Psst! I am as anti-American as you are pro-American. Who’da guessed? There is very little about this country I like. A few loonies have screamed at me, “Go back to where you came from if you don’t like it here!” Thanks for the advice. Just where is it I came from? I think (not sure) it was Lutheran Hospital at the edge of Brownsville, Brooklyn, near the East NY section. I doubt it is even there any more. So much for the good suggestion. And, anyway, hospitals are just one more thing I hate about this country. Of course, my pet peeves are with police, politicians, and “doctors” [those weird creatures who, with over-the-top stupidity like to say, "Hello, my name is Doctor..." It is no use telling them that they are wrong, that a check of their birth certificates would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Doctor" is not any physician's first name. They have the same sense of humor that Freddy Krueger, the monster, hero of many movies, has.] Really, now, don’t just say the politically correct thing – be honest. If you had to choose between killing the despicable Freddy and fifty world-renowned surgeons, wouldn’t the choice be easy? Wouldn’t you do the same as I would? And don’t be coy and ask, “What choice is that?”

BUT MY PROBLEM TODAY IS WITH POISON GAS. The U.S. intelligence community [sic] believes “with some degree of varying confidence” that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

Chuck’s boss, Barack, says that if Syria is using poison gas in its war against Syrian rebels then it has crossed a red line and he won’t put up with that. He said, using an incomprehensible metaphor, that the use of chemical weapons “would change my calculus. That would change my equation.” What the hell does that mean? Would Barack drop the Pythagorean Theorem in favor of E=mc square? Are you such a fan that you think he knows what he is talking about?

A big problem is that Syrian officials say their country has not used poison gas and never will, that the Americans are a bunch of liars. Look, for me it is simple. When country X says one thing and the U.S. says something diametrically opposed, I usually go with country X. What else can I do? History is on my side.

- The Gulf of Tonkin, Aug. 4, 1964: The U.S. went to war against North Vietnam on the basis of a false report that the warships USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy came under attack by the North Vietnamese navy.

- The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, Aug. 20, 1998: the U.S. destroyed this Sudanese factory with cruise missiles in retaliation for a pair of bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa two weeks earlier. The Clinton Administration said it had evidence of chemical-weapons production at the facility, and that it had ties to Osama bin Laden. Both claims were lies.

- Operation Desert Fox, Dec. 16-19, 1998: The U.S. and Britain launched a four-day bombing campaign against assorted targets across Iraq suspected of housing Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. But there were no such weapons and up to 2,000 Iraqis died in the attacks.

- Operation Iraq Freedom, 2003-2011: More lies. More than 100,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, are believed to have been killed in the war, along with nearly 4,500 U.S. troops.

Beyond that, any military action to take out Syria’s chemical arsenal risks spewing plumes of the deadly agents and killing innocents in the way. Hitting chemical-weapons storage areas, sends those chemical weapons somewhere.” What do Chuck and Barack say to that?

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In the course of doing your homework, determine how many unjustified military interventions the U.S.A. has engaged in. Would fifty be a bad guess? I doubt it. Give me the legal life. Sing “Give me the simple life” but make a few necessary changes, for example, the ones I suggest below.

Der Bingle will guide you with the tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTzudIVvUaM

I don’t believe in lyin’ and killin’
Why mess around with strife
I never was cut out to step and strut out
Give me the legal life

Some find it pleasant killing a peasant
Those things roll off my knife
Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes
Give me the legal life

A cottage small is all I’m after
Not one that’s loaded with bombs
A house that rings with joy and laughter
and filled with the music of Brahms

Some like the mined road, I like the safe road
Free from the care and strife
Sounds corny and seedy, but yes indeedy
Give me the legal life

The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest and most pivotal battle of the American Civil War and it decisively turned the war in the Union favor. Joshua Chamberlain, a man of staggering ability as a diarist who would go on to be president of Bowdoin College and governor of Maine offered this (SG: abbreviated) account of the battle.

“But we can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals, and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be, whenever and wherever the hour strikes and calls to noble action…Every pioneer and musician who could carry a musket went into the ranks. Even the sick and foot-sore, who could not keep up in the march, came up as soon as they could find their regiments, and took their places in line of battle, while it was battle, indeed. I long to be in the Field again, doing my part to keep the old flag up, with all its stars.

