8th episode of ToI’s new podcast miniseries ‘Israel’s Judiciary: Reform or Ruin?’ takes a nuanced journey into looming legislation that could alter country’s checks and balances
— Read on www.timesofisrael.com/dr-susan-weiss-five-areas-in-which-the-override-clause-should-terrify-women/

Monday 27 March 2023

Well, here we are again, another school shooting, another shooting and this time the shooter appears to be a little girl.  Two long guns, two pistols.

About ten minutes ago I predicted the “it could have been worse” narrative and a self-congratulatory press conference where first responders would be praised.

Five minutes later, CNN started the “it could have been worse” narrative.  It’s so predictable, so infuriating, so idiotic. 

Who was it yesterday who said that 3% of the population in this country owns over 50% of the guns.  Why?  For what purpose?   

Yadda, yadda, yadda….anything but talk about the problem…

• What is the role of the FBI in this investigation?
• What the FBI does, their specialized teams.
• Law enforcement will explore every facet of the shooters’ background.
• MSNBC the “police response time was incredibly rapid.”  Ken Delanian (scum bag of the world). 
• Six victims killed.
• Was there any “active shooter” training in the school.
• They “ran toward the shooter.”
• As the always decent Frank Figliuzzi says, “I hate it that we are here” critiquing the methods of law enforcement.  
• But, we are here and the corporate media will spend the next few days lamenting and looking sympathetic and relating irrelevant fact after irrelevant fact trying desperately to create a conversation that looks meaningful.  It, however, will not be.  It is just so much chatter to try to convince viewers that this is not a deeply diseased society.

When I first turned on the television and heard about the shooting, there was a little girl being interviewed, smiling, tilting her head, courting the camera.  “What?” I said to myself as I listened.  “What did they say?  Her mother was inside the building with the shooter?  What?  And she’s smiling?  What the hell is this about.”

Recklessly, I posted the photos of this young girl smiling, deferentially cocking her head for the camera.  Is this what you look like when your mother is inside a school with an armed person?  Is this what you look like describing your mother cowering in response to gunfire?”

The response, of course, was swift, dictatorial, and censorious.  “What kind of a post is this.  Delete it.”  “This person is obviously in shock.  Leave her alone.” 

And, so we go on as a society, turning our heads away, refusing to look, refusing to digest the import of what it in front of our faces.  It is highly likely that this little girl was so taken with the charm of being interviewed on national television that she couldn’t refrain from smiling.

It reminded me very much of the little girl recently who sat as foreman of a grand jury investigating Trump.  When it was over, she couldn’t help herself.  She hit the media trail and talked and smiled and vamped.  She was completely oblivious to how tacky and tasteless her behavior was.  She was going to be on television, all over television.  But, at least, at the very least, she wasn’t smiling and vamping and telling a story about her mother being inside a building with an active shooter.  At least. 

Sunday 26 March 2023

Night News Notes

Israel

Further civil unrest broke out in parts of Israel Sunday after Netanyahu fired his defense minister who criticized the imminent judicial overhaul and proposed that it be postphoned.

• There were not only protests in the streets, but universities have shut their doors and union leaders are hinting at a general strike.
• The legislation, scheduled to be pushed through early next week, would give the government more control over the selection of Supreme Court judges and limit the court’s authority over Parliament.
• Protestors broke through police barriers outside Netanyahu’s residence.
• In response to the legislation, military leaders had warned of a surge in military reservists’ refusing to fulfill their volunteer duty. 
• The dismissal is considered an indication that Netanyahu will proceed with a final vote on the legislation.
• The legislation is said by the government to be needed to give elected lawmakers primacy over unelected judges. 
• Critics say that it would remove one of the few checks on government wrongdoing.
• Demonstrations started within minutes of the announcement.
• There is a growing Palestinian insurgency in the occupied West Bank, “rising tensions with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia; and fear of an imminent confrontation with Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.”
• The dismissed cabinet member had been appointed instead of a more right-wing candidate and was considered to ease tensions with Washington which feared a more extreme member to oversee Israel’s powerful military which receives an enormous amount of US aid.
• One opposition lawmaker called Netanyahu’s move “an act of madness.” “Netanyahu is determined to drive Israel into the abyss.”
• Reservists have noted that they fear being given illegal military orders if the Supreme Court lacks the ability to oversee government activity.
• “The overhaul has become a proxy for much deeper social disagreements within Israeli society related to the relationship between religion and state, the future of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and ethnic tensions among Israeli Jews.”
• “Orthodox Jews and settlers say the court has historically acted against their interests, and has for too long been dominated by secular judges. Jews of Middle Eastern descent also feel underrepresented on the court, which has mostly been staffed by judges from European backgrounds.”

