Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Majority rule, evil "colonials" and white farmers out. That's what you want right? Well, drink up you bastards! Next time be careful what you ask for.
#3
Much used to be different. Two decades ago, before Zimbabwe's USA's enviable infrastructure and robust economy broke down under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe,Speaker Nancy Pelosi's
Hey, don't scoff, it's happening right now before our very eyes. And there is no one who will bail us out.
Optimists have long theorized that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez would meet his Waterloo with the burst of the petroleum bubble. But with oil prices down some 75% from their highs last year and the jackboot of the regime still firmly planted on the nation's neck, that theory requires revisiting.
It is true that popular discontent with chavismo has been rising as oil prices have been falling. The disillusionment is even likely to increase in the months ahead as the economy swoons. But having used the boom years to consolidate power and destroy all institutional checks and balances, Mr. Chávez has little incentive to return the country to political pluralism even if most Venezuelans are sick of his tyranny. If anything, he is apt to become more aggressive and dangerous as the bloom comes off his revolutionary rose in 2009 and he feels more threatened.
Certainly "elections" can't be expected to matter much. Mr. Chávez now controls the entire electoral process, from voter rolls to tallying totals after the polls have closed. Under enormous public pressure he accepted defeat in his 2007 bid for constitutional reforms designed to make him president for life. But so what? That loss allowed him to maintain the guise of democracy, and now he has decided that there will be another referendum on the same question in February. Presumably Venezuela will repeat this exercise until the right answer is produced. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
01/12/2009 06:35 ||
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#1
Pet Peeve #1,347,892
Talk about attention deficit. Assholes like this seem to think that a predicted result has to occur within 10 minutes of the cause no matter what the prediction. Geebus Louis these thinks can take a little time. Let's see if Oogo the Magnificent is still standing in 2 years if oil continues as is.
1. Do not attempt to escape. The punishment is death.
2. Never gather in groups of over three people or move around without the guard�s authorization. The punishment for unauthorized movement is death.
3. Do not steal. If one steals or possesses weapons, the punishment is death. The punishment for failure to report the theft or possession of weapons is death.
4. Obey your guards. If one rebels or hits a guard, the punishment is death.
5. If you see outsiders, or suspicious-looking people, report them immediately. The punishment for abetting in the hiding of outsiders is death.
6. Keep an eye on your fellow prisoners and report inappropriate behavior without delay. One should criticize others for inappropriate behavior, and also conduct thorough self-criticism in revolutionary ideology class.
7. Fulfill your assigned duties. The punishment for rebelling against one�s duties is death.
8. Men and women may not be together outside the workplace. The punishment for unauthorized physical contact between a man and a woman is death.
9. Admit and confess your wrongdoings. The punishment for disobedience and refusal to repent is death.
10. The punishment for violating camp laws and rules is death.
#3
The second Cartoon History of the Universe had a bit about the beginning of the end of the brief, brutal, legalistic Ch'in Dynasty:
[Cartoon image of miserable troops huddling in a muddy downpour]
"What's the penalty for rebellion?"
"Death!"
"What's the penalty for being late?"
"Death!"
"Well, guess what, we're late."
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
01/12/2009 11:09 Comments ||
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#4
IIRC, STAR TREK'S Dr. MUDD > The key word you're missing/describing, Mr. SPOCK, is DEATH.
Ironically, the same episode also illustrates the JOYS = HORRORS OF [Robo = Space Android Babe] POLYGAMY. FOR MUDD + MALES ANYWAY [AndroModels versus multiple Mudd AndroWifes].
#5
ION NORTH KOREA, TOPIX > seems Kimmie's Big Boss Pert on SOUTH KOREA has been sentenced to receive NOKOR COMMIE "RE-EDUCATION", VIA HARD LABOR AT A CHICKEN FARM???
#1
Hey, I recommend it highly! Ever since I married the Tsar and got a new last name that sounds possibly Jewish, I don't really get bothered with any of that pro-Arab crap any more.
