[Bearing Arms]We first wrote about the absurd case against US Air Force Tech Sgt. Matt Pinkerton in early November, when he was charged with murder by Assistant State's Attorney Glen Neubauer. What was Pinkerton's crime? Not pausing to dial 9-1-1 after Kendall Green forced is way into Pinkerton's home at 2:00 AM.
Our friend and Bearing Arms contributor Mike McDaniel has been following the Pinkerton case on his own site, and now reports that charges against Pinkerton have been dismissed by the judge and that's no small thing:
Pinkerton was apparently not acquitted, in other words, found not guilty of the charges. There is a significant difference in the process of the similar outcomes. To be acquitted, one much normally endure a complete trial and a jury must render a not guilty verdict. In this case it seems that the judge determined that there wasn't enough evidence to sustain any of the multiple charges against Pinkerton. If this trial followed the normal course of such things, after the prosecution presented its case, the defense asked that the judge dismiss the charges because the prosecution failed to sustain its burden of proof, and that request was obviously granted, likely with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refilled in the future. If so, the case is over.
There is, however, one additional possibility: the judge might have dismissed prior to the conclusion of the prosecution's case, so obvious was the prosecution's lack of evidence, so poorly did the prosecutor observe Maryland state law. If that happened, it is unusual indeed. Prosecutors normally do not bring murder charges absent a very strong case, and judges are normally reluctant to dismiss a murder case before all potential evidence has been heard.
#1
One would assume that the prosecution had to present evidence to a grand jury who indicted the Tech Sgt.. Sounds like a failure of the grand jury process. It would be interesting to know what evidence was presented at the grand jury; was it false?
#2
Grand Juries usually give the Prosecutor the benefit of the doubt. Prosecutors sometimes take a weak or flawed case to the Grand Jury to cover themselves and/or the Investigators. In most states the Prosecution does not need to go to a Grand Jury at all.
#3
...Remember the old saying that a Prosecutor can get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. What I'd ask at this point is what kind of ambitions does Counselor Neubauer have...?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/22/2014 4:57 Comments ||
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#4
A lawyer friend of mine once told me that if you are indicted, you can't sue for false arrest, even if you are acquitted or the charges are dropped. (At least in New York state)
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/22/2014 11:11 Comments ||
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#5
Basically the USAF Service Member is out the cost of his lawyers and defense. Probably enough to bankrupt him. When a case gets tossed like this, I think the prosecutors should be held liable. Also, that TSgt has a felony murder arrest now on his record. Can he get that expunged?
#6
the USAF Service Member is out the cost of his lawyers and defense
This is the problem with prosecutorial abuse; the state pays the prosecutor's expenses and the innocent defender is out their life savings. I have seen it happen. Prosecutors are not held responsible for their transgressions. Until they are, this abuse will continue.
#1
Obama could not act with such disdain for the law if he wasn't aided and abetted by Harry Reid. The remedy is impeachment after the November elections.
#2
I shouldn't impeach unless I were very sure of a conviction... Anything less would be viewed as vindication by everyone prepared to think of Republicans as racist or of those who went up against this president as racist.
Vote in November. Vote against, if you won't vote for.
#3
Impeachment isn't going to happen again this President, counter-productive an absolute waste of time. Make him veto Apple Pie, Mom's Lemonade and cheap gas.
The pertinent part of Section 5 of the US Constitution says,
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
#6
Suppose Obama was impeached before 2016. This is the "poison pill alternative" whereby, it is costly to the donks and whoever they put up for President. However, the unintended consequences might come about from impeachment and voters might get very angry with the party that impeaches. The voters might view this as a legal lynching much as they did in the OJ trial which resulted in acquittal. The Senate is not going to convict Champ even if the Pubs win the Senate--not enough votes. Historically, there is a reluctance to convict. The Pubs might just continue as they are on many fronts; i.e. death by a thousand cuts. There seems to be a rich trove of illegality in this administration to draw from if the Pubs decide to play hardball. The Pubs will probably see how the 2014 elections come out. Should they win the Senate and keep the House, their options should be increased. I would think the Pubs are looking at these various alternatives.
