convenient study, the text from CBS is presented with highlighted commentary to raise flags as necessary for decent FACT-CHECKING, which we do for our own operation here in our in-house research, my son included:
QUESTION: How would it make sense to spend scarce civic construction money on a high speed highway then clog it with hundreds of checkpoints to make it secure enough. In order to carry other-than-Israeli traffic how could it be done without those hundreds of checkpoints? Perhaps there's some logic to the absence of any checkpoints on the highway and the limitation on users that has escaped CBS's writers' mental image of the fantasy they are constructing and it would spoil their big viewership emotional response to clutter up the image with logical complicating ideas of how to accomplish their wishes. We would also wonder if some complication on construction cost-sharing -- as we shall see in the water system -- affected the highway sharing.
FACT: Barghouti's cousin was convicted in Israel of the murder of several people and is held in prison there -- where he, Barghouti, is excluded. Guess that fact slipped Barghouti's mind as a possible reason why his visiting privileges might be reduced, because he "neglected" to inform CBS's Simon. As for Simon's research skills -- or those of CBS' vaunted 60Minutes fact checkers -- this connection was found in a quick search of Google records on Barghouti. Either CBS has a seriously pathetic research team or they have no interest in disturbing the fantasy-story they calculate will draw large viewership. Possibly trumped-up war-stories are as good for TV networks as murders were once said to be for selling newspapers. Would a broadcast network be inclined to nudge viewers into an angry mindset and risk US military involvement in an unjust war venture just to boost prime-time? What would be their dis-incentive? Not financial.
FACT: The incendiary concatenation of this image of crusader invasiveness with the subsequent assertion that the invasiveness is rampant with presumeably settlers invading and occupying Arabs space "inside their own homes" -- after all, settlers' actions were the topic of this paragraph, not Israeli military on security missions -- is sheer calculated hyperbole. The CBS fantasy writers swing right into a vignette to cover the sleight of tongue as though they have easily discovered an ugly example. That's sheer theater tactics, not news reporting.
As for the location of the settlers enclaves, and yes they would need to be fully community operations because the settlers were originally not welcomed decently... what a crime, "little cities"... don't the Palestinians live in their own towns and "little cities"?
And then there's the accusation that the settlers had taken the 'high ground' as if that were the most desirable in the WestBank. When the settlers began arriving in the beginning, there were no critical services like water and electric for the area and the prime locations were in the bottoms where the water at least would be accumulated naturally and be handy. In those areas the Palestinians had already made the prime land their own. The settlers were told by the Israelis to occupy the then-less-desirable heights, as also offering some security from an unstable situation as well as being what was less contentiously undesirable by the existing population of Palestinians.
When water services were proposed later, the Palestinians were negative, some refusing entirely to participate, some Palestinian officials refusing to contribute their community funding share to the project which put the entire price of the water for their people on the individual Palestinian using the water service. Furthermore, the water coming through the pipelines used by the settlers -- and those Palestinians who did stubbornly choose to be connected to the pipelines in spite of their "leaders" decisions -- is Israeli water, not Palestinian water. It is being pumped from Israeli aquifers within the Israeli boundaries with the exception of a couple wells within meters of the boundary.
The data on the water situation is available online with a simple Google search and download. In pdf form it will be attached here for further reading. Amazing lack of fact-checking by a major news organization makes you wonder whether the entire American schoolsystem is responsible for some mental character-flaw where the listener is expected to take every, and only the, word of some authority and to simply repeat it on request. Totally schoolish. CBS factcheckers do fit the image and their management apparently expects that their viewership will also simply swallow the fantasy pill as presented by their 60Minute news authority experts without questioning any part of the concoction.
NOTE: CBS has access to much more senior political contacts, yet they basically wimp out on asking anyone with more authority to discuss legal/political issues whether this is standard practice for a war-zone. Nor do we have any clue on how long this particular surveillance operation has been active.
Note also that the demure, beautiful woman that is in one of these scenes and never says a word or plays any significant role, becomes the main icon used for the cover image to the entire video, in contrast to the burly, roughneck woman mayor from one of the troublemaking settlers' groups who was featured repeatedly and usually quoted after presenting her with incendiary remarks that challenged the safety of the settlers from eviction from the homes they've built, diminishing the roles they've played in support of the occupation's security.