It really plays with some people's minds when an obvious shiksa wishes them a Happy Chanukah, too. ;)
#2
I my business everyone is considered Jewish unless proven otherwise.
Posted by: Camera ||
01/12/2009 12:39 Comments ||
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#3
Not only is it brilliant but an addition I would add is to mention casually about how a host should treat a rude guest in Muslim culture. I could be wrong but the Muslims take guests and all that very seriously and reminding/shaming those in North American on visa's who talk rudely that they are guests cannot hurt.
A nominee who wants to tie down the executive branch.
Barack Obama's cabinet choices are understandably getting most media attention, but everyone knows policy is also made by the sub-cabinet. So we think more public scrutiny should be drawn to Mr. Obama's choice of Dawn Johnsen to lead one of the executive branch's most important legal offices. Her appointment makes sense for a President Gulliver, but not for a Commander in Chief fighting terrorists.
Ms. Johnsen became famous in the left-wing blogosphere as an especially arch critic of the Bush Administration's war on terror. As an Indiana University law professor, she took to the Web with such lawyerly analysis as "rogue," "lawless," "outrage," and that's the mild stuff. Now she's been nominated to run the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which interprets the law for the entire executive branch.
One of the OLC's main duties is to defend the Presidency against the inevitable encroachment of the judiciary and Congress on Constitutional authority, executive privilege, war powers, and so forth. Ms. Johnsen knows this, or should, having served as acting OLC head in the Clinton Administration between 1997 and 1998. The office has since become all the more central in a war on terror that has been "strangled by law," to quote Jack Goldsmith, a former Bush OLC chief.
Yet Ms. Johnsen seems to think her job isn't to defend the Presidency but to tie it down with even more legal ropes. She has written that "an essential source of constraint is often underappreciated and underestimated: legal advisors within the executive branch." And in touting her qualifications, the Obama transition cited her recent law review articles "What's a President to Do?: Interpreting the Constitution in the Wake of the Bush Administration's Abuses"; and "Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive Power."
#2
Lawyers have no morals, they have sides. Bush was on the other side and his administration's actions were "rogue", "lawless", etc. The Obama administration's actions would be "proper" and "legal", even if they were to be worse.
#3
See also DRUDGE > OBAMA CABINET CZAR [carol M. browning] HAS SOCIALIST TIES [pro-OWG, anti-Wealth Group]. Ms. Browning's name has also been reportedly taken off the SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL webpage; + RENSE > TIMES.UK - LEADING US ECONOMIST [Yale Pert = Econ Prof. Robert Schiller] FEARS DECADE[-S?] OF [real]WEAKNESS FOR THE US. Multiple periods of RECESSIONS [Depressions] coupled wid HIGH US UNEMPLOYMENT, PROTRACTIVE FINANCIAL MISERIES???
WASHINGTON--What do Pakistan and Mexico have in common? They figure in the nightmares of U.S. military planners trying to peer into the future and identify the next big threats.
The two countries are mentioned in the same breath in a just-published study by the United States Joint Forces Command, whose jobs include providing an annual look into the future to prevent the U.S. military from being caught off guard by unexpected developments.
"In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico," says the study - called Joint Operating Environment 2008 - in a chapter on "weak and failing states." Such states, it says, usually pose chronic, long-term problems that can be managed over time.
But the little-studied phenomenon of "rapid collapse," according to the study, "usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems." Think Yugoslavia and its disintegration in 1990 into a chaotic tangle of warring nationalities and bloodshed on a horrific scale.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, where Al Qaeda has established safe havens in the rugged regions bordering Afghanistan, is a regular feature in dire warnings. Thomas Fingar, who retired as the chief U.S. intelligence analyst in December, termed Pakistan "one of the single most challenging places on the planet."
This is fairly routine language for Pakistan, but not for Mexico, which shares a 2,000-mile, or 3,200-kilometer, border with the United States.
