US House backs resolution condemning Goldstone report

Some sanity reigns in the US and the EU

 
Further to my post on Lux et Veritas earlier (here)

According to the JP (full report here)

The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday condemning the Goldstone Report, that accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, and calling on the Obama administration to oppose its endorsement.

...and the EU is showing some backbone too:

Meanwhile, European nations launched intense negotiations with Arab states, ahead of a UN General Assembly debate on the report. 

In an attempt to scuttle efforts by Arab states to bring the matter to the Security Council, and from there to the International Criminal Court, EU states were backing new language emphasizing accountability for crimes against humanity and calling on Israelis and Palestinians to launch investigations into war crimes. 

The Obama administration has already condemned the report, which was expected to go to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, as unhelpful to its efforts to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said:

"I think the UN report is unbalanced, and unfair, and inaccurate,"

Pandering to the propaganda of the Arab and Muslim states does not help move towards peace in Israel-Palestine; on the contrary it is a barrier because it gives hope to all those that support Palestinian terrorism will eventually be victorious in its stated aims to destroy Israel.

What is needed is for the message to go out to the Palestinians that there is only one outcome and that is a peaceful one - not a military victory through terrorism and destruction of Israel.

The lasting principle should be that Israel has the right to defend herself against attack.

To put it simply, there can be no peace until Israel's right to exist is recognised throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

The content of the resolution is very encouraging, clearly identifying Hamas' responsiblity; a large portion of the report is included below with some key phrases high-lighted.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

The actual words of the motion passed by the House of Representatives is interesting & illuminating:

RESOLUTION

Calling on the President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.

Whereas, on January 12, 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed Resolution A/HRC/S-9/L.1, which authorized a `fact-finding mission’ regarding Israel’s conduct of Operation Cast Lead against violent militants in the Gaza Strip between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009;

Whereas the resolution pre-judged the outcome of its investigation, by one-sidedly mandating the `fact-finding mission’ to `investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by . . . Israel, against the Palestinian people . . . particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression’;

Whereas the mandate of the `fact-finding mission’ makes no mention of the relentless rocket and mortar attacks, which numbered in the thousands and spanned a period of eight years, by Hamas and other violent militant groups in Gaza against civilian targets in Israel, that necessitated Israel’s defensive measures;

Whereas the `fact-finding mission’ included a member who, before joining the mission, had already declared Israel guilty of committing atrocities in Operation Cast Lead by signing a public letter on January 11, 2009, published in the Sunday Times, that called Israel’s actions `war crimes’:

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate gave serious concern to many United Nations Human Rights Council Member States which refused to support it, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon,Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;

Whereas the mission’s flawed and biased mandate troubled many distinguished individuals who refused invitations to head the mission; Whereas, on September 15, 2009, the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ released its report;

Whereas the report repeatedly made sweeping and unsubstantiated determinations that the Israeli military had deliberately attacked civilians during Operation Cast Lead;

Whereas the authors of the report, in the body of the report itself, admit that `we did not deal with the issues . . . regarding the problems of conducting military operations in civilian areas and second-guessing decisions made by soldiers and their commanding
officers `in the fog of war.’;

Whereas in the October 16th edition of the Jewish Daily Forward, Richard Goldstone, the head of the `United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’, is quoted as saying, with respect to the mission’s evidence-collection methods, `If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.’;

Whereas the report, in effect, denied the State of Israel the right to self-defense, and never noted the fact that Israel had the right to defend its citizens from the repeated violent attacks committed against civilian targets in southern Israel by Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating from Gaza;

Whereas the report largely ignored the culpability of the Government of Iran and the Government of Syria, both of whom sponsor Hamas and other Foreign Terrorist Organizations;

Whereas the report usually considered public statements made by Israeli officials not to be credible, while frequently giving uncritical credence to statements taken from what it called the `Gaza authorities’, i.e. the Gaza leadership of Hamas;

Whereas, notwithstanding a great body of evidence that Hamas and other violent Islamist groups committed war crimes by using civilians and civilian institutions, such as mosques, schools, and hospitals, as shields, the report repeatedly downplayed or cast doubt upon that claim;

