Gaza & Egypt, NYC Theater, Afghan Blogger + OPEN Thread
By NoQuarter on January 26, 2008 at 11:48 AM in Afghanistan, Current Affairs, David Mamet, Gaza, New Yorker
New report just in at the NYT today: “Tensions Grow at Egypt-Gaza Border: “Traffic over the border in Rafah remained heavy on Saturday, but Egyptians reported shortages of supplies and a growing fatigue with the Palestinian influx.”
An American woman — Sidney Misal, 49, “working for a nongovernmental organization, the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation” — has been kidnapped in Afghanistan along with her driver. Meanwhile, reports the Gulf Times, the “UN urges review of journalist’s death sentence.” Do any of you know if there’s an online effort to help this blogger? Details below, along with a fun story about David Mamet’s new play:
More from the Gulf Times:
KABUL: The death sentence handed down to a reporter in Afghanistan has prompted the United Nations and several press freedom organisations to call on the Afghan government to intervene in the case.
Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, 23, a journalist for the daily Janan-e-Naw, and a student of Balkh University, was detained in October for downloading from the Internet and distributing to classmates an article written by an Iranian scholar that contained anti-Islamic sentiments.
The article allegedly questioned why men are allowed to have four spouses in Islam while women are denied the same right.
On Tuesday Kambakhsh was presented before a court of three judges in northern Mazar-e-Sharif and handed the death penalty in a closed session without any legal counsel.
The Afghan Independent Journalists Association was outraged that no lawyer, journalist, or human rights representatives were permitted entry to the court during Kambakhsh’s trail.
The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan on Thursday issued a statement saying the case is a “possible misuse of the judicial process” that does not “serve the cause of justice.”
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which has offices in Kabul, believe the real intent by the court is to intimidate Kambakhsh’s older brother, Ibrahimi, who recently published an article implicating an Afghan legislator in a series of killings and kidnappings. …
God, would I love to see this play. From the New Yorker:
Presidential Pratfalls
David Mamet’s Oval Office satire.
by John Lahr January 28, 2008A professional skeptic and an inspired word jockey, David Mamet can lay claim to the same connoisseurship of human folly as H. L. Mencken, who once observed that, in America, “only the man who was born with a petrifie diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night.” Mamet’s new Oval Office satire, “November” (well directed by Joe Mantello, at the Ethel Barrymore), is a hilarious demonstration of the fact that we live in an age of equality: all classes are criminal.
As the curtain rises on “November,” the President of the United States, Charles H. P. Smith (Nathan Lane), who is on the eve of losing his bid for a second term (his numbers are “lower than Gandhi’s cholesterol”), asks his trusted aide Archer Brown (the expert Dylan Baker) what has happened to his public support. “Why, why?” he moans. “You’ve fucked the country into a cocked hat,” Archer replies. (The guffaws from the audience acknowledge our outrage and disillusion with our own current leaders.) For farcical purposes, Mamet is quick to add financial desperation to Smith’s woes. In the last days of his election campaign, Smith has no money for TV ads. He has no money for a Presidential library or to guarantee his own future; even his security guards have gone walkabout.
At once a barbarian, a bully, and an idiot (“I always felt that I’d do something memorable—I just assumed it’d be getting impeached,” he says), Smith brings oxygen to Mamet’s rhetorical brilliance … DO read all!
What else is going on?
I just love Hendrik Hertzberg’s blog at the New Yorker. The titles of his posts are priceless. He recently wrote a hysterically funny story on the Mormon church. At his blog, he writes about a reaction from Utah:
Read Hertzberg’s original story published in the New Yorker.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2008/01/down-below-i-vo.html
for a slightly less enthused review.
This was, btw, the plot of a recent SpongeBob Squarepants: petrified diaphragm.
Bob lost the abilty to laugh.
Mikementum?
Susan,
Here are several views regarding what happened in Gaza. Mubarak is now being pressed by the US and Israel to crack down on the escapees.
January 24, 2008
Hole in the Wall
Power to the (Palestinian) People!
By JEFF HALPER
The people of Palestine have done it again, taking their own fate in their hands after being let down by their own “moderate” political leadership and, indeed, the entire international community in their struggle for freedom.
http://www.counterpunch.org/halper01242008.htmlin collaboration with Israel.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Jailbreak!