Mexico's mention beside Pakistan in a study by an organization as weighty as the Joint Forces Command, which controls almost all conventional forces based in the continental United States, speaks volumes about growing concern over what is happening south of the U.S. border.
Vicious and widening violence pitting drug cartels against each other and against the Mexican state have left more than 8,000 Mexicans dead over the past two years. Kidnappings have become a routine part of Mexican daily life. Common crime is widespread. Pervasive corruption has hollowed out the state.
In November, in a case that shocked even those (on both sides of the border) who consider corruption endemic in Mexico, the former drug czar Noé Ramírez was charged with accepting at least $450,000 a month in bribes from a drug cartel in exchange for information about police and anti-narcotics operations.
A month later, a Mexican army major, Arturo Gonzalez, was arrested on suspicion that he sold information about President Felipe Calderón's movements for $100,000 a month. Gonzalez belonged to a special unit responsible for protecting the president.
Depending on one's view, the arrests are successes in a publicly declared anticorruption drive or evidence of how deeply criminal mafias have penetrated the organs of the state.
According to the Joint Forces study, a sudden collapse in Mexico is less likely than in Pakistan, "but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state."
It added: "Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."
What form such a response might take is anyone's guess, and the study does not spell it out, nor does it address the economic implications of its worst-case scenario. Mexico is the third biggest trade partner of the United States (after Canada and China) and its third-biggest supplier of oil (after Canada and Saudi Arabia).
No such ties bind the United States and Pakistan. But the study sees a collapse there not only as more likely but as more catastrophic.
It would bring "the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons. That 'perfect storm' of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger." The study then warns of "the real possibility that nuclear weapons might be used."
It is not clear where on the long list of actual and potential crises around the world Mexico and Pakistan will rank once Barack Obama takes office as U.S. president on Jan. 20. During the election campaign, Obama repeatedly criticized Pakistan for not cracking down hard enough on terrorists inside its borders.
Since then a new Pakistani president has come to power. Not long after that, tensions between Pakistan and India, also a nuclear power, rose sharply after gunmen attacked two luxury hotels and other sites in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, and killed 163 people. India described the attack as a conspiracy hatched in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistanis.
Closer to home, the U.S. economic crisis looks likely to slow down a $1.4 billion assistance program - including military equipment, training, technology - to help the Mexican government gain the upper hand over the drug cartels and re-establish control over what some have called "failed cities" along the border, places where shootouts, beheadings and kidnappings have become routine.
It would take a very rosy outlook on the future to expect rapid progress.
Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything. The CIA's job was to keep an eye -- a jaundiced eye -- on the whole world, friend and foe, weak countries and strong ones alike, as a means of preventing catastrophic surprises.
For more than 50 years, on the whole, the magic worked. And then, on Sept. 11, 2001, another Pearl Harbor happened. The CIA was not spared when blame was handed out. An intelligence failure had occurred and the result was the loss of 3,000 lives, billions in destroyed property, and incalculable damage to the American psyche.
In terms of the original illusion concerning an all-knowing intelligence service, the agency was fundamentally at fault. In reality, it is not likely that any system then in existence could have identified the terrorists (19 obscure youths out of a 2001 world population of 6.1 billion) and forestalled their crimes in the absence of a colossal stroke of luck. On 9/11, it was the terrorists, not their victims, who had all the luck.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/12/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
> Terrorists haven't been 'lucky' here since 9/11
Seems more to do with the low numbers of Muslims in the US as well as the tactical genius of the Iraq flypaper rather than the CIA Oxbridge equivalent alumnis efforts.
#2
Its no excuse for Feds or local Agencies to NOT tell patrons their emails are being read andor copied, etc. e.g. DATA MININGS, and widout their consent I might add.
#3
Being in Intell is very PERSONAL work. It isnt abstract. Its who you know and how well you know them. Its effective to the degree that its look me in the eye.
And you know who your friends are and who isnt your friend. Your friends are those who are inside and everybody else is game outside.