Whereas in one notable instance, the report stated that it did not consider the admission of a Hamas official that Hamas often `created a human shield of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen, against [the Israeli military]‘ specifically to `constitute evidence that Hamas forced Palestinian civilians to shield military objectives against attack.’;

Whereas Hamas was able to significantly shape the findings of the investigation mission’s report by selecting and prescreening some of the witnesses and intimidating others, as the report acknowledges when it notes that `those interviewed in Gaza appeared reluctant to speak about the presence of or conduct of hostilities by the Palestinian armed groups . . . from a fear of reprisals’;

Whereas even though Israel is a vibrant democracy with a vigorous and free press, the report of the `fact-finding mission’ erroneously asserts that `actions of the Israeli government . . . have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions . . . is not tolerated’;

See more of the House Resolution at the Washington Independent here

US Congress votes on condemnation of the ignominious Goldstone Report

This today  from UN Watch:

Today will be an important trial for the cause of truth, justice and peace.

The U.S. Congress will be voting this afternoon on a superb condemnation of the ignominious Goldstone Report, in advance of a United Nations resolution to be debated tomorrow.

The Goldstone Report is a 500-page document that reverses perpetrator and victim, falsely accuses Israel of “deliberate attacks” against civilians, and ignores the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Hamas terrorist organization. (For more see here). 

Here's what peace activist and philosopher Moshe Halbertal writes in the latest edition of The New Republic: "The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair."

Tomorrow, the United Nations General Assembly will begin debate on an Arab-sponsored resolution to pressure the Security Council into referring Israel to the International Criminal Court.

Genocidal Sudan is a leading supporter.

According to Richard Falk, the U.N.'s permanent investigator of alleged Israeli crimes -- who accuses the U.S. of being behind the 9/11 attacks -- the Goldstone report is a key weapon in "the legitimacy war." On that, he's right. And so what the United states and other Western democracies say and do will be critical. 

I had to read that twice! The "UN's permanent investigator of alleged Israeli crimes" is a 'truther'!

Richard Falk "accuses the US of being behind the 9/11 attacks." This is the UN? Oh yes, I remember the organisation that allowed Yassar Arafat to speak to the general assembly with a gun. Din't Arafat win
a Nobel Peace Prize?

Help! The world has been hi-jacked by crazy people.

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

Calgary Men's Cursillo Weekend

I arrived home last night from the Calgary Men's Cursillo Weekend renewed and elated from the proceedings.

It was held at Entheos, about 20 minutes west of Calgary, a quiet and tranquil spot with beautiful grounds.

The Cursillo weekend started on Thursday evening, and on Sunday evening everyone left for home, and they were more than pleased with the weekend - I would say delighted from what I saw.

The Cursillo movement is world-wide, and the branch that I attended is part of the Anglican Cursillo movement, under the Diocese of Calgary, however there were several participants from other denominations who attended.

The Cursillo weekend is open to other denominations, in fact they are always very welcome. It should be said, that all believers in Jesus Christ are brothers and sisters and part of one church, the different branches have different ideas of worship and some different interpretations, but all are brothers and sisters and all members of one true church.

I heard testimonies from some of the men from other denominations, and in every case they said it was a very positive experience; I heard one man say that he was very glad to discover a different form of worship from his own faith tradition, and he was surprised in a positive way.

I attended a weekend during the fall of 2007 as a participant, and a couple of months ago I was invited to attend again as a volunteer in some role to help make the weekend a success for the participants, just as others had done for me two years ago.

After some thought, I responded to that invitation with a glad heart, however I had some questions as to how it would work for me. Now I know, and I am very glad that I answered that invitation - it has been a great experience for me.

What can I say about Cursillo to convey something of what this weekend meant to the participants and to this who are working to make it a success?

The first thing I can say is that it is founded on Christian love, which is at the heart of the Christian Gospel (good news).

