Not until entrenched ethos of violence ends will domestic gun violence end

Thomas Dworzak MAGNUM
UN disarmament curriculum image

Serial killing: 

U.S. abroad, 

U.S. at home

By Carolyn Bennett (re-reporting and commentary)

U.S. involved in violence against Syria

The latest: a university, civilian death

At least 80 people died Tuesday and scores of people suffered wounds when two explosions hit Aleppo University in Syria’s second largest city, Press TV reported.

Reports said it was unclear where the second of the two explosions hit but “one of the explosions hit an area between the university dormitories and the Faculty of Architecture.” Among the dead, Press TV reported, were women and children.

Syrians protest
foreign interference

The crisis in Syria ─ as U.S. involvement has done throughout the region of the Middle East and eastern Africa ─ is devastating to civilians, far more than to armed forces. ” The U.S.-allied Free Syrian Army “is taking advantage of the situation, [using] aggression and violence to get what it wants.”

In a Press TV interview, Michel Chossudovsky of Montreal’s Center for Research on Globalization said, “This particular event of bombing a university suggests that the so-called opposition, the so-called Free Syrian Army, is in the state of despair; [and] to claim, as Western media are doing at this moment, that government forces would have bombed a government building, a state university, is totally absurd.”

Lawlessness masked as deference to law

An initiative raised by four countries (Ireland, Denmark, Slovenia and Austria) to refer the case of Syria to the International Criminal Court,  Chossudovsky says, will go nowhere as this initiative, in effect, is being raised by North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries (except Ireland) and “NATO is behind the rebel forces in Syria.

“In other words, who should be taken to the ICC?

The foreign powers that are the sponsors of these terrorist attacks and the assumption of this initiative is precisely the opposite. It is to ultimately smear and demonize the Syrian government.

Self-inflicted

Violence over there, over here

U.S. self-inflicted violence

Year end into 2013

December 14, 2012: Twenty children, six adults fatally shot, killer commits suicide at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Shooter also kills his mother.

December 17: Texas gun store owner calls to arm teachers, offers them concealed-carry discount.

January 4, 2013: Shootings target 3 New York police officers

January 7/8: Texas North Shore Senior High School student is arrested for posting this message on a Twitter account: “Who wants to help me blow up the school tomorrow?”

January 10: At least two people reportedly shot in gunfire that erupted at a Bakersfield, California, high school.

A week earlier four people died, including the shooter, and sustained injuries in the exchange of fire in Pennsylvania.

January 11: A school district in the Midwestern state of Ohio votes unanimously to allow school janitors to purchase and bring guns to their respective schools.

January 12: San Diego, California, police in a confrontation (rising from a domestic dispute) shoot and critically wound a man in a confrontation at the Reading Cinemas Carmel Mountain.

January 12: A Tennessee man threatens “to spark civil war" and "fire the first shot" if there is an executive order to ban assault rifles and to impose stricter gun control.

Thomas Dworzak MAGNUM
UN disarmament curriculum image

January 15 (yesterday): Shooter with a semiautomatic pistol shoots two people at Hazard Community and Technical College in eastern Kentucky.

Same day a gunman enters a business college in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, and shoots a school administrator, then turns the handgun on himself.

I

n pathetically muddled remarks yesterday, the U.S. president said, “The belief that we have to have stronger background checks, that we can do a much better job in terms of keeping these magazine clips with high capacity out of the hands of folks who shouldn't have them, an assault weapons ban that is meaningful... those are things I continue to believe make sense.”

But what of the unending train of violence and unchecked serial killing that is ordered daily and justified by Washington?

Does any sane person seriously believe that U.S. massacres of civilians and assassinations of leaders and heads of state in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Somalia, Syria, Mali, Palestine, all across the Middle East and Africa are some kind of humanitarian venture, random acts of kindness and are separate and distinct from U. S. domestic violence? Do you? I don’t.

N

either this president nor the long line of predecessors nor the American people at large want to confront underlying issues or the entrenched U.S. predilection for violence in all affairs domestic and foreign. If anything, it is this willful ignorance, this careless indifference, this hypocrisy, this tunnel vision that is indicative of psychological and moral impairment. This we must disarm.

Sources and notes

Press TV news search, http://www.presstv.ir/ and other news sources

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Member States Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April 4, 1949, which, after World War II, sought to create a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and Eastern Europe.

Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Joining the original signatories were Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); and Albania and Croatia (2009). France withdrew from the integrated military command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the organization; and in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that the country would resume its position in NATO’s military command. 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Nuclear powered impunity means they always “get away with murder”

Ben-Gurion and Sharon to Netanyahu ─ More than six decades “international community” aides, endorses elimination of a people

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Canadian economist and academic Michel Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ (2005), and Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).This week he was writing at Global Research on the latest carnage in the Occupied Territories.