“But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men, – men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man, and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order – do we call it? – fraught with such ruin. Was it God’s command we heard, or His forgiveness we must forever implore?….But out of that silence rose new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism, of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key-note weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness; the writhing concord broken by cries for help, some begging for a drop of water, some calling on God for pity; and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun; some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them; and underneath, all the time, the deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless, or too heroic to articulate their agony…It seemed best to bestow myself between two dead men among the many left there by earlier assaults, and to draw another crosswise for a pillow out of the trampled, blood-soaked sod, pulling the flap of his coat over my face to fend off the chilling winds, and still more chilling, the deep, many voiced moan that overspread the field.

“This struggle of an hour & a half, was desperate in the extreme: four times did we lose & win that space of ten yards between the contending lines, which was strewn with dead & dying. I repeatedly sent to the rear reports of my condition, that my ammunition was exhausted, & that I could hold the position but a few minutes longer. In the mean time I seized the opportunity of a momentary repulse of the enemy, to gather the contents of every cartridge box of the dead & dying, friend & foe, & with these we met the enemy on their last & most desperate assault. In the midst of this, our ammunition utterly failed, our fire, as it was too terribly evident, had slackened, half my left wing lay on the ground, & although I had brought two companies from the right to strengthen it, the left wing was reduced to a mere skirmish line. Officers came to me, shouting that we were “annihilated”, & men were beginning to face the rear. I saw that the defensive could be maintained not an instant longer, & with a few gallant officers rallied the line, ordered “bayonets fixed,” & “forward” on the run. My men went down upon the enemy with a wild shout, the two wings were brought into one line again. I directed the whole Regiment to take intervals at 5 paces by the left flank, & change direction to the right, all this without checking our speed, thus keeping my right connected with the 83rd Penna, while the left swept around to the distance of half a mile. In this charge the bayonet only was used on our part, & the rebels seemed so petrified with astonishment that their front line scarcely offered to run or fire—they threw down their arms & begged “not to be killed”, & we captured them by whole companies. We took 368 prisoners. . .

“The prisoners were amazed & chagrinned to see the smallness of our numbers, for there were only one hundred & ninety eight men who made this charge, & the prisoners admitted that they had a full Brigade.” [SG: Chamberlain commanded 20th Maine regiment at the battle.] This is great writing and inspires envy in all would-be writers.

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Just 3,400 years earlier, another great Joshua showed what he could do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks7fLAwzVxY

Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, said yesterday that the use of drones is legal, ethical and wise. He may be right but, in the great tradition of press secretaries, refused to be drawn into a discussion of the pro and cons of this position.

The most common defense of the use of drones is that they save lives — American lives. A collateral benefit is that, since they are very accurate, drones do not target the innocent and kill only Bad Guys and destroy their hiding places.

As substitutes for “boots on the ground,” it can hardly be questioned that drones save American lives. The collateral benefit is disputable. American estimates of the harm drones do is not close to what Afghanistan estimates are. Who to believe? We, the public, are not in a position to resolve the matter and we can only go with our gut feelings. I won’t dare to take that one on.

Let us look briefly at JUST WAR TRADITION. That doctrine commands us to kill proportionately to the harm that is visited upon us and do no more harm than is needed to bring hostilities to an end. JWT also demands that we examine whether our cause is just. Just War theorists distinguish between jus ad bellum and jus post bello. Jus ad bellum sets out a set of criteria that purport to tell us whether entering into war is permissible at all. Thus defined, it seems that if a nation fails the jus ad bellum test and has no legitimate grounds for warring, it is pointless to ask whether it can pass the jus post bello criterion. The United Nations Charter binds nations to seek resolution of disputes via principles of jus post bello: peaceful means and requires authorization by the United Nations before a nation may initiate any use of force against another, beyond the inherent right of self-defense against an armed attack. That being the case, we may say with some certainty, that drones or no drones, the USA is not engaged in a just war.

Jus post bello may be summarized thus: the principle of discrimination should be employed to avoid imposing punishment on innocents or non-combatants; the rights or traditions of the defeated deserve respect; the claims of victory should be proportional to the war’s character; compensatory claims should be tempered by the principles of discrimination and proportionality; and, the need to rehabilitate or re-educate an aggressor should also be considered. Unfortunately, this does not tell us much about how war should be conducted but mainly how it ought to be ended.