Gazans have broken out of Gaza into Egypt. The Guardian editorial from yesterday says it all really:
If you bottle up 1.5 million people in a territory 25 miles long and six miles wide, and turn off the lights, as Israel has done in Gaza, the bottle will burst. This is what happened yesterday when tens of thousands of Gazans poured into Egypt to buy food, fuel and supplies after militants destroyed two-thirds of the wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. It was the biggest jail break in history.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/
Gee, Cee, do you think Musbarak may do their bidding? I’m laughing. Hey, if I got $3+ billion a year in foreign aid, I might do their bidding too.
As usual, BBC World News America + World News did a superb job covering the story (via BBCAmerica channel). CNN gave it a few seconds at most.
NOW, for a totally opposite POV, via Memeorandum’s blog tracking service:
The Big Trunk / Power Line:
HE DIDN’T GIVE AT THE OFFICE — This week we’ve seen the news services become pure instruments of terrorist propaganda on behalf of Hamas. As Noah Pollak and Pajamas Media pointed out, even Time jumped in to lend a hand. Rest assured that the organs of the mainstream media will not pause …
+
Discussion: Pajamas Media
::::
I like to check in on Memeorandum every day. It seems to track right-wing bloggers a lot more than us lefties, but it also is valuable in that it points to many of the “hot” news stories.
::::
Just a thought: I am so confused by the entire story and history of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Jordanians, and on and on. I’ve kind of given up on following it closely because all sides are so stubborn, so hateful, that it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll ever live harmoniously.
One thing that concerns me greatly about Hamas: Would any substantive agreement to create a state ever be enough for them? Or are they mostly about agitation and violence? I fear it is so.
One more comment: There’s also the zealotry and extremism of the Jewish settlers. There was a PBS Frontline about them last year that creeped me out. They’re a wholly irrational, hard-line lot.
Susan, maybe if you made a real effort to hear the Palestinians’ story FROM PALESTINIANS you might understand why they appear to be “stubborn and hateful”.
PALESTINIANS ARE THE INJURED PARTY HERE, SUSAN, despite what the other side would have you believe. Palestinians are the ones who have had everything taken from them by force. The fact that they are “stubbornly” refusing to accept back, presented as a “generous gift” the crumbs of what has been stolen from them only means they are behaving as most normal human beings would behave.
This is not a “battle for the same piece of land” between two sides who have equal rights, equal claims, and equal power. This is much closer to what happened in the case of the American Indians, or the Maori in New Zealand, or the Australian aborigines. And it is coming to have more and more and more similarity to South African apartheid than Israel and its fans are willing to admit.
What disturbs me the most is that the Israeli’s have commited war crimes and they DO incarcerate children from age 8 up if they throw stones.
And they do this on the tax dollars we provide. My solution, and correct me if I am off base, would be to give aid dollars for specific purposes, with audits, and on going oversight by non partial UN or NGO groups.
How about cutting off ALL aid to Israel until it begins to behave like a member of the civilized world?
PS Nellie, they not only imprison children, and not only for throwing stones. They imprison them on whatever pretext they can think of, and they imprison them sometimes to punish family members. And there are very reliable, well-documented cases of Israel torturing children.
How do you know I haven’t, Shirin? I’ve gone to events, in person, hosted by Palestinians, albeit many, many years ago. I picked up their literature and read it. I even went to Rachel Corrie’s memorial service in Olympia, Wash, and wrote about her many times — and when I did, at Daily Kos, I was creamed by all the pro-Israeli Daily Kos people. I’ve been very sympathetic to their problems, but what has caused a dropdown in my sympathies for them is that I don’t see Hamas as the party that can help its people in a mature, constructive way, given as Hamas seems to be to rabble-rousing and violent clashes. It’d be like appointing the 60s-70s Weather Underground in charge of the Vietnam peace talks … they weren’t interested in peace. They were too smitten with confrontation and violence.
Now, lecture me some more.
Susan, pardon me for making assumptions. I should have elicited more information from you before commenting. It’s just that it gets very tiresome hearing the Palestinians made responsible for nearly a century of crimes against them, and sometimes one reacts too quickly to statements that seem to be doing that.
