100% spot on rant on what is wrong in the ivory towers of the left. Go read it, you will be glad you did.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
01/08/2009 16:37 ||
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#1
Abu is correct, so for those who don't have the time to go read, I have excerpted below:
The needs of the group must supercede, dontcha know.
Im pissed off that everyone seems okay on having to press one for English.
Im pissed that my sweet well-wishing friends and acquaintances now say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.
Can we all stop taking ourselves so damn seriously for half a minute?
Im pissed that I study the political issues of the day, educate myself, stay informed daily by a multitude of news sources from all slants and yet, come election day, my informed vote is cancelled by some numbskull who votes for the nicest smile, who doesnt know who the current vice-president is, or which party controls Congress, and whats more, doesnt care.
Im pissed off by how soft many in our nation have become. How whimpy the tone, how spineless the resolve. What happened to that brutally real notion that people should be held responsible for his or her actions?
when did destitution become a virtue? When did begging become a noble venture? When, dear friends, did panhandling become a lucrative industry? FTS!
Who can identify virtue, when there is no shame?
When are we going to admit that there is an evil movement out there dedicated to our destruction.
Youre not on your knees worshiping their boy Allah, so for this you and everyone like you all over the world must die and die now. But wait, its a religion of peace.
Were the good guys. Were not imperialists, or else we wouldve nuked the oil countries into radioactive dust, then moved in and taken the oil. Were the good guys. Only an entrenched self-loathing hatred of America will prevent you from seeing that.
regarding the one sided NY Times coverage of Muhammad Saad Iqbal's story, GitMo - > Pakiwakiland.
You would never know from reading the Times' article that Iqbal was accused of plotting to kill a U.S. official in Indonesia. There is no hint of the fact that Iqbal himself admitted to consorting with terrorists. Instead, Iqbal is portrayed as an obvious innocent who was wrongly tortured.
As with nearly all terrorism-related matters, there is ambiguity. The full truth of Iqbal's life may be impossible to piece together. Nevertheless, let us consider the available evidence found in the U.S. government's unclassified files, which were produced online by the Department of Defense and then republished by the Times in its own online database. Despite being freely available, the Times ignored most of the files' contents when reporting on Iqbal.
#1
Let the NYT management have custody of this guy and full responsibility for any crimes he may commit. As in, he kills - you die! Then read their editorials.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
01/08/2009 7:58 Comments ||
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#2
The NYT is going broke and I don't see any way for them to avoid that, they'll go out with their Anti-American guns blazing.
And I say don't let the door hit you in the arse.
#3
Everyone who writes a comment on Rantburg could run a better newspaper than the NY Times. Tell the truth. Be pro-American in America. That seems to be beyond the ability of the NY Times.
Rather than call for a special election in Illinois, Reid sends a letter to Blagojevich signed by everyone in the Democratic caucus asking him to step down. They assert that they will not seat anyone he appoints.
Harumph.
Blago wipes his ass with it and appoints Burris anyway.
Burris holds a press conference and announces he will be in D.C. on Tuesday to be sworn in with the rest of the Senate. Bobby Rush plays the race card. Reid does not see the handwriting on the wall.
He counters by calling Secretary of State Jesse White, who has already said he won't sign Burris's certification, and encourages him. What White is doing is most certainly outside his legal authority -- the Secretary of State doesn't have veto power. But Reid not only gives White a high five, he tells him they'll use this to keep Burris from being seated.
Then he smugly chortles about how he'll manipulate Senate procedure and punt to the Rules Committee, and assures everyone that they will drag things out for months if necessary until Blago is impeached and his successor appoints someone else. And he does it in the press.
Upon reading this, Cornyn announces that Franken won't have a signed certification either, and the GOP will use it to keep him from being seated,
Blago laughs out loud. This is amateur night in Dixieland. He leaks to the press that he spoke with Reid before the election, and that Reid didn't think any of the African American candidates vying for the seat were "electable," while Tammy Duckworth was. He stirs up the potential jury pool and makes Reid look like an idiot -- the day before Reid is set to appear on Meet the Press.
Reid looks like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs on Meet the Press. Nobody knows how much Fitz has (not even Fitz, who is still trying to transcribe his tapes) or how much he'll need to reveal to prove his case, so Reid says he "doesn't remember" his conversation with Blago, but calls Blago a liar anyway. When asked if he supported Jesse Jackson Jr. for the Senate seat, he says he would support JJJ. And admits that there's "room to negotiate" on Burris.
Burris appears at the Senate on Tuesday. Gets turned away. Could Reid look any worse?