That is not easy because justice, like history, is written by the victors. A defeated army and indeed the civilian body from which the army stems should thus be prepared to subject itself to the imposition of rules and forms of punishments, humiliation, and even retributions that it would not otherwise agree to. Of course, as things now stand, we can only guess when the current dragged-out war will end, notwithstanding bold predictions and announcement of intentions by our President. It seems to be that neither jus ad bellum nor jus post bello provides us with sufficient ways determine the legality, ethics or wisdom that Jay Carney tells us we have. Are we not in a tertium quid because we don’t know when the war will end and what are the best ways to hasten the conflict along so that we may enter the jus post bello stage?

Of course, Mr. Carney does not mean well but he does treat the press as though they are very dense.

At about the halfway mark of the Civil War, Abe Lincoln takes the bold step of issuing an Emancipation Proclamation. A truly great moment in U.S. history. So it is now 150 years since that most important time. The film, LINCOLN, is about that moment. Since it stars Daniel Day-Lewis, there wasn’t, and could not possibly have been, suspense concerning who would get the Best Actor Award. ARGO, a very exciting potboiler, won Best Movie award for its false portrayal of a Middle East incident. It didn’t deserve awards, but what the hell. I saw it and liked it.

Here is a list of the best Civil War movies. Culled from over one thousand pretenders.

1. GLORY – stars Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington. Great and horrifying battle scenes. From this movie, you really learn why war is hell.

2.THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE – Everyone has read the book; now see the movie. All about courage and cowardice.

3. GONE WITH THE WIND – The epic of epics. You can’t argue with it. You might as well say you read Hamlet and didn’t like it. Visually stunning and the winner of exactly 35 trillion awards and honors. I’m a fan.

4. An OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE – It has no competition in the category of greatest very short movie ever made. A disquisition on time. A work of genius. A philosophical masterpiece. Visually stunning. You cannot say enough or too many good things about it.

5. BIRTH OF A NATION – If you feel you must make a ranking of best Civil War movies of all time, leave this one out! It is downright stupid to compare other Civil War films to this one. It is not just that it is in a class by itself but it is a serious contender for greatest movie of all time, regardless of its category. It is not a movie you watch to enjoy; in fact, it is nearly impossible to enjoy it. Viewing this film is part of your education as a human being.

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Oh, and of course, the aforementioned LINCOLN. Best movie of 2012.

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With love for Pauline Kael.

It may well be that the person most qualified to be President of the United States is in fact the current President. I won’t make Mr. Obama’s greatness or lack thereof my theme. The fact is, however, that if the sole or main criterion for judging him is based on his commitment to peace, we would be in a sorry state. I admit there is much more to being qualified for the presidency than a commitment to pacifism, but I would like to explore the notions that collectively make a theory of pacifism. [My interest in the matter dates from 1984 when I was awarded a national summer fellowship to study pacifism and I focussed on the anti-pacifist views of Jan Narveson.]

While many would regard one’s idea about pacifism not to include any stance towards animals, that was not the view of the most famous pacifist of the 20th century – Mahatma Gandhi. For the Mahatma, pacifism and nonviolence are one thing. For most of us, that seems a stretch but let us not quibble about that for the moment. The quotation Gandhi is best remembered for (I think) is this: The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.

Gandhi certainly believed was that any serious doctrine of nonviolence had to extend to animals. In America, the doctrine of nonviolence does not extend to animals. Those who preach there is too much violence in our country almost never have in mind the killing of deer, game birds, squirrels, etc. for fun and games. Those who are conscious of the deaths heaped upon animals generally want to draw a distinction between killing animals on the grounds of some alleged necessity and killing them for fun and games. Most of us admit there is never necessity but think we have many more important matters to worry about. Everyone knows there is an extraordinary number of animals that are not killed by design but unintentionally and by accident. Almost everybody thinks this is a great pity but accidents are unavoidable and, in any case, once again, we have more important matters to worry about.

It is precisely the view that we have more important matters to worry about that drives us to think not all violence should be condemned and it is precisely that idea that caused the Mahatma to think moral progress is impossible until or unless we stop our insouciant shrugging off animal death with something like, “Oh, well, how sad. What’s for dinner?”