“We are not dealing with an isolated event,” Michel Chossudovsky writes. “The invasion of Gaza is part of the broader U.S.-NATO-Israel military agenda.” 

Broader Middle East War

“The attack on Gaza must be understood in relation to the broader Middle East war,” he says.

“The Israeli attack was approved by [U.S. President Barack] Obama. It has a direct bearing on U.S.-NATO-Israeli pans for war pertaining to Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

“The timing is of utmost significance: one week following the U.S. presidential elections. ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ is a deliberate act of provocation, intended to lead to military escalation.”

 

Bitter irony

On November 14, Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari was murdered in an Israeli missile attack. In a bitter irony, barely a few hours before the attack, Hamas had received the draft proposal of a permanent truce agreement with Israel.”

The firing of dozens of rockets by Hamas against Israel came after the Israeli attacks, Chossudovsky reports.

Self-fulfilling prophesy

circular propaganda

Manufacturing War - Creating and labeling “terrorists”

Rafah Crossing

“Palestine’s response was known to Israeli war planners and the resulting Israeli civilian casualties are now being used to justify military escalation on humanitarian grounds.

“What we are dealing with is a carefully planned operation, a clear act of provocation. The deaths of Israeli civilians (envisaged and foreseen by IDF military planners) are being used to muster the support of the Israeli public.

  

“Meanwhile, the Israeli attack is casually portrayed by the Western media as part of a legitimate counter-terrorism agenda.

Child's home
demolished

“The Obama administration is blaming the victims of Israeli atrocities. The victims are portrayed as terrorists.’” 

Background: The IDF or Israel Defense Forces or ‘The Army of Defense for Israel’ consists of ground forces, air force and navy, the military forces of the State of Israel. Headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Defense Minister of Israel. The IDF is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel.

The IDF has served as Israel’s armed forces in all the country’s major military operations.

The number of wars and border conflicts in which it has engaged has made it “one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world.”

Originally the IDF operated on three fronts: against Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Egypt in the south. After the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, the IDF has concentrated its activities in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, including the First and the Second Intifada.

The Israel Defense Forces was officially established ─ comprised of a conscript army formed out of the paramilitary group Haganah, incorporating the militant groups Irgun and Lehi ─ on orders of Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion on May 26, 1948.

Ariel Sharon, Israel’s 11th Prime Minister, was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948.

  

Operation flashback

Planned Humanitarian Disaster: Massacre in Palestine

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (tenure February 13, 2007 – January 20, 2009) John Negroponte on December 8, 2008 “was in Tel Aviv for discussions with his Israeli counterparts.” Included in the meetings was Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, Chossudovsky recalls.

‘Operation Cast Lead,’ the December 27, 2008– January 18, 2009 war on Gaza that left more than a thousand Palestinians dead, “was initiated two days after Christmas and was coupled with a carefully designed international Public Relations campaign under the auspices of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

“Hamas’ military targets [were] not the main objective; ‘Operation Cast Lead’ [was] intended, quite deliberately, to trigger civilian casualties. What we [were] dealing with [was] a ‘planned humanitarian disaster’ in Gaza, in a densely populated urban area.”

Chossudovsky continues documenting a historical design of calculated genocide and removal that has been escalating for more than 60 years.

Expulsion was referred to by Ariel Sharon as ‘a 1948 style solution.’

Referencing Tanya Reinhart’s “Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making,” Global Research, December 2001, he writes:

For Sharon ‘it is only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians ─ Jordan is Palestine – was the phrase that Sharon coined.’

Sources and notes

“The Invasion of Gaza: Part of a Broader US-NATO-Israel Military Agenda. Towards a Scenario of Military Escalation?” (By Prof Michel Chossudovsky), Global Research, November 16, 2012,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-invasion-of-gaza-part-of-a-broader-us-nato-israel-military-agenda-towards-a-scenario-of-military-escalation/5311957

Professor Michel Chossudovsky continued

In 1999, Chossudovsky joined the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research as an adviser and he has been a visiting professor internationally and has been advisor to governments of developing countries.

Michel Chossudovsky (b. 1946) is a Canadian economist and professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky

Canadian economist and academic Michel Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ (2005), and Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).

Israel Defense Forces, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces

David Ben-Gurion or David Gruen (b. October 16, 1886, Płońsk, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]; d. December 1, 1973, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel) was Israel’s first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63), “a Zionist statesman and political leader.”

Ariel Sharon (b. February 26, 1928; d., after being in a persistent vegetative state following a stroke, January 4, 2006), chief participant in Arab-Israeli wars, was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948. The retired Israeli general also served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon

Benjamin Netanyahu (var. refs Binyamin, Bibi, b. October 21, 1949, Tel Aviv [now Tel Aviv–Yafo], Israel) has been Israel’s prime minister twice: 1996–1999, and 2009 until the present.

Biographical notes Wikipedia and Britannica

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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