Old School

by Bryan

The BBC carried the news: Baroness Warsi quits as Foreign Office minister over Gaza

Foreign Office minister Baroness Warsi has resigned from the government, saying its policy on the crisis in Gaza is “morally indefensible”.

She wrote on her Twitter feed that she was leaving with “deep regret”.

Lady Warsi, who was previously chairman of the Conservative Party, became the first female Muslim cabinet minister when David Cameron took office in 2010.

The Muslim business community in Britain, predominately families who immigrated from Pakistan, is a major component of the Conservative Party.

The Baroness felt that simply saying that the situation in Gaza was terrible, while doing nothing about it and implying that Hamas was somehow responsible, was not a policy she could support.

Cameron’s statement in response to the resignation that included a line about the Baroness discussing this with him before going public with her resignation, must be particularly galling to Warsi who has been pushing for Britain to use its influence with Israel to stop the attacks on Gaza from the beginning.

While the IDF has withdrawn ground forces, the negotiations about something more permanent are taking place in Egypt. The Egyptians are moderating between Israel and Iran, because the Egyptians don’t talk to Hamas either, and Israel doesn’t talk to Iran or Hamas.

8 comments

1 Badtux { 08.06.14 at 11:38 pm }: The first rule of negotiation is that to negotiate, you need to talk to the people you’re negotiating with, not someone else altogether. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re not negotiating — you’re just pretending.

‘Nuff said.
2 Bryan { 08.07.14 at 2:21 pm }: The current Israeli government doesn’t negotiate with anyone. Their concept involves having the other side agree to everything they want and then holding a meeting to discuss why it is impossible for the current Israeli government to even consider anything that you want them to do.
3 Kryten42 { 08.14.14 at 7:44 am }: I’ve been looking for a report published a few years ago. I couldn’t remember exactly when, but remembered I read it in Raw Story. I found it. It was about how the USA is modeling the Police forces there after the Israel model.

Report: Israeli model underlies militarization of U.S. police

I bring it up because it illustrates the point that the USA is very much pro-Israel, no matter what! So expecting anything other than support of Israel is a fools dream. *shrug*

Excerpt:

The extreme militarization of American police forces has been brought to public attention by the tactics employed against Occupy protesters, which often appear more appropriate to counter-terrorism operations than to the control of non-violent protest. According to investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, however, the proper term for this ruthless suppression of dissent should be “Israelification.”

In an article which begins with examples of American police training alongside Israeli security forces, Blumenthal writes, “Having been schooled in Israeli tactics perfected during a 63 year experience of controlling, dispossessing, and occupying an indigenous population, local police forces have adapted them to monitor Muslim and immigrant neighborhoods in US cities. Meanwhile, former Israeli military officers have been hired to spearhead security operations at American airports and suburban shopping malls, leading to a wave of disturbing incidents of racial profiling, intimidation, and FBI interrogations of innocent, unsuspecting people. The New York Police Department’s disclosure that it deployed ‘counter-terror’ measures against Occupy protesters encamped in downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park is just the latest example of the so-called War on Terror creeping into every day life. Revelations like these have raised serious questions about the extent to which Israeli-inspired tactics are being used to suppress the Occupy movement.”

And here is a recent example:
Livestreamer behind Ferguson footage says cops were shooting tear gas near homes

Welcome to USI (United States of Israel)! Lucky you.
4 Kryten42 { 08.14.14 at 8:05 am }: This was interesting also. You would think that Israel would be the last Country to embrace fascism. But then again, it was created out of fascism, so maybe it’s not so far fetched. *shrug*

Signs of fascism in Israel reached new peak during Gaza op, says renowned scholar

Israel Prize laureate and renowned scholar Zeev Sternhell fears the collapse of Israeli democracy, and compares the current atmosphere with that of 1940s’ France. The time we have left to reverse this frightening trend is running out, he warns

And then… The USA and the UK and Australia too. Apparently. The race is on! 🙂 Oh… Welcome to the new World Order! (Does that mean I’ll have to learn a new salute? *sigh* To hell with that!)

