Wednesday, March 20, 2024

The Donald J. Trump Pearl Harbor lookout justice system

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Sunday, March 17, 2024

more journalists need to cover how the people of Gaza feel about Hamas, Israel, President Biden and America

    I keep seeing news reports of Donald Trump saying, if he was president, the war in Gaza would not have happened, and I keep wondering if he is (a) lying, (b) insane, (c) both?  

    I keep seeing news reports of President  Biden (a) leaning on Israel to stop slaughtering and displacing the people of Gaza, (b) sending food and relief aid to the people of Gaza, and (c) sending bombs and cannon shells and money to Israel. 

    I keep wondering how the beleaguered people in Gaza feel about (a) Israel, (b) America, (c) Hamas?

    In my Apple newsfeed this Sunday morning, a Christian Science Monitor article addressed (a), (b) and (c). 

    I wondered how long the Gaza people who spoke out against Hamas might expect to live? 

    I wondered how long the people still living in Gaza might expect to live? 

    I wondered how the people running Hamas and Israel live with themselves, and how President Biden and Americans who support Israel’s war in Gaza live with themselves?

‘Hamas gambled with our lives’: Gazans are now daring to speak out

By  Special correspondent

Fatima AbdulKarim Special contributor

and another special contributor
March 14, 2024

AMMAN, JORDAN; RAMALLAH, WEST BANK; AND GAZA
Across the Gaza Strip – from markets to evacuee camps to social media channels – Palestinian frustration and anger with Hamas is on the rise.
Complaints began with Hamas’ apparent disregard for Gaza civilians who faced the brunt of Israel’s punishing military response to the Oct. 7 attack while Hamas fighters remained in tunnels.
Now, with starvation, profiteering, and internal chaos on the rise, the militant group that has ruled the strip for 17 years is nowhere to be found.


WHY WE WROTE THIS
A story focused on
COURAGE
For the first time since the war began in Gaza, resentment against Hamas is boiling to the surface in public expressions of anger and in social media, as residents increasingly are losing their reluctance to speak out.


“We did not choose to be in a war that takes us from our homes, [takes] the lives of loved ones, and puts our lives in a death game that we knew nothing about,” says Bisan Nateel, a youth organizer for a local Gaza nongovernmental organization.
“Hamas didn’t warn us or give any instructions to protect or help people. I don’t know what they were thinking or what they expected people to do, but this is unacceptable for everyone in Gaza,” says Walid, an aid worker in central Gaza who declined to use his full name. “I feel that Hamas gambled with our lives at stake, and lost.”
Rafaat Naim, a Gaza businessman and former member of the Palestine Chamber of Commerce, says prior to the war, support for Hamas among Gaza residents was already limited. “Hamas’ popularity in the Gaza Strip was waning, due to its governance failures [and] misallocation of funds,” he says. “The devastating impact of the conflict further entrenched this sentiment.”
The anger that has been simmering since the early days of the war, meanwhile, has only in recent weeks come to the surface. These are not organized calls or political protests against Hamas, but conversational complaints growing louder by the day. Tiny protests have been scattered.

Kosay Al Nemer/Reuters
View caption
“People now are very angry with Hamas, but at the same time they are afraid to express the anger inside them by protesting or holding sit-ins,” notes Wael Mohammad, a civil engineer and longtime Hamas critic in Gaza. He says 16 years of the Islamic Hamas’ intimidation tactics, as well as its use of religious faith to push its ideology, made “the population in Gaza docile.”
Now with the lack of Hamas police officers on the streets, and a reduced threat of being dragged off by its security services, people in Gaza, facing starvation, are more emboldened to criticize the movement in public. Some even curse it.
This outspokenness, however, does not mean Gazans’ support, in principle, for armed resistance against the Israeli occupation has lessened. Nor has their view changed that the conflict is an Israeli war against the Palestinian people.
There remains a belief among most residents that, with a 17-year siege of Gaza, they have been punished for two decades by Israel, the international community, and the Palestinian Authority for Hamas’ presence, and that the movement has never had the chance to act as a normal government.
Yet growing disillusion with Hamas’ rule is impacting the group’s future prospects each day the war goes on, as residents see it as unresponsive, irresponsible, and lacking basic care for Gaza’s people.