Source:

The judicial overhaul

• The legislation would move decision making about Supreme Court judges to the control of the government. 
• This is the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel’s history.
• The government wants to curb the Court’s ability to strike down laws passed by Parliament it deems unconstitutional.
• The 120 seat Parliament would be able to override court decisions with a 61 vote majority.
• Another provision would weaken the authority of the attorney general who is now independent of the government.
• Right-wing Israelis have long opposed limits placed by the Supreme Court on some settlement activities in the occupied West Bank.
• “Ultra-Orthodox Jews also resent the court for opposing measures that they value, including gender-separated public bus lines and wholesale exemptions from military conscription for all men enrolled in Torah studies.”
• Unlike other democracies, Israel has no written constitution.
• The court is the only check on government power.
• Critics say that Netanyahu was formerly a supporter of an independent judiciary.  Now, after an indictment on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, they say he is acting out of personal interest.

Source:

Recent Removal of Netanyahu Minister

The Supreme Court ruled that a close ally of Netanyahu should be removed from his posts after a conviction for tax fraud.

• The Minister, Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party, was ruled against on the grounds of “extreme unreasonability” because of the conviction and suspended prison sentence.
• Netanyahu is himself on trial on corruption charges.
• As part of the judicial changes: “The government also wants to turn the legal advisers in government ministries into political appointees who would no longer answer to the attorney general.”
• “The Parliament rushed through a legal amendment after the November election to allow Mr. Deri to become a minister despite his recent conviction for tax fraud. As part of a plea agreement about a year ago, he received a suspended prison sentence.”
• “The Supreme Court judges wrote in their ruling that they had based their decision in part on the recidivism of Mr. Deri, who was first convicted in 1999 of taking bribes, fraud and breach of trust while he was a lawmaker and cabinet minister, and served two years of a three-year prison sentence. He was released in 2002 and returned to the political stage in 2011.”
• (Note: Netanyahu finally dismissed Deri at the end of January 2023).

Source:

www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/world/middleeast/judiciary-overhaul-benjamin-netanyahu-israel-parliament.html

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/26/us-indicts-alleged-russian-spy-sergey-cherkasov-who-tried-to-infiltrate-icc-in-the-hague

Maria Lvova-Belova

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and this woman who is the Children’s Ombudsman in Russia, for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Sunday 26 March 2023

Ukraine Morning Notes: Ukrainian Children

Podcast: The Daily 3/3/23

Children have become the spoils of war. 