Love is at the core of the weekend; Christ's love for the world is continued by His Church in community. Christ was at the centre of a community with His disciples and followers, Christ was the centre of the community of believers in the early church, and He is the centre of the Church today. (Unfortunately I must qualify that statement; He is the centre of the true church, sadly there are many churches who claim to be Christian but they teach something else; they adopt the title "christian" but sadly they are not.)

Here's a snippit from the Calgary Cursillo website (here) on the purpose of the weekend:

The weekend is an opportunity to meet other individuals who are seeking to strengthen their faith.

It provides an opportunity through shared prayer, worship, singing, study, fellowship, discussion, and love to experience the reality of the gift of God’s grace.

What does Cursillo do for those who attend?

It helps to renew and deepen Christian commitment. Cursillo is one of many renewal movements.

Many people have said Cursillo provides an important learning experience which causes many to feel like newly made Christians with a purpose and with support.

This is from the Cursillo Website of the National Episcopal Church in the US (Episcopal in the US is part of the world-wide Anglican Communion) read more here.

A mule deer buck stands guard. Entheos, Alberta, 2009

Cursillo is world-wide there will probably be an organisation available to you wherever you live, so if you would like to know more about Cursillo you can contact the local organisation. If you have a problem to find it please fell free to email me at gurth.whitaker@gmail.com, and I will make sure you get the information and alert the organisation wherever it is.



Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

To Enthios for the Men's Cursillo Weekend

I will be away at the Men's Cursillo 4-Day Weekend, and I will not be posting during that time.

The Cursillo weekends are held at Enthios - a beautiful place 30 minutes west of Calgary

You can read about Cursillo on my previous post, from Monday, September 21, 2009: What is a Cursillo Commissioning? There is a link which leads to the Calgary Cursillo site and explains all about it.

Enthios means something like: breathed by God

Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB

Does the US Want Obama Health-Care Reform?

For Canadians the information has been somewhat distorted; I hear Canadians talking as though there is no safety net in the United States; that is not really true; they have Medicaid and Medicare.

Medicaid is available to certain low-income individuals and families  (see here)

Medicare is for people over 65 and some disabled people (see here)

Both programs are administered by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), both of which are generous programs and certainly not inferior to our general services here, possibly better.

Here's what the HHS says about itself:

The is the United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves.

My understanding is that there are other safety nets, programs and clinics; stories that people get turned away from hospital and die in the streets are not true.

Canadians also seem to be under the misapprehension that the Republican Party, or GOP (Grand Old Party) as it is sometimes called, does not want reform, but the Obama Government does.

That is incorrect, both the GOP and the Democrats are in favour of reform; the GOP had a 4-point plan proposed by Senator McCain, whereas the Democrats have tried to implement a "universal" or "socialised" health-care system in the past.

President Clinton put forward a plan in 1993, however the Democratic Party itself  offered a number of competing plans of their own, and the plan was declared dead in 1994 by Democratic Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, who is the current special envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration.

But where do the American people stand in the issue? Here's the results from "Pollster.com".

We see that there is a clear margin of Americans who oppose the Obama plans over those who support it.

Oppose = 47.8%

Favour = 44.9%

A word about the approach used by Pollster.com .
 
They do not conduct their  own polls, but analyze the results from a number of other major pollsters to arrive at a mathematical representation of all the polls under consideration. It is like an average, but it is more mathematically rigorous than that, and uses techniques used in science and statistics to properly treat the data (such as linear regression, least-squares regression); Pollster.com explains their methodology here, and the full result can be found here here.

Both Parties Propose Reform

The Official GOP Plan can be read here, but it's more instructive to look at the commentary by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post from August of this year; his opening statement summarises the Obama plans:

In overhauling any segment of our economy, the 1986 tax reform should be the model. Yet today's ruling Democrats propose to fix our extremely high-quality (but inefficient and therefore expensive) health-care system with 1,000 pages of additional curlicued complexity -- employer mandates, individual mandates, insurance company mandates, allocation formulas, political payoffs and myriad other conjured regulations and interventions -- with the promise that this massive concoction will lower costs.

