One Sided War

The continuing one sided war that is Israel's occupation of Palestine continues though of course from the media perspective we get here there are two sides engaged in 'violence'.

UN chief demand stopping violence in Gaza, southern Israel

Israeli-Palestinian violence in Gaza pushed peace efforts to the sidelines as militants threatened revenge for Israeli attacks that killed at least 24 people over two days, and Palestinian moderates joined in condemning Israel.
In a botched attack on Wednesday, an Israeli missile hit the wrong vehicle, killing a 12-year-old boy, his father and uncle. Later Sunday, two militants were killed in an airstrike in central Gaza.

Ah violence that wonderful media phrase that places blame equally on both sides on both parties in a conflict. When the state attacks protesters its because of the threat of violence so they respond with real violence. When the army attacks a village it is because of the threat to them and they respond with violence.

No blame is placed on who engaged in the violence first. Police and Army fully decked out in protective gear, Kevlar bullet proof armour, shields, helmets, clubs, gas, rubber bullets and real ones, attack the unarmed unprotected protesters or villagers, like Knights of olde attacking the peasants.

In the case of Israel the reporting always is about how they are responding with violence because they have been attacked. But if you read between the lines what you see is that Israel has attacked Gaza consistently since last summer. It has refused to allow Palestinians free movement, it keeps them in the townships under curfew, it cuts of money, supplies, fuel and electricity.

Analysis: What now for Hamas?

Ever since the Hamas military takeover of Gaza in June, the territory has been subjected to an economic siege. Israel labelled the Hamas-controlled Gaza a "hostile entity".

In September 2007, Israel declared Gaza a 'hostile entity'; while in October it began a series of 'apparently punitive' measures, including large reduction of fuel supplies.

Since June2007, Israel has been imposing a strict closure on Gaza after Hamas has taken over Gaza amidst a power struggle with Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, who embraces a peace strategy.

Gaza's last power station closes as Israel blocks supplies

Israel Blocks Supplies, Steps Up Gaza Airstrikes

Israel Closes Gaza Border Crossings

Israel closes Gaza Crossing to UN Aid and Kills 37 Palestinians

HOLON, ISRAEL, 20 January 2008 (IRIN) - With violence in the Gaza Strip and along Israel's southern border escalating, a small hospital in Israel offers a ray of hope for a handful of seriously ill Gazans.

"This child would have died without surgery," said Dr Alona Raucher-Sternfeld, as she simultaneously looked at the small Palestinian baby, Jamal, and the echo machine checking his heart.

Six-month-old Jamal came with his grandmother, Haifa, from the Dir al-Balah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to get a check-up on 15 January at the Wolfson medical centre, an Israeli governmental hospital in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Jamal was operated on here when he was two months old, suffering from two heart defects. His tiny size further complicated the surgery, which was ultimately a success, the doctor said.

"When he came here, he was blue. It was an emergency," Raucher-Sternfeld said, reviewing the initial referral from Al-Awda hospital in Gaza.
The surgery, hospital stay and logistics in bringing him out of Gaza were coordinated and partially funded by Save a Child's Heart, an Israeli humanitarian organisation, with some European Union donations. In 2007, 128 Palestinian children from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all suffering from heart conditions, were treated by the programme and the hospital.

Israeli rules

However, even this organisation could not bend the tight restrictions at the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza. Jamal's 24-year-old mother is too young to be allowed out of the enclave, according to Israeli security regulations, and the grandmother was sent as an escort instead.

Col Nir Press, head of the Israeli coordination and liaison administration in Gaza, recently said Israel requires rigid security rules, as Palestinian militants have, in the past, taken advantage of permits issued for medical reasons. In 2004, for example, four Israeli soldiers at the Erez crossing were killed when a Palestinian patient blew herself up inside the terminal.

Press also said the number of permits to Israel issued for medical reasons had risen 50 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year. Some foreign aid workers said this was a result of the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Young people not allowed to leave Gaza

Sometimes, simple mistakes of clerks, or clogged up bureaucracy, cause problems.

One-year-old Shahed, from northern Gaza, came with her grandmother to the hospital late in the day. They had been held up at Erez for an extended period of time, as someone had mistakenly entered the wrong date on the permit application.