NOTE: Curious lack of notice by Bob Simon that larger families in circumstances where you can't find jobs or support your existing population is rather irresponsible for anyone else to do. In this fantasy of CBS creation, it's just a 'strategy'. Interesting that the Hamas use of women and children as human-shields could also be confirmation that the value of individual lives is in low regard and that more human-shields are expected to be useful for their 'strategy', hence the women must produce more human-shields -- or warriors if needed . Canon-fodder time is immoral personal, civic and military operation. Yet we see no uprising against Hamas in any of Simon's reporting. Support for those who make your children into human shields makes no sense. Possibly the Palestinians are, in effect, hostages of the Hamas mafia and are excusably Stockholm syndrome affected, which is not an attempt at diagnosis only an observation reminiscent of the Patti Hearst events of my graduate school days when we saw the kidnap victim join her kidnappers and take up weapons to rob banks to get funds to support her abusive kidnappers' agenda.
FACT: CBS is again repeating a standard -- but gross 'inaccuracy' -- line from the Palestinian propaganda machine. The pdf attached above -- including factual data on water in the West Bank and Gaza -- and cited earlier shows the reality of Palestinian refusal to participate in the construction of the water pipeline.
Further the damning idea that Israelis are profligate water-wasters and that the Israeli claim to greening the desert -- by using intelligent methods of agriculture and conservation -- is supposedly exposed as phony are also revealed to be gross propaganda when checking the facts. The Israelis' water usage is approaching the sustainability levels that have been measured for their water sources and the Israelis have been the 2nd lowest water users among the arab neighboring countries.
FACT: Livni is as athletic and brusque as any military paratrooper and constitutes the embarassing third puppet-image for this feminized theatrical production, to contrast with the burly settlerwoman and the demure silent arab beauty. Livni is tough and impressive and promising brutal fighting among the Israeli troops and the settlers. Stay tuned, viewers! More theater! To CBS, of course, the broadcaster who also knows how to use women.
CBS has presented this image of the settlers as brutal invaders who don't belong there, but the fact is that Israel has absorbed over 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries so that by now there are almost no Jewish refugees left to come, but the Arab 'brothers' have outright refused to absorb the Palestinian refugees, not even lining up to provide substantial resources for them -- nothing sufficient to thrive, only to suffer -- much less encouraging them to come to their brothers' homelands. Just the opposite. The Egyptians shoot at Palestinians trying to flee Gaza. (See evidence below).
The Palestinians never did have a state of their own either. There was no reason why they should have been considered to have been forced to be refugees for these 40 years when they could have had their own state -- multiple times in past negotiations as far back as 1967 when the offer was made to them after they had been evicted from Israel for the attack that led to the 1967 Seven Day War. Or even been welcomed into the homelands of their Arab 'brothers', but they were more convenient and useful to their Arab brothers as abscesses on the Israeli border. What would Americans have done if we were the Palestinians' arab brothers with our refugee brothers on our doorsteps? Think about it.
Further, none of the current states in the Arab world were in existence much longer than the Israeli state, so the claims of invasive state-creation is diminished to a suspect claim. There were over a million Jews spread out in the Arab world in 1948, and if they had not been badly treated by those Arabs, why have those populations of Jews emigrated to the point that there are few left in Arab countries and Israel has welcomed 600,000 of them when they arrived destitute on Israel's doorstep. The Arab world and their Palestinian brothers are the cause of the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. The earliest Arab state was a product of the WWI conflict resolution, barely 40 years prior to Israel's claim. The other Arab statehood dates are even later -- Syria as late as 1941 and Kuwait in 1961. Prior to WWI, the area was mostly ruled by Turkey, and subsequently imperially 'incubated' by France and England while they were supposedly developing their infrastructure for independence again in some new form. Ethnic groups were not neatly separated, the Jewish population had an established presence in the area and their claim to statehood is contemporary with the objecting Arab countries. (See the population movements in the evidence below).
There were 600,000 Jews in Israel in 1948, and over 1,000,000 jewish refugees in the Arab countries surrounding Israel. Israel has demonstrated their statehood-worthiness in both economic, military and humanitarian responsibility for their Jewish brothers effectively banished from the Arab territories, something their Arab neighbors have yet to demonstrate for their own brotherhood. The Egyptians guard their border with Gaza and treat any Palestinians trying to escape the carnage in Gaza as if they were criminals to be excluded from Egypt at all costs. Jordan even reneged on supplying their agreed quota of critical water for the Palestinians. Only the Israelis have supplied access to water from their own resources as well as electric from their own resources.
All of these 'inconvenient truths' are public knowledge if any fact-checkers or responsible editors were employed by CBS News. The sources quoted in the pdf on water and the public history dates, the history facts are all credible sources, not just Israeli propaganda.