#7
I agree John. No sense creating a political victim or party martyr. What a lovely distraction an impeachment would be. Champ would enjoy such a struggle immensely. In fact, I'm not entirely uncertain that he's not actually laying the defensive groundwork for such an event. Better to permit the pain of his indolence and prideful ineptness to continue for another couple of years. This will permit a permanent memory to be etched into the minds of [least some of those] who voted for him. The prop wash of the Champ administrations failures will most assuredly impact every democrat seeking election or reelection, which is another added benefit.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/22/2014 18:41 Comments ||
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#9
The worst thing that could happen to this narcissist macaroon, in his mind, would be to ban his name from history, never have his name pass anyone's lips and deny him his legacy. But that is not going to happen...just wishful thinking.
#10
Relegate Champ to the dung heap of history along with the "Washington Redskins" name (sarc). Relegate Harry R. there also; he is such a weasel with all his created crises such as illegal immigration and the Redskins. All noise and distraction. During the time before they are relegated to the dung heap, they should be serving time in the Graybar Hotel.
[Telegraph] We cannot be indifferent to what is happening in Syria and Iraq, imagining it to be a self-contained, faraway war between Moslems
Careful, buddy, that's the Obama Doctrine you're dissing...
Across the Middle East and Africa, it is an uncomfortable fact that the cries of jihad accompanying the latest attack or terrorist outrage are often uttered in a British accent.
Al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... , gunnies who ransacked towns in northern Kenya this week and left 60 people dead, were led by a white man speaking "fluent British English", according to witnesses. In the Commons yesterday, David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... estimated that 400 British Moslems are currently in Syria or Iraq, mainly attached to the Isis organization marching on Storied Baghdad. "The people in that regime, as well as trying to take territory, are also planning to attack us here at home in the United Kingdom," he said.
It is for this reason that last week's debate about the dissemination of British values in Moslem schools was more than theoretical. How have we created the circumstances in which hundreds of young men born and raised in this country want to fight, and possibly die, on foreign battlefields? Even worse is the likelihood that some may return home determined to inflict mayhem in their own country.
As Mr Cameron observed, this development poses an even bigger danger for Britannia than the radicalised young men who travelled to al-Qaeda camps in Pakistain to be trained in bomb-making techniques. Many came back intending to carry out atrocities here, and some succeeded — including the July 7 jacket wallahs in 2005. It is easy for recruits to Isis to get into Syria by travelling through Turkey, and ubiquitous social media ensures they have contacts waiting when they arrive. It is not fanciful to imagine that some of these fighters will be recruited by al-Qaeda to carry out attacks in Britannia and the West.
The police and the security services are fully aware of the threat. Indeed, dozens of Syria-related arrests have been made, passports confiscated, citizenship rights removed and legislation is now being prepared to make the planning of terrorist attacks overseas illegal here in the UK. This needs to be put on to the Statute Book as speedily as possible. There is also an important role for the Moslem community in Britannia to play. The police have already sought the co-operation of Moslem women, to try to dissuade or inform on men who intend to fight. But religious leaders also need to be involved, by urging would-be jihadis to stay at home and counter the call to arms they may hear on the internet. As Mr Cameron told MPs, we cannot be indifferent to what is happening in Syria and Iraq, imagining it to be a self-contained, faraway war between Moslems. Without the utmost vigilance, it has the potential to harm us as well.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Good luck with the UK Muslim community, Mr. Cameron. Ever heard of the term "taqiyya?"
Muslim scholars teach that Muslims should generally be truthful to each other, unless the purpose of lying is to "smooth over differences."There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman. These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.
The link is chocked full of chapter and verse providing background to taqqiya.