The aging woman collapsed on the floor as she finally reached the hospital waiting room, tears of exhaustion - but also relief- rolling down her cheeks. She said she ran around inside the Erez terminal, trying to speak with Palestinian and Israeli officials, explaining she had an appointment for the young baby, who recently had a pacemaker put in by the Wolfson surgical team.

"I have diabetes, I'm not strong" she said, breathing heavily, as Jewish and Arab hands helped her into a chair. Like all Palestinians, she brought with her a small but weighty valise, just in case the doctors would make them stay more than one day.

Shahed's 19-year-old mother and 20-year-old father have little chance of leaving the enclave.

It attacks with military raids, missile attacks and bulldozers used against the civilian population which it justifies as being attempts to control Hamas. These attacks on Gaza are often unprovoked, just Israeli occupation policy in practice.

Olmert describes Israel-Gaza violence as "war"

When Hamas and others in occupied Gaza resist with ineffective rocket attacks, which kill no one, barely ever damage property, and basically end up landing in empty fields, this makes the news and is used by the Israeli propaganda machine to justify their continuation of more aggressive military occupation and suppression in Gaza.

Hamas fires over 160 rockets into Israel since Tuesday

Darkness falls on Gaza as Israel takes revenge for rocket attacks

More Palestinian civilians die daily in Gaza as Israeli rocket attacks miss their targets, if they were ever intended to actually hit a Hamas target, and hit wedding parties, or folks gathered in the market.

VOICES IN GAZA SCREAM OUT FOR HELP

Today, children were playing in the streets of Gaza, scores were rushed to hospital with blood pouring out of their little limbs, heads, eyes and nose…Israel bombed Gaza again.40 dead, 100 injured and out of the 100, 45 were children. 45 children not older than 10, soaked in blood. Their own.

More than 37 Palestinians, including at least 11 civilians, have been killed in air and artillery bombings since Israel launched the offensive on Tuesday.

Palestinians stand in front of a destroyed building of Hamas's Interior Ministry after it was targeted by an Israeli missile in Gaza Jan. 18, 2008. Israel closed border crossings with the Gaza Strip and destroyed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry on Friday in what witnesses said was an air strike, stepping up what it says is a campaign to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.(Xinhua Photo)

GAZA, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- One Palestinian woman was killed and 46 others were injured in a fresh Israeli strike near the abandoned headquarters of the Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza City on Friday, the Doha-based al-Jazeera Satellite Channel reported.

A letter from Gaza
1.5 millions in Gaza are punished collectively now

Dr. Medhat Abbas, Crisis management Palestinian Health Ministry

January 20, 2008 Dear All, Assalam Alykom About (30) strikes were implemented by the Israeli army on Gaza Strip between 14/1/2008 to 19/1/2008 evening . The attacks resulted in (36) martyrs. out of them (3) Ladies and (5) children. The number of those who were injured was (90) out of them there were (9) critical cases and (4) cases of amputations in the limbs (two cases lost their both lower limbs) out of the total casualties (35) were children while the women were (7). On 18/1/2008, the military campaign against the Gaza Strip was crowned by the announcement of sealing all the borders outlets leading to the Gaza Strip, which led to the interruption of all ways of life in the Gaza Strip. Nothing is entering Gaza now, nothing is getting out side it !!! Without exception, no fuel or food and medicines while we are living in the gloom the majority of time as a result of cutting the electricity. The Zionist Israeli occupation has been practising a collective punishment against 1.5 millions in Gaza. The punishment does not exclude children, women or elderly.No patients will travel abroad for treatment now, whatever their health status, before the 18th of January Israelis used to refuse almost 26% of the patients applying to travel for treatment. Today it is 100% closure, the patients now have to face their destiny and to die in peace. No coffins in Gaza any more, there is not even Cement to build their graves. So the people have to starve, the people have to be targeted by the unmanned planes, and when wounded there should be no treatment, and later no coffins or grave when they die. This is the reality. Imagine that Israelis are controling the milk of the babies in Gaza. What sort of respect for international conventions is it?? Dr. Medhat Abbas Crisis management Palestinian Health Ministry

:: Article nr. 40285 sent on 21-jan-2008 01:10 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=40285

When they do blow up a car full of Palestinians we can never be sure they were civilians because the Israeli propaganda machine informs the Western Media that they have successfully targeted and taken out a group of nameless faceless Hamas militants. In effect every Palestinian living in Gaza is a nameless Hamas militant.