Evading responsibility

All those interviewed stressed that Hamas left the Gaza public “in the dark” about its plans even after Israel’s counterattack began. Added to the lack of communication was a seeming lack of concern for civilians as Hamas forces retreated to their tunnels.
“Hamas followed the same old war plan and left the people to the mercy of Israelis,” says Walid, the aid worker.
“We gave in to Hamas for a long time, and we thought Hamas as a party would be prepared for the war after Oct. 7 as they claimed. But they were only ready to protect themselves,” says Rana Alsayed, a mother and feminist activist from Gaza City who was displaced four times by Israel’s offensives.
“This war is beyond Hamas’ capabilities,” says Ahmed, a Gaza photojournalist who blames intense targeting by Israel’s military for the movement’s inability to govern or protect its citizens. “It cannot help itself, let alone the people.”

Fatima Shbair/AP
View caption
For some Palestinians in Gaza, the war has cemented the idea of Hamas as a militant faction looking out only for itself rather than for the people it has governed since first being elected by a plurality in 2006. It has ruled unopposed since 2007, when it drove out its rival Fatah and seized the strip.
“They see their role is to fight Israelis and not to care for the people. But since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, they implicitly agreed to care for its people,” says Walid, who, like many, sees Hamas as “evading that responsibility.”
“At least provide enough food for the people to not die of hunger. Build shelters and safe places for the people to go to. Establish a form of civic protection and law enforcement to keep people in check,” the aid worker says.
“The Oct. 7 operation was nothing but a continuation of the series of political and military gambles that the movement has made since its inception, an operation that brought nothing but destruction, killing, displacement, and deportation of the residents of the Gaza Strip,” says Mr. Mohammad, the civil engineer.
He likens the movement to “a group of mercenaries and militias that do not rise to the level of a Palestinian movement” and don’t “care about Palestinian blood.”
He, and others, point to statements by Hamas’ leadership abroad at the onset of the war that it was the responsibility of the United Nations and the international community, not Hamas, to protect Gaza civilians.

Anger over aid, profiteering

With a breakdown of law and order, organized crime is increasing and aid is looted and sold on the secondary market before many can get it. And there is a growing belief that not only does Hamas bear responsibility for the looting and profiteering through its absence, but it also may be complicit or participating in it.
“We have to buy food that was sent to Gaza as aid. We hear lots of rumors that this aid was stolen under the eyes of Hamas, sometimes in complicity with people from the government,” says Walid.