And if you dont have any friends on the inside then you cant do your job. Most people for years were checker suited bowties in the Agency. Or dead eyes and really big stakes efficiently dangerous men. Helms was one of those.
There were men in the Agency who didnt play by the rules, and you could get pulled over the side and drowned with no warning whatsoever. Your left ear was always looking away from the thing that went bang if you got too close to what you didnt appreciate.
And when an administration changed there was always the possibility that the new boy would show up and demand you give him the list of names of everybody who trusted you. Then YOU were outside.
There will come a day when Langley is a dust filled dark office with a disconnected phone in a cardboard box on the floor.
And the people who do the job wont be there anymore. They will be where their kind always were. Needing a bath and sweating in Goombah and counting the traffic coming up the road.
The numbers dont matter, what matters is staying away from the suits and not chatting at parties.
And poor old Angleton hiding behind the couch while the flashbulbs popped.
#4
Excellent article. What happens with this agency is vitally important to the entire Intelligence Community (IC). The Director Central Intelligence (DCI) owns the community process through a system of Director Central Intelligence Directives (DCID) to which the entire IC must abide and coordinate. This is a good news and at times bad news story for the services, but that is indeed another story. In the field it is a political process with the Chief of Station acting as the go-to-guy for the Ambassador (AMBO) or Chief of Mission (COM). If guidance from the COM and State Department is to limit the profile, (low risk/no-risk) not on my, his, or her watch, then collection activities suffer and the staff go golfing or skin diving. Blame for what does or does not happen, ie, knowledge acquisition and situational awareness in a given region must be shared. The events of 9/11 were a game changer. I credit President Bush and various DCI's for this. Is the organization perfect? Certainly not, but it's a far cry from the Carter years. Obama's appointment of Leon Panetta to the DCI is regretable and troubling not because of the personality, but because of Obama's lack of understanding of the organization, it's vital mission, and it's current needs.
#5
The CIA was not spared when blame was handed out.
Unlike Kimmel and Short, the director of the CIA would receive a medal for his service rather than be stripped of his rank and position. Yeah that's pinning blame.
#6
It has never been the same since the Carter administration and Frank Church. Hard to believe he represented Idaho. But then so did Larry Craig.
Posted by: Jack is Back ||
01/12/2009 10:48 Comments ||
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#7
There were men in the Agency who didnt play by the rules, and you could get pulled over the side and drowned with no warning whatsoever. Your left ear was always looking away from the thing that went bang if you got too close to what you didnt appreciate.
I'm afraid I have no idea what that means, Angleton9. But I thank you for whatever it was you were doing behind the couch while I wasn't looking. If I'd known I would have set down a cup of tea and a plate of cookies for the brownies.
#8
I respect you trailing wife. On Saturday, April 27, 1996, Colby died in an apparent "boating accident" near his home in Rock Point, Maryland, although his body was actually found, underwater, on Monday, May 6, 1996. The subsequent inquest found that he died from drowning or hypothermia after falling out of his canoe, and there was no further investigation.
James Jesus Angleton had never had his picture taken, he had orchid growing as a hobby and was an aesthete who enjoyed making intricate jewelry and constructing flyfishing lures. He shunned the spotlight and was a very secretive man and ran COINTEL.
He was quite probably a genius and undoubtedly mad. He knew too much to be fired and he was removed by having his Cover blown and his madness exposed during a private party when camera men chased him taking his picture for publication in the Media.
Remember? All words are codes to some extent..
#9
Long ago I wrote a small amount of fairly respectable poetry, Angleton9, although I never mastered that modern free verse. (Long rant herewith ruthlessly subdued.) Language is a multi-layered code, working as much at the subconscious as conscious level, which is why good semioticians make so much money, and one reason why reading the posts, and names, at Rantburg is such a learning experience.
We were still in Brussels when poor Mr. Colby encountered the water. If the International Herald Tribune didn't notice, then neither would have I. Our country and Mr. Angleton both were lucky to intersect for so long. I'm glad I have no memory of his first photo -- such a man deserves to have some things forgotten.
