Members of the parliamentary opposition are to meet on Monday to decide on the fate of Andrew Holness following his loss in the Appeals Court earlier this week. The meeting was originally planned for today.
It was called by Leader of Opposition Business in the House, Derick Smith, who says he will pledge his support for Holness. The Court of Appeal threw out an appeal by Holness in the Senate seat saga and made it abundantly clear that Senators Arthur Williams and Dr Christopher Tufton did not resign in 2013 and must retake their positions in the Senate. Minutes after the ruling Wednesday, Delroy Chuck resigned from the Shadow Cabinet and urged Holness to do the same. The party was thrown into turmoil last month when the Constitutional Court ruled that Holness acted unconstitutionally when he used undated, unsigned resignation letters to oust Tufton and Williams from the Senate. There were reports that the party was divided on what was to become of the Opposition Leader. Several heated meetings were held within the party to determine his fate. Meanwhile, Senators Williams and Tufton are expected to retake their seats in the Upper House this morning.
Pundits are wondering why two statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prior to the Israeli elections and on the day of the elections drew so much attention. After the elections, Republican leader and former presidential contender John McCain told US president Barack Obama to “get over your temper tantrum.”
For Israel supporters like McCain, Netanyahu’s statements are merely election rhetoric that can easily be resolved and even erased. In fact, Netanyahu already slightly backtracked from his pre-election opposition to the two-state solution and also technically apologized to Israel’s Arab citizens. So some might wonder why the big fuss over these two statements. Well, to understand the depth of the problems caused by these two statements, it is important to understand the two basic components of the world (i.e., US) policy towards Israel.
Washington and many European countries consider Israel a democratic country that fairly and honestly represents all its citizens, and not just the Jewish population. If the US and other Western countries reached the conclusion that Israel is undemocratic and a religious state, they could not have given it the kind of support (financial, political and military) they have. Based on this assumption that Israel is a democratic state representing all of its citizens, the world always takes the side of Israel in justifying its decades-old occupation. Israelis have fooled the world for so long saying that they want peace and a civil end to the occupation, but it is somehow those barbaric terrorist Palestinians who refuse to deal honestly with Israel.
When the issue was further pressed on Israel as to what kind of a solution it is willing to accept, Netanyahu reluctantly accepted the idea of a two-state solution, putting two conditions on such a state in order for benevolent Israel to accept. But as US-sponsored talks began and ended without a solution, Washington started to question Israel’s commitment. Secretary of State John Kerry publicly blamed Israelfor making peace talks fail because of its settlement expansion and reneging on the promise to release prisoners. Yet the US continues to give Israel the benefit of the doubt and to believe that, somehow, the normal cycle of democracy will resolve this problem. Americans really believed that the Israeli public, like any other democracy, will make the needed adjustments at the polls when the time comes to decide whether they want peace or not.
The US had good reason to think that way. In the past, Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu in the first term, were ousted by the public in similar circumstances. The Americans believe that the Israelis would take into consideration their relationship with Washington when they go to the polls. After all, no other ally in the world has stood by Israel and protected Israeli policy more than Washington. The two statements by Netanyahu, therefore, must have come as a disappointment for some. All of a sudden, the Americans were faced with the reality that Israel is a democracy only for Jewish citizens. When the non-Jewish citizen, i.e., Palestinian Arab citizens, united in one bloc and attempted to properly use their legal right to vote, Netanyahu and company got upset and showed where they really stood on the issues of democracy as a mechanism working to the benefit of the people.
The United States does not need to change its policy. It simply needs to honour its own commitments and hold all countries, including Israel, accountable. The idea that Israel and the US have shared values in terms of democracy and the right to self-determination proved fake. The truth is coming out and Netanyahu’s attempts to correct his errors will do little to change what the world has now finally come to understand, namely that Israel is neither a democracy nor that its five-decades old occupation of four million Palestinians is the fault of the occupied rather than the occupier.huffingtonpost.com
Attorney General Eric Holder discusses the Justice Department’s Ferguson investigations on March 4, 2015. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
ASADENAHILLS, Mo. — “Lacee Scott?” the judge called. The 23-year-old rose from a hard black plastic chair, walked past the fireplace and stood before the table at the front of the living room.
From the outside, the house is barely distinguishable from others on the street — brick, three bedrooms, built in 1948. Over the entrance, however, there is a sign identifying it as City Hall. Once a month, the living room, with its lamps, hardwood floors and clock on the mantle, becomes a courtroom. Those with business before the judge first check in with the clerk in the dining room before taking a seat among the rows of chairs set up in the family room.
Scott, a senior at Alabama A&M University, had lived in Pasadena Hills during high school. Her father, a former St. Louis County police officer, works for Walgreens. Her mother is the principal of a local elementary school. Last summer, when Scott was home visiting her family, a notice was placed on her car.
Parking had never been an issue in her quiet, suburban community. Pasadena Hills is small, with a population of less than 1,000. But the municipality had recently passed an ordinance requiring those parking overnight to display a $10 residential parking sticker on their vehicles. The notice ordered Scott to come to City Hall to obtain the sticker.
The city office has extemely limited business hours, however. The seven-hour drive from Huntsville, Alabama, back to Pasadena Hills also made it difficult for Scott to appear in person. Soon, the city began mailing her threatening letters.
“They sent me a letter and said there would be a warrant out for my arrest if I didn’t come back for this,” Scott told The Huffington Post of her court appearance. “For $10. For parking in front of my house.”
Such experiences are not uncommon in St. Louis County. According to ascathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice released this month, authorities in nearby Ferguson routinely abused the rights of residents, who were viewed “less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue.” Attorney General Eric Holder said the Ferguson Police Department had essentially served as a “collection agency,” with officers competing to see who could issue the largest number of citations.
In dozens of interviews with The Huffington Post over the past several months, residents have called the system “out of control,” “inhumane,” “crazy,” “racist,” “unprofessional” and “sickening.” Some have told stories of being slapped with large fines for minor violations and threatened with jail if they couldn’t pay.
“Everyone’s got a horror story about the police,” former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch told HuffPost in a recent interview. “And most of that horror story relates back to being ticketed for some minor violation.”
Even before the DOJ released its report, the need to change the way St. Louis County’s many tiny municipalities operate had become a rallying cry among protesters, lawmakers and even members of law enforcement.
Last year, Missouri’s attorney general filed suit against several municipalities for violating state law regarding the collection of revenue through traffic fines.
In December, St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said he believed some municipalities “victimize those whom they are designed to protect.” In February, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called some of the current practices “immoral.”
“If you think that taxation of our citizens through traffic enforcement in St. Louis County is bad, you have no idea how bad it is,” Belmar said.
There are 90 separate municipalities in all, home to 11 percent of Missouri’s total population. The largest is Florissant, an area of 12 square miles with over 52,000 residents. The smallest, the village of Champ, has just six houses. Population: 13.
Police are an overwhelming presence in St. Louis County. Nationally, the United States has roughly 2.4 police officers for every 1,000 residents, according to FBI statistics. In many parts of St. Louis County, the ratio is much higher. Beverly Hills, Missouri, with fewer than 600 people covering just 13 blocks, has 14 officers on its police force.
As in Ferguson, many of these police departments and local courts generate massive amounts of revenue for city coffers. Municipalities in St. Louis County took in $45 million in fines and fees in 2013 — 34 percent of the amount collected statewide — according to Better Together St. Louis, a nonprofit working to improve municipal government in the St. Louis region.