How long will the American viewers remain docile in the face of CBS lying to us? How long will Americans continue to trust the educational curriculum and training of the factory-schoolsystem that inculcates this sort of docile ignorance and susceptibility to trumped-up enthusiasms that make such scams as CBS is pulling over viewers' eyes possible? For whose benefit is this fantasy-enthusiasm being created and where will those misled by it be circumstantially guilty of what crimes?
Stay tuned to CBS? We have a new administration that is currently more trusting of such fantasies as CBS is broadcasting. Where will they lead? Will there be more alertness when we are told the sky is falling. And yes, there's going to be carnage, and yes we care, and we realize this is a warzone where carnage happens. The Israelis airlift warnings -- air-dropped leaflets to be precise -- but war produces disasterous mindsets that need to be corrected, which we have seen happens occasionally among the Israelis when one of their combatants goes over the edge. Hamas however is the supposedly elected government of the Palestinians and that government is totally over the edge (see the evidence below) and will not be at all capable of justice. In fact, since there is such a curiously drastic difference between Gaza and the West Bank in the guerilla activities, it would appear that the Hamas have decided that Gaza is not worth a decent life since they concentrate their death-and-destruction activities in Gaza, effectively deciding that Gaza's people are to be sacrificed as victims -- useful for crying and reproducing. If there were a decent humanitarian peace group, their focus would be to transfer Gazans -- willing to be abandoning everything in their current homes that they cannot carry -- to new homes in the West Bank. There are instances covered online of what happens to Gazans who protest to Hamas when they don't wish to be human shields any longer and the Hamas response was gruesome. The peace groups on site are the only ones capable of finding a way to do something to relieve the unwilling sacrificial human shields.
So where is the UN, to insist that the Palestinians should be welcomed into the countries of the surrounding Arab states? The UN? All hiding behind their own oil dependence. At least for now. If the end of the oil age is approaching, this whole scenario could turn totally around. It would seem the only practical solution is to stall while we work for independence from foreign oil. Then insist that the Palestinians be re-settled by their Arab brothers. Some attempts at progress on this oil-independence path are in play all over the world -- third world and first world. Economics is going in this direction if we can just keep the situation from getting out of control with trumped-up enthusiasms based on 'gross inaccuracies' THEN PEACE IS NOT OUT OF REACH AS CBS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.
Israel Air Force Precision Strike on Qassam Rocket Launcher 30 Dec. 2008 From IDFNADesk
The images on this and other clips from IDF flight videos showed targets being hit and moments later massive explosions when the initial strike ignited munitions hidden in or adjacent to those buildings. Effectively the Hamas "warriors" were hiding their artillery behind the skirts of women and children, behind the wounded in medical facilities, behind the religious peoples there.
But I also noticed a link among the Google references that showed that CBS -- that major trusted TV broadcaster in the US -- had reported on the YouTube effort by the Israeli's. This was -- I thought -- amazingly good news because it would mean that the constant stories of atrocities would now focus on the use of non-combatants as human shields. So I went to see what CBS had discovered:
Israeli Military Pounds Gaza, On YouTube Posted by Khaled Wassef, an analyst and producer with the CBS News Internet terrorism monitoring team.
The article was unbelievably misrepresenting the reality of what the videos had shown. The initial paragraphs were straight factual:
(CBSNEWS) Video clips of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) strikes on Gaza have been posted on a special channel set up by the Israeli military on the famous video-sharing Web site, YouTube.
The channel youtube.com/user/idfnadesk was launched on Dec. 29, 2008, and has already attracted 4,122 subscribers. Twelve videos are on-show so far.
YouTube requires age verification if you want to see some of the clips that show missile strikes on human targets.
Some of the videos have already been censored, and then restored by YouTube.
"We were saddened on Dec. 30, 2008 when YouTube took down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's (Israeli Defense Forces) operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip. Fortunately, due to blogger and viewer support, YouTube has returned the footage they removed," a message posted on the channel's page explained.
But the conclusion of the CBS report -- for the non-benefit of those who would probably never go surfing over to YouTube for their own look, possibly since the factual portion had made the point that some clips supposedly showed carnage (which was not in any of the footage that I had seen) -- completely misled readers as to the important content. Hiding the reality of the Hamas abuse of non-combatants, CBS stated that the footage showed that the IAF was not as accurate as they'd like the public to believe! Specifically:
(CBSNEWS) The IDF move to set up a channel on YouTube comes amid reports of heavy civilian casualties suggesting that the Israeli air strikes on Gaza may not be as 'surgical' as claimed by the IAF.