Like most western leaders, Mr. Cameron, you are deluding yourself to thinking that you can reason with Islamists. This is delusional and suicidal thinking on the installment plan.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in bonnie Scotland ||
06/22/2014 3:59 Comments ||
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And thus, little Virginia, we learn once again why God + 1960's-79's Guam Taotamonas foresaw Tom Cruise's new 2014 movie "EDGE OF TOMMOROW".
Plus "INTERSTELLAR", in case the Marxists + Globalists, etal, in their manic self-centered arrogance think they + their Nukes can't lose agz Radical Islam.
I don't have much to say about the anniversary of arguably the greatest strategic defeat suffered by Hitler in WWII. The start date of Operation Bagration, otherwise known as the Battle for Western Belorussia was in 1944 on this date. Starting then and ending in early August, the Soviet Red Army immolated 300,000 German soldiers and wiped 30 German divisions off the situation maps, taking advantage of a strategic deception that kept the bulk of Germany's hard experienced, mobile forces in the south to defend against what the German General Staff thought was Stalin's next move.
When the offensive began, Hitler did Stalin a tremendous favor by tying German forces down to specific locations and forbidding local commanders from switching forces. This long-standing defensive practice of switching forces from one threatened sector to another, tying those forces to roads that were denied the Red Army, and refined by the German commander's experience in the field, could have slowed the Red Army down, but ultimately, it probably would not have yielded anything other than yet another tactical win, as the German Army was forced back into central Europe.
For years during the Cold War we heard about the tremendous victory of the Red Army against the German Army. Soviet top commanders constantly celebrated this very day. But after the walls came tumbling down a truth emerged: the German Army also took a pretty good sized chunk out of the Red Army even with the strategic blunder committed by Hitler.
The western Allies had opened the second front just a few weeks earlier, as the Red Army was planning its moves in the first front. Operation Bagration ultimately found the Red Army near the eastern border of Greater Germany, where they would remain until January 12th, 1945.
#1
The enomity of it all still brings awe to one'senses. Glantz has written brutally true descriptive articles about the shattering of surrrounded German troops. Troops that were denied all mobility by their tyrant leader.
#2
Just as a lot of Western histories concentrate to the point of ignoring the great battles of the East, the Eastern histories like wise ignore the contributions of the West. One among them was the war of attrition in the air battle for Berlin, begun in February, the allied air arms forced the Luftwaffe to defend the capital. That meant the fronts had to be stripped of air support that would otherwise be available. The allies suffered significant losses but could make them up. The Germans suffered as well, but couldn't. From the allied perspective it was to remove the Luftwaffe as the threat to the Normandy landings, but it has contributory effects elsewhere. Tactical air support was often critical to American success as it had been to the Germans in 1940. Think 'clear weather prayer' and Bastogne. It provided that edge to make up for less than tactical or operational brilliance. Had the Luftwaffe not been molested and in full force to be employed, how more difficult would have thing been on the Eastern Front.
The audacious terror strike on June 8, 2014 at Pakistan's Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, which killed 36 people — including 10 terrorists of the now Mullah Fazlullah-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who staged the assault — was perhaps the tipping point that propelled the Nawaz Sharif government to shed its reluctance to mount an all-out counter-offensive against one of Pakistan's major terror conglomerates. That Prime Minister Sharif conscientiously strove for peace talks with Pakistan's main terror "tanzeem", the TTP — considering that his political formation, the PML-N, allegedly had durable links, since years, with some Pakistani extremists — was understandable. That a majority of these fundamentalist elements, especially in Punjab, electorally assisted the PML-N in the last general elections is hardly a political secret.