Israeli missile strikes kill two Gaza militants

Israeli Troops Kill Militants in West Bank, Gaza in Separate Attacks

Pregnant Detainee delivers her baby under harsh conditions

Friday January 18, 2008 - 23:39

Palestinian Ministry of Detainees, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, reported on Friday that detainee Fatima Al Ziq, from Gaza, delivered her baby, Yousef, in Kfar Saba Israeli hospital. She was subjected to harsh treatment while being transferred to the hospital and was cuffed.

This is not a war of defense as is often proclaimed by Israel and its apologists in the Bush and Harper governments, this is a war of aggression by Israel in territories it considers under its control.

According to the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, fewer Israelis were killed by Palestinian attacks in 2007 than in any other year since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in late 2000. "The Good Year," proclaimed the daily Yediot Aharonot in a banner headline Jan. 1.

With the decline in attacks, the building of an Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank and the deepening isolation of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, the conflict is receding to the margins of consciousness of many Israelis.

It is a war of terror against the Palestinian peoples, and their counter attacks are then used to justify further violence by the Israeli state.It is not a measured response, it is a policy of hitting back with twice the strength and power to teach a lesson. However that lesson falls flat when you are the aggressor in the first place, the occupying power, the giver and taker of life. Like the Borg of Star Trek Israeli policy in Gaza is to remind Palestinians to accept their imprisonment and punishment for resistance is futile.

Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter expressed a harsh reality to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Sunday, warning that “without military deterrence in Gaza, Sderot could very well collapse.”

Dichter added that “the government must instruct the IDF to eliminate the rocket fire from Gaza entirely. These attacks need not be minimized or managed, but stopped completely irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians.”

The internal security minister noted that 180 Qassam Rocket have been fired at Gaza vicinity communities since the start of 2008. Referencing his recent visit to Sdeort he stated that “the weekend was absolutely terrible on them. After a draining week like that I would expect the IDF chief of staff to address the government as well.”

Responding to Dichter’s scathing criticism, Defense Minister Ehud Barak replied that Israel must uphold its current policy vis a vie Gaza.

"We are impacting the overall quality of life in Gaza and destroying the terror infrastructure," said Barak.

As the cabinet meeting opened, Olmert praised IDF and Shin-Bet operations in the Gaza Strip, and noted that such strikes will continue.

Also during the cabinet meeting, Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim addressed the crisis in Gaza, precipitated by the blockade imposed on the Strip by the defense minister Thursday. This in light of persistent rocket attacks originating from the region.
“We should not manufacture a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Its residents are hostages of a deranged regime, but there is no real humanitarian crisis there,” said Boim. The housing minister also attacked the UN, which condemned Israel following the Gaza closure. “I don’t hear the UN speak out for residents of Gaza vicinity communities which have been living in the shadow of rocket salvos for weeks, months and even years,” he said.

The Bush visit to the Middle East further reinforced this message as did the visit on his coat tails of Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs; Maxime Bernier. Sure they promote a two state solution, but one of those states; Palestine will not be determined by the Palestinian people rather it will be a state designed for them by Israel and its allies. At best it will be a colony of Israel, what they once occupied with military force they will concede to the management of their selected Palestinian compradors.

Peres: Public will rule on any deal reached with Palestinians

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday accused Gaza's Hamas rulers of trying to destroy the Palestinian dream of statehood, saying the Islamist group's violent takeover of the coastal strip last June "destroyed and tries to destroy our dreams, future and national aspirations".

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The repeated bouts of Israel-Gaza fighting are fueled by a three-way standoff between Israel, the Islamic militant Hamas and moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with none able to win the upper hand.
Only an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal or an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza would likely break through the deadlock.