The municipal courts lie at the heart of this system. There are 81 in all. Some are housed in government buildings that were built for public use. Others, like the ones in Pasadena Hills or nearby Country Club Hills, have been set up in buildings designed as residential homes. Kinloch holds court in the cafeteria of an abandoned elementary school. In Beverly Hills, the police department and court share a building with a pharmacy. There’s an ATM in the lobby, and a payday loan outlet is conveniently located next door.
The reach of these courts extends beyond traffic and parking violations. Some municipalities require occupancy permits for those who live in their jurisdictions, which in practice means people can be fined for sleeping over at their boyfriend or girlfriend’s house. In some municipalities, overgrown grass or failing to subscribe to a designated trash collection service are offenses that can ultimately lead to an arrest record.
Even clothing choices can be a target. Pine Lawn has a municipal code thatbans saggy pants. One man received a $50 fine in 2012 for wearing pants that were too big for his waist, according to court documents. After he missed two court dates associated with his fashion crime, he was slapped with two additional $125 fines, and for a time, there was a warrant out for his arrest.
The ways in which St. Louis County’s municipal courts have abused their authority have united a bipartisan coalition of state legislators, activists and law enforcement officials who agree on the need for reform.
Last month, the state Senate passed legislation that would crack down on municipalities that use their courts to generate revenue. That legislation is currently being debated in the state House. The state Supreme Court has also stepped in to help fix the municipal court in Ferguson. Federal civil rights lawsuits have been filed against some municipalities. And the Justice Department has said that municipalities across St. Louis County should take its report on Ferguson as a warning.
A French helicopter departs for the site where Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed. CREDITPHOTOGRAPHBYMUSTAFAYALCIN/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY
Flying time from Barcelona to Dusseldorf is an hour and fifty-six minutes — not a long haul — so there’s no reason to imagine that Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525, could have anticipated that his commander, Captain Patrick Sondenheimer, would get up and leave him alone in the cockpit, as the captain did, a little more than twenty minutes after takeoff on Tuesday, while the plane, an Airbus 320, cruised over the French Alps. There is no reason to imagine, in other words, that Lubitz could have foreseen, on that route, or on that day, much less in that precise airspace, that he would find himself, without any struggle, in a position to lock himself in the cockpit and take control of the plane, initiating its descent, and continuing to fly it steadily down, down, down over eight minutes that must have seemed to anyone conscious of the trajectory a god-awful eternity, especially after the captain began knocking, then shouting, then pounding at the barred cockpit door — flying down, down out of the sky, down into the mountains, down into death: his death and the deaths of the hundred and forty-nine other souls whose fate he had become.
But that, we’re told, is what happened to that plane. That’s the story that emerged from the recovered cockpit voice recorder, by way of Brice Robin, the chief prosecutor of Marseille, who listened to the full thirty minutes of audio, from takeoff to oblivion. There was nothing wrong with the plane. There was nothing identifiably wrong with the pilots: their conversation, until the captain stepped away, was perfectly genial, collegial, banal. But the cockpit door could only be secured like that intentionally, from within, and the plane’s loss of altitude, its steady dive into the teeth of the Rhone Alpes, too, could only be the result of deliberate individual action. Asked if Lubitz had committed suicide, Robin said he did not call it that but that it was a logical theory to consider. Robin would only go so far as to say that Lubitz had evidently intended “to destroy the aircraft,” and that he was upgrading the case from involuntary to voluntary manslaughter. In the final moments before annihilation, the recorder registered the hammering of the captain’s fists and feet against the door, the screams of passengers, and the quiet, steady rhythm of Lubitz’s last breaths.
The horror. It’s all there in the sound of Lubitz breathing. The wind of life, the wind of death. That steady soughing tells us all that we know so far, and all that we don’t yet — and may never — know, about this atrocity, the deadliest aviation catastrophe in France in more than three decades. Just as the brevity of the flight, and the apparent spontaneity of the captain’s decision to leave the cockpit — to stretch a leg? or take a piss? or have a chat? We do not know — tells us that Lubitz could not have planned before he flew that day to crash the plane that way; and just as the locking of the door, and the pushing of the button that brought the plane down, tell us that he acted consciously and deliberately, so Lubitz’s breathing, unbroken by any attempt at speech, tells us that he chose not to explain himself. He knew that he was on the record. What did he think he was doing? What came over him? What possessed him? And why?
Assuming, for now, that Robin has got the story right, Lubitz’s victims — high-school students and opera stars, vacationers and business commuters, young lovers and old married couples, families and solitary travellers, citizens from at least fifteen countries — meant nothing to him. They could have been any of us, anywhere — whoever flies or rides a train or takes a bus or in any way entrusts her life to strangers, as we all must regularly and routinely to get through this world. That sense of investment in calamity — it could have been me — is true, of course, of accidents and targeted acts of terrorism as well. But to be told that a scene of mass death is the result of an accident or terrorism is to be given not only an explanation of the cause but also an idea of how to reckon with the consequence – through justice, or revenge, or measures meant to prevent a recurrence. After the massacre at Sandy Hook, we could at least dream of gun control. But the story of Lubitz, suddenly in control of a plane flying all those aboard to their deaths, offers us only a cosmic meaninglessness and bewilderment.
Around the same time that the prosecutor, Robin, was telling a press conference in Marseille what he had heard on the Germanwings flight recorder, the news wires were reporting from England on the grand ceremonial reburial, at Leicester Cathedral, of Richard III, the blood-soaked fifteenth-century king, whose remains were recently exhumed from a local parking lot. The Bishop of Leicester, presiding, laid the cutthroat monarch to rest with the words “All our journeys lead to this place where reputation counts for nothing.” You could take that to mean that all worldly action and ambition is in vain, or that the void of death that awaits us makes it irrelevant whether we do good or bad on Earth. But why let the Bishop have the last word? Thinking of the mystery of Lubitz’s last breaths, and the bones of Richard, I turned to my idea of a higher authority, Shakespeare, and his imagination of Richard reckoning his own bloody meaning and meaninglessness as a force of nature: What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter: My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. This week, the King of Spain, the President of France, the German Chancellor — all said that they will stop at nothing to make sure that the Germanwings crash is thoroughly investigated. But what comfort is there in such assurances? When death strikes without the rhyme or reason of coherent human agency, in the form of a tsunami or an earthquake, a flood, or lightning bolt, or falling tree, the insurance companies, godless agencies of capital though they be, describe the blow as an “act of God.” Even those who like to believe in a divinity that loves us and means us well can grasp, and take some sort of solace in, the awareness that creation is random and incomprehensible and indifferent; that — turn, turn, turn — there is a time to every purpose under heaven; that, in short, it is not personal. Still it seems to go against our grain to accept that we are part of this natural order of disorder ourselves — and that the wholesale murder of innocents by someone as apparently motiveless as Lubitz (as far as we know so far) might also best be understood as an act of God.newyorker.com
Once again new information has crept to the fore of Criminal cops brutalizing and terrorizing citizens. Floyd Dent a 57 year old Detroit native was pulled over because he was supposedly in a known drug zone. Cops pulled Dent over under the guise that he rolled through a stop sign ‚pulled him from his Cadillac at gunpoint, threw him to the pavement and placed him in a choke-hold. Police in a shockingly familiar scene caught on dashboard camera video. An officer put Floyd Dent, 57, in a choke-hold with one arm and began throwing right-handed hay-makers to the man’s head. Video shows the full, vicious assault: 16 blows to the head and a kick to the arm, and another officer shocking Dent with a stun gun three times. Cops lied that dent was trying to flee but it appeared they forgot about their own dash-cam video which proved no such thing happened. desperately seeking to justify their unwarranted on the 57 year old man, they lied that he said “I will kill you as they dragged him from his car”. Of course there was no evidence of that as they had turned of their microphones. They arrested Dent on a slew of charges, including driving with suspended license and possession of crack cocaine they allege was found in the car, according to Click On Detroit. Dent has no criminal past and a blood test at the hospital revealed no drugs or alcohol in his system. State police told Dent’s attorney this week they were investigating the incident. William Melendez, the Inkster, Mich., officer who placed Dent in the chokehold, was accused of misconduct as a Detroit police officer in 2004 as part of a group of cops acquitted in a federal trial for civil rights abuses,the Detroit Free Press reported.A judge dismissed all but the drug charge against Dent, who faces an April 1 court date. He refused a plea deal for probation, his attorney said.“ Mister Dent Dent has no criminal past and a blood test at the hospital revealed no drugs or alcohol in his system. See:https://mikebeckles.com/i‑was-on-my-last-breath-detroit-man-put-in-chokehold-pummeled-shocked-by-cops-in-traffic-stop/
THEOUTRAGE
Floyd Dent
There is no national media attention on this issue! Once again we see the issue of brazen, unprovoked police aggression being unleashed against members of the black community. Which begs the question, when are people going to fight back against these criminal cops? On these pages we have repeatedly asked, why isn’t it a felony for cops to turn off microphones or otherwise tamper with devices which may be needed for evidence? More importantly why are cops not prosecuted to the full extent of the law when they plant evidence, and falsify reports? Why are cops allowed to keep their jobs when they commit crimes against citizens, or worse, case allowed to quietly move to different departments to carry out their sadistic power trips on citizens? Why would Prosecutors offer mister Dent a plea deal on the drug charge knowing their police witnesses were clearly caught trying to frame mister Dent? Why is it more important to snag mister Dent into the criminal justice system with a fraudulent guilty plea than to aggressively prosecute the cops who obviously planted evidence, brutally assaulted him and falsified reports to justify their actions?