On the other hand, the Pakistani army and its notorious handmaiden, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — themselves formidable practitioners of the art of exporting terror to neighbouring India and Afghanistan — were persistently demanding strong action, exclusively against the TTP, for it had been striking at will against army assets all across Pakistan, including the daring and devastating attack on the strategic naval air base at Mehran, Karachi in May 2011. Meanwhile, the Pakistan army and the ISI, for decades, have conveniently disregarded other equally lethal extremists in anti-India terror groups, such as the Hafiz Saeed-led Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, as also the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda elements, which it considers its "strategic assets".
Till last year, the Pakistani army had mounted only half-hearted attacks in the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including the rugged Waziristan regions that have been a haven for terrorists of all hues — both indigenous Pakistanis and foreign militants operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan on both sides of the Durand Line. Most casualties inflicted on terrorists in the North and South Waziristan sanctuaries can be attributed to the US drone strikes since 2008, which have caused many deaths among both extremists and civilians. However, this year, under pressure from the Pakistan government, the US has resorted to only the odd strike. That Washington, with its planned draw-down in Afghanistan, has pressured the Pakistani military machine to up the ante against terror groups holed up in the Waziristan belt would be stating the obvious. Presumably, with Pakistan's economy in the doldrums, coupled with an alarmingly deteriorating internal security situation and generous financial doles promised by the US, the army would have agreed to bite the bullet at long last and resolutely go after the TTP and, ostensibly, the other terror groups too.
In February this year, Pakistan formally unveiled its National Security Document that laid out, in some detail, Pakistan's anti-terror policy. Despite a few off and on peace talks and ceasefires between the unyielding TTP and the Pakistani establishment, PM Sharif finally gave the green signal for the Pakistani armed forces to mount an all-out offensive against all terrorists in the North Waziristan belt. Thus Operation Zarb-e-Azb was launched with all ferocity on June 15, employing nearly 30,000 troops. The operation is significantly named after one of the Prophet's swords, "Azb", which he had used in the battles of Badr and
With Pakistani F-16 fighter jets pounding militant hideouts in North Waziristan, tanks also rolled through the streets of Miramshah, North Waziristan's main town. Thousands of civilians of this town and the neighbouring villages have fled to safer areas to avoid the impending ground offensive. The army has also liberally employed lethal multi-barrel rocket launchers, heavy artillery and attack helicopters, unmindful of the collateral damage that could occur. Media reports point to over 200 militants having been killed in the first 36 hours of the offensive, including Uzbek terror kingpin Abu al-Manni, who reportedly had masterminded the Karachi airport attack.
Pakistan's army chief, General Raheel Sharif, vowed to destroy terrorist sanctuaries "without any discrimination" — a reference to the selective anti-terror operations the Pakistan army has been accused of. Meanwhile, TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shahid immediately retaliated, saying that, "By God, we will soon shake your palaces in Islamabad and Lahore and burn those to ashes." The Pakistani establishment, expecting violent retributive acts by the Taliban, has deployed large numbers of security personnel to guard sensitive assets across the country.
The otherwise delayed anti-terror offensive has closed ranks, perhaps for the first time in many years, among Pakistan's major political parties and civil society. Even Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the hitherto recalcitrant opponent of offensives against the TTP, has welcomed the government's decision as have other major parties, including the PPP and MQM. If Pakistan can truly discard terrorism as an extension of state policy — against both India and Afghanistan — and not be selective in combating terror groups, India will wish it all success in ridding itself of the scourge decimating its vitals. Pakistan today stands at the crossroads of its destiny. Only its sincerity of intent in endeavouring to eliminate terror in all its manifestations can help it.
The writer, a retired lieutenant general, was India's first defence intelligence chief
Posted by: John Frum ||
06/22/2014 09:29 ||
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#1
"By God, we will soon shake your palaces in Islamabad and Lahore and burn those to ashes." The Pakistani establishment, expecting violent retributive acts by the Taliban, has deployed large numbers of security personnel to guard sensitive assets across the country.
One assumes that sensitive assets include the palaces in Islamabad and Lahore of the government elites.