As hunger grips Gaza, law and order crumbles

Mohammed, an accountant and former government employee now in Rafah, says the links between Hamas and aid theft across Gaza are “clear.”
“We cannot provide definitive proof, but who has the guns? Who has the monopoly on force in Gaza? It’s Hamas. The work of organized criminal groups wouldn’t happen without their consent,” Mohammed says via WhatsApp messaging. “They are profiting politically and economically from our death and misery.”
Dissent is also growing in the local business community. Members say they have long chafed under Hamas’ restrictions, appropriation of incoming materials, corruption, and wars.
They have lost businesses, farms, and homes in this war – but also have found no entity to facilitate a return of trade or even the distribution of basic aid to stave off a famine.
Despite the rising anger, fear persists amid occasional reports of mosque imams or civil society organizers being dragged off and “disappeared” by Hamas for voicing public criticism. Protesters gathering in northern Gaza were shot at by armed men.
“At the grassroots level, Hamas persists in its oppression even amid these dire circumstances,” notes Mr. Naim, the businessman.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
View caption
Alternatives emerging?
In the void left behind by Hamas, some Gazans are attempting to organize at the grassroots to provide services and a sense of order.
In Rafah, so-called Protection Committees – groups of local young men, dressed in matching black clothes and masks, armed with batons – are providing basic security to markets and public areas.
Mr. Naim is one of several local Gaza business owners and community leaders who are attempting to form a council to facilitate the entry and distribution of aid and goods.
They have set their sights on advocating for the border to open to resume a robust flow of aid and commerce into the besieged strip.
“The people demand resolute, clear, and strategic decisions to pave the way for stability,” says Mr. Naim.
Yet attempts by the people to organize and circumvent Hamas face steep obstacles – and danger.
This week, unverified reports emerged that Hamas executed a mukhtar, or local community leader, in northern Gaza, allegedly for coordinating with the Israeli military for a separate initiative to facilitate aid.
The incident appeared to confirm what Palestinians in Gaza already knew or believed: Any Israeli involvement would delegitimize and kill any alternative group providing services in Gaza.
“The occupation’s civil administration has engaged with some community leaders and members of the private sector,” notes Mr. Naim. “This initiative is both unacceptable and risky for all involved on the Palestinian side.”
While the majority of Palestinians in Gaza interviewed say they no longer want Hamas’ rule, a significant portion still support its existence as an armed movement. A lack of alternatives leaves Gazans unsure of their future.
“I still support Hamas as a liberation movement, but I am not satisfied with its uncalculated actions,” notes Ahmed, the photojournalist.
With the losses piling up for families in Gaza facing missile strikes, famine, and profiteering, more Gazans say the idea of trusting Hamas as rulers governing the strip again is unthinkable.
“I lost my mother, my husband lost half his family, and we lost our house. My children have known nothing but wars and escalations,” says Ms. Alsayed, the Gaza feminist.
“How can my children ever believe in Hamas, who are neither providing us with a bite to eat nor allowing anyone else to do so?”

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

    

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Friday, March 15, 2024

God makes queer people, too

 


      Key West rainbow parade

    Ok younguns, around dawn this Ides of March, I dreamed about one of you and it caused me to think, “To tell the truf, politics and religion in America reveal everything you never wanted to know about America.”

    My old Jewish friend in Key West, Sam Kaufman, who is a city commissioner and a practicing attorney, told me one day in his office that my talking about my dreams didn’t bother him, because Jewish people think dreams come from God.

    That one of you I dreamed about last night was born a cross-wired girl, who always felt she was a boy, and there was nothing she could do about it, because that was how God made her, and since God doesn’t make mistakes, that was how God wanted her to be.

    If my blaming God turns people off, then I just as easily can blame Mother Nature, but no way I ever can blame that babyfossil for what she had no control over, religious views to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Eventually, with her parents' blessing, that cross-wired babyfossil had surgery that made her more male and she became much happier, and while that wasn't easy for someone as long in the tooth as I am to wrap his mind around, I knew very well what it's like to live in a body that doesn’t seem to suit me, and if I there was surgery that would make my cranky bowel be less cranky, I would have that surgery done, and I don’t see how God could be angry with me for that, any more than God is angry with our beloved she who became a he.

    For you see, what is important to God is what’s in our hearts, and how we live - actions speak louder, than what we say about ourselves or even what we think. That’s what that Jewish guy Jesus in the Gospels was all about: doing the next right thing, live and let live, leave the judging to God, and God will not judge you

    That’s not a big seller in some religious and political circles, and I am a guilty as the next person of judging and finger-pointing when I think someone with influence has gone off the rails and become a menace. But I do not judge queer people, who cannot be who some straight people think they should be, because their Bible tells them so, because it ain’t natural. because whatever.

    I’ll let you in on a secret, babyfossils. I think people who get wyrdd about queer people deep down inside are wyrd themselves, but they don’t know it; or they know it, but pretend outwardly that it isn’t so. They pretend, because they hate being wyrd, because their Bible, or something, tells them being wyrd is bad, so they make sure nobody thinks they are wyrd, by being really against wyrd people.

    Bible people’s favorite saint is St. Paul. I say that, because I heard Christians quote St. Paul far more than they quoted Jesus.