How much longer is this country going to pretend that the serious issue of police abuse, particularly black citizens are isolated events, or worse, does not warrant serious action? Every incident of police misconduct which goes unpunished tells citizens that is how society wants it to be. The stark reality is that much of the abuse police dish out to black citizens is done based on their racist misconceptions of Black Americans. Lets not fool ourselves Racism is deeply institutionalized and endemic in American society. There are wonderful police officers just as there are wonderful doctors nurses and firemen, but there are also a dangerous cadre of racist ignoramuses who are wearing police uniforms and are seriously abusing citizens , falsifying evidence to gain convictions and killing people they hate.
These cowardly punks get away with it because of America’s love affair with cops and law-enforcement. The problem for black citizens is that the love affair with cops walks hand in hand with the hatred many harbor for us. Never mind that if anyone had the right to be hateful and mad it would certainly be us for what has been done and what is still being done to our people. How do you defend against those hiding behind a badge? The tragedy for good cops is that when the rage boils over their is no differentiation, a cop is a cop. We have seen it happen before. Those who support cops regardless of the atrocities they commit are not law abiding intelligent citizens. Intelligent citizens are aware that when cops commit crimes and gets away with it, it erodes the respect citizens have for the rule of law. They are aware it places the lives of all cops in jeopardy. You do not support criminal cops in their abuse of citizens because you care about the well being of cops.
You do so because they carry out a sick sadistic desire you harbor to inflict pain and death on those you hate.
A Detroit man was pulled from his Cadillac at gunpoint, thrown to the pavement and put in a chokehold by police in a shockingly familiar scene caught on dashboard camera video. An officer put Floyd Dent, 57, in a chokehold with one arm and began throwing right-handed haymakers to the man’s head. Video shows the full, vicious assault: 16 blows to the head and a kick to the arm, and another officer shocking Dent with a stun gun three times, Click On Detroit reported. “I’m lucky to be living,” Dent told reporters Wednesday about what was a simple traffic stop. “I think they were trying to kill me, especially when they choked me. I was on my last breath. I told them, ‘Officer please, I can’t breathe.’”
“I can’t breathe” became a national catchphrase for police brutality after Staten Island man Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold during a July 17 NYPD arrest gone wrong. Police followed Dent’s car in a suburban Detroit area known for drug dealing and pulled him over Jan. 28 for not properly stopping at a stop sign. The police report claims Dent was trying to flee in his car, but the video shows otherwise. “Next thing I know, he took out his gun. He’s talking about blowing off my head,” Dent said. “Then he grabbed me out the car and started beating on me. I just couldn’t believe it.”
Officers said Dent yelled, “I’ll kill you.” But police microphones were off.
Cops arrested Dent on a slew of charges, including driving with suspended license and possession of crack cocaine they allege was found in the car, according to Click On Detroit. Dent has no criminal past and a blood test at the hospital revealed no drugs or alcohol in his system. State police told Dent’s attorney this week they were investigating the incident. William Melendez, the Inkster, Mich., officer who placed Dent in the chokehold, was accused of misconduct as a Detroit police officer in 2004 as part of a group of cops acquitted in a federal trial for civil rights abuses, the Detroit Free Press reported. A judge dismissed all but the drug charge against Dent, who faces an April 1 court date. He refused a plea deal for probation, his attorney said.“I get tears thinking about it,” Dent told reporters. “I don’t want to watch the tape of them beating me because I get upset.”newyorkdailynews.com
Linden New Jersey cop Pedro Abad Jr. has had several run-ins with the law which would have landed any ordinary person in serious trouble including jail time, was behind the wheel driving the wrong way on a Staten Island street after leaving a strip-club, obviously drunk. As a result he crashed head-on into a tractor trailer Killing one of his colleagues critically injuring two others and himself and also injuring the tractor trailer driver. Here’s whats shocking.
The Civic seen in the aftermath of the crash …
Pedro Abad Jr., Linden police officer, swerved off the road in a black 2010 Audi A5 and hit a bus stop sign, a street sign and a stop sign before slamming through the side of New Way Supermarket in Roselle, N.J., at 3:46 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2011, according to a police report.
His car ended up inside the store, causing heavy damage to the building. Ravi Patel, 26, who co-owns the deli with his dad, recalled getting a call in the middle of the night that the store’s alarms had been triggered. “We didn’t know it was a crash,” Patel told the Daily News Wednesday. “It wasn’t until we got to the corner. We saw the car inside — the whole car!”
It took three months for all the damage to be fixed and the damage was so extensive the store was closed for the first three weeks of repairs. “Everything was messed up,” Patel said. “The register was on the ground, everything. The door doesn’t even shut still because of the crash.” Reeking of alcohol, Abad, 27, was rushed from the scene to University Hospital in Newark, where he was charged with driving while intoxicated and careless driving. Inside the ambulance he admitted to having two mixed drinks at a local club, according to the police report.
Abad also received violations for drunken driving and refusing a Breathalyzer test on Feb. 26, 2013, after he crashed in Rahway, N.J., New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission records show. During that incident, Abad was caught on camera stumbling and slurring his words while asking for an officer he said he knew from the academy, NJ.com reported. His license was suspended for seven months in the wake of the Rahway crash, records show. In addition to the two drinking-related crashes, Abad was involved in six other accidents going back to 2005, state records show.