Abbas and his aides, meanwhile, complain that Israel is using the Gaza quagmire as an unfair pressure tool in peace talks. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said peace talks cannot move forward unless the Palestinians halt rocket fire, a position endorsed by U.S. President George W. Bush in his recent visit.

Yet Olmert has not said how he expects Abbas to do what Israel has been unable to achieve.

Abbas aid Nabil Amr said Israeli negotiators routinely raise the Gaza issue whenever their Palestinian counterparts demand that Israel halt West Bank settlement expansion, as required under a U.S.-backed peace plan. «When we raise the settlements as a condition to continue (negotiations), they raise the legitimacy in Gaza,» Amr said. «The Israelis use it, and Abu Mazen (Abbas) cannot do anything because he is not there.

SEE:

Surf's Up In Gaza

Rachel Corrie Story Banned In Canada

Thank The New Canadian Government

Canada Forces Palestinans Into Poverty

Unemployment Breeds Terrorism

Kristallnacht In Gaza


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MLK Day

In honour of it being Martin Luther King Day in the U.S.A I thought I would repost this;

Martin Luther King Voice of the Working Class

His I Had A Dream Speech was delivered to a Civil Rights rally organized by Phillip Randolph VP of the AFL/CIO.

This is the fortieth anniversary of his assassination in 1968 while in Memphis fighting for workers rights and a living wage.

Memphis, Tennessee. April 4, 1968. A bullet from an assassin’s high-powered rifle strikes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and throws him to the balcony floor outside his room at the Lorraine Motel.

Most Americans know that Dr. King died in Memphis, but few of them recall why he traveled there. In the last year of his life, King changed his focus from civil rights issues to ending the war in Vietnam and ending poverty at home. In early 1968, 1,300 mostly black, underpaid sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike for better working conditions and union recognition. King heeded the call to Memphis to support these striking workers who epitomized the poverty and economic injustice he planned to dramatize with his Poor People’s Campaign.

University of Washington history professor Michael K. Honey has written the first definitive history of the sanitation workers strike in his new book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike and Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (W.W. Norton, 2007). The book weaves the stories of the workers, activists, and local politicians with a detailed account of the last weeks of King’s life. Cornel West called the book “a magisterial account of this neglected period.” Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal honored Jericho Road with starred reviews.

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Nothing New Here Move On

New party for Alberta's right It's not a new party it's the same old right wing rump of Social Credit.

A clone by any other name;Wildrose Alliance Party born in Alberta

Another good reason for supporting abortion on demand.

SEE

0+0=0

Wild Rose Party In and Out Scheme

Rent A Crowd

More Shills For Big Oil

Link Byfield's New Party

Link Byfield Goes AA

Where's The NDP?

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And They Won Both World Wars Too

Americans claim that without them the Allies would not have won WWI or WWII of course they joined the battle late, in the final years of both wars, but the attitude remains. America won the War. Whether it was Texas Rangers in Germany or Navajo Code Talkers in the Pacific.

Now of course we have them announcing that frankly they can win the war in Afghanistan without us. Guess we can leave.

Mr. Gates said: "Our guys in the east, under [American Major-General David] Rodriguez, are doing a terrific job. They've got the [counterinsurgency] thing down pat. But I think our allies over there, this is not something they have any experience with." The Los Angeles Times story develops this idea, quoting a senior U.S. military veteran of Afghanistan as saying NATO forces are "taking on a Soviet mentality ... They're staying in their bases in the south, they're doing very little patrolling, they're trying to avoid casualties, and they're using air power as a substitute for ground infantry operations, because they have so little ground infantry."

Their record of success in counter insurgency wars is very public. Let's see Cuba, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Angola,Nicaragua, nope no real victories there. Perhaps Chile, but that was a CIA funded coup. So it doesn't count. I know the invasion of Grenada and then Panama. Whew knew they had success somewhere.

No wait those weren't counter insurgencies they were invasions. The population was not mobilized in opposition to those invasions. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, where they are still fighting insurgents.

Yep send in the marines. But make sure that they are using the British Guide to Counter Insurgency in Malaysia, circa the 1950's. Which is what their counterinsurgency strategy is based on.