Yes!
Obama stares down DiFi, appoints Panetta to the CIA, and the NYT breaks the story before she's told (but Ron Wyden already knows). DiFi's fuming.
Despite having been one of the 50 Senators who signed Reid's letter saying Burris would never be seated, she announces that as the outgoing head of the Rules Committee she thinks the Senate has no choice but to seat him. (Good timing, because Charlie Rangel is already complaining about the Rules Committee dragging its feet, and Jesse White is complaining that Reid made him the fall guy.)
Reid can't hold his own caucus in line. Blames Rahm. Gives interview saying "I don't work for Barack Obama."
Smooth. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
01/08/2009 07:28 ||
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#1
She must be psychic. I was thinking the same thing yesterday. I'd own half of Nevada.
#4
True, Blondie - but they won't wait in line all night as people did for Reagan.
For instance, I personally will take the MSM's word for it. I'll know they're telling the truth because they'll be crying and rending their garments, just as anyone does when their beloved dies.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/08/2009 18:22 Comments ||
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#5
Carter writes: And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.
WTF is a defensive tunnel? His bias is not even thinly veiled.
#9
Jimmah is the gift that keeps on giving... like a case of genital herpes, we just never really git rid of him.
why isn't he dead? i think he is clinging tenaciously to life so he can see Big Zero give a performance in the oval office that will make jimmy look mildly competent.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
01/08/2009 21:18 Comments ||
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In the photo op at the White House luncheon with the five living presidents, Jimmuh wouldn't even stand next to the others, even Clinton. Obama and Bush share a laugh, but Carter has a disgusted smirk. How did he ever get elected in the first place?
#11
700 trucks daily and the Palestinians are undernourished because Israel imprisons them and the world doesn't care? Well, I don't care other than my tax dollars go to support this lunacy. Geesh, Carter needs put out of his misery.
Good for Shrum for championing Israel's right to defend itself against the Hamas rocket barrage. He is correct, too, that lasting peace will come only when the Palestinians abandon their hope that Israel can somehow be defeated or destroyed.
Unfortunately, Shrum represents an increasingly minority point of view within the Democratic Party. A Rasmussen poll conducted in the last week of 2008 found that while 62 percent of Republicans backed Israel's action in Gaza, only 31 percent of Democrats did. Almost three-quarters of Republicans blamed Hamas for starting this war; only a minority of Democrats agreed. Republicans are 20 points more friendly toward Israel than Democrats. And while extreme hostility to Israel does not exist among Republicans, almost one in 10 Democrats describes Israel as an "enemy of the United States."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2009 14:06 ||
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Yet it is also true that Obama comes to office with the most opaque record on Israel of any new president
The guy sat in a church for 20 years that was shockingly anti-semitic. I guess that wasn't worthy of mention in this article.
#2
Can we please stop using website comments as meaningful indicators of the opinion of site owners?
And yes, the hostility to Israel among the Left is a concern for the Dem party. So? Obama won election dissing Hamas. His new Sec of State is the woman who made a point of being more proIsrael than obama. The new NSA is pro-arab, but his ties are all with Fatah, not Hamas. The Secdef is the same.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course. I can certainly understand Baraks desire to move before Jan 20. On several different grounds. But lets judge the president elect on what he says and does (even if that means waiting till he takes office) not on arcana like this.
#3
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#5
And yes, the hostility to Israel among the Left is a concern for the Dem party. So?
lol! Do the stats in this article upset you? They should. You are aligned with a party that will turn on you in a dime. Yet you stay with them because that Republican Right is just soooo evil. It sux to get a clue, doesn't it?
Sure, we can all put our desires on the blank slate that is Obama. Why not? Hope is what the man ran on. And maybe he does not share the views from those of his Pastor who was his family's mentor for so many years. I think we all agree that is a change we can hope for.
The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.
My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state -- risks that threaten its very survival -- because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place.
Just look at the spate of attacks this week on Jews and Jewish institutions around the world: a car ramming into a synagogue in France; a Chabad menorah and Jewish-owned shops sprayed with swastikas in Belgium; a banner at an Australian rally demanding "clean the earth from dirty Zionists!"; demonstrators in the Netherlands chanting "Gas the Jews"; and in Florida, protestors demanding Jews "Go back to the ovens!"
Continued on Page 49
The conventional wisdom about the incursion by Israeli ground units into Gaza, mirrored in Sunday's Washington Post, is that "Israeli leaders run the risk of repeating their disastrous experience in the 2006 Lebanon war, when they suffered high casualties in ground combat with Hezbollah." Apparently, reporters and pundits are even more prone to refighting the last war than generals: Gaza is not Lebanon; Hamas is not Hezbollah and, most critically, Israel now is not Israel in 2006.