Linden, N.J., Police Officer Pedro Abad Jr. was behind the wheel of a wrong-way driving Honda Civic that smashed head-on with a tractor-trailer.
Yet Pedro Abad Jr. the police officer was still allowed to be driving an automobile. Why was this young man allowed to be driving ? Why is he even still a cop after all those infractions? Why is it such a hush , hush about whether he was drunk on the morning of his latest crash? Would it have taken this long to arrest the driver of the tractor trailer if he was driving drunk the wrong way, seriously injuring and killing cops? I believe we all know the answer to these questions. Condolences would be pouring in from all across the country, the Media would have looped the story endlessly and there would have been a procession of cops parading by to show support for their fallen comrades killed by the drunk driver. Of course the Media would have found all kinds of experts willing to offer up all kinds of advice on what the penalty should be for the driver. Why is this case different? Where is the outrage? What hypocrisy?
Linden, N.J., Police Officer Pedro Abad Jr. was behind the wheel of a wrong-way driving Honda Civic that smashed head-on with a tractor-trailer.
The off-duty Jersey cop at the wheel during a wrong-way fatal accident on Staten Island had been busted for drunken driving after crashing into a deli in 2011, police records reveal.
Pedro Abad Jr., a Linden police officer, swerved off the road in a black 2010 Audi A5 and hit a bus stop sign, a street sign and a stop sign before slamming through the side of New Way Supermarket in Roselle, N.J., at 3:46 a.m. on Jan. 22, 2011, according to a police report.
His car ended up inside the store, causing heavy damage to the building.
Ravi Patel, 26, who co-owns the deli with his dad, recalled getting a call in the middle of the night that the store’s alarms had been triggered.
“We didn’t know it was a crash,” Patel told the Daily News Wednesday.
“It wasn’t until we got to the corner. We saw the car inside — the whole car!”
It took three months for all the damage to be fixed and the damage was so extensive the store was closed for the first three weeks of repairs.
“Everything was messed up,” Patel said. “The register was on the ground, everything. The door doesn’t even shut still because of the crash.”
Reeking of alcohol, Abad, 27, was rushed from the scene to University Hospital in Newark, where he was charged with driving while intoxicated and careless driving.
Inside the ambulance he admitted to having two mixed drinks at a local club, according to the police report.
“He should have learned his lesson,” Patel said. “You don’t screw up again. That’s just wrong. Look at how many lives he took.”
Investigators are continuing to probe whether Abad was drinking with his three passengers at Staten Island strip club Curves before Friday’s crash. Abad was driving a Honda northbound in the southbound lanes of the West Shore Expressway when he hit a tractor-trailer head-on at 4:50 a.m., killing two men in the car.
Killed in the gruesome Staten Island crash were Linden cop Frank Viggiano, 28, and passenger Joseph Rodriguez, 28. Another Linden cop in the car, Patrik Kudlac, 23, and Abad remain hospitalized in critical condition.
Rodriguez’s funeral was held Wednesday morning at St. Elizabeth Church in Linden.
Abad also received violations for drunken driving and refusing a Breathalyzer test on Feb. 26, 2013, after he crashed in Rahway, N.J., New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission records show.
His license was suspended for seven months in the wake of the Rahway crash, records show.
In addition to the two drinking-related crashes, Abad was involved in six other accidents going back to 2005, state records show.nydailynews.com
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz no shrinking Violet when it comes to tackling tough subjects, once again braved the heat by asking his company’s baristas to broach the subject of race with customers. The initial part of the campaign was that baristas write the words “race together” on coffee cups as they serve customers. That part of the campaign ended March 22nd . Shultz insists that negative backlash is not behind the termination of that effort.The cup writing part “was always just the catalyst for a much broader and longer term conversation”about racial inequality and diversity, he said.
The response to race together has been mixed including some harsh backlash on social media, including threats against some executives of Starbucks. Hold that thought though.…. I am not sure whether surly half-awake people heading to work without their first bit of morning pick-you-upper are ready to broach the tedious and thorny subject of race. Notwithstanding, I commend Howard Schultz for daring to want to fix the cancerous problem of race in America. Speaking to CNN Schultz said “If we all continue to be bystanders on something that’s dividing the nation, then where is this headed?We are better than this as a country,”. I agree that if we continue to be bystanders on something that’s dividing the nation we are heading , well, nowhere.. Not sure I agree America is better than this ! In fact America has shown it is not better than this. How could America claim to be better than this in the year 2015 when there are racial divisions so deep and divisive that people are threatened with death for daring to speak out and wanting change?
How is America better than this when people are being killed by police because of the color of their skin? I hear a lot of talk about the need for a national conversation on race. This argument has been at the fore-front of ever instance where race is present in an issue. We hear it from the President down to every talking-head on Television. I’m not quite sure how that would occur? How is a national conversation on race initiated? How is it executed?. For the most part African Americans are particularly enthused about such a conversation. Black leaders have never seen a conference they did not like. Give our people the opportunity to dress up and attend a conference and they are in” hogs-heaven”. The only problem is that after they attend these dress-up talk fests nothing ever change. They go back to their deprived communities where things remain just the way they have always been.
Me ? I was never one for all of that nonsensical talk, I guess it’s my Jeans T‑shirt and boots mentality , just do it like Nike says. So lets quickly examine some simple facts surrounding racism in America. There is no reason to beat around the bush and pretend. You cannot fix what you do not identify, so lets identify the problem. (1)WHITESSTARTEDRACISMINAMERICA. Whites started racist discriminatory practices in America, they can end it when they chose. This practice pre-dates slavery. The practice of white superiority was what caused European settlers (mostly prison inmates) to almost decimate the native American population. It was that mentality which created the slave trade and the pogrom unleashed on African people both on the motherland and those uprooted and transplanted here in the western hemisphere. It was white ignorance, and grandiose ideas of racial superiority which cost untold millions of lives in the middle passage and here in the land of bondage. It was whites who initiated this carnage on not only blacks, but all of the native people they found, not just here in the Americas but as far away as Australia, New Zealand and India.
(2)WHITESCANENDIT. Whites can end the ignoble practice which teaches and places one race above another, yet in far too many household children are taught that they are superior to others. It is not accidental that many communities, towns, counties and states are still rabidly discriminatory to some people based on race. Where do the children learn these behavior patterns? They learn them from their parents, they learn them from their friends whose parents teach their kids to hate.
(3) MANYWHITESDONOTWANTTOCHANGE. Many whites understand the benefits of “white privilege”and they are not about to give it up. Even those who claim not to be racist do benefit from white privilege even though they don’t know it, or may not even ask for it. Getting a pass on a ticket,or not getting pulled over harassed or worse, is white privilege. Having access to loans because of connections is white privilege. Being spoken to with respect by police is white privilege.
Racism persist because people benefit from it, they are not about to give up the perks because it’s right or moral. Some say you can’t legislate that people do away with discriminatory racial attitudes and practices. I disagree. There is legislation for everything else, you may not be able to change people’s heart with legislation but you damn sure can make it expensive if they display racist attitudes toward others. Eventually they will get the message right? Yeah .… You see, the reason we are still dealing with this crap, is that too many who are supposed to draft and pass the appropriate legislation into law are the most vile racist creatures.
I write about the country we know as Israel from time to time in critical terms. The main reason I have been critical of this 68-year-old state, is that it’s leaders, sponsors, and some of it’s people claim divine authority for the establishment and existence of that entity, not just in being but it’s geographical placement. Having read and seen a tiny bit of the atrocious heavy-handedness and callous disregard Israel displays for human life, while purporting to be God’s chosen people, I cannot remain silent.