Pakistan needs its neighbors for investment and trade. India needs to put some carrots out there for Pakistan if they succeed.
[DAWN] IF the snuffies had their way, the whole nation would forcefully be subscribing to their antediluvian code. All confessional and cultural differences would be vigorously stamped out as the hard boyz are not fond of difference of opinion. Perhaps that is why today, anything that veers even slightly from the ultra-orthodox path is under threat in Pakistain. Take, for example, Sufi shrines. As reported on Saturday, a shrine on the outskirts of Islamabad was targeted by an IED during urs celebrations. Luckily, due to the low intensity of the device no fatalities were reported, though some devotees were maimed critically. Considering that a large number of devotees were attending the event, much greater carnage could have been caused. This is not the first time a Sufi durbar has been targeted in or near the capital. In 2005, an kaboom rocked the Bari Imam shrine — perhaps the capital's best known durbar — during the saint's annual urs. Numerous fatalities resulted. In the years since, the shrine has been mostly closed during urs festivities, depriving devotees of the colour and zeal that marked the event. A few days earlier, the Auqaf department sealed the shrine as an bomb was found near the structure in May.
While ensuring the security of people's lives is amongst the government's primary duties, we fail to understand why appropriate security measures cannot be put in place that would safeguard citizens' lives while allowing them to continue with religious and cultural activities. Militants have attacked everything from mosques to markets; does the state feel that shutting everything down each time there is a threat is the best solution? Militants have also bombed the Data Durbar complex in Lahore, Abdullah Shah Ghazi's dargah in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... as well as Baba Farid's shrine in Pakpattan. Will the state one day disallow urs celebrations at these iconic shrines due to security concerns? Instead of curtailing cultural activities, the government needs to strike at the root of the problem. For example, there are numerous Sufi shrines in Islamabad and its suburbs, and a number of them are being threatened by the growth of some myrmidon madressahs sprouting up in the area. Police and intelligence agencies have done little to keep an eye on the activities of the myrmidons. What is clear is that the age-old cultural and religious practices of the people cannot be put on ice indefinitely due to the murderous bullying of obscurantists.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
As I recall U.S. forces were careful not to fire on mosques and made sure religious shrines were not damaged. These ROEs got people killed. Now this tribal conflict is threatening mosques and shrines? How does one picture a "shrug" here?
[DAWN] CLEARLY, demonstrating a little bit of efficiency in the Model Town affair in Lahore could have saved the Punjab government a lot of trouble. The intervention from the top for which the province is famous was missing for long hours as the situation outside the Minhajul Koran secretariat on Tuesday deteriorated gradually. If that delay defied logic, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif ...Pak dynastic politician, brother of PM Nawaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab... had been rather slow in giving marching orders to two of his senior associates in government. The step that he has now resorted to could have been taken immediately after the firing incident outside the Minhajul Koran office. The delay allowed doubts and accusations to creep in and the opposition demands got louder with time. The Punjab government chose to answer statement with statement, announcing a judicial commission but inexplicably putting off the administrative action it has now taken. The chief minister needed to appear a little more humble in the wake of the Model Town tragedy and, given his reputation for quick responses, to be prompt in his administrative action in aid of a fair inquiry. By procrastinating he exposed himself to criticism that all this time he had been looking for suitable scapegoats.
The law minister Rana Sanaullah was one of the two brass hats to be removed. The other is Tauqeer Shah, who was working as the chief minister's principal secretary. There is a contrast between the two men, both considered very close to the chief minister: Mr Sanaullah has been a loud-talking minister giving the impression that offence is the best defence policy. Dr Shah, in comparison, has been known as a chief ministerial aide who has preferred to do his assignments quietly. His sacking over a police raid at as sensitive a place as the headquarters of Dr Tahirul Qadri ...Pak politician, founder and head of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran. He usually resides in Canada, but returns to Pakistain periodically to foam at the mouth and lead demonstrations. Depending on which way the wind's blowing, Qadri claims to be the author of Pak's blasphemy law. Other times he says it wasn't him... at a crucial moment will feed the legend that casts him as a man authorised to take important decisions by a chief executive who is not known to share power easily. His forced ouster will be construed as some kind of a loss for Shahbaz Sharif.