In any event, the American army and marines have produced a new counter-insurgency manual. One of its authors, General David Petraeus, is now in charge of the “surge” in Iraq. It may be too late to turn Iraq round, and Afghanistan could slide into greater violence. But the manual offers some comfort: it says counter-insurgency operations “usually begin poorly”, and the way to success is for an army to become a good “learning organisation”.

According to Mao's well-worn dictum, guerrillas must be like fish swimming in the “water” of the general population. T.E. Lawrence, helping to stir up the Arab revolt against Turkish rule during the first world war, described regular armies as plants, “immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head”. Guerrillas, on the other hand, were like “a vapour”. A soldier, he said, was “helpless without a target, owning only what he sat on, and subjugating only what, by order, he could poke his rifle at”.

Western armies have unsurpassed firepower, mobility and surveillance technology. Guerrillas' main weapons are agility, surprise, the support of at least some sections of the population and, above all, time. The warren of Iraqi streets and the fortified compounds of Afghanistan compensate for the insurgents' technological shortcomings. The manual, however, attempts to change the army mindset: in fighting an enemy “among the people”, it says, the central objective is not to destroy the enemy but to secure the allegiance of the citizenry. All strands of a campaign—military, economic and political—have to be strongly entwined.

Much of this thinking is drawn from the British experience in Malaya, but conditions today are vastly different. In Templer's day, securing “hearts and minds” did not mean just acting with kindness to win the people over; it also included coercion. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese, among whom the insurgents mainly operated, were uprooted and moved into guarded camps known as “new villages”, where they were offered land. If the British could not find the fish, they resorted to removing the water.

None the less Afghanistan is Bush's mess, left behind in the rush to invade Baghdad. Laying the blame for military failure in Kandahar at the foot of NATO when your own nation has the vast majority of troops and fire power is simply passing the buck.And a failure to follow advice already given you.

A general hits out

Gates' criticism draws heavily from a recent study authored by the US general who commanded the forces in Afghanistan from October 2003 until May 2005, Lieutenant General David W Barno, in the prestigious journal Military Review. Barno is an influential voice in the US defense community. He chose to begin his paper devoted to the counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, citing lines by ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

Barno claimed the US counter-insurgency strategy during his period produced "positive and dramatic" results. He gave the "center of gravity" in his strategy to the Afghan people and not the "enemy". He kept in view the Afghan people's "immense enmity to foreign forces" and deduced that eschewing the "Soviet attempt at omnipresence" in Afghanistan, only through a "light footprint approach" instead, could the war be successfully fought.

Barno wrote that Afghan people's tolerance for a foreign presence was "a bag of capital [that was] finite and had to be spent slowly and frugally" and, therefore, under his charge US forces took great care to avoid Afghan casualties, detainee abuse, or transgressions in observance of respect to tribal leaders or causing offence to traditional Afghan culture.

Second, Barno outlined that he and the then-US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, bonded as a team and they had a "unity of purpose" in ensuring perfect interagency and international-level coordination. According to Barno, the slide began in mid-2005 after he and Khalilzad were reassigned. Washington then decided to publicly announce that NATO was assuming responsibility for the war and that the US was making a token withdrawal of 2,500 troops.

"Unsurprisingly, this was widely viewed in the region as the first signal that the United States was 'moving for the exits', thus reinforcing long-held doubts about the prospects of sustained American commitment. In my judgement, these public moves have served more than any other US actions since 2001 [the fall of the Taliban] to alter the calculus of both our friends and our adversaries across the region - and not in our favor."

Barno implied NATO messed up the top-notch command structure he created. The result is, "With the advent of NATO military leadership, there is today no single comprehensive strategy to guide the US, NATO, or international effort." Consequently, he says, the unity of purpose - both interagency and international - has suffered and unity of command is fragmented, and tactics have "seemingly reverted to earlier practices such as the aggressive use of airpower".