It’s an interesting read. Especially for someone with the skills of an analyst.
5 Kryten42 { 08.14.14 at 10:25 am }: I decided to find out more about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, where 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed, was shot to death by police.

So Bryan, WTF is wrong with this picture?

I tell you what! If that was my team in Cambodia, I would have shot them before they could have killed the kid! Except that it would never have happened!

The fiasco in Ferguson shows why you don’t give military equipment to cops

Last weekend in Ferguson, Missouri, an 18-year-old named Michael Brown, who was two days from starting college, was shot to death by the police. The circumstances surrounding his death remain in dispute (though an eyewitness says he was virtually executed on the street), but that hasn’t stopped locals in this St. Louis suburb from demonstrating for justice and condemning police brutality. The protests lapsed into serious unrest on Sunday, with opportunists taking advantage of the chaos to loot local businesses, and have continued every day since.

Throughout all this, police from Ferguson, St. Louis County, and other departments have responded by arming themselves to the teeth with heavy-duty military equipment. Concerns about “police militarization” in America — the origins of which have been discussed to great extent by Radley Balko — are rampant.

But the great irony of this story is that the military itself would never behave so crudely. And that is precisely why it is beyond reckless to let a bunch of local cops get their hands on a high-grade military arsenal.

Of course, if he’d been a white kid, he’d probably still be alive. I say probably, because I look at that pic and see a bunch of trigger happy morons who probably think Rambo was real! In fact, one of those assholes was caught on tape yelling, “Bring it, you f**king animals! Bring it!”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!
6 Bryan { 08.14.14 at 9:50 pm }: When I went to the Police Academy we were taught the proper way to use force, and just as important, when not to use it. This was emphasized in our FACIT [Family and Crisis Intervention Techniques] training, the “Shoot-Don’t Shoot” portion of firearms training, and in riot control training.

I look at that picture and I see a mob, not police officers. Camo serves no purpose in the urban environment and looks stupid. They look like a bunch of GI Joe wannabes in Waffen SS helmets. Their stance and posture are maximizing the threat potential to everyone and the use of automatic weapons in the urban environment almost guarantees innocent people being wounded. They are inciting a riot not controlling the situation.

While the were intimidating protestors, no one was protecting the property of people, so there was looting. The only way of defusing the situation would be by an open and public investigation of what actually happened when that teen was killed. If you don’t interview witnesses, and you harass and arrest people who took video of the event, you are creating a major problem for your department and the sponsoring government. You are making it almost impossible for the FBI not to open an investigation, which is something no police department should want.

The police response is brain dead. By seemingly ‘circling the wagons’ to protect an officer who may be involved in a bad shooting that may result in criminal charges being filed, every officer in the department has put his job on the line.

I don’t know what happened when the boy was shot, but the police response to the protest screams cover-up.

The Boston PD missed the Marathon bombers because they had put all of their resources into harassing the Occupy protestors. These police procedures are not making the people safer and are alienating everyone.
7 Badtux { 08.14.14 at 11:31 pm }: Yeppers, the Ferguson police response is what you get when you got a buncha wanna-bes with all the gear, but without the training or common sense to keep it in the locker except when dealing with an active shooter (which was not the case in Ferguson). Even military veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan with experience dealing with *real* terrorist populations were appalled.

Of course, race has nothing to do with why the cops were calling protesters “animals”. Surprised I didn’t hear “porch monkey” or “nigger”, but I guess they’ve gone out of style…
8 Bryan { 08.15.14 at 12:10 am }: They have been acting more like ISIS than the regular military. They have been acting like a street gang, not like peace officers. I’m not sure that psych screening and retraining would help, but that’s the minimum I would recommend if they don’t fire everyone involved in this mess.