Some statistics to bore AND NUMB you. Nothing numbs better than the sense of helplessness.
Here is the latest “harvest”of deer

Virginia: 253,678
Missouri: 283,253
Washington: 35,118
Oklahoma: 111,427
Georgia: 350,715
California: 16,941
South Carolina: 248,778
New Jersey, 56,000
New York: 222,979
Pennsylvania: 335,850

I believe this adds up to 1,864,339 deer. 40 other states make their contribution but I hazard the guess that they add “only” another 200,000 or so deaths. Since we don’t take squirrels as seriously as deer, it is difficult to know how many we shoot. I would guess the number to be between 4 million and 10 million annually, but as the joke goes, “Who’s counting?” The Audubon Society estimates that we run down a mind boggling one million squirrels daily and while this seems preposterous to those of you not in the habit of observing dead squirrels, it certainly seems a reasonable estimate to me. I don’t recall the last time I saw fewer than six dead squirrels along the two mile stretch from my home to the university I used to work at. I have seen drivers accelerate their cars at the sight of squirrels. This is a mad form of violence and I have no doubt that Immanuel Kant was right when he said that violence towards animals begets violence toward people. Is there any reason to think that veteran criminals or mad youngsters who go on violence sprees in schools don’t enjoy the “practice violence’ of squirrel killing? Getting used to the infliction of death on animals is a fine way to inure yourself against squeamishness.

As for game birds, it seems that only madmen care about them. Nevertheless, their deaths are tracked. “Five billion birds die in the U.S. every year,” said Melanie Driscoll, a biologist and director of bird conservation for the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi Flyway for the National Audubon Society. Don’t rack your brain by calculating a daily number from that.

Thus it is that President Obama has repeatedly defended the dignified role of the rifle in American culture. He loves, respects and admires “a careful, responsible” hunter as much as the next guy. So ingrained is the curious idea that killing for fun is wholesome that all those who hate Wayne LaPierre say that if only the NRA could figure out a way to restrict rifles so that guns were limited to “mature” adults, they would love to join Wayne and the rest in a vigorous hunt. One might almost think that the “liberals on CURRENT TV or MSNBC or their counterparts in the print media have never heard of Mohandas Gandhi. [Of course he has been dead for 64 years and professional liberals do not think a sense of history is essential for their cause.]

For thirty-five years I bought into the animal rights thesis of Tom Regan that pushed the idea that each animal cares for its own life as each of us cares for ours. Today, that strikes me as insane. But the remnant of that philosophy is still with me: animals matter. They are much more than empty vessels into which we can pour pleasurable or painful experiences. [The latter is the utilitarian position championed most famously by Peter Singer.]

To his credit, Regan is a disciple of Gandhi and he argues that all the great social movements are ineluctably bound together. You cannot be an advocate for gay rights, for women’s rights, for the rights of colored persons or any other group in any coherent way unless you grasp the idea that you must also be an advocate for animals. I am nearly certain he is right.

The trouble is that pacifism is complex and it has too many divisions so that many pacifists think other pacifists are crazy. It is hard to see how it connects to say, women’s rights or to gay rights. I can’t bite that one off for purposes of this essay but I can at least offer a few sketches of pacifism so that readers may decide for themselves.

For many pacifists, pacifism is a doctrine that there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. This is highly restrictive and makes avoidance of war between states the prime mover. War is a means to an end, and always the wrong one, these pacifists say. Readers can see for themselves that while this is a noble thought, it has to be wrong. This idea of the wrongness of war does not bother to distinguish the empirical reasons for thinking so from the deontological reasons. The pacifism of Martin Luther King had little to do with his worries about war. [He did have some worries about war.] He believed in passive non-resistance to oppressors but he had in mind nothing global but focussed on not returning beatings for beatings on a personal level. Other pacifists are concerned with hawkish aggression. Nations should never attack other nations, and only in the direst circumstances should they fight back. Such pacifists are known as doves, although real doves fight among themselves to protect their territory. They don’t fight other birds to protect their territory. “Go ahead and take it, if you feel that strongly about it.”

The most famous pacifist in history is Jesus and perhaps Leo Tolstoy is his greatest modern disciple, preaching a doctrine of Christian love for all mankind. Loving everybody is, of course, nonsense since equal love for all is indistinguishable from equal indifference to all. It is, what philosophers call conceptually absurd.

Jainism is the hardest pusher of the idea that pacifism involves veganism, a very extreme form of vegetarianism and I hope, for my personal sake, that its merits are few. Albert Einstein is the spokesperson for what I call wishy-washy pacifism. He says that sometimes the good pacifist must admit that war in the name of self-defense is necessary because bad guys cannot be reasoned with. Maybe. But that just isn’t pacifism.