The Palestinian people chose Hamas as their leading party in what has been universally deemed to be free and fair democratic elections - or at least as free and fair as is possible under a decades-long occupation. From that moment on both the Palestinians and those Hamas political leaders have been punished for exercising their democratic rights. Israel has systematically arrested many of Hamas’ most credible and moderate leaders - why is that? This is nothing new, you know. What does Israel fear from moderate Palestinians?
Hamas is not a monlithic organization. I will try to say more later.
I have a hunch that a lot of Americans are sympathetic to the Palestinians and are tired of giving Israel billions a year in aid.
Hamas is probably a complex organization. The Black Panthers were complex too and did a lot of community work, including breakfasts for children, but they did stockpile weapons and they did commit crimes, even murder. They also advocated the violent overthrow of the United States. That can’t be ignored.
Other Lisa has a great point about a one-state solution. As I recall — correct me if I’m wrong — there was a time when Palestinians freely went back and forth, and Israelis and Palestinians worked together in a fairly normal atmosphere.
I think Susan is right in her perceptions of American sentiments towards Israel and the Palestinians. Things have changed a lot in recent years. At the risk of “arguing by anecdote,” I’d look at my own mother, who said to me a year or so ago that she used to believe the “brave little Israel” rhetoric - they were seen as the underdogs, and their cause was just. The Olympic Massacre really sealed that image in a majority of Americans’ minds.
Ask my mother what she thinks of Israel/Palestine now and you will get a far different response. She’s not the only one. More and more Americans perceive Israel’s actions as unjust, in spite of widespread public revulsion over actions like suicide bombings.
Great point about the Olympics massacre — the entire nation and world were riveted and horrified by those events.
Then there was the Leon Uris effect. His novel “Exodus” was a huge best-seller and romanticized the entire story about the founding of Israel .. that novel’s effect lingers to this day.
But times are changing, and Americans are pissed off that we’re at the beck and call of the Israelis, and that we give them so much foreign aid. They also cause a lot of headaches for us in the Middle East because almost all of our politicians are afraid to stand up. Gosh, who was that congresswoman who dared to oppose some pro-israeli legislation, and suffered because the pro-israeli lobby gave her opponents so much money and ran ads against her?
Yes, that novel, Exodus, and the movie based on it, was incredibly effective in propagating the Israeli founding mythology of the “plucky little newborn nation” fighting for its life against the hate-filled Ayrab hordes. The reality could not have been farther from that, and yet the myth has been so thoroughly, and so effectively created, and kept alive, that to this day even people who are horrified and disgusted by Israel’s conduct now still believe it. It is also very common for Israelis and other Jews to believe firmly that Israel was pure and good until 1967.
The fact is that Israel was born by necessity of ethnic cleansing. And it is also a fact that it was the Zionists who introduced terrorism to the region. The first car bombs, the first airline hijacking, the first letter and package bombs came from the Zionists.
I wish more people would read the works of Israeli historians like Benny Morris, who wrote the seminal works confirming the Palestinians’ narrative of 1948-49 (and the fact that Morris is a disgusting racist who regrets they did not do a more thorough job of ethnic cleansing only makes his work that much more credible), and Ilan Pappe, whose latest work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” documents what may of us have known all along - that the ethnic cleansing was not an “unintended consequence” of the war of 1948, but rather its main purpose. And Tom Segev. And Avi Shlaim. Etc.
I recall Hanan Ashrawi commenting in the ’90’s how ironic it was that after all our decades of repeating and repeating and repeating the Palestinian narrative it was not until some Israeli historians told the same story that it began to have some credibility.
I am very glad to see that more and more Americans are beginning to understand the current situation better, but I wish they would also look back and understand that the Palestinians’ legitimate grievances began in earnest in 1947.
Susan, there is no doubt that Hamas, like the Black Panthers, has committed some crimes along with the positive, and the justifiable things they have done (though their crimes pale in comparison to those of Israel). However, I am sure you agree with me that just as the unfortunate actions on the part of Black Panthers cannot be used to negate the legitimacy of Blacks’ grievances or their demands, neither can unfortunate actions on the part of Hamas be used to negate the legitimacy of Palestinians’ demands. Nor do unfortunate actions on the part of Hamas in any way justify collectively punishing the Palestinian people or denying them their rights in any way.