Barno makes some chilling conclusions. First, he says the "bag of capital" representing the tolerance of Afghan people for foreign forces is diminishing. Second, NATO narrowly focuses on the "20% military dimension" of the war, while ignoring the 80% comprising non-military components. Third, the "center of gravity" of the war is no longer the Afghan people but the "enemy". Fourth, President Hamid Karzai's government is ineffectual "under growing pressure from powerful interests within his administration". Fifth, corruption, crime, poverty and a burgeoning narcotics trade have eroded public confidence in Karzai. Finally, "NATO, the designated heir to an originally popular international effort, is threatened by the prospects of mounting disaffection among the Afghan people."

Barno sidesteps the ground realities. The US strategy's real failure happened, in fact, in the 2003-2005 period when he was in charge of the war. Of course, the failure was not at the military level, but at the political and diplomatic level. That was a crucial phase when the window of opportunity was still open for a course correction over the Taliban's exclusion from the Afghan political process. The Taliban should have been invited to come in from the cold and join an intra-Afghan dialogue and reconciliation. The extreme emotions of 2001 had by then begun to ebb away.

On the contrary, Khalilzad's diplomatic brief was that the US presidential election of 2004 was the priority for the White House. The "war on terror" in Afghanistan was a milch cow in US domestic politics. Presidential advisor Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney shrewdly calculated that an enemy in the Hindu Kush was useful for the Republican Party campaign, while resonance of the booming guns in Afghanistan would be a good backdrop for election rhetoric against a decorated war veteran like John Kerry.

And, showcasing of Karzai in Kabul's presidential palace helped display Afghanistan as a success story. A victorious Karzai indeed landed in the US to a hero's welcome from George W Bush on election eve. Bush went on to win a second term, but the Afghan war was lost. The slide began by mid-2005 as the embittered Taliban began regrouping. As the year progressed, as Everts and many others pointed out, the Iraq war "sucked the oxygen away from Afghanistan". How could Gates possibly admit all that? He would rather NATO take the blame. But then, it is a sideshow in actuality.

Instead of using outdated tactics from the Cold War or quoting Sun Tzu perhaps the American Military and its NATO Allies need to read Machiavelli's; The Prince.

But in maintaining armed men there in place of colonies one spends much more, having to consume on the garrison all income from the state, so that the acquisition turns into a loss, and many more are exasperated, because the whole state is injured; through the shifting of the garrison up and down all become acquainted with hardship, and all become hostile, and they are enemies who, whilst beaten on their own ground, are yet able to do hurt. For every reason, therefore, such guards are as useless as a colony is useful.

I conclude, therefore, that no principality is secure without having its own forces; on the contrary, it is entirely dependent on good fortune, not having the valour which in adversity would defend it. And it has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain or unstable as fame or power not founded on its own strength. And one's own forces are those which are composed either of subjects, citizens, or dependants; all others are mercenaries or auxiliaries.

A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles, accordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles, seeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his shadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding they cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority. He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former finds himself with many around him who consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to obey him.

Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, whilst the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because of their being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself, as they are few in number. The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far-seeing and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves, and to obtain favours from him whom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince is compelled to live always with the same people, but he can do well without the same nobles, being able to make and unmake them daily, and to give or take away authority when it pleases him.

Therefore, to make this point clearer, I say that the nobles ought to be looked at mainly in two ways: that is to say, they either shape their course in such a way as binds them entirely to your fortune, or they do not. Those who so bind themselves, and are not rapacious, ought to be honoured and loved; those who do not bind themselves may be dealt with in two ways; they may fail to do this through pusillanimity and a natural want of courage, in which case you ought to make use of them, especially of those who are of good counsel; and thus, whilst in prosperity you honour yourself, in adversity you have not to fear them. But when for their own ambitious ends they shun binding themselves, it is a token that they are giving more thought to themselves than to you, and a prince ought to guard against such, and to fear them as if they were open enemies, because in adversity they always help to ruin him.

Therefore, one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him. But one who, in opposition to the people, becomes a prince by the favour of the nobles, ought, above everything, to seek to win the people over to himself, and this he may easily do if he takes them under his protection. Because men, when they receive good from him of whom they were expecting evil, are bound more closely to their benefactor; thus the people quickly become more devoted to him than if he had been raised to the principality by their favours; and the prince can win their affections in many ways, but as these vary according to the circumstances one cannot give fixed rules, so I omit them; but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity.