If the God of Israel is that vengeful and uncaring I do not want any part of that unjust discriminatory God. Because I know that the God of my christian faith , the God of forgiveness is a just God> I must speak out, not just against the bill of Goods which has been sold the world about this illegitimate state, but against Ministers of the Christian Gospel here in the western world who continue to mislead the faithful with false teachings about God’s demands, as it relates to support for Israel.
“Israeli’s”, The name they call themselves, are a significantly different people than Jews of the Bible and yes, the Torah. Scholars and other thinkers wonder how a people who claim to have their Genesis in the middle East could be exiled to Europe and return as Caucasians? Did they undergo a change in their skin tone due to the passage of time or, are they just people who adopted a faith as their own and now claim to be God’s chosen people? Many also wonder whether being a Jew is merely accepting the faith which then automatically makes one God’s chosen people,entitled to a prophetic homeland, on land occupied by others for thousands of years? If you find yourself asking these questions, you must be prepared for a blow-back of epic proportion which may result in you losing your ability to work or worse. No one is supposed to question the authenticity of the bill of goods. Do and you are branded an anti-semite. The very idea of a Jewish homeland, that which materialized in the actual creation of the so-called Jewish state in 1947, is based solely on religious interpretation of people practicing the faith. If I decide to accept Islam as my religion of choice does that give me the right to claim Saudi Arabia as my homeland? You get my point! So how does Caucasians practicing the Jewish faith claim Palestine as their homeland then force the real indigenous Jewish people into concentration camps? I digress though. You see, most people here in the western world are unaware that the Zionist state of Israel round up and place African Jews(real jews)into concentration camps. The very foundation on which the state was formulated is flawed and at best fraudulent. Christian ministers of the Gospel continue to mislead congregations on this subject because they lack intellectual inquisitiveness. Others simply do not know so the lead their flock in blind submission to a lie. You don’t have to take my word for it take a look at what (Neturei Karta) Jews against Zionism has to say.
JUDAISMANDZIONISMARENOTTHESAMETHING
We would like to take a few minutes of your time to prevent you from making a terrible mistake that may have disastrous results for many.
You have always without a doubt heard and read much about the political crises in the Middle East in which the State of Israel plays a central role. This is, in fact, an ongoing series of crises with potential to bring the greatest misfortune on the entire world. Tragically many believe that Zionism and Judaism are identical. Thus they conclude that the entire Jewish people is responsible for the actions of the Zionist government and the world crises which emanates from it. This is a Grave Error!
The truth is that the Jewish faith and Zionism are two very different philosophies. They are as opposite as day and night. The Jewish people have existed for thousands of years. In their two thousand years of Divinely decreed exile no Jew ever sought to end this exile and establish independent political sovereignty anywhere. The people’s sole purpose was the study and fulfillment of the Divine commandments of the Torah.
The Zionist movement created the Israeli state. The latter is a persuasion less than one hundred years old. Its essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism’s inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people stood in staunch opposition to it.
To this day Torah Jewry remains forever loyal to its faith. Zionists want the world to believe that they are the representatives of the entire Jewish people. This is false! The Jewish people never chose them as their leaders.
The Zionists have deceived many well meaning Jewish people via terror, trickery and false propaganda. They have at their disposal the use of a nearly universally subservient media. Whoever attempts to criticize them puts his livelihood and, at times, his very life in danger.
However, despite the media blackout and easy resort to terror the simple truth remains unrefuted and irrefutable: ACCORDINGTOTHEJEWISHFAITHANDTORAHLAWTHEJEWISHPEOPLEAREFORBIDDENTOHAVETHEIROWNSTATEWHILEAWAITINGTHEMESSIANICERA!
The Creator gave us the Holy Land thousands of years ago. Yet, when we sinned, He took it away and sent us into exile. Since that time our task is to wait for Him to send the Messiah. At that time, the Creator alone, without any human being lifting a hand or saying a word, will bring us together and take us out of exile. He will likewise establish universal peace among all mankind and all will serve Him in good will.
Some religious Jews, confused by Zionist propaganda quote Biblical verses that state that G‑d gave the children of Israel the Holy Land. They overlook, unfortunately, those verses which say that He took it away due to our sins. They further ignore those prophecies which explicitly describe the last exile’s conclusion as a Divine, not a human process.
The Creator has commanded every Jew to follow the ways of peace and to be loyal to the country where he lives.
Torah true Jewry waits patiently for the Messianic redemption. They have nothing to do with any kind of pseudo “Jewish State” and its aggressions against other peoples. They have a deep sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians who have suffered the most from Zionism’s false teachings and barbaric actions. The Zionist state is not a Jewish state. The Zionists alone are the only ones responsible for their actions. Authentic Jewry has and will continue to oppose the very existence of this blasphemous state.
On the eve of Israeli Elections Benjamin Netanyahu the Likud Prime Minister of the Zionist State of Israel was asked by an interviewer with the Israeli news site, NRG, if it was true that a Palestinian nation would never be formed while he’s prime minister, Netanyahu replied, “Indeed.”
“Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel,” he said. “This is the true reality that was created here in the last few years.”
Netanyahu went on to say that any opponents on the left who might argue otherwise are“sticking their head in the sand, time and time again.” From all indications Benjamin Netanyahu will also be the new Prime Minister of Israel for another term.
Thursday March 19th Benjamin Netanyahu told NBC News. “I don’t want a one-state solution”. “I don’t want a one-state solution,”Netanyahu told NBC News in his first interview with U.S. news organizations since Tuesday’s hard fought elections, adding that“circumstances would have to change” first, for there to be a “negotiated peace.”
There are a few issues at play here. Either Netanyahu believes people have forgotten his earlier statements given just a couple of days earlier , or he doesn’t care that we know he is a racist liar who respects no one but Israeli’s. I’m going to go with the latter , having seen this guy’s Modus-operandi.
That’s not all however, Netanyahu’s arrogance knows no bounds, in answer to his one state pronouncements on the eve of the elections he lied point blank in another interview given to a different network. Quote: “We have to get the Palestinians to go back to the negotiating table, break their pact with Hamas, and accept the idea of a Jewish state. And I think that’s what the international community should be focused on,”. Well there is the cheeky arrogance. He sets the parameters for what the Palestinians must do before he considers, (in his Godly might) their demands for a home of their own in their homeland.
Hate-filled Israeli crowds demonstrate against African migrant workers. America sends billions of dollars , African-American tax dollars to support the state of Israel annually
Consider that even if the Palestinians were to allow themselves to be humiliated further, by acquiescing to every demand Netanyahu makes , they would not be any closer to a homeland than they are today. A Palestinian homeland cannot be contingent on the dictates of Israel or Palestine for that matter, there has to be a honest impartial broker both parties respect. Israel respects no one. A true Palestinian state may not be doable in light of all of the bad blood which has fomented since 1947. It is certainly not possible with Israel telling a sovereign people who they may associate with. It is not possible with Israel laying parameters for talks, while confiscating, and annexing more and more Palestinian territory each day, using them to build more and more settlements for Israeli Jews. A Palestinian state is certainly not possible with the United States of America acting as broker while simultaneously being a sponsor, enabler, and supporter of Israeli domination and occupation of the Palestinian people.
