Imkyng’s Neighborhood

There are systems that are healthy enough to grow. There are systems that are not growing but can be made to look healthier than they are, or feel stronger than they are.

Economic news today was that the economy GREW because of the stimulus that came from government checks sent out for consumers to spend (for goods made in China).

Is that growth? Or is that addiction to spending, very much like an addiction by a human to a drug that SEEMS like it is altering the system in positive ways, but is not?

Did the "growth" supposedly measured by economists include more jobs? More businesses? More exports? More productivity? More innovation? More profits?

In history there are cases of government sponsored stimulus with positive systemic effect. Those cases are usually associated with non-conservative governments. Would that lead the perceptive observer of the current economy to say that the economic stimulus strategy of mailing out checks to everyone (apparently mostly spent at Walmart) was a conservative step by a conservative government?

More likely it was a desperate manipulation of statistics - a meaningless redistribution of money or numbers - to create the illusion of growth.

God was up in cloudy heaven
with an old heavy black iron stove
assisted by two adult male angels
all three of them wrapped up in white sheets.
One angel's name was Hamilton,
the other angel's name was Shame,
and I wondered where Japeth was.
Hamilton and Shame were cooking french fries
in a huge cast iron skillet
in oil on top of the stove.
After they were crispy brown
God got inside the stove
with his own huge skillet.
On the other side of the stove
from where the fries were being fried in oil on a burner
was an opening. A big square hole.
Hamilton and Shame scooped their french fries out of their skillet
and into the hole so they disappeared into the stove
where God was.
When there were no more fried left
God leaped out with surprise and beaming pride
to show everyone
that he had a big pan full of mashed potatoes.
A miracle!

This is a real dream.

Hillary Clinton got praise for her strong and eloquent support of Obama yesterday at the Demo Convention. Next day, it is Bill Clinton's turn. I wonder what was going through his mind. Should he vent? Should he talk about himself? Should he be a good party man?

Then I realized (knew?) that Bill Clinton's personality - as demonstrated in all his years of politics - would probably lead him to just want to outdo Hillary.

With an historically rousing speech, he could be the best ever, and help the little lady too.

I was very disappointed in Barack Obama the other day when I heard a speech he made (I think in Iowa, on his way to Denver) in which he followed what I consider to be a republican script (that is, one concerned with money over principle).

He bellowed to a cheering crowd that the USA should not be paying for the war in Iraq because the Iraqis have a lot of oil, their oil revenues having doubled in the last year, and they should be paying for the war and their own reconstruction themselves. [Big demo applause here.]

So is Barack saying that after the USA invades and destroys another country, killing half a million people and displacing millions of refugees, and fomenting civil war and installing a gangster economy - that there is no American responsibility any longer? Is he - like Dubya did - saying "mission accomplished"?

As Stan reminded me the other day, one of the most significant and beneficial government programs in the history of humanity was a reconstruction program - the Marshall Plan. Fixing what you blew up is not a dirty task to avoid, but a responsibility that helps heal nations.

But Barack is pandering ...

A curious commentator here on Vox suggested that he needed more historical context to understand my earlier post, describing a documentary film about the voices and recollections of men engaged in the murder spree in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Not being familiar with the names and places and events, younger readers may need to be reminded of the facts, and stimulated to think about why this massacre was an important event. 

Often heard in the American press and blogosphere is the crying question, "Why do they hate us?" Of course, for most Americans, it seems sufficient to whiningly express the question without having any intention of finding any possible answers to it. It would be a little bit of work to go back and read about how westerners have been engaged in mass-murdering Muslims for decades. After all, we have re-runs to watch on our iPods.

But thankfully in a diverse America that still fosters intellectual and moral curiosity in some circles, there will be people who will turn off the mass media long enough to research the roots of mideast terrorism.

Part of the context of remembering of Sabra and Shatila is the recent arrest and impending trial of Serbian leaders who are accused of mass murder and violent ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. During the war in Bosnia, a lot of people were rounded up and shot. Some were thrown into ditches. Some were hanged as a public warning. It was a policy and strategy at the time to murder people who spoke the wrong language, who went to the wrong places of worship, who lived in areas that were desirable. People who had no guns, who were not soldiers, who had only been living their lives.