PS It is also important to recognize that groups like Hamas are a direct result of Israel’s criminal actions with respect to Palestinians. And the case of Hamas is particularly ironic since it achieved its position of power and influence directly from the hands of the government of Yitzhak Shamir, who nurtured and supported it in order to weaken the PLO.
What recent American actions in Iraq does that remind anyone of, by the way?
Be careful what seeds you sow because that will determine the crops you will reap when the time comes.
shirin i read your posts regarding palestine very closely … i find many of your arguments to be rather enlightening. i may not agree 100% of the time but you do keep me thinking.
i suspect i know only one thing for sure … until the US govt (read bush here) is willing to include hamas in the peace process … it will end in failure. obviously, the people of plaestine have chosen them and therefore they are a legitmate player in the peace process.
Just a thought: I am so confused by the entire story and history of the Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, Lebanese, Jordanians, and on and on. I’ve kind of given up on following it closely because all sides are so stubborn, so hateful, that it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll ever live harmoniously.
Susan,
The following started to help me become aware of some things. Now I know the other side.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
by Ilan Pappe
http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201388812&sr=8-1
The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Cage-Palestinian-Struggle-Statehood/dp/0807003093/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=12013
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge Middle East Library)
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 by Benny Morris
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/105-2545503-5828443?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=benny+morris
One thing that concerns me greatly about Hamas: Would any substantive agreement to create a state ever be enough for them?
We haven’t been told the truth about Hamas. Not that Israel empowered them to counter the secular PLO or any of this
Setting the Record Straight on Hamas
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN
II. Hamas accepts a two-state solution. When asked by Newsweek-Washington Post correspondent Lally Weymouth on 26 February 2006 what agreements Hamas was prepared to honor, the new Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh answered, “the ones that will guarantee the establishment of a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital with 1967 borders.” Weymouth went on, “Will you recognize Israel?” to which Haniyeh responded, “If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights then we are ready to recognize them.” (5) This view encapsulates the Hamas demand for reciprocity.
http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein06122006.html
And
http://www.counterpunch.org/loewenstein06252007.html
Thanks for this Cee, and especially for the bit about Hamas accepting a two-state solution. There is so much nonsense written about Hamas, and Hamas is blamed for far more than it is responsible for.
But Hamas, as Al Qa`eda in Iraq does for the U.S., serves an important purpose for the Israelis.
“Gee, Cee, do you think Musbarak may do their bidding? I’m laughing. Hey, if I got $3+ billion a year in foreign aid, I might do their bidding too.”
It would be more fruitful to concentrate on the asymmetry of the arrangement because we give more aid to the Israelis, the tail which wags the US dog. But that is another story……..
It is imperative, though, that we contemplate that while Sparta won the Peloponnesian War and held sway over all of Greece, today it is the dinky (less than 15,000) capital of Laconia prefecture. They were even more ruthless than the Israelis and held their Palestinians, the Helots, in no less severe bondage. (Even hunted them as a rite of passage)
So here we are once again doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That is Einstein’s definition of insanity.
We are barking mad; Bush didn’t screw up the world we did.
Link seems to be broken on your Halper story, Cee. I think you inadvertently added a couple of extranous letters.
http://www.counterpunch.org/halper01242008.html
I also found another nice story there on Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery01272008.html
“ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de la Meurthe, slightly amended: It is worse than a war crime, it is a blunder!”
(My interjection: he is slightly wrong here: the epigram belongs to Tallyrand.)
Who said “…Tear down that wall”? You guessed it.
MY, my, how far we’ve come. It finally spills out on to the TV set, which is the same level of awareness as many Americans will achieve. New York City is 11 by 6 and has 8 million people in it. Any one who has lived through the 1977 blackout and having the lights turned off there, knows what it is like. You add the fact that someone intentionally did this and the response “on the ground” is predictable chaos.
Can anyone help me understand how a Palestinian state can be created when you have two separate pieces of land? Are there any other examples of a “state” not being a single “plot” of land with a continuous border? I have never been able to get my head around that one.
