"Mr Israel" blasts settlements

bravo, bravo, bravo!

Popular TV Anchor Chastises Israeli Policy

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 16 minutes ago

JERUSALEM - Israel's Walter Cronkite, a respected TV journalist who has delivered the main evening news since 1968, has stepped out from behind the shield of measured neutrality with an angry indictment of Israel's settlement policy and occupation of the Palestinians.

Haim Yavin's five-part documentary — part one was being broadcast Tuesday — prompted calls from settlers for his dismissal, but could also mark a watershed in how the nation views its four-decade rule over Palestinians.

Yavin, 72, has anchored the evening news on Israel's public TV channel since 1968, building an image as a dispassionate reporter — much as Cronkite did in the United States. A founder of Israel's public TV station, Yavin is known as "Mr. TV" and commands considerable respect.

Rarely have settlers been portrayed as harshly by Israel's mainstream media as in Yavin's documentary, filmed with his hand-held video camera and interspersed with his commentary.

"Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," Yavin comments in the first segment after listening to settlers insist God gave them these lands. "We simply don't view the Palestinians as human beings."

Yavin's stand comes at a time of controversy over the settlements Israel built in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip after capturing the lands in the 1967 Mideast war.

Jewish settlers, once coddled and feared by Israeli politicians, feel increasingly beleaguered. Their erstwhile patron, Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, is determined to withdraw from all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank this summer, forcing about 9,000 settlers out of their homes.

Tom Segev, an Israeli author and social commentator, said Yavin's middle-of-the-road reputation could sway some Israelis. "He is Mr. Israel, the voice of Israel, the soul of Israel, and if he comes out with this, it means that apparently a lot of people feel the same," Segev said. "But I'm not sure if people will react."

When Cronkite returned from a reporting trip to Vietnam and told his viewers in an editorial comment that the United States could not win the war, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost middle America.

Yavin said he was able to keep his views out of the many documentaries he made in the past. But when the latest round of fighting with the Palestinians broke out and Palestinian suffering increased, he decided to act.

He said in a telephone interview Tuesday that he didn't believe that he had become more dovish — but Israelis had become more hawkish.

"We have to go through a mental revolution," Yavin said. "The Palestinians are a people and we have to share this land ... We have to wake up from our dream."

In his documentary, Yavin repeatedly shows Palestinians suffering at the hands of arrogant settlers and soldiers. In one scene, he filmed a crowded Israeli army roadblock, showing sick women and crying children waiting in the hot sun for hours.

Israel set up the roadblocks at the outbreak of the current round of fighting in 2000, saying they were needed to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen from reaching Israel.

At one point, Yavin shifted the camera toward the Israeli soldiers to ask why they weren't letting people through. "I look for danger in these people and I can't find it," Yavin said in the film.

In another scene, settlers chased Palestinian olive pickers out of an orchard, accusing them of planning terror attacks. The scene ended with an elderly Palestinian woman asking: "Is it forbidden for us to pick olives? Isn't it a sin not to let us pick?"

Settlers were outraged over the documentary, which was broadcast by the private Channel Two, rather than by Yavin's station, Israel TV. Israel TV declined to air the documentary, Yavin said, but he claimed the decision was not politically motivated. Fewer than a dozen settlers held a demonstration outside the offices of Israel's Broadcasting Authority, which oversees Israel TV.

A leader of the Settlers' Council, Bentsi Lieberman, demanded Yavin's dismissal in a letter to the authority. "It is unacceptable that Haim Yavin will continue to anchor the news of the national station that professes to be objective," Lieberman wrote.

Authority chairman Uri Porat said Yavin would not be fired since he had not violated his contract.

tillman's parents blast pentagon liars

Pentagon faked heroic death for icon shot by fellow Rangers
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 24/05/2005)

The parents of a former American football star killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan yesterday accused the Pentagon of propagating a false account of his death to stir up patriotic fervour back home.

Pat Tillman became a national icon last year when it was reported that the sports superstar who had turned down a multi-million-dollar contract to join the army after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 had been killed by enemy fire.

The account of his death on a barren hillside in Afghanistan was like a heroic, boys' comic story. He was said to have been charging up a hill to attack Islamist diehards, bellowing orders to fellow Rangers, when he was mown down in an ambush.

But as with another stirring tale of valour at war - that of Private Jessica Lynch, whose capture in the invasion of Iraq was fantastically embroidered by the authorities - the truth was much more prosaic. Tillman was shot dead by Rangers in his own platoon who mistook him for the enemy. Army investigators deemed it an act of "gross negligence".
...

"All the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this," his father, Patrick Tillman, a lawyer from San Jose, told the Washington Post. They "interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realised that their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand-basket if the truth about his death got out.''
...

Soldiers at the scene knew instantly that Tillman was killed by American bullets as he sheltered behind a boulder. Gen John Abizaid, the American overall commander in the region, knew within days. But Tillman's fellow Rangers were told not to talk about it "to prevent rumours".

His mother, Mary, yesterday told the newspaper that the Bush administration capitalised on the false account to counter the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal then unfolding. "I think there's a lot more yet that we don't even know, or they wouldn't still be covering their tails.

"If this is what happens when someone high-profile dies, I can only imagine what happens with everyone else."

that's classic narcissism

hmm, never apologized or admitted he was wrong... that sounds a lot like a certain famous chimp we know...

Accused Kidnapper Booted From Court

...

Psychiatrist Noel Gardner, who testified in March that Mitchell was competent to stand trial, said Mitchell's conduct Tuesday was "outrageous and bizarre" but not evident of a mental disease.

"I think his (religious) ideas are extraordinarily irrational, but just because you're irrational doesn't mean you have a mental disease. All of us hold irrational ideas," Gardner testified.
...

Gardner described Mitchell as no different from millions of people with firm religious beliefs but said he veered into narcissism and a delusion of prophecy.

"Several of his siblings said they never heard him apologize or admit he was wrong — that's classic narcissism," Gardner said.

The competency hearing was to resume Wednesday.
...

yer out!

this man has been caught DUI at least 3 times, he's a proven danger to the community, and he belongs behind bars NOW. no matter how many homers the guy hit, three strikes should mean yer out. and in this case, never mind the interlock, he should never be allowed behind the wheel again.


SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
Vida Blue may face jail time

Dave Murphy, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Former Giants and A's star pitcher Vida Blue was sentenced to six months in jail Monday for violating his probation from a 2004 drunken driving conviction, but it is likely that he will end up spending his time in a residential alcohol treatment program instead.

Blue, 55, did not attend the hearing in a South San Francisco courtroom, but attorney Joshua Bentley told San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Clifford Cretan that his client agreed to all the terms.
...

Blue, a six-time all-star player who pitched during 17 seasons with the A's, Giants and Kansas City Royals before retiring in 1987, has had at least three arrests for drunken driving in the past six years.

He pleaded no contest after police arrested him in Dublin in August 1999 and was placed on two years' probation in April 2004 after pleading no contest to a 2003 DUI charge on Highway 101 north of Highway 92.

As part of that probation, Blue was supposed to report to a 20-day work program by June 19 last year but didn't show. He was arrested on another DUI charge March 13 after a minor accident in Scottsdale, Ariz. Another attorney is representing Blue in that case, which is pending, Bentley said.

Monday's agreement extends Blue's probation until May 2007 and says he is not allowed to drink alcohol or go to liquor stores or bars and must install an ignition interlock in his car -- a device that prevents people under the influence from driving -- when he gets his driver's license back. He also is subject to testing for alcohol.
...