As for the brownies, my dear, even the House Fae can be ruthless in their whimsy. Let us hope they do not decide to share you, instead, after you so kindly and gently enlightened my confusion.
#10
Although the inquest into Colby's death found he had died of natural causes, there were some suspicious circumstances:
* unusual for him to be canoeing at night;
* he had not spoken to his wife of any plans to go canoeing;
* his house was unlocked, with the radio and computer on, and the remains of a meal on the table;
* there was no sign of the life-jacket his friends said he usually wore;
* his body was found approximately 20 yards (18 m) from the canoe (itself found 100 yards (91 m) from the house) after the area had been thoroughly searched multiple times.
* his body was found 9 days after accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Colby
HYDERABAD, India -- Manmohan Singh leads the largest democracy on earth. But India's prime minister is gentle of manner and speaks in whispers. One struggles to imagine him professing love without shyness to his own wife. And so it meant something when he recently laid the L-word on a little-loved man: George W. Bush.
"This may be my last visit to you during your presidency," Mr. Singh told Mr. Bush in Washington in September, "and let me say, Thank you very much. The people of India deeply love you."
Laura Bush is not alone, after all.
"In 20 years I expect the Indo-U.S. relationship to resemble the Israel-U.S. relationship, and for many of the same reasons"
Shashi Tharoor, leading Indian writer
Among the least coveted jobs in the world today, along with grave digging, is the task of burnishing President Bush's foreign legacy: the complex, competing challenges of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, North Korea, China and what many in Europe and the third world see as a tarnished national brand.
But love is an unpredictable thing, and it is possible that the love-fest stoked by Mr. Singh and Mr. Bush will, with time, come to be seen as President Bush's enduring overseas accomplishment: the cultivation of India, long prickly about empires, as a partner of the sole superpower.
#2
Actually the crisis imperils the three state plan (Israel, Hamas-Gaza, Fatah-West Bank). It might actually restore two state if Fatah can retake control over Gaza when Hamas is smashed.
#4
Israel has been trying to give away the Palestinian territories for years. First to the Palestinians themselves -- the Oslo accord, that withdrawal in 2005 from Gaza -- and also by trying to force Egypt to take up their duties as border guardian.
The PA/PLO-Fatah is not going to be able to take over the Gaza Strip, for the same reason they lost it to Hamas before: they are literally not members of the tribe. Egypt wants nothing to do with 1.5 million tunnel-mad, homicidal maniac, welfare queens, even if they could be the ones to skim off the UN largess.* As for Jordan, the last time they owned the West Bank, Arafat nearly took over both sides of the river. Abbas has no such ability, but who's to say how soon the PLO will birth another such charismatic horror?
On the other hand, last night I saw an article (which I can't find again, naturally) elaborating on the theme that the Arabs are concerned that Israel has finally gone mad, which will do much to re-establish Israel's deterrence ability. I think the leak that Israel was ready to destroy Iran's nuclear program last month will add to that -- does anyone think President Obama will have the same influence over Israel as President Bush, especially if Likud forms the new government in February? And note that despite Hizb'allah's big words, they haven't done anything except retreat from their border with Israel since Operation Cast Lead began, even though they're armed with all that wonderful new Iranian weaponry and training. Even the shooting over the Syrian border was clearly a guard relieving his nerves rather than anything concrete. I would love to see Israel jets buzz President Assad's palace again, this time dropping a few paint bombs for emphasis.
*The Sandmonkey blogged about this the other day. He is reasonably pro-Israel, but absorption is not a solution he is willing to accept under any terms.
As Israel persists in its military effortsby ground, air and seato protect its citizens from deadly Hamas rockets, and as protests against Israel increase around the world, the success of the abominable Hamas double war crime strategy becomes evident. The strategy is as simple as it is cynical: provoke Israel by playing Russian roulette with its children, firing rockets at kindergartens, playgrounds and hospitals; hide behind its own civilians when firing at Israeli civilians; refuse to build bunkers for its own civilians; have the TV cameras ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children; exaggerate the number of civilians killed by including as "children" Hamas fighters who are 16 or 17 years old and as "women," female terrorists.
