In today's pages: Panetta, Gaza and billboards
Demonstrating once again that its left hand doesn't care what its right hand is doing, the Opinion Manufacturing Division offers conflicting views today on President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Californian Leon Panetta to head the CIA. On the right-hand page, Columnist Tim Rutten argues that Panetta is a good choice, regardless of his lack of experience in spookery. To support his point, Rutten catalogs the roster of failed CIA chiefs with intelligence-community experience, while lauding one who brought none to the job: JFK's CIA director, John McCone. Over on the left-hand side, the Times editorial board bemoans the Panetta nomination -- not because we don't like the former congressman, OMB director and White House chief of staff, but because we worry he won't be confirmed. And that, the board says, "could undermine the president-elect's plan to purge the agency of the excesses of the Bush era."
The board also throws its support behind a proposal to admit more out-of-state students into the University of California system. They'll bring more than higher tuition revenues, the board writes:
... [T]he system never existed merely to educate Californians. It serves more broadly to advance the intellectual and cultural life of California, not just by educating its sons and daughters but by drawing others here.
Back on the Op-Ed page, Israeli author Etgar Keret dissects the twisted logic of "proportionality" in the spiraling Gaza conflict. And former L.A. City Councilman Mike Woo praises the 9th Circuit's decision upholding the city's moratorium on billboards, and urges the current council not to trade new digital billboard permits for cash:
... [N]o amount of siphoned-off billboard revenues is worth sacrificing public safety. California has passed state laws regulating cellphone use and text-messaging while driving because we know that such distractions cause car accidents. And yet a digital billboard, like the one recently installed in my neighborhood at Silver Lake Boulevard and Effie Street, is undeniably meant to draw a driver's eyes off the road.
Don't forget to check out today's letters, too, where readers vent on the out-of-state student issue, the Gaza conflict and taxis in L.A.
SORRY FOR THE GAZANS=THEY HAD A CHANCE TO SURVIVE WHEN ISRAEL GAVE THEM THE LAND BACK-AND THEY VOTED FOR HAMAS-THEY REAP WHAT THEY SOW!
Posted by: NOEL HERSHFIELD | January 09, 2009 at 12:17 PM
Four days ago, Israel invaded Gaza on the ground to compliment its aerial bombardment. The Palestinian death toll has reached 660. The official Israeli death toll is up to 5, of whom 4 were civilians. Attacks on civilians, no matter who they are, is criminal. Yet the US government, public relations officials, and mainstream media—unlike those of almost every other country in the world—continue to criminalize Palestinian violence while absolving Israel (the undisputed party in power) of almost any responsibility of its own. The official position seems clear: Israel can do as it likes until Hamas stops all violence.
The underlying assumption here is that Palestinians' human rights depend on the actions of their leaders. This is false. Palestinians do not have to earn the human rights inalienable to every person on Earth. Human rights are non-negotiable. Likewise, Israelis do not have to earn their human rights. Israeli state terror notwithstanding, it would be criminal to bombard the entire population of Israel (in which, as in Gaza, fighters live alongside their families in civilian areas) for the crimes of its government.
But this is exactly what Israel is doing in Gaza with US weapons before a seemingly impotent international community. Every day the carnage unfolds on CNN-International (different from CNN-US—the United States is the only country in the world with domestically customized international news coverage): a mother and her 4 kids killed instantly; a 7-year-old shot twice in the chest (I'm not sure how that happens accidentally, but does that even matter?); more than 40 policemen in training obliterated (even Israel does not claim the Palestinian police orchestrates rocket attacks); TV stations and places of worship successfully destroyed; a mortuary out of room for bodies.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, "sewage water is pouring into the streets in Beit Hanoun, following damage to the main pipeline between Beit Hanoun and the Beit Lahiya wastewater treatment plant." Save The Children reports that newborn baby Gazans are battling hypothermia due to power cuts and freezing winter winds.
Some of the worst news comes from the doctors. Can you imagine a hospital functioning without electricity? According to the mainstream British newspaper The Guardian, medics are working around the clock and running out of anesthesia. There is no more gauze so doctors are using cotton, which sticks to wounds. Nurses are forced to draw blood with the wrong sized syringes and without alcohol. The Guardian article was entitled, "The injured were lying there asking God to let them die." Many have gotten their last wish, dying as they wait in the emergency rooms.
Anna
Posted by: Dalia | January 07, 2009 at 05:32 PM
Where the LA Times opinion pages are concerned, shouldn't the phrase be "its left hand doesn't care what its far-left hand is doing"? Credit to Ronald Reagan, who first used a version of that line when speaking of his own Administration (and used "right" and "far-right" instead).
Posted by: JVW | January 07, 2009 at 05:30 PM