To begin with, the physical and geographical differences between southern Lebanon and the Gaza strip could hardly be greater. And while Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah leadership were under air attack in the outskirts of Beirut in 2006, the Hamas leadership has far fewer places to hide in Gaza city and elsewhere in Gaza. The initial successes of the Israeli airstrikes were not just a product of much better intelligence about Hamas (though it's probable that Israeli intelligence had done a superior job of exploiting differences amongst Hamas and West Bank leaders to improve its targeting), but also reflect simple facts of proximity and smaller scale. The terrain makes perhaps an even greater difference in ground warfare. The hills of southern Lebanon are not only naturally defensible terrain--each village providing an excellent fortified fighting position--but helped to channel Israeli armored columns. A good percentage of Israeli combat deaths came from a handful of successful ambushes.
#2
Nuclear weapons are for threatening, not using. Actually using one in this day and age (even on Israel) would be beyond my comprehension. I don't know what would unfold, nuclear counter attack? UNSC sanctioned invasion? Hard to say, but it would be safe to say that if Iran had a nuke they could not shoot it at Israel for attacking Hamas.
Dear protestors, Arab Israelis, and citizens of the world:
We are in favor of the democratic right of every person to rally in favor whatever he or she feel like, even if we are talking about Israeli citizens demonstrating against their country at a time of war.
...Yet nonetheless, and with all due respect, we wish to tell you something at this time: Your views do not really make a difference to us right now. At this moment, when we are fighting for the wellbeing of southern residents, the level of support we receive from you does not matter to us too much. It is irrelevant.
The important thing is that tens of thousands of Israeli citizens will be able to live a normative life; the kind of life where no Grad or any other kind of rocket would be landing on their heads in the middle of the street.
This may sound a little odd, yet if in order to secure this kind of normative life we need to turn the lives of Gaza residents into hell, then with great regret this is precisely what we shall be doing.
We would of course be happy to only hurt Hamas terrorists in surgical strikes, yet this is a little difficult to achieve when the terrorists are operating in the midst of the civilian population in Gaza.
You may be surprised about this, yet when it comes to a choice between the option of allowing southern Israel residents to continue being hurt and the option of hitting the terrorists with full force, while realizing that innocent civilians in Gaza will be hurt too along the way, we choose to side with our own citizens. How weird indeed.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot something else: We already withdrew from the Gaza Strip. A long time ago. Perhaps you repressed this minor detail, yet we uprooted settlements, just the way you like it. We expelled Jews from their homes, in line with our own decision, just in order to get out of Gaza. We carried a brutal transfer to the residents of Gush Katif just to secure some peace and quiet.
So next time you ask us to evacuate settlements, ask yourselves what we'll be getting in return.
The scenes from Gaza are heartbreaking. But the whole conflict could be avoided if the Palestinians said one small thing
Daniel Finkelstein
It was strictly forbidden to have a notebook in Belsen, but my Aunt Ruth had one anyway. Just a little pocket diary - an appointment book with one of those tiny pencils. And in it, in the autumn of 1944, she noted that Anne Frank and Anne's sister, Ruth's schoolfriend Margot, had arrived in the concentration camp.
My mother and my aunt had been watching through the camp wire when the Franks arrived. Mum remembers it well, because they had been excited to spot girls they knew from the old days in Amsterdam. They had played in the same streets, been to the same schools and Ruth and Margot attended Hebrew classes together. The pair had once been pressed into service to act as bridesmaids, when a secretive Jewish wedding had taken place at the synagogue during their lesson time.
But Ruth and Margot did not grow up together. Because while Ruth and my mother lived, Margot and Anne never left Belsen. They died of typhus.
I am telling you this story because I want you to understand Israel. Not to agree with all it does, not to keep quiet when you want to protest against its actions, not to side with it always, merely to understand Israel.
There are two things about the tale that help to provide insight. The first is that all these things, the gas chambers, the concentration camps, the attempt to wipe Jews from the face of the Earth, they aren't ancient history, and they aren't fable. They happened to real people and they happened in our lifetime. Anne and Margot Frank were just children to my aunt and my mother; they weren't icons, or symbols of anything.
The second is that world opinion weeps now for Anne Frank. But world opinion did not save her.
The origin of the state of Israel is not religion or nationalism, it is the experience of oppression and murder, the fear of total annihilation and the bitter conclusion that world opinion could not be relied upon to protect the Jews.