There are many who measure the rise of al-Qaida from the Bosnian mass-murders. Westerners killed Muslims and the UN peacekeepers did nothing. The Americans wouldn't even talk about it. The Europeans averted their eyes and responsibility. The Russians crowed about Serbian rights. The Bosnians were just local niggers, to be eliminated for the sake of the greater Serbian nation.

That was echoed by the Israeli-sponsored killing of thousands of Palestinians (mostly women and children) by right wing Christian milita fighters in Beirut. The west groaned a little. President Reagan denounced the massacre, but went right on funding and supporting the perpetrators. Nothing was ever done to assign responsibility or ensure accountability. The Israelis held an investigation, but the powers behind the murderous plot were never held responsible. Ariel Sharon was as much a mass-murderer as Karadzic and Milosovic and others in the Balkans, but he died a hero.

Here is a BBC summary (published 20 years after the massacre):

 Thursday, 24 January, 2002, 19:05 GMT

An unknown number of Palestinians died in the 40-hour slaughter

The 1982 massacres of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps claimed the lives of at least 800 civilians, murdered by Lebanese Christian militiamen allied to Israel during its brief occupation of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The killings are considered the worst atrocity of Lebanon's 15-year civil war and perhaps during the entire Middle East conflict.

Elie Hobeika was the Phalangists head of military intelligence

The victims had been left defenceless after Israel drove the Syrian army and fighters belonging to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from the Lebanese capital.

The expulsion of the PLO was the result of Israel's "Operation Peace for Galilee" invasion, masterminded by then-Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, to eradicate the "terrorist threat" posed by the Palestinians' military presence in Lebanon.

The slaughter was carried out by fighters from the Lebanese Forces militia (LF), linked to the Christian Phalange group, who were hungry for revenge for the killing of the Phalange leader Bashir Gemayel in a car bomb two days earlier.

They didn't spare anyone; they killed everyone they came across

Survivor Muhammad Faqih

PLO forces withdrew in a US-mediated ceasefire at the beginning of September.

Mr Sharon declared that "2,000 terrorists" remained in Palestinian refugee camps around Beirut. Sabra and Shatila were surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers, with checkpoints to monitor the entry or exit of any person.

But on the afternoon of 16 September about 150 LF fighters moved into the camps.

Massacre begins

Survivors say that the killers went from house to house, threatening to blow up buildings if the residents did not come out.

The survivors reported overhearing the Phalangists telling one another to use axes to kill their victims, because the sound of gunfire would alert others to their fate.

The camps today: Little sympathy for Hobeika's assassination

"They killed my sister's husband in front of me," said survivor Nadima Nasser. "I saw them shooting at the men. They killed them all. I fled."

Mrs Nasser is one of 23 survivors who have lodged a legal case against Mr Sharon in Belgium, where the law allows him to be tried for alleged crimes committed abroad.

Her testimony, along with others is included on a newly-launched internet site about the massacres, Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila.

Israeli inquiry

Mr Sharon resigned his post after an Israeli commission of inquiry established that he bore indirect responsibility for the deaths for "having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance" by the militias when he allowed them into the camps.

Mr Sharon denies responsibility for the massacre

The Kahane Commission inquiry said LF intelligence chief Elie Hobeika had direct responsibility, because he ordered the killings.

Mr Hobeika denied involvement in the killings right up to his death in a car bomb attack on 24 January 2002.

Outside Israel, human rights groups have long argued that Mr Sharon and the Lebanese Christian perpetrators should be tried for war crimes.

In January 2001, in the run-up to Israeli elections in which he won a resounding victory, Mr Sharon expressed regret about the "terrible tragedy," but refused to apologise or accept any responsibility for the massacres.

The Belgian court is still deciding whether to pursue charges of crimes against humanity against Mr Sharon.

Hobeika had said he would testify against the Israeli Prime Minister and had "important revelations" to make.

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Thanks for reading!

-daisy