Sam Harris, would-be king of atheism, chips in with the thought that pacifism is a fallacy, combining hesitance with cowardice, in that the social context in which a pacifist can protest was created by the actions of direct activists. Harris compares the collateral damage that could result from practicing torture with that resulting from errant bombing. He posits that if one is willing to accept the collateral damage that results from the incidental bombing of civilians on the one hand, one cannot denounce the collateral damage resulting from the accidental torture of the innocent on the other. [I'll have to take a closer look at that one.] The aforementioned Jan Narveson thinks pacifism is a self-contradictory doctrine via a rather complex argument that frightens me.

I hope this survey has the merit of not being exceedingly boring and that it may even be intellectually stimulating.

Very quietly on December 30, the President reauthorized ‘Fisa Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012?, which provides a five-year extension of Title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Big Brother will watch you. Worse yet, Obama has agreed to a provision preventing the construction of any new facility for transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. It will save lots of money and ensure that the 86 prisoners still rotting there without trial will remain there. By beautiful coincidence, Obama’s 2nd term will start on Martin Luther King’s birthday. You remember Marty, don’t you? He once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Obama has just made sure the arc is even longer than the Reverend King had imagined.

Dennis Kucinic makes a couple of observation. “We’re entering into a brave new world, which involves not only the government apparatus being able to look in massive databases and extract information to try to profile people who might be considered threats to the prevailing status quo. But we also are looking at drones, which are increasingly miniaturized, that will give the governments, at every level, more of an ability to look into people’s private conduct. This is a nightmare.”

The bill that Obama so gladly signed hands him $633 billion to play the game “Commander-in-chief.” China will spend $228 billion, Russia $93.7 billion, the U.K. $57.5 billion, France $50.1 billion, Japan $44.7 billion and Germany $44.4 billion.

The U.S.O. [the U.S. of Obama] spends 4.7% of its GDP making sure we are safe from evil doers, which works out to about $2,141 per person. China spends only 2.1% of its GDP getting ready to kill us and that amounts to 74 bucks per person. Let’s hope China’s forces don’t ride on the backs of hungry soldiers. The Finns spend 1.5% on paranoia (about $702 per person), Sweden 1.2%, Denmark 1.4%, Norway 1.5%, Switzerland 0.8%.

Watch out for a vicious collaborative attack from these enemies of America.

Reprinted from today’s www.watchingpolitics.com

Worries about chemical warfare that could be introduced by Syria have caused President Barack Obama to warn Syria that “[t]he use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable” — a comment echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, both of whom said that use of the arsenal would cross a “red line” for the United States.

Don’t they know the election is over? This cocky strutting on the stage is entirely unnecessary. There is a Chemical Weapons Convention signed by about 190 nations, including Russia, China, the United States and most Middle East nations that totally outlaws such nonsense. Would Syria’s president, Assad, be so crazy as to suppose that if he used chemical weapons, he would retain the support of his allies? Not a chance he thinks so and not a chance that they would.

Moreover, despite the posturing of the U.S. big shots, they probably know that the effectiveness of chemical weapons, like rumors of the death of Mark Twain are highly exaggerated. [Well, okay, Mark is dead nowadays.] Chemical weapons have rarely been militarily decisive. In World War I — which marked the historical debut of choking, blister, and blood agents — they caused only 4 percent of the war’s casualties and only 3 percent of those casualties died. Used episodically in the years since, blistering agents rarely achieved notable results. Chemical weapons are obsolete and Syria’s habit of threatening their use is childish. Close-quarters combat renders chemical weapons not only ineffective but counterproductive; with sarin or VX, a simple wind shift could turn the deadly agent against the Syrian military. Syria’s likely blister agent — so called “mustard gas” — is highly corrosive, remaining a hazard for forces attempting to occupy the affected area.

If you must see them, here are the details of the Chemical Weapons Convention:
http://armscontrol.org/act/1997_04/cwctext

Juan Cole is a friend of a friend, so I wrote a brief note to him. Juan is an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and often on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East. His political blog has been voted by the blogging community as best political blog in America.

I wrote: “Dear Juan, While tens of thousands are shooting each other dead in Africa and millions more are at risk of dying from disease and starvation, you fiddle with worries over Gaza.”

