Man, I was already depressed today ...

Rachel Abrams wants Palestinians to be, among other things, thrown into the sea to be devoured by sharks.

The demented complexity of the sentence where she says that - and refers to (some?) Palestinian children as "Devil's spawn" - has to be read to be believed, but if you try superhard to parse it it's Shalit's captors she wants thrown into the sea FWIW; everybody else mentioned is just subject to dehumanising insults. Which I'm sure is how she'd weasel out of it.

And not just for sharks - to be thrown into the sea "to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose." The attention to detail in the stargazers reference, and the last moment nod to one of the maddest evocations of an interventionist God I've ever seen, are the bits that stuck with me.

"Rachel Abrams is the half-brother of John Podhoretz..... and married to Elliot Abrams."

well, at least gay marriage is catching on... but since Rachel had her sex change operation, should he have changed his first name too?

That's a really fine post.

Eliot Abrams and that group of thugs did a lot more evil in the 80s than at El Mozote, and it almost seems like all that evil in Central America in the 80s was practice for the Middle East later.

Susan

Jon must have fixed that, but you made me laugh.

We seem to be especially "blessed" with lunatics in powerful positions.

You can imagine the Christmas dinners.

"Shall I carve the turkey?"

"Yes! Let's carve up Turkey!"

"Oh, Christ, can't we even go five minutes..."

Apparently sharks very rarely devour people. Generally if someone is attacked by a shark, he receives a single bite, after which the shark swims away, presumably in search of something more appealing. If the bite ends up being fatal, it's just because their teeth are so big and sharp.

Recently a guy from Vietnam told me the only way we'd ever solve the Arab problem would be to kill all of them. Of course it occurred to me to make witticism about the morrissettian irony of his statement, but I just told him I didn't want to hear that shit.

Carving turkey?! People like this shouldn't even be allowed to hold anything as sharp as a pen or pencil.

Christmas dinners? Christ? Is this the usual joke that's over my head?

The real crime is godoggo's use of the modifier "morrissettian". What the hell, man?

off track, sort of but not really, i've been busy and forgotten to read pepe escobar lately, which is my bad, and I provide the link to spare others the same sin of omission:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/others/Escobar.html

And of course his royal majesty King “Humanitarian” Obama has made things ever so much better in Libya:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/11/terror-and-revenge-engulfs-nato%e2%80%99s-libya/

Following meetings with Libyan evacuees (disappeared) from NATO’s nine months of bombing who are now present in nearby countries and from meetings inside Libya with incarcerated former officials and some of their family members as well as fugitive opponents of the new “government” it is clear that the current period is cascading into paroxysmal revenge attacks and political cleansing.

Those increasingly being targeted by “disappearance squads” are family members and associates, even former domestic employees such as gardeners, handymen, and household staff of former regime affiliates. Homes, cars, furniture, of former regime affiliates are being systematically confiscated. Torture has become the normal means to elicit information regarding the whereabouts of individuals thought to still be supporting the former regime. The reason, according to one former Libyan official who barely escaped one of the French squads and who now resides in Egypt, “is the same reason drones are so popular with your US military, torture works. Not 100% but it’s better than the other options.”

Could be a great idea for a new TV program. The could call it All in the Familly or some such thing. Is this what is meant by American familly values?

Buggy computer software is not the only "brain" where buggy ideas come from.

If we are a sophisticated human civilization we must implement some of our science that may be telling us why this type of madness is proliferating.

Dredd: GREEDY=STUPID,all the science ya need.

I hadn't heard that the Argentinian military drugged their prisoners before throwing them into the ocean from helicopters. I'd heard about the throwing part, but not the drugged part. It makes sense from a practical perspective. But what impresses me is that it is more humane than I imagined.

As Lord Krishna says, we humans have both divine and demonic tendencies.

I hadn't heard that the Argentinian military drugged their prisoners before throwing them into the ocean from helicopters. I'd heard about the throwing part, but not the drugged part. It makes sense from a practical perspective. But what impresses me is that it is more humane than I imagined.

As Lord Krishna says, we humans have both divine and demonic tendencies.

mistah charley

Much as with the Nazis, the point was not to be humane, but to be coldly efficient, or as you said practical. In that respect, I think it was soul-chillingly inhumane. It is difficult for me to imagine something worse than people being tortured and murdered with an attitude approaching ambivalence.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/scil-j14.shtml

Say, WE could empty out GITMO and close it by chaining the prisoners together and shoving them out of a helicopter over the Atlantic. NO WAY to tell the innocent from the guilty at this point, not that ANYONE in America really cared to begin with. Rather than let the guilty go free along with the INNOCENT, shove them ALL out, let the Atlantic be their mass grave. Problem solved.

An alternate version might be:

"Round up the captors of innocent people (who routinely send them to Guantanimo or render them to distant, law-free lands to be tortured), the slaughtering-by-hellfire-missiles, the death-worshiping-overly-militarized, innocent-clusterbombing savages who dip their hands in blood and use other people's women, and their offspring—those who haven’t already been enlisted into the Army, there to murder strangers, or to sit behind their computer monitors, using their distance and anonymity as shields, hiding behind their state secrets and disdain for the Geneva Conventions, like the soulless, conscience-less animals they are..."

Because I see little difference between one innocent-slaughterer and another.

N E done said some setch thing as:
It is difficult for me to imagine something worse than people being tortured and murdered with an attitude approaching ambivalence.

Ambivalence is a step UP from the bottom. Ambivalence is at least an expression of SOME question as to the 'rightness' of a given act. If they are "ambivalent" then that means they do entertain some internal questions. Rather, I daresay that there was no ambivalence involved at all. Cold indifference is perhaps what you meant. THAT is pretty damn bad but I would argue a slight step still above the bottom: gleeful acts of torture/abuse.