    If you read St. Paul’s letters, you see he thought more highly of men than he did of women, and he told his followers that he wished they were like him, celibate. And, although Jesus never did it, Paul condemned homosexuality as an abomination. 

    When Paul was Saul of Tarsus, and was getting Christians crucified by the Roman government if they did not renounce Jesus, he was a Jewish Pharisee, and as such, he had, as did every Jewish man, a solemn duty to God to marry and have children and increase the numbers of God’s chosen people. Yet, there is nothing in Paul's letters about him having a wife and children, and I suppose every woman around Paul knew he was gay.

    In 1996, I explained all of that to several gay men in Birmingham, some years younger than me, after the minister of Southside Baptist Church and my Sunday school teacher there had not convinced them to give our eclectic Sunday school class a try. After hearing what I said about Paul, they decided to attend our Sunday school class and they really liked it.

    About 20 years later, there was a big flap in Key West, where the weird are said to go pro, about LBGTQ people, who made up around 20 percent of the people in the city. I went to a city commission meeting, and at the very end, when citizens can speak for 3 minutes about anything to the mayor and commissionerss and the public watching on the local TV station and live streaming, I recounted what I had told the young gay men in Birmingham about St. Paul.

    Several years prior, a lesbian woman named Teri Johnston was elected to the Key West City Commission. I thought she was the best city commissioner the city ever had. She was unbeatable when her commission seat came up for election every 4 years, but she wore out, I thought, trying to get the city government do better, and she retired. 

    In 2018, I ran for mayor the 6th time, and Teri ran for mayor, and she won, and she got reelected easily in in 2020 and 2022, but she decided not to run in 2024, even though she could have won. I think she got tired again of trying to get the city government to do better.

    Also while I lived in Key West, the city’s county commission seat was held by a lesbian woman named Heather Carruthers from 2008 through 2016, as I recall.

    At a Key West Business Guild candidate forum in Key West, in 2010, when I was running for the county commission, the candiates were asked to state their position on LBGTQ people needing to feel safe in the Florida keys. The Business Guild had been started by LBGTQ people.

    When my time to speak came, I said that topic is very personal to me, because my brother Major was bisexual in the closet in Birmingham, and someone found out and was leaning on him in some way, threatening to out him publicly, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, and he killed himself and tried to make it look like murder.

    Major lived in San Francisco, then in Key West, then in St.Petersburg, before moving back to Birmingham and meeting a woman I knew and they got married and had two children, and he tried living a double life. We became estranged after he realized he could not persuade me that he was not bisexual, which my first wife, your grandmother, and my second wife, had known since the 1970s, and it never mattered to us. We merely hoped he would find happiness.

    I tell you these things, babyfossils, because a lot of religious people in America are very prejudiced against LBGTQ people, and there is nothing that can be done to change their minds, and it might be dangerous to try to change their minds, so deep is their prejudice and so convinced are they that God is on their side. Unless you live in a place like Key West, it’s safer and maybe smarter, I think, to leave them alone and stay out of their way, than get in their faces about LGBTQ people.

    Our beloved she who became a he lives in a part of America where queer people are better received than other parts of the country, and I hope he will simply do what he enjoys doing and keeps his head down and lets time and God work on the people who have a big charge about queer people. It takes a very long time for rivers to round and smooth stones in the river bed, and St. Paul made that process a lot slower for people who don’t like LBGTQ people.

    Imagine what it did to the psyche of Christendom for its favorite saint to be a celibate in the closet gay man.

    Imagine what it did to the psyche of Christendom for its Trinity to be all male. How do such a God reproduce?

    In Judaism, the Spirit of God is called Shekinah, female gender.

    I told the Key West City Commission that, too.

    Grandfossil

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

By Sloan Bashinsky at No comments:

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Classified Documents: a well-meaning forgetful when convenient old man vs. an old cocaine addict diaper shitter lecher tyrant

    My friend Bob, who does the tech work for The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast and my books at the free internet library, archive.org, told me this morning of seeing something posted on Reddit yesterday about President Biden not soiling his pants on certain important occasions.

