Israeli officer shoots Palestinian youth in the back, and lies about it!

An article by Peter Beaumont in today's "The Guardian" (see this link) describes how video at the scene of a shooting of Mohammed Kasbeh, a 17 yr old Palestinian boy by an Israeli Army Colonel, Yisrael Shomer, contradicts what the Colonel said.  Colonel Shomer said he thought his life was endangered by the rock-throwing youth, but apparently the youth was running away, and the Colonel shot him in the back.  He then kicked the body and drove off, offering no medical help.  It is clear that video recording is starting to bring out the truth in many police and military actions, and hopefully will help bring about a new era of civility among everyone.  Police, Military and Civilians should be always thinking that whatever we say or do, our actions and words are probably being recorded by someone. If we do something wrong, the video evidence will make it difficult to deny.

Israel's military and police have continually been unjust towards the Palestinians, whether living within Israel, or in the neighboring territories.  The actions and words of Israel's high ranking leaders and the high-ranking military officers set the tone for all of the civilians and military.  This action by an Israeli Colonel clearly demonstrates that Israelis have little regard for the lives of Palestinians.  Israel also been somewhat bad neighbors to adjoining countries.  Many times, Israel has attacked neighboring countries before being attacked, or attacked other countries based upon some very minor incursion from the other side.  When Israel does attack their neighbors, they seem to always try to extract 10 times the amount of damages and deaths as they have lost. I feel certain that Israel's "Ten eyes for an eye" policy is an attempt to "terrorize" their neighbors into not attacking them, rather than just stopping a war and bringing peace.    Israel's bad behaviour throughout most of my lifetime, has been the main cause for the continuous unrest in the region,  If Israel had acted better, would Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah,  or ISIS been able to recruit and mobilize so many people?  Would the neighboring countries want nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, if they didn't know that Israel already has them and would use them if threatened?

When the US attacked Iraq or Afghanistan, we then helped them rebuild infrastructure and establish a government.  When Israel attacked neighbors, they have seemed to abandon them afterward.  They don't help their neighbors rebuild, they don't provide medical care or other aid.  In fact, they try to set up severe restrictions to inhibit help.  Even though they are one of the wealthiest and best educated countries in the region, they expect other countries to help their neighbors.  Then they complain when Saudi Arabia, or Iran donates food, clothing, housing, money or weapons to help the neighbors.  

American news media seems to be very "pro-Israel" and does not seem to do a very good job of reporting on the Palestinian side of news.  Conversely, it appears that Israel's government and "friendly organizations" spend tens of millions of dollars on billboard, television, radio, and internet advertising to try and convince Americans and the rest of the world that Israel is truly threatened by their neighbors and deserves the billions of dollars we send to Israel to subsidize them.

ExxonMobil donations to global warming deniers

Disinformation campaigns have a lot of similarity with terrorism.  Similar to terrorism, it only takes a few "dis-informers" to have a tremendous impact on the public.  Only a few airline bombers have forced all travelers to go through major inspections and loss of privacy to reduce the threat.  Only a few anti-global warming advocates with little or no scientific data can force the rest of the world to have to expend major resources to prove the deniers wrong.  The tobacco industry was very successful for many decades by using similar techniques to keep the public from believing that smoking caused cancer.  The climate deniers are doing the same thing.  We all know that the Koch Brothers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to protect the coal industry by paying climate-denying scientists and politicians.  However companies like ExxonMobil seemed to suddenly become "good citizens of the world" around 2007 when they began saying that they now wanted to protect the climate and would no longer spend stockholders money on political donations or contributions to "bad science."  According to this article in The Guardian, by Suzanne Goldenberg it appears they lied.    If she was able to find this in Exxon Mobil's accounting, imagine how much money they may have spent in hidden ways, or channeled through executives and employees.  And this is just ONE oil company!

What still amazes me is how many people I've met, including well-educated friend whom I think of as being rather level-headed, who believe the global warming deniers, or somehow believe that the subject is "controversial" or "undecided" due to so many opposing viewpoints.  It shows me how VERY effective a disinformation campaign can be!  It seems that so many people listen to just "sound bites" and really don't look at the actual data, and the sources of the data presented.  Only a few "bought off" members of US congress and senate are necessary to keep the doubt alive in the public's mind.

How to save the planet? Stop having children | Frankie Mullin | Society | The Guardian

The Guardian had this article that points out that the root of the world's problems are overpopulation.

How to save the planet? Stop having children | Frankie Mullin | Society | The Guardian



There have always been concerns about the world's population and predictions that humans would run out of food for the teeming masses.  So this isn't all that new.  Maybe we aren't in danger of running out of food or space to live.  But it is clear now that we are affecting the global environment and we are squeezing out other species of plants and animals who live in the world.  When humans run out of land to live on and grow food, we will probably begin to inhabit and farm the oceans.  By doing that, humans can continue to survive, but the cost may be the loss of most of the other "non-useful" species of life.



The overpopulation problem has been delayed by the many plagues and wars that have destroyed massive amounts of population and slowed down the growth.  However, now with modern medicine, we have conquered most of those diseases, and there will not likely be any plagues that will make a large dent in the population.  I had always expected a World War III to occur during the cold war, and envisioned a post-nuclear war world that could take centuries to get back to today's population.  It appears, at least for the present, that we may not have a nuclear holocaust.



Small changes can have huge effects on the world over time.  Reducing the birthrate would have a tremendous effect on the world's environment in 50 to 100 years from now.  I agree that medical practitioners in the US should help families make intelligent decisions on family size and assist their patients reach those goals using modern medical techniques.



However, the world also needs to put pressure on the religions of the world who are trying to grow and spread their religions by having more babies.  Muslims, Catholics, Hasidic Jews, and Mormons, for example seem to want to have as many babies as possible to promote their religion.  More babies means more people paying to support the church, and more people to proselytize and spread the religion.  The Catholic Church, carefully developed a theology several hundred years after Christ that started the restrictions on birth control See this article on Slate   It wasn't until the 1930s that the Catholic Church made birth control "a sin" . Other religions later seemed to adopt the same belief in order to try to maintain their "population" in competition with the Catholics.  Somehow, world opinion needs to be changed to discourage this sort of destructive behavior and families who do have more than a few children need to be financially penalized for that decision.  Should the world pay for those very large families health care?  Free education?  Reduced income taxes?  

If the FCC is going to kill net neutrality, it'll have to get through you and me first | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Dan Gillmore of "The Guardian" posted a good article today.

If the FCC is going to kill net neutrality, it'll have to get through you and me first | Dan Gillmor || 

There appears to be a LOT of opposition to the Cable Company proposal to have "fast lanes" for some internet providers.  However the FCC has a bias toward industry.

Dan point out that we all need to question our representatives to make sure we know where they stand on this very important issue.

The problem with "fast lanes" --is that everyone else goes into the "slow lane"

I would agree to a concept of fast vs slow lanes as long as the internet providers were required to divest from all other businesses, and make all arrangements for fast lanes be public -- sort of like a public utility.  There was an error made in the past that excludes internet from being considered a utility.  It isn't clear why internet wouldn't be a utility, when phone is a utility.  Most people are getting away from wired phones, so the phone "utility" is dying at the same time that internet usage continues to grow.