So even if Palestinian leaders were to somehow capitulate to every demand Israel makes, what guarantee do they have of a homeland? The simple answer is “none”. The Palestinians would be stupid to sit at the same table with Israel, as long as Israel has at it’s helm, the pathological liar Benjamin Netanyahu. There is no diplomatic speak to make this any more palatable. Netanyahu is a vile despicable liar.
Asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell whether he was racist in light of comments he made just prior to the elections, he replied, “I am not” , On the day of the election, Netanyahu claimed that his government was being threatened by Israeli Arab voters who were turning out for the election in “huge quantities.” When was voter turnout a bad thing? Do you see the connection here between Netanyahu the Senator from Israel and Republicans here in America who fundamentally believe black and Latino voter turnout should be controlled and impeded? Judge for yourself , this is Benjamin Netanyahu speaking about African migrant workers entering the Jewish state. “They are Infiltrators,“If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state,” Not only is Netanyahu a racist he is a xenophobe. Netanyahu is adamantly opposed to African migrant workers entering Israel, some of his comments were centered around allegations that a Jewish woman was raped in a migrant community. Israeli Police said the overall crime rate inIsrael had fallen. There had been one alleged rape of a teenage girl connected to the migrant community, for which three suspects were in custody.
Yohanan Danino, the Israeli police chief, said migrants should be permitted to work to discourage petty crime. theguardian.com reports.
Eli Yishai,
This was not enough to tamp down the vile racism of some of Israel’s leaders. Interior minister, Eli Yishai, rejected such a move, saying: “Why should we provide them with jobs? I’m sick of the bleeding hearts, including politicians. Jobs would settle them here, they’ll make babies, and that offer will only result in hundreds of thousands more coming over here.”Yishai repeated an earlier call for all migrants to be jailed pendingdeportation.“I want everyone to be able to walk the streets without fear or trepidation” … The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying,”.
Migrant African workers treated like garbage in Israel. Labeled Infilitrators.
Israel forcibly removed migrant African workers, some of whom were deported to Eritria and Sudan. Others are incarcerated in a mammoth prison in the Negev desert. The facility is reported to hold roughly 11,000 people and was built at a cost of £58m. In response to fears of human rights groups and NGO’s about the dangers they could face in their home countries once returned Netanyahu said, “I’m not responsible for what happens in Eritrea and Sudan, the UN is.” Completely oblivious and unconcerned for the safety of refugees, Netanyahu coldly dismisses that concern. Nevertheless Netanyahu and other Jews never miss an opportunity to berate the rest of the world with stories of what Hitler did to them. Some Israeli’s do have a heart however, they argue in the light of Jewish history, their state should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing persecution.
Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Palestinian can only look on.
Over the last three decades American Administrations have supposedly worked to achieve peace in the Middle east. From Carter to Obama. We can agree that the United States was never a honest broker toward that end, as it was the United States and Britain which created the problem in 1947 with the creation of what we have come to know as the state of Israel. Yesterday , under pressure to preserve his political viability on the eve of national elections, Benjamin Netanyahu declared there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. This bold, yet unequivocal statement flies in the face of what Israel and it’s supporters claim has been their goal all along. To have a two state solution with the Palestinians. Netanyahu made liars of all apologists, who swore over the decades that Israel was committed to peace and a two state solution to the decades long conflict. American Administrations dating back 3 decades have supposedly worked feverishly toward what they characterize as peace between Palestine and the state they created. Peace was never attainable under the conditions on the ground, in fact the Americans have maintained they supported Israel unequivocally. That means regardless of the atrocities Israel commits, America has pledged it’s unwavering support to defend it. The Palestinians argue they want a state of their own as the land now occupied by Israeli’s are Arab lands, their lands. Since 1947 Palestinians have lived under subjugation and rigid Israeli domination. Some observers argue Israel practices a form of apartheid worse than that which existed in South Africa.
images of white south Africans domination of blacks during the apartheid era
I am not sure about the analogy, having seen some of the suffering of the South African black people under the brutal oppression of the White Apartheid régime which existed there, On the other hand Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza live and die under incredible conditions caused by Israeli blockade,occupation and humiliation.
Notwithstanding, Netanyahu’s last ditch desperate confession is surprising only to dyed in the wool Israeli apologists. Sure Netanyahu want to hold onto power in Israel’s twisted maze of a political system. In fact even as as I write this Media Houses are reporting that he has already claimed victory , even though the race is supposedly too close to call. Now that Netanyahu revealed himself to be a deceptive liar to his supporters the rest of the world which never drank the Israeli kool-aid are vindicated. Israelis do not want peace with their neighbors. If Israel strikes a deal with the Palestinians they will have no more pretext to keep annexing their lands.
We were never fooled by Netanyahu or Israel and it’s supporters. All it takes is a little research and an open mind to recognize that the State of Israel is a land grabbing center of trouble in the middle east. No one bothers to talk about the fact that Israel has scores of Nuclear weapons while supporters of the Zionist state wants Iran emasculated. It is not enough that Saddam Hussien is out of the way, Netanyahu wants America to decimate Iran under the guise that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. If Israelis are serious about peace why don’t they give up their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? Why don’t they give back the lands they annexed to their rightful owners ?
These are the questions which intelligent observers must ask , anything else is accepting without challenge manufactured Zionist propaganda. Somehow Israel has made it some kind of crime to criticize them, or to question their lies. It is time that the world see this country for what it is, a land-grabbing warmonger which cannot coexist with it’s neighbors. Netanyahu has to know saying there will be no Palestinian state on his watch will be attractive to Jews anxious to get their hands on Palestinian lands on the eve of a vote. That is the reason he said it, Obama be damned. American money will never dry up, too many powerful Jews with money control the politics.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (Reuters /Ahmed Saad)
Speaking with NBC, Zarif slamed the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after he once again said in his Monday’s speech before the US Congress that Iran openly threatened to wipe Israel off the map.
The Iranian FM urged Netanyahu to refresh his knowledge of history as his comments have not only “distort[ed] realities of today,” but also go against the Bible and Jewish sacred texts.
“He even distorts his own scripture. If you read the book of Esther, you will see that it was the Iranian king who saved the Jews…” Zarif said.
The Iranian Minister called Netanyahu’s accusations “truly regrettable” stressing that they refer to “an entire nation which has saved Jews three times.”
“It is truly, truly regrettable that bigotry gets to the point of making allegations against an entire nation which has saved Jews three times in its history: Once during that time of a prime minister who was trying to kill the Jews, and the king saved the Jews; again during the time of Cyrus the Great, where he saved the Jews from Babylon, and during the Second World War, where Iran saved the Jews,” he said.
“We’re not about the annihilation of Jews,” Zarif stressed, reminding the channel that 20,000 Jews reside in Iran “in peace” and even have their own representative in parliament.
“We have a history of tolerance and coöperation and living together in coexistence with our own Jewish people, and with Jews everywhere in the world. If people want to espouse fear mongering to fan such hysteria in the world, that’s to their detriment,” Zafir said.
On the contrary, he stressed, the current Israeli régime “is a threat” to Iran as it’s a régime “that engages in the killing of innocent children, a régime that engages in acts of aggression.”
“Israel threatens to use force against Iran almost on a daily basis… Of course, if they did use force against Iran, we would defend ourselves, as we have done with great sacrifice in the past. But we are not invading, we are not threatening anybody. We have not threatened anybody for 250 years,” the Iranian FM said.
While Netanyahu only has “a record full of infanticide, full of killing of innocent people, full of aggression against his neighbor, full of occupation,” he added.