4-Point Reform favoured by Republicans (simplified)

1. Tort Reform
2. Real health-insurance reform
3. Health Insurance Across State Lines
4. Reduce fraud and waste in Medicare / Medicaid
   

1. Tort Reform: A significant portion of US health costs result from the huge awards by US Courts in malpractice suits. These awards result in much higher premiums than would otherwise be required, and forces doctors to practice overly defensive, and unnecessary, medicine to reduce the chances of litigation. Kruathammer calls it "an epidemic of defensive medicine that does no medical good, yet costs a fortune."

Tort reform has been proposed by the GOP for some time but it has been blocked by the Democrats because a significant part of their revenue comes from litigation lawyers; the Democrats will not embark on reform to avoid alienating their supporters.

Here's the extent of the problem:

An authoritative (study by the) Massachusetts Medical Society, found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits.

Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance). 

This one area of reform alone could have a huge impact on US health-care, but the Democratic party blocks it to protect their support base.

2. Real health-insurance reform (see the whole discussion here):

Tax employer-provided health-care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness.

So why doesn't the Obama administration reform it?

Repealing the exemption has one fatal flaw, however. It was advocated by candidate John McCain. Obama so demagogued it last year that he cannot bring it up now without being accused of the most extreme hypocrisy and without being mercilessly attacked with his own 2008 ads.

3. Health Insurance Across State Lines: the current laws prohibit competition across states lines. This adds costs by duplication, causes problems with portability, and greatly adds to costs by eliminating widespread competition ensuring that rates remain high. This approach has also has been previously blocked by the Democrats.

4. Reduce fraud and waste in Medicare / Medicaid: the Democrats have blocked reforms to address this also on previous occasions. But savings have been included as part of the CBO's (Congressional Budget Office) financial plan for Obama's reform. The question is why wait for a massive, complex new bill to reduce fraud and waste? Why not start action on reducing fraud and waste the day after inauguration?

Obama's Plan
The core of Obama's plan is to ultimately replace the the US Medical Insurance industry with a single-payer, government run and controlled plan.

Chief objections to this are:

1. Governments are inefficient and wasteful, (example Medicare and Medicaid) therefore this will result in far higher costs than from private companies.
2. Government will be taking over control of one sixth of the US economy; Government control of business is opposed by many Americans on Constitutional grounds
3. Many people think that their health is a private matter between them and their doctor, therefore the Government should play no part in it. People see this as another intrusion by the Government into their private lives. 
   
4. It will be massively expensive (estimates of 1 -2 Trillion dollars, but nobody really knows), and will not reduce costs, which was Obama's original reasons for reform . The actual costs are likely to increase far more than estimated, probably by a factor of 2 or 3 or more (example Maine)
5. Emphasis should be on other more urgent issues, jobs, the war in Afghanistan, Iran and the burgeoning US deficit
6. The bill itself is not being developed along bi-partisan lines, and this is causing some concerns not only to Republicans, but also to Democrats. Members of both houses feel that the way to produce pass such major legislation is along bi-partisan lines. That is, both Republicans and Democrats work together to forge a bill.
7. Coupled with the lack of bi-partisan input, is the concern that the bill is being rushed through, and that such a large piece of legislation, with such major impact to the US economy and the US people, should be given proper time for consideration, debate, development and finally passage into law. Without proper time this presents an unreasonable risk without a corresponding benefit to the American people. The reason for the haste is political.
8. A very real concern is the complexity of the bill, which exists in 5 different versions and some as long as 1,500 pages. Can the bill administered effectively once passed into law? Or will the complexity lead tp  problems with administering this bill

Finally, Obama promised for open government - that was a very big point in his campaign. Obama said he would introduce a new way of government. In reality this bill and associated negotiations, have been done behind closed doors.

It was requested that the bill would be made available on-line for an adequate period of time to review. This request has been denied; the reason given is that it would be too complicated and too time consuming to do it. This is laughable.

Will it pass? Congressional elections are coming next year and many Democratic representatives fear for their seats and are unwilling to back an unpopular bill, so it is going to be interesting to see how this develops. My own hope is that the final bill is not the socialised form of medical care, but contains the reforms necessary to increase efficiency and lower overall costs, all of which will be good for Canada.


Gurth Whitaker
Calgary AB