What, a lie? Was CBS simply hiring unscrupulous writers with their own personal bias on display and strangely no editor curious enough to check the article? Was there a larger group -- including editors and fact-checkers -- who were covering the conflict in the middle east at the moment and were consciously doctoring data? Maybe some large stockholders had bought major segments of CBS ownership issues and undeniably had influenced the hiring practices or just editorial judgment?
Ordinarily, I wouldn't even have been interested in foreign affairs, much less digging further, but the idea that the once revered venue that produced Walter Kronkite had such a twisted propaganda arm in place was puzzling. I personally would not qualify for any favoritism by Israeli government acceptance as an immigrant. To the Jewish world, I've been labeled a 'shicksa' and my son was called a 'sheigitz' (spelling unknown) by my former mother-in-law. Not that I was ever interested in going to Israel. But my instinctive alarm over such a misrepresentation of reality by a major source of trusted information was ignited. So I looked around for other CBS coverage.
It didn't take long to find that the article hiding the Hamas cowardice and abusiveness of their own people was part of a much larger CBS fantasy production. Video after video was up at the CBS online site whose headlines fit the same picture of Israeli troublemaking and Hamas/Palestinian victimization, with peace as lost and hopeless. Check these examples:
Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution? 60 Minutes: Growing Number Of Israelis, Palestinians Say Two-State Solution Is No Longer Possible
Has peace in the Middle East become nothing more than a pipe dream? As Bob Simon reports, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians feel that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
Is Peace Out Of Reach? (13:09)
* Hamas political leader Moussa Abu Marzuk explained to Steve Kroft, in 2002, that the terrorist organization was developing missiles to escalate the conflict with Israel beyond suicide bombings.
Hamas (3:35)
* Bob Simon reported from Israel and the West Bank in 2003, where the construction of a fence to block Palestinian suicide bombers had received international opposition.
The Fence (4:45)
So we did, check them, and this is what we found in the one titled "Time Running Out for a Two-State Solution". For your convenient study, the text from CBS is presented with highlighted commentary to raise flags as necessary for decent FACT-CHECKING, which we do for our own operation here in our in-house research, my son included:
(CBS) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.
It's known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.
Daniella Weiss moved from Israel to the West Bank 33 years ago. She has been the mayor of a large settlement.
"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.
Though settlers and Palestinians don't agree on anything, most do agree now that a peace deal has been overtaken by events.
"While my heart still wants to believe that the two-state solution is possible, my brain keeps telling me the opposite because of what I see in terms of the building of settlements. So, these settlers are destroying the potential peace for both people that would have been created if we had a two-state solution," Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, once a former candidate for Palestinian president, told Simon.
And he told 60 Minutes Israel's invasion of Gaza - all the death and destruction in response to rockets from Hamas - convinces him that Israel does not want a two-state solution. "My heart is deeply broken, and I am very worried that what Israel has done has furthered us much further from the possibility of [a] two-state solution."
Palestinians had hoped to establish their state on the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware. But Israelis have split it up with scores of settlements, and hundreds of miles of new highways that only settlers can use. Palestinians have to drive - or ride - on the older roads.
When they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank.
QUESTION: How would it make sense to spend scarce civic construction money on a high speed highway then clog it with hundreds of checkpoints to make it secure enough. In order to carry other-than-Israeli traffic how could it be done without those hundreds of checkpoints? Perhaps there's some logic to the absence of any checkpoints on the highway and the limitation on users that has escaped CBS's writers' mental image of the fantasy they are constructing and it would spoil their big viewership emotional response to clutter up the image with logical complicating ideas of how to accomplish their wishes. We would also wonder if some complication on construction cost-sharing -- as we shall see in the water system -- affected the highway sharing.
(CBS) Asked why there are so many checkpoints, Dr. Barghouti said, "I think the main goal is to fragment the West Bank. Maybe a little bit of them can be justified because they say it's for security. But I think the vast majority of them are basically to block the movement of people from one place to another."
Here's how they block Barghouti: he was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Jerusalem and worked in a hospital there for 14 years. Four years ago he moved to a town just 10 miles away, but now, because he no longer lives in Jerusalem, he can't get back in - ever.
He says he can't get a permit to go. "I asked for a permit to go to Jerusalem during the last year, the last years about 16 times. And 16 times they were rejected. Like most Palestinians, I don't have a permit to go to the city I was born in, to the city I used to work in, to the city where my sister lives."