Israel was the idea of a journalist. Theodor Herzl was the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse when he witnessed anti-Semitic rioting against the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus who had been falsely accused of espionage. Herzl was then among the small corps of journalists who in 1895 witnessed the famous ceremony of disgrace in which Dreyfus was stripped of his epaulettes.
The experience led Herzl to abandon his belief in assimilation. He became convinced that Jews would only be safe if they had their own national home. Herzl became the first leader of modern Zionism. For many years many Jews resisted Herzl's conclusion. My grandfather was among them. But the experience of Jews all over the world in the first half of the 20th century - not just in Europe but in the Middle East too - rather bore out Herzl.
So when Israel is urged to respect world opinion and put its faith in the international community the point is rather being missed. The very idea of Israel is a rejection of this option. Israel only exists because Jews do not feel safe as the wards of world opinion. Zionism, that word that is so abused, so reviled, is founded on a determination that, at the end of the day, somehow the Jews will defend themselves and their fellow Jews from destruction. If world opinion was enough, there would be no Israel.
The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.
Yet they will not say it. And they will not mean it. For they do not want the Jews. Again and again - again and again - the Palestinians have been offered a nation state in a divided Palestine. And again and again they have turned the offer down, for it has always been more important to drive out the Jews than to have a Palestinian state. It is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don't want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews.
There cannot be peace until this changes. For Israel will not rely on airy guarantees and international gestures to defend it. At its very core, it will not. It will lay down its arms when the Jews are safe, but it will not do it until they are.
And if you reflect on it, doesn't recent experience bear this out? Just as Herzl was borne out? A year or so back I met a teacher while I was on holiday and fell to talking with him about Israel. He was a nice man and all he wanted was for fighting to stop and to end the suffering of children. And he had a question for me.
Why, he asked, doesn't Israel offer to give back the West Bank and Gaza? Why doesn't it just let the Palestinians have a state there? If the Palestinians turned it down, he said, then at least liberal opinion would be on Israel's side and would rally to its assistance.
So I patiently explained to this kind, good man that Israel had, at Camp David in 2000, made precisely this offer and that it had been rejected out of hand by Yassir Arafat, not even used as the basis for negotiation. I told him that Israel was no longer in Gaza, having withdrawn unilaterally and taken the settlers with it. The Palestinians had greeted this movement with suicide bombs and rockets. Yet the teacher, with all his compassion, wasn't even aware of all this. And liberal opinion? Sad to relate, my new friend's faith in it was misplaced. It has turned strongly against Israel.
Israel has made many mistakes. It has acted too aggressively on some occasions, has been too defensive on others. The country hasn't always respected the human rights of its enemies as it should have done. What nation under such a threat would have avoided all errors?
But you know what? As Iran gets a nuclear weapon and so the potential for another Holocaust against the Jews and world opinion does nothing, I am not so sure that the errors of world opinion are so much to be preferred to the errors of Israel.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/08/2009 00:00 ||
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Israel's friends can't be counted on for the long haul. To ensure their own survival, Israel needs to occupy Gaza until the job's done, like what we did in Japan and are doing in Iraq.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
01/08/2009 7:54 Comments ||
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#2
You can't coexist with an enemy that is hell bent on your annihilation. The paleostains have built this thing up in their minds to be some kind of divine struggle with themselves as warriors of god or something. You can't reason with them, you can't bargain with them, you can't persuade them. All you can do is make sure they can't hurt you.
Renowned cleric Youssef al-Qaradaoui, who happens to be a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood have called to turn Friday into a day of wrath and have asked that the traditional Friday prayer, the most important moment of the week for a pious Muslim, be followed by large demonstrations to express solidarity throughout the Muslim world.
Days of wrath that were ordered in the past for instance for the Mohamed cartoons crisis of 2006 have prompted large gatherings and serious troubles.
Throughout the world, including in Europe, Jewish communities will be specifically at risk, especially in the early afternoon. It is worth noting that several fatwas that call to kill Jews have been issued and passed on through online Arab media and jihadist websites. The latest comes from Algerian cleric Chamseddine Bourouba who wrote yesterday that any Jew is a legitimate target that can be struck by Muslims.
Interests of Western countries accused of supporting Israel could also be targeted throughout the Arab world.
#3
Let's make all of these fatwas declarations of war and therefore any one so targeted can shoot first. If Boobaloo says any Jew is a target than any Jew can also make HIM a target.
Create a standing prize pool. Whoever whacks Boobaloo or Qarawowee or Sadr or anyone else gets a $1,000,000.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