Hamas itself has a name for this. They call it "the CNN strategy" (this is not to criticize CNN or any other objective news source for doing its job; it is to criticize Hamas for exploiting the freedom of press which it forbids in Gaza). The CNN strategy is working because decent people all over the world are naturally sickened by images of dead and injured children. When they see such images repeatedly flashed across TV screens, they tend to react emotionally. Rather than asking why these children are dying and who is to blame for putting them in harms way, the average viewer, regardless of their political or ideological perspective, wants to see the killing stopped. They blame those whose weapons directly caused the deaths, rather than those who provoked the violence by deliberately targeting civilians. They forget the usual rules of morality and law. For example, when a murderer takes a hostage and fires from behind his human shield, and a policeman, in an effort to stop the shooting accidentally kills the hostage, the law of every country holds the hostage taker guilty of murder even though the policeman fired the fatal shot. The same is true of the law of war. The use of human shields, in the way Hamas uses the civilian population of Gaza, is a war crimeas is its firing of rockets at Israeli civilians. Every human shield that is killed by Israeli self defense measures is the responsibility of Hamas, but you wouldnt know that from watching the media coverage.
The CNN strategy seems to work better, at least in some parts of the world, against Israel that it would against other nations. There are many more protestsand furydirected against Israel when it inadvertently kills fewer than 100 civilians in a just war of self defense, than against Arab and Muslim nations and groups that deliberately kill far more civilians for no legitimate reason. It isn't the nature of the victims, since more Arabs and Muslim civilians are killed every day in Africa and the Mid East by Arab and Muslim governments and groups with little or no protests. (For example, on the first day of Israels ground attack, approximately 30 Palestinians, almost all Hamas combatants, were killed. On the same day an Islamic suicide bomber blew herself up in a mosque in Iraq, killing 40 innocent Muslims. No protests. Little media coverage.) It isn't the nature of the killings, since Israel goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid killing civiliansif for no other reason than that it hurts their causewhile Hamas does everything in its power to force Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by firing its missiles from densely populated civilian areas and refusing to build shelters for its civilians. It isn't the nature of the conflict, because Israel is fighting a limited war of self defense designed to protect its own civilians from rocket attacks, while most of those killed by Arabs and Muslims are killed in genocidal and tribal warfare with no legitimate aim. The world simply doesn't seem to care when Arabs and Muslims kill large numbers of other Arabs and Muslims, but a qualitatively different standard seems to apply when the Jewish state kills even a relatively small number of Muslims and Arabs in a war of self defense.
The international community doesn't even seem to care when Palestinian children are killed by rocket fireunless it is from Israeli rockets. The day before the recent outbreak, Hamas fired an anti-personnel rocket at Israeli civilians but the rocket fell short of its target and killed two Palestinian girls. Yet there was virtually no coverage and absolutely no protests against these "collateral" civilian deaths. Hamas refused to allow TV cameras to show these dead Palestinian children, who were killed by their own rockets. Nor have there been protests against the cold blooded murders by Hamas and its supporters of dozens of Palestinian civilians who allegedly "collaborated withIsrael. Indeed Hamas and Fatah have killed far more Palestinian civilians over the past several years than have the Israeli, but you wouldn't know that from the media, the United Nations or protesters who focus selectively on only those deaths caused by Israeli military actions.
The protestors who fill the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco were nowhere to be seen when hundreds of Jewish children were murdered by Palestinian terrorists over the years.