• Some children taken back to Russia and placed with Russian families.
• Systematic removal, many from group homes, of Ukrainian children, relocated to Russia, planned to give them Russian citizenship.
• Some children taken from their parents.
• Parents might have been imprisoned.
• Ukrainian officials have identified 16,000 children, mostly orphans.
• Russians were portraying the operation as “rescuing” children.
• Speaking to children who had had this experience, a Ukrainian reporter interviewed Anya.
• 14 year old, eastern Ukraine, she was flagged to Ukrainian social services, inadequate parental supervision.  She was moved to a sanitorium, common in Ukraine, before the war.  She was among some 90,000 living in a group home in Mariupol.
• When Russia invades, some children leave group home.  Anya does not get picked up.  She hides with other children.  They are evacuated to safer city, but at check point, pro-Russian officials decide to send them into Russian territory.
• Bussed into Russia.  Children were not asked.
• Rehabilitation facilities then moved into foster family with 6 other children.  She shares a room with 6 boys.  They treat her nicely.  She still wanted to go back home.
• Many of these families are well-meaning.
• She has patriotism classes in school.  The intent is teaching children how to be proud of Russia.
• The children are told Ukraine is really bad.
• She was given Russian citizenship, a passport.
• In May, Putin streamlined the process of giving children Russian citizenship.
• The Russians are not hiding this effort.  It portrays Russians as saviors of Ukrainian children.
• This frames the war as a humanitarian issue.
• Targeted at the domestic audience, it make it appear that Ukrainian doesn’t really exist, but is part of Russia.  These children are part of Russia, going back to where they belong.
• Videos and articles and state media that shows children arriving in Russia and receiving Russian families. TV cameras, given teddy bears.
• They are interviewed saying how happy they are to be in Russia.  Documentaries about the children.
• It usually takes a family member to start the process of getting the children returned.
• (Note: The NYT reporter finds it necessary to “play devil’s advocate” and argues that children are in a safer place.  Jesus.  She also repeats everything the Ukrainian reporter says, like a prosecutor who repeats each and every statement of the witness.  Drives you mad.  Also, there is this fake intensity to her voice, as if telling a ghost story to children.)
• Anya’s mother is out of work and does not have access to the internet.  Her going to Russia to get her child back is about like her going to the moon.

Day 6: CBC Radio Podcast (3/24/23

•  ICC charge against Putin and a Russian commentator who adopted children herself.
• Maria is Children Ombudsman.  She appears in videos with Ukrainian children.  They use children as a tool to justify Russian action in Ukraine.

Eric Bland, the attorney representing the Smith family, confirmed to PEOPLE that a rape kit was administered but was not tested
— Read on people.com/crime/stephen-smith-death-rape-kit-administered-homicide/

You
— Read on www.marketwatch.com/story/20-banks-that-are-sitting-on-huge-potential-securities-lossesas-was-svb-c4bbcafa

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/24/south-africa-must-arrest-vladimir-putin/

The governor has requested nearly $100 million for the new State Guard force.
— Read on www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/03/24/desantis-state-guard-helicopters-arrest-cellebrite/

United States Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has a powerful “partner” in his political “crusade” against reproductive autonomy. Erin Morrow Hawley, the lawmaker’s wife since 2010, is an attorney representing right-wing groups suing to have the abortion medication mifepristone banned nationwide.Mor…
— Read on www.alternet.org/judge-in-texas-abortion-case/

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/countdown-with-keith-olbermann/id1633301179

A

Netanyahu later doubled down on his controversial plans to weaken Israel’s judiciary, despite long-running protests and interventions from international leaders

Hundreds of Israeli reservists, including specially trained Air Force crew, had announced they would refuse calls to serve if the overhaul passed, as they would no longer feel that they’d be serving a democratic government

r a vote in the Knesset on Tuesday to roll back 2005 legislation that previously ordered the evacuation of four Israeli settlements established in the northern West Bank.

Under international law, the West Bank is considered occupied territory and settlements there illegal, which Israel disputes.

said, “I believe that the protests must be a sign of warning and the signals that are coming from Washington must be a red light to Benjamin Netanyahu and to make him stop what he’s doing in order to save not only Israeli democracy and the state of Israel, but relations with the US as well.

One of the drivers for this judicial coup that they’re trying to pass now is the settlers that have been wanting to bring down the Supreme Court of Israel for many, many years because they want to be able to do in the West Bank whatever they want to do,” she added.

the law that was passed is “a shameful, disgraceful law whose whole purpose is prevent Netanyahu from being sent to prison.”

The owner of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group has warned Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu that the Ukrainian army is planning an imminent offensive aimed at cutting off his forces from the main body of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
— Read on www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2023/3/21/wagner-boss-warns-russia-military-of-imminent-ukraine-attack