Tehran and the P5+1 powers (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany) are currently in the decisive stage of talks, hoping to reach compromise over Iran’s controversial nuclear program by mid-summer.
Zarif has once again turned down accusations by the West that the Iranian authorities are trying to develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, but Tehran insists that its program is for peaceful purposes.
“We never had the bomb. We will never have a bomb. We’re not looking to have a bomb. We do not believe a bomb is in our interest. Whereas [Netanyahu] does have a bomb. He has 200 nuclear weapons,” he said.
Zarif then went on to say that Israeli Prime Minister “has stood against a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction” and he still accuses Iran of preparing one.
“He’s in no place to do that. He doesn’t have the authority, the moral authority, to do that,” Zarif said.
According to the FM, Iran and the six world powers are “very close” to reaching a deal, but “there are details that need to be worked out.”
On Tuesday the Israeli Prime Minister once again voiced his fierce opposition to Iran’s nuclear program in front of a joint session of the US Congress, calling Tehran “the foremost sponsor of terrorism” that threatens not only the Israel and the Middle East, but the world, including the America.
Netanyahu urged for Iran to cease a “march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
Yet, on Monday, US President Barack Obama defended nuclear negotiations with Iran and maintained that a favorable settlement was still possible.
While Iran is still “more likely than not” to reject a deal, Obama stressed to Reuters that the odds of success are better today than three or five months ago.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.(Reuters /Mandel Ngan)
The Obama administration has led the charge against Jewish settlement construction in the contested West Bank, Israel’s defense minister has said, adding that he hopes the slowdown will be “temporary”.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Israel wants to construct more settlements in the West Bank, but an outpouring of global condemnation — spearheaded by the United States — has sidelined those aspirations.
“I really want to approve plans and build more – right now this issue provokes a reaction first and foremost from the Americans, and then threats from various sources,” Ya’alon said, as quoted by Haaretz, on Tuesday addressing high school students in a Jewish West Bank settlement.
According to Ya’alon, the United States has “led the charge” and Israel has been “very, very careful not to push the envelope too much.” The construction will eventually begin again because the Obama administration “won’t be around forever.” The comments, also broadcast on Israeli Army Radio, may further strain relations between the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration.
Reuters /Baz Ratner
In October, top-ranking officials in the Obama administration, including Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry refused to meet Ya’alon during a visit to Washington.
The snub should not have come as a surprise, however, considering the Israeli minister had earlier been quoted in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth as accusing Kerry of being “obsessive and messianic” in regard to his strenuous efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, an elusive objective that has evaded US leaders for decades.
The human rights group Peace Now said that while there have been no new settlement projects since a meeting between Obama and Netanyahu in October, the construction of previously announced housing continues, AP cited the group as saying. Israel attracted the criticism of the global community when it accepted tenders — shortly after a 50-day conflict in the Gaza Strip that left some 2,200 people dead, the majority of them Gazans — to construct over 1,000 new settler homes in East Jerusalem. Read more @http://rt.com/news/213095-israel-obama-us-settlements/
A partial view taken on October 29, 2014 shows cranes used to construct new buildings in the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, which was originally built in the 1990s, in the annexed Arab east Jerusalem area of Jabal Abu Ghneim. (AFP Photo/Ahmad Gharabli)
US-Israeli relations have sunk to new lows after Obama administration officials were cited calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and “coward” engaging in political posturing, instead of efforts at Middle-Eastern de-escalation.
The comments were delivered in a conversation with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on condition of anonymity. To many they symbolize the next step in a “full-blown crisis” of relations between the two, primarily over Netanyahu’s relentless settlement-building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Iranian nuclear issue.
“The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” said one official, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states,” he continued.
Goldberg keeps a running list of all the things US officials have ever called Netanyahu in interviews, and it’s not small. “Aspergery” popped up, among other things. But it is the first time high-ranking officials have expressed their views of the Israeli leader in such a “gloves-off manner. ”Read more @http://rt.com/news/200427-netanyahu-chickenshit-us-interview/
“I think anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state and to evacuate territory is giving radical Islam a staging ground against the State of Israel,”
Well just as we have said on so many occasions before, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu facing defeat and desperate to hold onto power in electeions scheduled for Tuesday March 17 said, as long as he is Prime Minister there will be no State of Palestine. Well wow , take a moment to digest that statement. For years Israel has gobbled up Palestinian territory with unprecedented rapaciousness. Many people have seen it for what it is, a craven land grab, end of story.
American Presidents from Carter to Clinton, to Bush and now Obama has demanded that as part of any peaceful end to the protracted Israeli /Palestinian conflict, Israel must stop building settlements on Palestinian lands. Nevertheless none of them did anything to stop the Billions of tax-payers dollars which pour into Israel annually ‚even as Israel thumbs its nose in contempt. Ariel Sharone once said it was real easy to move America to do its bidding. Israel argues they need to confiscate more territory to place a buffer between them and their enemies. That entire argument is flawed and unworthy of serious discussion. Based on that argument Israel would perpetually need to c take territory until Palestinians are forced out of the region all together.
Frustrated with that argument , former President Bill Clinton stated some time ago, Israel should state it does not want a two state solution and live with the consequences. President Carter who worked assiduously to broker peace between the two parties, and brokered the historic 1978 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt have been factually forthright in talking about Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people.
President carter said that the state of Israel is worse than the Apartheid system which existed in South Africa. Carter outraged many Jews who are generally above criticism with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In the Book President Carter said quote:” “The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Road-map for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens — and honor its own previous commitments — by accepting its legal borders,”end quote.… In response American Jewish Committee head David Harris responded in a column forThe Jerusalem Post. “In accepting the Palestinian narrative, Carter has conveniently revised history, excused the Palestinians for their tragic failure to come to terms with Israel each time the chance presented itself, and blithely ignored Israel’s very legitimate security concerns,” Harris wrote in 2006.
“Many Israelis, including those that once greatly admired his role in fostering peace with Egypt, may never again trust Carter’s diplomacy, including his vaunted role as an election monitor. He can no longer claim to be an honest broker.”
So there you have it they only have use for you when you agree with them. After the expected firewall of protest from Jews and their supporters, Carter offered up a mea culpa of sorts in March of 2010. By the summer of that very year Carter was forced to slam Israel once again in an op-ed piece quote: “There is no humane or legal justification for the way the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting this war,” the two former presidents wrote. “Israeli bombs, missiles, and artillery have pulverized large parts of Gaza, including thousands of homes, schools, and hospitals. More than 250,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian noncombatants have been killed. Much of Gaza has lost access to water and electricity completely. This is a humanitarian catastrophe.”
Netanyahu’s statement came after polls in Israel showed him losing ground in elections slated for Tuesday. Some observers have opined that Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of congress in defiance of President Obama’s efforts to get a deal with Iran may have backfired. Running in a tight race against Isaac Herzog, his competitor from the Zionist Union party. Experts say the race is too close to call. “I think anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state and to evacuate territory is giving radical Islam a staging ground against the State of Israel,”
On these pages we have consistently maintained that the Zionist state is not interested in a two state solution. Peace is not in Israel’s plans, never was. Ariel Sharone and now Benjamin Netanyahu has no interest in peace. Netanyahu like Sharone, understands the simplicity of making that a reality, as far as America is concerned. Continue to settle more land, Palestinians respond to the injustice, Israel reacts with overwhelming force, there is no consequence. Of course Israel has no obligation to respect International law. Bombing schools, hospitals and residences are quite normal. It’s just Palestinian lives at stake. Their argument? We need more land to separate us from the terrorist Palestinians ., so they take more and the cycle continues . Never mind that it is Israel which has the nuclear weapons and the cutting edge weaponry, the best in the world, as against the downtrodden Palestinians throwing rocks and blowing themselves up in exasperation.