    Bob said that he dug further into online lore and discovered it was a reference to times Donald Trump had shit in his pants on important occasions, one of which was while meeting with the President of Turkey.

    Bob described a press conference Trump gave when he was president, during which he abruptly said he had to take an important phone call and there was the sound of a wet fart and he walked off the stage and left.

    Bob said he found stuff online of someone who worked with Trump on The Celebrity Apprentice TV show, who said Trump used a lot of cocaine cut with Mannitol, which is used as a diuretic to treat kidney failure and as a laxative for babies, long use of which can cause adults to become incontinent. 

    I google-searched “Trump shit his pants” and found:

    Then, Bob sent me this YouTube interview below of the fellow from The Celebrity Apprentice, who details Trump’s cocaine and Adderall addictions, and Trump's incontinence, Trump wears Depend liners and a corset, he has a long strands of hair that he weaves with hair spray, and how he misbehaved in the studio with young women contestants and with his daughter Ivanka, who gave him a lap dance, and who later told him to hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s in Washington, D.C. 
    I think every American, and every person on the planet, should watch this 20-minute interview of someone who knew Donald Trump well.
    


    I wondered where I was hiding in a cave so that I did not know about all of that until today?

    I wondered why CNN, President Biden and the Democrats aren't slinging that shit show all over the place?

   I wondered if that, and Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll, are why Melania doesn’t live with Trump?

   I wondered how many foreign leaders know about it?

   I wondered how FOX, Republicans and MAGAs, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Forbes Magazine spin it?

   I read online yesterday that, when asked if he would debate Trump, who is demanding a debate, President Biden said Trump doesn't behave.

   During their first debate in 2016, hosted by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Trump kept interrupting and talking over Biden, and kept interrupting and talking over Blitzer, and I wanted to blitz Blizter for not turning off Trump’s mic.

  During the New York civil prosecution of Trump’s companies for overstating their assets to get favorable low interest loans for lucrative investments, Justice Arthur F. Engoron could not get Trump to shut up. 

    If I were President Biden, I would tell Trump that he is still throwing tantrums and shitting in his diapers and presidential debates are for grown ups, and I would give Trump and Wolf Blizer links to the above Instagram and YouTube videos, and I would call a press conference and recount all of that to the journalists and give them the links.

    Shifting gears, after watching President Biden’s State of the Union Address, which I reported in the state of the plagued union America post, I watched some of Alabama’s junior U.S. Senator Katie Britt's rebuttle on behalf of the Republican Party. When Britt lamented an illegal immigrant sexually assaulting a woman and how terribly that had affected her, I wondered how terribly affected she was over Trump bragging about being able to get away with grabbing women's pussies because he was a celebrity, and how that played in the minds of the E. Jean Carroll v. Donald Trump New York state court jury, which found Trump guilty of sexually assaulting Carroll?
    
    On CNN yesterday morning, I watched about an hour of Special Prosecutor Robert Hur, who has a stellar record as a federal prosecutor, and is a natural born citizen son of Korean Immigrants, and a registered Republican, who speaks English better than President Biden, Donald Trump and myself, be quizzed, insulted and lambasted by Republicans in Congress for his decision not to prosecute President Biden for hanging onto classified documents after he was Vice President under President Barack Obama, because Biden was a well-meaning, forgetful old man a jury probably would sympathize with and not convict. 

    The Republicans got Hur to say, yes, there was a tape recording of Biden telling a ghostwriter that he had only recently discovered he had a lot of classified documents, but when later asked about that by Hur, Biden said he did not remember saying that to the ghostwriter. 

    Having recently watched Biden speak for 70 minutes in his State of the Union Address to Congress, demonstrating terrific cognitive function and memory for an 81-year-old man, which is my age, I concluded Biden had lied to Hur, and I wished the Republicans had told Hur that in plain English, and that he should indict and prosecute Biden, so that Donald Trump cannot claim Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's classified documents prosecution case against Trump is political and deprives him of equal protection under the laws, and perhaps Hur then would have coughed up that, well, in truth, the U.S. Department of Justice has a longstanding policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents.