Moreover, the number of civilians killed by Israel is almost always exaggerated. First, it widely assumed that if a victim is a "child" or a "woman", he or she is necessarily a civilian. Consider the following report in Thursdays NY Times: "Hospital officials in Gaza said that of the more than 390 people killed by Israeli fighter planes since Saturday, 38 were children and 25 women. Some of these children and women were certainly civilians but others were equally certainly combatants: Hamas often uses 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds as well as women as terrorists. Israel is entitled, under international law, to treat these children and women as the combatants they have become. Hamas cannot, out of one side of its mouth, boast that it recruits children and women to become terrorists, and then, out of the other side of its mouth, complain when Israel takes them at their word. The media should look closely and critically at the number of claimed civilian victims before accepting self-serving and self-contradictory exaggerations.
By any objective count, the number of genuinely innocent civilians killed by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza is lower than the collateral deaths caused by any nation in a comparable situation. Hamas does everything in its power to provoke Israel into killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible, in order to generate condemnation against the Jewish state. They have gone so far as firing rockets from Palestinian schoolyards and hiding their terrorists in Palestinian maternity wards. Lest there be any doubt about the willingness of Hamas to expose their families to martyrdom, remember that the Hamas terrorist leader recently killed in an Israeli air attack sent his own son to be a suicide bomber and then refused to allow his family to leave their house even after learning that he and his house had been placed on the list of military targets.
Nor is this double standard - applied to Israel on the one hand, and Arab and Muslim nations and groups on the other hand - limited to the current situation in Gaza. It has provided an excuse for the international community to remain silent in the face of massive human rights violations including genocides perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims around the world for years. Many of those who protest Israeli self-defense actions remain silent in the face of real genocidessuch as that in Darfur.
The reality is that the elected and de facto government of Gaza has declared war against Israel. Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, they have committed an armed attack against the Jewish state. The Hamas charter calls for Israels total destruction. Under international law, Israel is entitled to take whatever military action is necessary to repel that attack and stop the rockets. It must seek to minimize civilian deaths consistent with the legitimate military goal, and it is doing precisely that, despite Hamas efforts to maximize civilian deaths on both sides.
The best outcome for purposes of producing peace would be the destruction or substantial weakening of Hamas, which rejects the two-state solution. Israel and the Palestinian Authority could then agree on a peace that would end both the Israeli occupation and the rocketing of Israeli civilians.
#3
Even in this case Dershowitz demonstrates the liberal disease.
" (this is not to criticize CNN or any other objective news source for doing its job;"
CNN is NOT objective it it doing the job Hamas wants done. That is why they would HAVE a CNN strategy in the first place!
If CNN was a fair and objective news organization it would show how it is HAMAS that is hiding behind civilians in hospitals, counting their baby troops as innocents, etc.
If CNN did that then the CNN strategy would be a failure. But, Dershowitz can't bring himself to dis the liberal media by calling them what they are; propagandists for the terrorists.
Almost a decade and a half passed since the time I heard about Salman Rushdie and Iran's "unforgivable love " for him. I picked up his "Satanic verses" a few weeks ago to find out where this "affection" is coming from. I did not finish first chapter yet and already like the book. Just take a look at the following few sentences:
But that was what women did, he thought in those days, they were the vessels into which he could pour himself, and when he moved on, they would understand that it was his nature, and forgive. And it was true that nobody blamed him for leaving, for his thousand and one pieces of thoughtlessness, how many abortions, Rekha demanded in the cloud-hole, how many broken hearts. In all those years he was the beneficiary of the infinite generosity of women, but he was its victim, too, because their forgiveness made possible the deepest and sweetest corruption of all, namely the idea that he was doing nothing wrong.
does it sound familiar to any of you ? That is what so called-Palestinian "defenders", Hamas, Fatah, Qassam brigades, Mahmmud Abbas and most of all arafat were doing all along. Abusing and raping the world minds over and over and then would ask for forgiveness , or not. But they would always get one. It does not matter what they do, it will always be forgiven to them. Now they are corrupted, they don't just want a forgiveness, no, they[...]
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.
A nominee who wants to tie down the executive branch.
Terrorists haven't been 'lucky' here since 9/11