He replied: “Hi, Sidney, I’m more interested in statelessness than in violence. Cheers, Juan.”

1. Cairo, Egypt – The total number of people injured in the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes over the past few days has reached 166, the Health Ministry reported. The confrontations between protesters and the police on Thursday left 14 injured, 12 of whom were transferred to al-Mounira General Hospital. Clashes have been ongoing between security forces and protesters since Monday after thousands of Egyptians commemorated the first anniversary of last November scuffles where more than 40 were killed and hundreds were injured.

2. Gambia – A total of 244 Gambian youths deported from Libya arrived in Farrafenni on Wednesday. Muhammed Lamin Jane, a deportee and a native of Kombo Pirang, described the journey as a ‘terrible experience’.

3. Egypt – Eleven train collisions have occurred. Most recently, on Saturday, November 21, 2012, the train no. 165 coming from Assuit, going towards Minia, crashed Al Nour Azhar Institute’s student bus while crossing Al Mandara Train Stop, between the areas of Al Khawanka and Manfalot. 53 people were found dead, including children and school employees.

4. Kenya (East Africa) – IN the last 7 days, not less than 60 Kenyans have died in incidents that include a grenade attack on public transport.
In the last two months, nearly 150 Kenyans have died in bizarre battles that should have brought a government more attuned to the aspirations of the people out of the office. Police officers are sitting ducks when on patrol and in the last 2 months, over 70 police officers have been brutally murdered in the course of duty.

5. Nigeria – Seven persons were killed and 14 houses burnt in the Obi Local Government Area of Nasarawa State in renewed clashes between Koro and Eggon tribesmen.

6. Qatar – The UN refugee agency is taking a key role in the Educate a Child (EAC) initiative launched this month by Qatar’s Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and aimed at enrolling 172,000 refugee children in school in a dozen countries. With more than 60 million children not in school, EAC aims to help achieve the Millennium Development Goal II by assisting millions of children to access quality primary education.

7. Mali – A terror group occupying northern Mali claimed victory over secular Touareg rebels attempting to dislodge them, AFP reported Sunday (November 18th). The MNLA fighters attacked MUJAO’s Osama bin Laden Battalion led by Abu Walid Sahraoui, which was reportedly backed up by 300 fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). A cautious ceasefire was observed Saturday morning after a number of fighters were killed and wounded on both sides. A final death toll could not be obtained due to conflicting accounts given by the leaders of both groups.

8. Congo-Kinshasa – The arrival of M23 rebels in the eastern Congolese city of Goma on 20 November, has triggered widespread concern over the humanitarian ramifications in a region already beset by armed conflict, widespread displacement and attacks on civilians. One of the main concerns of humanitarian agencies in the region relates to the 60,000 residents of the Kanyarucinya camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) to the north of Goma shortly before M23 reached the outskirts of the town. The camp is one of five dotted around Goma, which have a combined population of around 95,000.

“One problem is that many displaced families were split up on Monday [19 November] as they tried to get away from the fighting,” said Tarik Riebl, Oxfam’s coordinator in Goma. “When we talk to people they say they don’t know where some of their family members are.” He added: “For the moment food is one of the main needs, and another is non-food items, such as water containers and other household items, and shelter. There needs to be a distribution of these items.”

9. South Sudan – At least 19 militias and one South Sudan army (SPLA) soldier died on Monday, when the two forces clashed in Linkwangule Payam, South Sudan’. A South Sudan Army representative described the slaughter as “a mop-up exercise.”

10. Demascus, Syria – Rebels seized the eastern Syria town of Mayadeen on Thursday, the latest in a series of strategic advances, as the number of people killed in the increasingly violent conflict passed the 40,000 mark. Defeated government troops fled from Mayadeen to a military airport near the main eastern city of Deir Ezzor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

11. Islamabad, Pakistan – A suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim procession in Pakistan overnight killed 23 people in the deadliest assault in the country for five months as Muslim leaders gathered for a rare summit in Islamabad. As well as the 23 people killed, police rescue spokesman Deeba Shehnaz told AFP that another 62 people were wounded, including eight children. Attacks on Wednesday killed 35 people.

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12. Murders, USA. -12,664 Whites 5,825. Blacks 6,329. Equal opportunity crime. Gaza and Israel can join forces to commit mayhem but they will never match our accomplishments.

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Betty Hutton offers serious comments on the murder problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGNm89GZBE