Tag: Mass Murder

Sabra And Shatila….A Remembrance

Today is the day that we remember the massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese militias working with Israeli forces during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

I have written about this tragedy every year…..the world must remember the mass murder of women and children and old people by allies of Israel as they watched over the camp.

https://lobotero.com/2017/09/18/remembering-sabra-and-shatila/

The intense summer heat was gone and the evening was breezy and cool that fateful Thursday evening, September 15, 1982, according to survivors of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre who, 34 years later, still remember and recount many details of the slaughter that was soon to follow.

It was following the 9/14/1982 assassination of President-elect Bachir Gemayel, leader of the Lebanese Forces militia and senior Kataeb Party official, that Israeli forces closed in with their tanks and blockaded the Shatila refugee camp and the adjacent Sabra neighborhood. By prearrangement with their Christian phalange allies, the Israeli invaders led the Kataeb affiliated Phalange militia from Beirut airport north two miles to inside the camp, in violation of their agreement with the US Reagan administration.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/23/34-years-after-the-sabra-shatila-massacre/

Israel has committed several crimes against humanity and have NEVER had to pay a price for their barbarity.  Sabra and Shatila and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty….two events that should NEVER be forgotten…..no matter how much Israel tries to whitewash their crimes.

Further reading:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-crimes-against-humanity-remembering-the-sabra-and-shatila-massacre/5545969

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/1390979.stm

My Lai–50 Years On

Closing Thought–16Mar18

Your Daily History Lesson…….

When I was teaching class at university I asked my class to find Vietnam on a map….15 students…..14 wrong answers….the only correct was a vet of that war…..in their defense they did not know the name Arafat or Begin…..I would bet that it is not much better these days of the information revolution.

How many people remember a Lt. named Calley?  How many remember a town named My Lai?

When I ask a class of college students how many have heard of My Lai, only a few if any raise their hands, tentatively. Even they are unsure what it was, or where, or when, or who was involved. Why have we forgotten the nadir of the Vietnam War? Is our collective amnesia accidental or willful?

March 16 marks the 50th anniversary of the date that does not live in infamy. Does it for any Americans? In 1968, American soldiers slaughtered animals, raped villagers, and murdered 109 “Oriental human beings” in My Lai. That was the number cited in a court-martial 18 months later.

https://original.antiwar.com/Russell_Vandenbroucke/2018/03/15/my-lai-amnesia-fifty-years-on/

Today is the 50th year anniversary of the massacre……

Americans, including GIs, were losing their once reflexive faith that the U.S. military, with all its skill and firepower, would prevail in Vietnam as it had so often throughout history. Also shattered was the faith that America’s fighting forces were inherently more virtuous than their enemies. The unraveling of that conviction began in earnest in 1969 with the revelation that American soldiers had murdered hundreds of unarmed and unresisting women, children, babies, and old men in the village of My Lai.

For many people, the shocking news came first in the form of several horrifying photographs. One shows almost two dozen dead Vietnamese bodies on a dirt road. Many have fallen in a twisted pile; some are partially naked. Another photograph shows a woman lying in a field with her legs drawn up under her body. Her conical straw hat has flipped off her head. If you look closely you can notice that a large portion of her brain lies exposed beneath the hat.

https://original.antiwar.com/Christian_Appy/2018/03/15/our-boys-50-years-after-the-my-lai-massacre/

To be fair……we must hear from the people that were there….the survivors…..

It was the sweet potato harvest season, so Ha Thi Quy woke up early to find a good spot in the village to dry slices of the delicately flavored tuber to sell.

She noticed some American soldiers in the village, but that didn’t alarm her.

“There are no Vietnamese troops here, so why should they start shooting?” Quy recalled her self-assurance in a bitter question that she still has not found the answer to……

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnamese-survivors-remember-my-lai-massacre-with-horror-and-confusion-3723079.html

Scars of war are the worse to bear…..

I begin my weekend…..lost in memories to times long ago…..chuq

It’s The Second, As Always!

The mass shootings lately, 18 of them so far in 2018, has  Americans yelling and thinking about the 2nd amendment…..this amendment to the Constitution has its uses…..

What about the days of the Founding Fathers, this is where the amendment came from……

In the days since the tragic murder of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, the number of people clamoring for tighter restrictions on the right to purchase or otherwise obtain a firearm crescendos daily, sometimes hourly.

Of course, those familiar with the Second Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America (that is the official name) would never support such tyrannical proposals, particularly those well-versed in the nearly 1,000-year history of the Anglo-American protection of the right of self-defense.