FACT: Barghouti's cousin was convicted in Israel of the murder of several people and is held in prison there -- where he, Barghouti, is excluded. Guess that fact slipped Barghouti's mind as a possible reason why his visiting privileges might be reduced, because he "neglected" to inform CBS's Simon. As for Simon's research skills -- or those of CBS' vaunted 60Minutes fact checkers -- this connection was found in a quick search of Google records on Barghouti. Either CBS has a seriously pathetic research team or they have no interest in disturbing the fantasy-story they calculate will draw large viewership. Possibly trumped-up war-stories are as good for TV networks as murders were once said to be for selling newspapers. Would a broadcast network be inclined to nudge viewers into an angry mindset and risk US military involvement in an unjust war venture just to boost prime-time? What would be their dis-incentive? Not financial.
(Bob Simon/CBS)What he's up against are scores of Israeli settlements dominating the lowlands like crusader fortresses. Many are little cities, and none of them existed 40 years ago. The Israelis always take the high ground, sometimes the hills, and sometimes the homes. And sometimes Arabs are occupied inside their own homes.
FACT: The incendiary concatenation of this image of crusader invasiveness with the subsequent assertion that the invasiveness is rampant with presumeably settlers invading and occupying Arabs space "inside their own homes" -- after all, settlers' actions were the topic of this paragraph, not Israeli military on security missions -- is sheer calculated hyperbole. The CBS fantasy writers swing right into a vignette to cover the sleight of tongue as though they have easily discovered an ugly example. That's sheer theater tactics, not news reporting.
As for the location of the settlers enclaves, and yes they would need to be fully community operations because the settlers were originally not welcomed decently... what a crime, "little cities"... don't the Palestinians live in their own towns and "little cities"?
And then there's the accusation that the settlers had taken the 'high ground' as if that were the most desirable in the WestBank. When the settlers began arriving in the beginning, there were no critical services like water and electric for the area and the prime locations were in the bottoms where the water at least would be accumulated naturally and be handy. In those areas the Palestinians had already made the prime land their own. The settlers were told by the Israelis to occupy the then-less-desirable heights, as also offering some security from an unstable situation as well as being what was less contentiously undesirable by the existing population of Palestinians.
When water services were proposed later, the Palestinians were negative, some refusing entirely to participate, some Palestinian officials refusing to contribute their community funding share to the project which put the entire price of the water for their people on the individual Palestinian using the water service. Furthermore, the water coming through the pipelines used by the settlers -- and those Palestinians who did stubbornly choose to be connected to the pipelines in spite of their "leaders" decisions -- is Israeli water, not Palestinian water. It is being pumped from Israeli aquifers within the Israeli boundaries with the exception of a couple wells within meters of the boundary.
The data on the water situation is available online with a simple Google search and download. In pdf form it will be attached here for further reading. Amazing lack of fact-checking by a major news organization makes you wonder whether the entire American schoolsystem is responsible for some mental character-flaw where the listener is expected to take every, and only the, word of some authority and to simply repeat it on request. Totally schoolish. CBS factcheckers do fit the image and their management apparently expects that their viewership will also simply swallow the fantasy pill as presented by their 60Minute news authority experts without questioning any part of the concoction.
(Bob Simon/CBS) One house for example is the highest house on the highest hill overlooking the town of Nablus. 60 Minutes learned that Israeli soldiers often corral the four families who live there and take over the house to monitor movement down below.
Simon and the 60 Minutes team went to an apartment owned by a Mr. Nassif. That morning, Israeli soldiers had apparently entered the apartment, without notice, and remained there when Simon knocked on the door.
"We cannot speak with you, there are soldiers," Nassif told Simon. "We are in prison here."
Asked what was happening, Nassif says, "They are keeping us here and the soldiers are upstairs, we cannot move. We cannot speak with you."
Nassif said he couldn't leave the house and didn't know how long he'd have to stay in place. Asked if they were paying him any money, he told Simon, "You are kidding?"
Abdul Nassif, a bank manager said he had to get to his bank to open the safe, but one of the soldiers wouldn't let him go. He told 60 Minutes whenever the soldiers come they wake everybody up, and herd them into a kitchen for hours while soldiers sleep in their beds. They can't leave or use the phone, or let 60 Minutes in.
(CBS) He sent 60 Minutes downstairs to see if his brother would open the door so we could ask the soldiers why they keep taking over this house. But the brother told Simon, "The soldiers close the door from the key. They take the key."