That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. For this reason a prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers. From the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good allies, and if he is well armed he will have good friends, and affairs will always remain quiet within when they are quiet without, unless they should have been already disturbed by conspiracy; and even should affairs outside be disturbed, if he has carried out his preparations and has lived as I have said, as long as he does not despair, he will resist every attack, as I said Nabis the Spartan did.

But concerning his subjects, when affairs outside are disturbed he has only to fear that they will conspire secretly, from which a prince can easily secure himself by avoiding being hated and despised, and by keeping the people satisfied with him, which it is most necessary for him to accomplish, as I said above at length. And one of the most efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not to be hated and despised by the people, for he who conspires against a prince always expects to please them by his removal; but when the conspirator can only look forward to offending them, he will not have the courage to take such a course, for the difficulties that confront a conspirator are infinite. And as experience shows, many have been the conspiracies, but few have been successful; because he who conspires cannot act alone, nor can he take a companion except from those whom he believes to be malcontents, and as soon as you have opened your mind to a malcontent you have given him the material with which to content himself, for by denouncing you he can look for every advantage; so that, seeing the gain from this course to be assured, and seeing the other to be doubtful and full of dangers, he must be a very rare friend, or a thoroughly obstinate enemy of the prince, to keep faith with you.

And, to reduce the matter into a small compass, I say that, on the side of the conspirator, there is nothing but fear, jealousy, prospect of punishment to terrify him; but on the side of the prince there is the majesty of the principality, the laws, the protection of friends and the state to defend him; so that, adding to all these things the popular goodwill, it is impossible that any one should be so rash as to conspire. For whereas in general the conspirator has to fear before the execution of his plot, in this case he has also to fear the sequel to the crime; because on account of it he has the people for an enemy, and thus cannot hope for any escape.

For this reason I consider that a prince ought to reckon conspiracies of little account when his people hold him in esteem; but when it is hostile to him, and bears hatred towards him, he ought to fear everything and everybody. And well-ordered states and wise princes have taken every care not to drive the nobles to desperation, and to keep the people satisfied and contented, for this is one of the most important objects a prince can have.

There never was a new prince who has disarmed his subjects; rather when he has found them disarmed he has always armed them, because, by arming them, those arms become yours, those men who were distrusted become faithful, and those who were faithful are kept so, and your subjects become your adherents. And whereas all subjects cannot be armed, yet when those whom you do arm are benefited, the others can be handled more freely, and this difference in their treatment, which they quite understand, makes the former your dependants, and the latter, considering it to be necessary that those who have the most danger and service should have the most reward, excuse you. But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you. And because you cannot remain unarmed, it follows that you turn to mercenaries, which are of the character already shown; even if they should be good they would not be sufficient to defend you against powerful enemies and distrusted subjects. Therefore, as I have said, a new prince in a new principality has always distributed arms. Histories are full of examples. But when a prince acquires a new state, which he adds as a province to his old one, then it is necessary to disarm the men of that state, except those who have been his adherents in acquiring it; and these again, with time and opportunity, should be rendered soft and effeminate; and matters should be managed in such a way that all the armed men in the state shall be your own soldiers who in your old state were living near you.

Princes, especially new ones, have found more fidelity and assistance in those men who in the beginning of their rule were distrusted than among those who in the beginning were trusted. Pandolfo Petrucci, Prince of Siena, ruled his state more by those who had been distrusted than by others. But on this question one cannot speak generally, for it varies so much with the individual; I will only say this, that those men who at the commencement of a princedom have been hostile, if they are of a description to need assistance to support themselves, can always be gained over with the greatest ease, and they will be tightly held to serve the prince with fidelity, inasmuch as they know it to be very necessary for them to cancel by deeds the bad impression which he had formed of them; and thus the prince always extracts more profit from them than from those who, serving him in too much security, may neglect his affairs. And since the matter demands it, I must not fail to warn a prince, who by means of secret favours has acquired a new state, that he must well consider the reasons which induced those to favour him who did so; and if it be not a natural affection towards him, but only discontent with their government, then he will only keep them friendly with great trouble and difficulty, for it will be impossible to satisfy them. And weighing well the reasons for this in those examples which can be taken from ancient and modern affairs, we shall find that it is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it.