There is an urgent need for Americans to refamiliarize themselves with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers on this topic, as well as the wisdom of those writers whose words inspired and informed our Founders.

https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/28367-cesare-beccaria-unknown-to-us-influential-on-our-founders

So many claim that the 2nd is what keeps our politicians honest….(pause here for laughter)….our reps are just as corrupt with or without the 2nd in place…..with that in mind…….

As the subject of the Second Amendment reenters the public discourse, the question of whether or not the right to keep and bears arms is an effective deterrent against tyranny must be examined. In the days of drones, fighters, and tanks, what good is a semi-automatic rifle? This question is typically posed by those who envision pitched battles between US Army forces and rebels. That isn’t how wars are fought anymore. Any uprising in the United States would be in the form of an insurgency. During an insurgency all of those high tech toys aren’t government assets, they’re insurgent assets. This doesn’t imply US soldiers would defect en masse to the rebels.

http://theantimedia.org/second-amendment-overthrow-government/

I guess goes along with that quote that has been attributed to Jefferson about the tree of Liberty and the watering with blood….or something like that……

(I expect the readership to go up because my more right wing brethren will have lots to say when it comes to the gun thing)

On Mass Killings

There has been a rash of mass killings so far this year…..and they are only going to get worse.  With each shooting the American public gets outraged and demands more and more action to keep it from happening again and with each passing shooting nothing gets done for the spineless Congress is a worthless as a limp dick.

But the one thing that amazes me is that all the talk about the mass killings in the school yard there is none when the government does it…..in the name of fighting for freedom……

As Americans continue to rage over the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Florida, expressing indignation at both the atrocity and efforts to impose (or reject) gun control, the U.S. government has acknowledged its own perpetual addiction to violence.

According to two letters released by the federal government last week in response to an inquiry from Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, the U.S. plans to maintain its military presence in Syria and Iraq indefinitely, citing vague threats of terrorism.

In one letter, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Policy) David Trachtenberg responded to Kaine by justifying continued operations in Syria with the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11 to justify invading Afghanistan.

http://theantimedia.org/americans-horrified-mass-killings/

It amazes me that we can be an unfeeling bunch of people…..a bit pathetic when considered…..

Closing Thought–16Feb18

Dictators always get their due! (most times)

There is one thing, well there are many but in this case there is just one, about Trump and his seemingly admiration for authoritarian leaders like Putin, Erdogan and Duterte…..these types of leaders seem to always have a heavy hand when dealing with there population especially those in opposition…..and an American president seems to like their actions.

Duterte has even gone so far as to brag about personally killing people……his boasting may have got his cocky ass in hot water with the ICC……

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte welcomes a preliminary investigation into allegations of crimes against humanity now underway by the International Criminal Court, a spokesman said Thursday, marking an about-face for a man who once described the ICC as “bulls—.” Duterte is “sick and tired of being accused” and is prepared to defend himself in court, though the investigation is “a waste of the court’s time and resources,” spokesman Harry Roque said in announcing the inquiry that is to decide whether there’s evidence to build a case, report the New York Times and Guardian. Roque maintained the government crackdown that’s left an estimated 12,000 people dead under Duterte’s leadership—though police put the number at 4,000—is a “legitimate police operation” to weed out drugs.

Duterte swore to “kill” criminals when he took office in June 2016. He has since faced accusationsof mass murder while keeping up a “great relationship” with President Trump. It’s those allegations that launched the ICC probe, confirmed by a prosecutor, per the Guardian. In a complaint sent to the ICC last April, a Filipino lawyer representing two men who say they were assassins for Duterte called him a “mastermind” of killings spanning the three decades since he became mayor of Davao in 1988. “Hopefully a warrant of arrest will be issued by the ICC against Duterte and his cohorts,” 11 of whom are named in the complaint, the lawyer said, per the Times. Arguing the government is attempting a cover-up, Duterte political opponent Gary Alejano says ICC officials “are the only ones who can step in.”

To illustrate what a “swell” guy this toad Duterte truly is……

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told soldiers last week to shoot female rebels in their genitals, the latest of several violent, misogynistic remarks.

Addressing a group of former communist rebels on Wednesday, Duterte, who served as a mayor before becoming president, appeared to encourage the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to target women in conflict.

“Tell the soldiers. ‘There’s a new order coming from the mayor. We won’t kill you. We will just shoot your vagina,’ ” he said.

“If there is no vagina, it would be useless,” Duterte continued, according to local media reports, appearing to imply that women are useless without their genitals.

This is the little prick that Trump had glowing remarks about….

Personally I think all nations should be members of the ICC but some countries are afraid to be held up to international laws…..countries like the USA.