So Simon and the crew left, and that night, so did the soldiers. But when 60 Minutes returned two days later, the soldiers were back for more surveillance. This time they kept the women under house arrest, but let the men go to work and the children go to school. When the children returned, we caught a glimpse of two armed soldiers at the top of the stairs.
Then more children came home, but the soldiers wouldn't open the door again.
A commander told Simon that he and the crew would have to go back behind a wall in order for the children to be let in.
The commander declined to talk to 60 Minutes. "But we are talking to you now," Simon pointed out, standing outside. "Why don't you tell us what you are doing here? Have you lost your voice? Well they've closed the door now, they've closed the window so I guess if the children are going to get home now we have to leave, so that is what we will do."
An army spokesperson told us the army uses the Nassifs' house for important surveillance operations. The Nassifs told 60 Minutes that soldiers usually stay for a day or two, always coming and going in the middle of the night. When they do go, the Nassifs never know when they will be occupied again. It could be tomorrow, next week, or next month. The only certainty, they say, is that the soldiers will be back.
NOTE: CBS has access to much more senior political contacts, yet they basically wimp out on asking anyone with more authority to discuss legal/political issues whether this is standard practice for a war-zone. Nor do we have any clue on how long this particular surveillance operation has been active.
Note also that the demure, beautiful woman that is in one of these scenes and never says a word or plays any significant role, becomes the main icon used for the cover image to the entire video, in contrast to the burly, roughneck woman mayor from one of the troublemaking settlers' groups who was featured repeatedly and usually quoted after presenting her with incendiary remarks that challenged the safety of the settlers from eviction from the homes they've built, diminishing the roles they've played in support of the occupation's security.
(Bob Simon/CBS) Another crippling reality on the West Bank is high unemployment, now about 20 percent. So some Palestinians can only find jobs building Israeli settlements. They're so ashamed to work on the construction sites that they asked 60 Minutes not to show their faces.
The settlers now number 280,000, and as they keep moving in, their population keeps growing about five percent every year. But the 2.5 million Arabs have their strategy too: they're growing bigger families.
NOTE: Curious lack of notice by Bob Simon that larger families in circumstances where you can't find jobs or support your existing population is rather irresponsible for anyone else to do. In this fantasy of CBS creation, it's just a 'strategy'. Interesting that the Hamas use of women and children as human-shields could also be confirmation that the value of individual lives is in low regard and that more human-shields are expected to be useful for their 'strategy', hence the women must produce more human-shields -- or warriors if needed . Canon-fodder time is immoral personal, civic and military operation. Yet we see no uprising against Hamas in any of Simon's reporting. Support for those who make your children into human shields makes no sense. Possibly the Palestinians are, in effect, hostages of the Hamas mafia and are excusably Stockholm syndrome affected, which is not an attempt at diagnosis only an observation reminiscent of the Patti Hearst events of my graduate school days when we saw the kidnap victim join her kidnappers and take up weapons to rob banks to get funds to support her abusive kidnappers' agenda.
(Bob Simon/CBS) Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.
"Unfortunately, and I have to say to you that apartheid is already in place," Dr. Barghouti argued.
(CBS) Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel to stop suicide bombers. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not.
FACT: CBS is again repeating a standard -- but gross 'inaccuracy' -- line from the Palestinian propaganda machine. The pdf attached above -- including factual data on water in the West Bank and Gaza -- and cited earlier shows the reality of Palestinian refusal to participate in the construction of the water pipeline.
Further the damning idea that Israelis are profligate water-wasters and that the Israeli claim to greening the desert -- by using intelligent methods of agriculture and conservation -- is supposedly exposed as phony are also revealed to be gross propaganda when checking the facts. The Israelis' water usage is approaching the sustainability levels that have been measured for their water sources and the Israelis have been the 2nd lowest water users among the arab neighboring countries.
(Bob Simon/CBS) Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution. That is no longer the case.
Meron Benvenisti used to be deputy mayor of Jerusalem. He told Simon the prospects of the two-state solution becoming a reality are "nil."
"The geopolitical condition that¹s been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," he explained.
Asked if this means the settlers have won, Benvenisti told Simon, "Yes."
"And the settlers will remain forever and ever?" Simon asked.
"I don't know forever and ever, but they will remain and will flourish," Benvenisti said.
"The settlers, the attitude that I present here, this is the heart. This is the pulse. This is the past, present, and future of the Jewish state," Daniella Weiss told Simon.
She says the she and the settlers are immovable. "We will stay here forever."
But one very important Israeli says she intends to move them out. She's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a candidate to become prime minister in elections next month. She's also Israel¹s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and she told 60 Minutes peace is unthinkable with the settlers where they are.