On the other hand, the outgoing law minister generated a lot of heat and acrimony as he went about publicly responding to whatever challenges the Punjab government was faced with. There had been calls for the PML-N leadership to rein him in. All his critics will now feel vindicated, and both administratively and politically, the PML-N must review its aggressive approach to issues. Dr Qadri and some others have rejected the sackings as insufficient and are demanding the chief minister's resignation. This is their argument: Rana Sanaullah couldn't have been acting without orders from above. An effort is now on to delink Mr Shahbaz Sharif from the gory Model Town incident by disconnecting him from his two associates. Their removal apart, this will require some doing.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/22/2014 00:00 ||
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[NYSun] Well, well, well. Guess who has gone calling on Ahmad Chalabi. Why, if it's not Brett McGurk, the senior aide of the State Department in respect of Iraq. He's just fetched up at the home in Storied Baghdad of the founder of the Iraqi National Congress. Mr. Chalabi is the visionary who won the Iraq Liberation Act of 1995. He's the man whom the Left likes to blame for allegedly making up intelligence to trick America to going to war for Democracy in his country. The State Department hated him above all others.
Now it's come a-calling. This news was brought in by Eli Lake, former diplomatic leg of the Sun, in a dispatchnull that the Daily Beast runs under the headline "U.S. Taps Old Allies for New Iraq War." Mr. Lake is not reporting that the visit with Mr. Chalabi is going to lead to the return of American GIs to Iraq. He is following up on the dispatch Thursday in the Times that named Mr. Chalabi as among the challengers emerging to replace Prime Minister al-Maliki.
Indeed, it was our government that was behind the purge of Mr. Chalabi from the interim Iraqi government that was established in 2004 and led by Iyad Allawi ... Iraqi politician, interim Prime Minister prior to Iraq's 2005 legislative elections. A former Ba'athist, Allawi helped found the Iraqi National Accord, which today is an active political party. He survived assassination attempts in 1978, in 2004, and on April 20, 2005. One of these days he won't... . Relations were decidedly cool as Mr. Chalabi plotted his comeback. The Times reports that he's now willing to bring the Baathists back into public life, meaning ending the anti-Baathist legislation he long supported. Mr. Chalabi, a Shia, seems to be acceptable to the Kurds. So we will see what happens.
Our own favorite Chalabi moment came when he was asked by an interviewer in Britannia whether Iraq needed another strongman, a la Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... of Afghanistan. No, he retorted, what Iraq needed was another Ludwig Erhard. This was a reference to the Free German economics minister who set the stage for a Western victory in the Cold war by establishing sound money in West Germany. This brought the economy to life, setting the contrast between West Germany and the communist East.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/22/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
State Dept really botched Chalabi and the INA. And State (Powell) has yet to recognize it was actually they who screwed up Iraq, not the military.
[Telegraph] The jubilant reaction of many Paleostinians to the kidnapping of three Israeli teenage boys has been met in the West with a bit of a shrug. The official daily PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has published cartoons mocking the three students and celebrating their capture. The Fatah Facebook page featured a cartoon of three rats dangling from a line. Sweets have been handed out on the streets (a traditional gesture of joy and celebration). Many children have been photographed by their parents, holding up three fingers and smiling. An internet campaign gathers pace and "popular support for the abduction has continued to proliferate on Paleostinian social media" according to the journalist Elhanan Miller. Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, of course, is exultant. Yes, Abu Mazen has condemned the kidnap and there have been some brave Paleostinian voices raised in defence of the three youngsters, but their voices are isolated; Paleostinians calling for the return of the three students have been threatened.
