I don’t have anything to say about Reagan. This is one of those things that is covered ad nauseam in the mainstream and as a result there will be ample coverage in the alternative media as well. Paul Street’s blog has a comparison of Reagan and Bush II, for example.
A couple days ago I blogged about the symmetry between Colombia and Venezuela — Venezuela’s elite attempting to halve Chavez’s term, Colombia’s elite attempting to double Uribe’s term.
Today’s symmetry is from Israel/Palestine.
Marwan Barghouti, one of the most respected Palestinian leaders and political prisoners, has been sentenced to life in prison (five life terms plus forty years) by an Israeli kangaroo court. The interesting part is that he was convicted not for any direct role in violence, but because — and this is a quote from the judges decision — “He did not have direct control over the militants, but did wield influence”.
Coupled with the fact that Israel doesn’t really have jurisdiction over Palestinians in a legal sense (a point raised by Barghouti himself and a Palestinian spokesperson — Barghouti said “The Israeli courts are a partner to the Israeli occupation … the judges are just like pilots who fly planes and drop bombs.”) this means that the Israelis should be rounding up, at the very least, the entire leadership of the United States, including Congress and much of the media — they don’t have direct control over US terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere, but they do wield influence.” They should also round up Sharon and his cabinet. There would be at least one difference between Barghouti and these arrests: they are much more demonstrably guilty than Barghouti was.
And now for the symmetry part. So, around the same time Barghouti’s sentence is coming down, Israelis were killing a 19-year old Palestinian, Omar Farah, in the West Bank, a 17-year old Palestinian, Mohammad Nabahan, in Gaza, and a man in a wheelchair at Qalandya, in the West Bank.
His name was Arafat Ibrahim Yakub, and he was in a wheelchair because he had been injured in the first intifada, in 1987.
An Israeli tank also ran over a man in a wheelchair in Jenin during the 2002 massacre there.
No one is serving a life sentence for any of these murders. Nor will the people who “influenced them” serve life sentences, any more than Reagan was punished for his crimes.