"Can you really imagine evacuating the tens of thousands of settlers who say they will not leave?" Simon asked.
"It's not going to be easy. But this is the only solution," she replied.
"But you know that there are settlers who say, 'We will fight. We will not leave. We will fight,'" Simon asked.
"So this is the responsibility of the government and police to stop them. As simple as that. Israel is a state of law and order," Livni said.
FACT: Livni is as athletic and brusque as any military paratrooper and constitutes the embarassing third puppet-image for this feminized theatrical production, to contrast with the burly settlerwoman and the demure silent arab beauty. Livni is tough and impressive and promising brutal fighting among the Israeli troops and the settlers. Stay tuned, viewers! More theater! To CBS, of course, the broadcaster who also knows how to use women.
CBS has presented this image of the settlers as brutal invaders who don't belong there, but the fact is that Israel has absorbed over 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries so that by now there are almost no Jewish refugees left to come, but the Arab 'brothers' have outright refused to absorb the Palestinian refugees, not even lining up to provide substantial resources for them -- nothing sufficient to thrive, only to suffer -- much less encouraging them to come to their brothers' homelands. Just the opposite. The Egyptians shoot at Palestinians trying to flee Gaza. (See evidence below).
The Palestinians never did have a state of their own either. There was no reason why they should have been considered to have been forced to be refugees for these 40 years when they could have had their own state -- multiple times in past negotiations as far back as 1967 when the offer was made to them after they had been evicted from Israel for the attack that led to the 1967 Seven Day War. Or even been welcomed into the homelands of their Arab 'brothers', but they were more convenient and useful to their Arab brothers as abscesses on the Israeli border. What would Americans have done if we were the Palestinians' arab brothers with our refugee brothers on our doorsteps? Think about it.
Further, none of the current states in the Arab world were in existence much longer than the Israeli state, so the claims of invasive state-creation is diminished to a suspect claim. There were over a million Jews spread out in the Arab world in 1948, and if they had not been badly treated by those Arabs, why have those populations of Jews emigrated to the point that there are few left in Arab countries and Israel has welcomed 600,000 of them when they arrived destitute on Israel's doorstep. The Arab world and their Palestinian brothers are the cause of the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. The earliest Arab state was a product of the WWI conflict resolution, barely 40 years prior to Israel's claim. The other Arab statehood dates are even later -- Syria as late as 1941 and Kuwait in 1961. Prior to WWI, the area was mostly ruled by Turkey, and subsequently imperially 'incubated' by France and England while they were supposedly developing their infrastructure for independence again in some new form. Ethnic groups were not neatly separated, the Jewish population had an established presence in the area and their claim to statehood is contemporary with the objecting Arab countries. (See the population movements in the evidence below).
There were 600,000 Jews in Israel in 1948, and over 1,000,000 jewish refugees in the Arab countries surrounding Israel. Israel has demonstrated their statehood-worthiness in both economic, military and humanitarian responsibility for their Jewish brothers effectively banished from the Arab territories, something their Arab neighbors have yet to demonstrate for their own brotherhood. The Egyptians guard their border with Gaza and treat any Palestinians trying to escape the carnage in Gaza as if they were criminals to be excluded from Egypt at all costs. Jordan even reneged on supplying their agreed quota of critical water for the Palestinians. Only the Israelis have supplied access to water from their own resources as well as electric from their own resources.
All of these 'inconvenient truths' are public knowledge if any fact-checkers or responsible editors were employed by CBS News. The sources quoted in the pdf on water and the public history dates, the history facts are all credible sources, not just Israeli propaganda.
How long will the American viewers remain docile in the face of CBS lying to us? How long will Americans continue to trust the educational curriculum and training of the factory-schoolsystem that inculcates this sort of docile ignorance and susceptibility to trumped-up enthusiasms that make such scams as CBS is pulling over viewers' eyes possible? For whose benefit is this fantasy-enthusiasm being created and where will those misled by it be circumstantially guilty of what crimes?