And yet, despite all this whooping and cheering about the trauma and possible death of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, the Paleostinians will likely pay a very small price in the international community or global public opinion. Why?
In part, because an anti-Zionist mindset that has taken root in the West, and at its heart is unexamined assumption — that Israelis and Paleostinians are different kinds of people. Israelis have agency, responsibility and choice, Paleostinians do not. In short, the world treats the Paleostinians as children — 'the pathology of paternalism' it has been called.
The unarticulated assumption of anti-Zionism is that Paleostinians are a driven people, dominated by circumstances and moved by emotions; qualities associated with the world of nature. Israelis are the opposite; masters of all circumstances, rational and calculating; qualities associated with the world of culture.
This dichotomous thinking has three bad consequences.
First, by granting only one side to the conflict agency and responsibility, the dichotomy distorts key events of the conflict (e.g. the war of 1948, the collapse of the Camp David peace talks in 2000, Gazoo after the 2005 disengagement). The Paleostinians are cast as passive victims; a compelled people (Haaretz writer Yitkhak Laor claims the second intifada was "instigated" by ⦠Israeli policy); a duped people (activist Tikva Honig-Parnass writes of "Barak's pre-planned collapse of the Camp David talks in October 2000"); and a people beyond the reach of judgement. Academic Jacqueline Rose views Paleostinian jacket wallahs as "people driven to extremes" and argues that Israel has "the responsibility for [the] dilemma" of the jacket wallah.
Second, the dichotomous understanding of Paleostinians and Israelis distorts our understanding of Israel's security. The threats Israel faces are discounted and the security measures taken by Israel reframed as motiveless and cruel acts. For example, the writer Shlomo Sand argues that Israel falsely "portray[s] itself as a persecuted innocent" and he claims that this portrayal, not real threats, has given Israeli society "a well of deep-seated collective anxieties." Ilan Pappe, an Israeli academic now teaching in the UK, claims that "Zionists" are "[c]ompelling a nation to be constantly at arms" by stimulating "continual angst" through the abuse of Holocaust memory. He dismisses "useful fabrications about Israelis suffering under intense rocketing" as a "fantasy of apologists." For the anti-Zionists, then, Israel's concern with security is either a pathology (an unconscious psychological condition Israelis cannot break out of) or — this a contradiction, note — a case of manipulation (a conscious political ploy).
The third consequence of this dichotomous thinking about the nature of the two peoples is the infantalisation of the Paleostinians: they remain perpetually below the age of responsibility; the source of their behaviour always external to themselves, always located in Israel's actions.
For example, when the Israeli novelist and Left-wing Zionist Amos Oz complained that incitement by Paleostinian intellectuals is one reason so many Paleostinians are "suffocated and poisoned by blind hate," Yitzhak Laor responded by accusing Oz of "incitement" against the Paleostinians. Oz's temerity in seeking to hold the Paleostinians to account condemned him in Laor's eyes.
The academic Jacqueline Rose has argued that Paleostinian suicide bomber is a person compelled, before admonishing Israel a few lines later for failing to take note of Freud's warning that "the forcefulness with which a group builds and defends and defends its identity was the central question of modern times." (That's just something for the cultured Israelis to worry about, it seems.)
Of course, Israel has to compromise and divide the land, making possible a Paleostinian state. But if the Paleostinians are treated as children, never held accountable for cultivating a culture of hate, then they will never make their own excruciating compromises for peace. And without those compromises — in a Middle East departing further from the norms of human behaviour by the day — Israel will not take risks for peace. Nor should it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bearing Arms]We first wrote about the absurd case against US Air Force Tech Sgt. Matt Pinkerton in early November, when he was charged with murder by Assistant State's Attorney Glen Neubauer. What was Pinkerton's crime? Not pausing to dial 9-1-1 after Kendall Green forced is way into Pinkerton's home at 2:00 AM.
David Cameron