    When Democrats in Congress expressed outrage that Hur played politics by besmirching Biden’s state of mind by calling him forgetful. I thought they ignored that Biden proved in his State of the Union Address that he is sharp as a tack mentally and thus he had lied to Hur about not remembering what he told the ghostwriter, and but for the Department of Justice’s policy of not prosecuting sitting presidents, Hur should indict and prosecute Biden.

    I agreed with Hur, that when confronted by federal authorities, Biden cooperated fully with finding and returning a whole not of classified documents in his possession, including a lot of his own handwritten notes, whereas when confronted by federal authorities, Trump did not cooperate and did plenty to try to prevent turning over the classified documents, some of which he had shared with other people to impress them.

     As a former law clerk to a United States District Judge who presided over every criminal prosecution in North Alabama, and as a former practicing attorney and political Independent, I say nobody is above the law and screw the Department of Justice’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president who has committed a federal crime. Trump and Biden both should be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents, and both should be barred from being president again because of mishandling classified documents. 

    As for their criminal punishment, the federal sentencing guidelines require federal judges to be harsher on Trump than on Biden, because Biden cooperated and Trump did not.

    To wind up today’s post, a poem emailed to me last night by an old lawyer I met in Jack Flats Sports Bar in West, where we had many conversations over several years’ time. I emailed him back, that his poem is lovely. I think his poem pretty well sums up what has happened to America, and it should be read each day Congress is in session.

WHEN SWEETNESS LOST HER WAY 

I can’t remember when or how 
I don’t recall the day. 
We’ll say it was a while ago. 
About the time the handshake died 
along with plain fairplay.  
And somewhere right about that time, 
Sweetness lost her way. 

Oh, you’re right to ask about Sweetness. 
You likely never knew her, not at all. 

She was the milkman’s deft delivery 
in the quiet before dawn 
when he knew how much my working dad 
needed that extra hour. 

The kid who’d fight for a ball or strike 
and skin a fist or break a tooth 
yet straggling hurt on his way home 
would guard a busy crossing 
for an old one that he didn’t know – not at all. 

She held the door and so much more 
I can’t begin to tell you. 
She’d smile and wait her turn in line 
and never butt or push or gripe. 

You never knew her.  

Each year she’d ring the kettle’s bell 
At Christmas for the Army 
They passed her by; some scoffed (and worse); 
Sweetness just smiled and rang the bell.

I saw her headed down the way  
and caught a sudden chilly fear 
the kind you feel when death is near. 
I tried to cry – my throat was dry; 
then screamed from dreamy half-sleep 
and saw the bleary image of her ghost, 
as she trudged a slow but steady pace; 
As though she knew her time and place, in this space, 
was gone. 

She was right.  

Gentility in business life has long since been forgotten.  
Professionalism?  
Get out, old man; we’ll through your ass beneath our bus! 
What’s mine is mine and yours is ours. 
No time to teach or lend or mend or care or heal. 
Just close the deal! 

Day to day, it’s much the same. 
Love thy neighbor? – play a game? 
Tell me who upon your street 
You know by name to stop and greet.  
Remember in our parents’ time? 
Sweetness can recall. 

Sweetness isn’t lost at all; 
It’s us. Yes, you and me. 
We’ve lost our common kindness 
Our patience and forgiveness; 
Our habit just to smile and stop and ask; 
“How are you?” 
And mean it. 

Replace the misdelivered mail
as if it weren’t a chore. 
Or chase the next-door neighbor’s dog 
and gently take her home, snuggled safely in your arms. 

Oh yes; Sweetness is out there, somewhere, I guess. 
Rueful smile and gleasoning tear. 
Mostly sickened to the core. 

But lost? 

“Aw nawsur, Miss Sweetness? She ain’t lost. 
She just don’t live here anymore.” 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com


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