Stay tuned to CBS? We have a new administration that is currently more trusting of such fantasies as CBS is broadcasting. Where will they lead? Will there be more alertness when we are told the sky is falling. And yes, there's going to be carnage, and yes we care, and we realize this is a warzone where carnage happens. The Israelis airlift warnings -- air-dropped leaflets to be precise -- but war produces disasterous mindsets that need to be corrected, which we have seen happens occasionally among the Israelis when one of their combatants goes over the edge. Hamas however is the supposedly elected government of the Palestinians and that government is totally over the edge (see the evidence below) and will not be at all capable of justice. In fact, since there is such a curiously drastic difference between Gaza and the West Bank in the guerilla activities, it would appear that the Hamas have decided that Gaza is not worth a decent life since they concentrate their death-and-destruction activities in Gaza, effectively deciding that Gaza's people are to be sacrificed as victims -- useful for crying and reproducing. If there were a decent humanitarian peace group, their focus would be to transfer Gazans -- willing to be abandoning everything in their current homes that they cannot carry -- to new homes in the West Bank. There are instances covered online of what happens to Gazans who protest to Hamas when they don't wish to be human shields any longer and the Hamas response was gruesome. The peace groups on site are the only ones capable of finding a way to do something to relieve the unwilling sacrificial human shields.
So where is the UN, to insist that the Palestinians should be welcomed into the countries of the surrounding Arab states? The UN? All hiding behind their own oil dependence. At least for now. If the end of the oil age is approaching, this whole scenario could turn totally around. It would seem the only practical solution is to stall while we work for independence from foreign oil. Then insist that the Palestinians be re-settled by their Arab brothers. Some attempts at progress on this oil-independence path are in play all over the world -- third world and first world. Economics is going in this direction if we can just keep the situation from getting out of control with trumped-up enthusiasms based on 'gross inaccuracies' THEN PEACE IS NOT OUT OF REACH AS CBS WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE.
-
Further evidence:
** Egyptian government shoots at hundreds of Palestinians fleeing Gaza. Simply fleeing for their lives and their children's lives. Three hundred extra Egyptian guards rushed to seal the border and to repulse Palestinians along this small 9 mile border. Where is the American big media coverage of these inhumane acts against sensible Palestinians wanting to live freely?
** Who's the humanitarian side in this struggle? Refugee rescue, or none
** Water usage photos of Palestinian swimming pools -- as well as the data on water systems -- that the powerful US big-media somehow never notices for public broadcasting of their fantasy reports. Which Palestinians are using scarce resources, further reducing water for their fellow refugees while maintaining that the Israelis cheat the Palestinians out of water for life's needs.
** How pathetic must we believe the CBS journalists and editors are to have not found this scoop -- at wikipedia no less -- on why the excellent Dr Barghouti wasn't welcomed to visit Jerusalem. CBS instead honors the good doctor's claims that Israelis were trying to handicap Palestinians' rightful freedoms, while never mentioning that his cousin, a convicted Intifada political murderer, held in prison on the Jerusalem side had co-conspirators and operatives in those murders -- still at large -- who might avail themselves of access to the good doctor's freedom of movement among the Barghouti clan and allies. Whether the Barghouti cousin is a political prisoner or a POW or a war criminal or other criminal is immaterial, there is justification for the Israeli judgment to sensibly restrict the good doctor's access to the area because he would be a convenient target for Hamas or Fatah to use in an attempt to engineer the escape of a prize prisoner. Claiming that this case shows that Palestinians are unjustly blocked from their rightful freedom is either grossly neglectful of responsible broadcasting or outright deception being practiced on us. Take your pick.
** Hamas' leader bragging in public speech that Hamas has adopted a strategy of death for women, children and the aged, making Hamas operatives fully authorized to use women and children as human-shields -- willing or not -- and making it clear to the women and children what's expected of the population. Human sacrifice to provide the media with a message to sell to the world that Palestinian women and children prefer death to Israeli occupation. How could this public broadcast by Hamas have escaped CBS's notice in their professionally required intensive review of material on and from their subjects?
** And some of the women and children are not willing, as seen in this clip captured by some Italian youtube member in the tumult of IDF conflict, where armed Hamas operatives grab children apparently at random as the operatives are running from an Israeli assault. When you are the target for the shooting, you are not 'saving' anyone by grabbing them and dragging them along the road with you, the target. Nor are you enhancing your speed and agility by dragging someone, so you're not improving their survival chances nor are you improving your own UNLESS you have another use for them.
** Hamas claims that their opposing party - Fatah - is harboring spies and collaborators with the Israelis. Official spokesman claims they'll be hunted down and jailed, but somehow, in that month of hunting there was not much jailing, instead CNN reported that 175 Fatah members were reported shot -- knee-caps, elbows, feet, etc -- at close range and by Hamas members. I suppose CBS wouldn't have noticed this sort of behavior among their play-actors in the CBS fantasy as an indication of a responsible, truly elected government of the Palestinians methods of dealing with the opposition party.
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