Some may wonder how it can happen that Agathocles, and his like, after infinite treacheries and cruelties, should live for long secure in his country, and defend himself from external enemies, and never be conspired against by his own citizens; seeing that many others, by means of cruelty, have never been able even in peaceful times to hold the state, still less in the doubtful times of war. I believe that this follows from severities being badly or properly used. Those may be called properly used, if of evil it is lawful to speak well, that are applied at one blow and are necessary to one's security, and that are not persisted in afterwards unless they can be turned to the advantage of the subjects. The badly employed are those which, notwithstanding they may be few in the commencement, multiply with time rather than decrease. Those who practise the first system are able, by aid of God or man, to mitigate in some degree their rule, as Agathocles did. It is impossible for those who follow the other to maintain themselves.

Hence it is to be remarked that, in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.

And above all things, a prince ought to live amongst his people in such a way that no unexpected circumstances, whether of good or evil, shall make him change; because if the necessity for this comes in troubled times, you are too late for harsh measures; and mild ones will not help you, for they will be considered as forced from you, and no one will be under any obligation to you for them.

SEE

Afghanistan A Failed State

Job Protection for Canadian Reservists

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Fire Democrats?

If they had done this; Fire employees that can't speak English? there would have been far fewer Democratic voters in the Nevada primary yesterday.

The Democratic Caucuses held in Casino hotels had to scramble to provide translators yesterday for the predominately Spanish speaking hotel workers members of the Culinary Workers Union.

The candidates have competed hard for Hispanic voters, who make up 40% of Culinary members and 11% of registered voters in the state. This week, Clinton and Obama unveiled dueling Spanish-language TV ads and dueling endorsements: Richard Chavez, brother of the late labor leader Cesar Chavez, for her, and Maria Elena Durazo — a top Los Angeles labor official — for him.

That is the reality of immigrant labour in America. It is predominately Latino's and not all of them are illegal. But the reality is that English is not their first language either. The nativist anti-immigrant movement of the Republican Right and Lou Dobbs and Company lump all Latino workers together, whether they are American citizens, guest workers or 'illegals'.


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Farmer John's Robot


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It's Not Wrong

Sorry but this is not wrong.

Torture manual wrongly includes allies: Bernier

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has distanced his department from one of its training manuals that lists the United States and Guantanamo Bay as places of torture.

The US uses waterboarding. Which is torture just ask the noted authority on torture; John McCain.

McCain denounced waterboarding as clear-cut torture:

“Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot and being used on Buddhist monks as we speak,” said McCain after a campaign stop at Dordt College here.

“People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that.”

But of course the Conservatives wanting to be in the good books with the Bush White House will do their bidding and revise the truth. What is wrong is denying the truth.

The CIA's "enhanced" interrogation techniques = TORTURE

Of course knowing that Gitmo is a place of torture we now have to ask why Minister Bernier has been silent over the fate of Omar Khadr. Changing the manual will not change the fact this Canadian citizen is being held illegally by the U.S. and probably tortured.

And while we are discussing waterboarding I wonder if the Harpocrites would like to test it out on themselves to see if it is torture. They would probably come to this conclusion.

Torture: Not a tough call

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Although other senior Bush administration officials (such as Attorney General Michael Mukasey) seem unsure as to whether the practice of waterboarding is torture, Mike McConnell, director of National Intelligence, has taken a public stance against it. Sort of.

McConnell, who seems to be among the few who apply the Golden Rule in his thoughts on torture, told New Yorker magazine that, if he were being waterboarded, he'd consider it torture.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God. I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anyone else's definition, for me, it would be torture." He says that using "special methods" of interrogation has yielded "meaningful information" and adds that the U.S. does not torture prisoners.

And yet, there's the matter of the taped interrogation the CIA destroyed, which shows the use of techniques most of us would consider torture.

Ok Minister Bernier if waterboarding is not torture then give us a demonstration with you as the subject. Yep changed your mind did you.


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