They do all this withAmerica’s backing of course.
I’m certainly no fan of the Democratic Party, it is weak ‚It’s unfocused and a fractious throw-together of self-serving interest groups. With that said, faced with the unpalatable prospect of the two political parties, right minded people have to hold their noses and side with the Democrats. It’s not as if the Democratic party is better,(less bad). It’s just that the Republican Party has denigrated to such depths of Racism and is so sold out to the 1% of the wealthiest Oligarchs, there is hardly any alternative but to cast one’s lot with the lousy Democrats.
Whether you are a fan of President Obama or not, one has to wonder whether Republicans are mindful that what they are doing to him is precedent setting? Republicans want control of the White House. To them, the Executive branch is the crème-de-la-crème of the three branches of Government as long as a Republican is the occupant. Not so much when Democrats occupy the Executive Mansion.Then Republicans are hell-bent on using whatever clout they hold between the Legislative and Judicial branch to stymie the effectiveness of whichever Democrat is in the white house.
In recent times they did it to Presidents Carter and Clinton, but neither of the two saw the venom and hatred which has been directed at Barack Obama. Of course what Obama faces is more than the idea that no democrat should occupy the white house but also over four hundred years of raw white supremacy. They do not believe a black man should ever enter much less occupy the white house. Incredibly they have questioned Obama’s competence, of course none of the elected ones could credibly question his academic qualifications for the job. So they had a political wannabe, the buffoon Donald Trump do it. Obama is a Harvard educated constitutional lawyer so that did not work. It did not stop them from questioning the place of his birth, to this day they argue he was born in Kenya. Ironically, during the 2008 elections between Obama and John McCain, when the birther [sic] issue emerged, no one bothered to mention that John McCain was born on a military base somewhere in the Panama Canal zone. There was no great outcry during George Romney’s 1968 bid for the GOP nomination . There is also silent acquiescence surrounding the divisive Ted Cruz’s Presidential ambitions, even though he was born in Calgary Canada. So what is it that gives legitimacy to the birther issue as it regards Obama if not race, you decide?
John McCain
The poisonous McCain has always pretended to be a rational person. McCain has been careful to pick and chose instances when to appear reasonable. For example during the 2008 elections when a bigoted old woman told him at an event that she did not trust Obama because he was an Arab who did not belong here. The seemingly rational McCain told her then quote”. “No ma’am,[Obama’s] a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” Sounds reasonable enough right? The truth is, John McCain saw the polls and he knew he would lose that election. He was in damage control mode then. In fact no one ever accused John McCain of being bright, rather than defend Arab-Americans as decent people worthy of trust, McCain fed into the hatred in the crowd by telling that ignorant old woman that Obama was not an Arab. So what if he was Arabic? Where in the constitution of the United States does it preclude an Arab from running for the Presidency of the United States? I will however leave Arabs to defend themselves. At the time McCain had Arabs like Daryl Issa supporting him and in some cases there were Arabs actively campaigning for him. There have also been Arab-Americans who have given exemplary service to this country . Former US Senate majority leader George Mitchell and four stars General John Abizaid, former Commander of the US Central Command, just two of the many.
To suggest that McCain was being magnanimous then, would be to praise a man who sets fire to a building then call the fire department. It was McCain who chose the poisonous hate-monger Sarah Palin and released her onto the nation. The raw bigotry which the world saw during the 2008 campaign was unprecedented and unwarranted. Yet John McCain stood by and did nothing as Palin poured the accelerant of hate stoking the smoldering embers of America’s bigotry and hate which lay just beneath the surface. The resultant inferno of racial animus now engulfing America was reignited on John McCain’s watch. There is no reasonableness in McCain. Every major policy decision McCain has taken, including choosing Sarah Palin has been disastrous and wrong. Unfortunately John McCain has been insulated from criticism since his release from a Hanoi POW camp in March of 1973. The brain-dead media is unwilling to confront John McCain with the folly of his positions, wrong on every issue. Never mind that McCain has consistently gotten every issue wrong, the media still puts him on national television as if he is some kind of foreign policy heavy-weight.
Loretta Lynch
It should come as no surprise to any reasonable person that McCain still hold a grudge for the shellacking he took from the black guy. It also should come as no surprise that McCain’s office has said that he will not support Federal Prosecutor Loretta Lynch to be the next Attorney General and the first black woman to hold that post. Every President is entitled under the constitution to his nominees, that includes Obama. There is nothing really which they can point to in the past of Loretta Lynch which would disqualify her from being the next AG. In fact Lynch who is supremely qualified, has far better character than the Republican Senators who are holding up her confirmation out of spite for the president. McCain’s colleague Chuck Grassley — one of just four Republicans who have expressed support for Lynch — said at her hearing: “If we can’t confirm Loretta Lynch, then I don’t believe we can confirm anyone”.
My question to Democrats is this, “are you taking notes”? One day they will have a president in the white house, what will you do then? Are you going to rubber-stamp everyone and everything they bring to a vote as you have done over the decades? Are you going to allow yourselves to be rail-roaded into giving them carte-blanche as you did with the Patriot Act? This country is becoming a shell of it’s own stated ideals. Why? Because a bunch of racist reactionaries have taken control of one party and the other party is too cowardly to fight back. On issue after issue they have been proven wrong, yet time and again, they have been allowed to drag America to the brink, because the Democratic party is too weak to stand up for America. Too weak and divided to stand up for it’s own President.
So poisonous has partisanship become in Washington that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, normally a beacon of reason, has announced that he’ll vote against confirming Brooklyn federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch as U.S. attorney general.
Not because Lynch is unqualified. She’s superbly capable of serving as America’s top lawyer.
Not because background checks have found untoward behavior by Lynch. Her probity is absolutely unblemished.
Instead, McCain would spurn Lynch as payback for President Obama issuing an executive action to let millions of undocumented immigrants live and work in the country. (A judge has stayed the President’s order.)
Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lynch offered no opinion about the legality of Obama’s action, saying only that Justice Department lawyers seemed to have engaged in a “reasonable” discussion about the policy, and that any advice she offered as attorney general would be “thorough,” “objective” and “completely independent.”
Brushing by such nuances, a McCain spokesman said, “No, he’s not voting for her, because she called the Obama executive action on immigration ‘reasonable.’ ”
A senator’s duty when considering a nominee is to ensure that the person is qualified for the post, while accepting that Presidents choose individuals who are in sync with their philosophies. Otherwise, Democrats and Republicans would never approve the other party’s nominees.
Sadly, McCain is breaching his obligation to the nation. His stance is all the more distressing because he was a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that worked to pass a comprehensive immigration bill in 2013.
For a bit of sanity, here’s what McCain’s colleague Chuck Grassley — one of just four Republicans who have expressed support for Lynch — said at her hearing:
“If we can’t confirm Loretta Lynch, then I don’t believe we can confirm anyone. And I would like to remind my colleagues that the President’s immigration policies are not seeking confirmation today.”
McCain may be running scared because he could face a GOP primary challenge for reelection next year. That could be an explanation, but it is no excuse for imperiling confirmation of an exemplary public servant who would become the nation’s first African-American female AG.nydailynews.com.
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