Actually, the fact that the West Bank and Ghaza are not contiguous is not the biggest geographical impediment. The biggest geographical impediment is that deliberately designed by the Israelis in the West Bank. Google ICAHD and look at the maps that show how Israel has systematically destroyed any semblance of contiguity there. Certainly that is no coincidence. And look at the path of Israel’s so-called “security fence”, and note that Israel has not only built it on Palestinian land, but note how deeply it cuts into Palestinian land and how it cuts villages off from their fields, and even cuts one part of some Palestinian towns off from their other parts. This is not about Israel’s security, it is about destroying the viability of a Palestinian state.
How strong is a blog post. Ask Arun Ghandi.
Small post in a religious blog run by the WAPO.
Post suggests that maybe Israel could be a bit less nasty to the Palestinians ( Jan 7 )
Reaction is not muted, it took maybe 10 seconds for the first “anti-semite” cry to be heard.
Ghandi apologized
Response: Not good enough. ADL calls for Ghandi’s head. ( Same ADL that cannot find Ms. Coulter’s call for improving the Jews out of existence to be defamatory )
Ghandi fired on Jan 18th by the president of the board of Syracuse U ( a Mr. Seligman ) where Ghandi’s institute is housed.
First they notice you, then they attack you, then you lose. Mr Ghandi is now headed for the same unpersonhood that Jimmy Carter inhabits, that SIbel Edwards inhabits, that Walt and Mersheimer would inhabit.
http://deathby1000papercuts.blogspot.com/2008/01/gandhi-grandson-quits-institute-after.html
Now granted that the Ghandi name carries a lot more emotive and historical weight than most of the bloggers and commentors here still it should be a wake up call. There are some things which any criticizm of will bring swift and costly retribution.
The REAL story - the story that is being ignored or downplayed here and nearly everywhere else - is not that the Palestinians have broken through that wall into Egyptian territory. The real story is that the conditions of massive collective punishment that have been deliberately and calculatedly imposed on the imprisoned Palestinian population by Israel do not only amount to a grievous war crime.
The real news is that what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians in Ghaza fulfills three of the conditions for genocide as laid out in Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on Genocide. This, in particular fits perfectly: “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” The Israelis will, of course, deny that what they are doing is CALCULATED to bring about physical destruction to the group, but COME ON! That’s like the Israelis’ (and the Americans’ in Iraq) insistence that when they massively bomb city neighborhoods they are not targeting civilians.
PS It should be unnecessary to point out that the United States’ 12+ year siege on the Iraqis, generally referred to as “UN sanctions” - maintained and presided over for eight hideous years by Bill Clinton - also constituted “conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, and to a great extent accomplished that goal.
I agree with you, Israel has destroyed whatever good will accorded it by abusing the Palestinian civil population in much the same way the Jewish people are, or were mistreated.
What did Gaza become but a walled in concentration camp, a prison of sorts?
Neocon strategists aren’t known for their full and far reaching vision, the military violence is not doing the trick.
“… by abusing the Palestinian civil population in much the same way the Jewish people are, or were mistreated.”
This is what gets to me. Have the Israelis bought into the idea that being tougher and more brutal will make them appear so strong that no one will dare go after them?
That the state of Israel should engage in acts of collective punishment is way beyond ironic.
I don’t see how a two state solution will ever work either, not when one of the “states” in question is a collection of Bantustans that lack many of the necessities to form a viable state.
Given the reality on the ground, that Israel is not going anywhere, the only thing I could see working is the one state solution - an Israel/Palestine that is not based on religious identity but on a new, national one. But who knows if that could ever happen?
I’m not much of a nationalist, especially not these days, but I would like to see the United States realize that reflexive support of Israel is not in our national interest.
Israel has been working on a one-state solution all along - a single, Jewish state in all, or nearly all of historic Palestine, plus the Golan Heights. To see that all you need to do is look at a few maps.
Shirin, you don’t have to convince me. I’ve seen the “settlement” maps.
It will never work, IMO, but Israel isn’t going to go away either. A state that is not based on a religion is the only thing I can see with a chance of working, and they are a long way away from that happening.
If it is not a Jewish state, Israel will cease to exist. Being The Jewish State is Israel’s raison d’etre.
I’d like to think that some day, there will be a fusion of Israel/Palestine that will be a truly modern Middle Eastern state. But I guess the best that can be hoped for in the immediate future is the two state solution - how to make a Palestine that is viable is the question. Does anyone have an answer?
Israel is the impediment to a viable Palestinian state. Israel doesn’t want that, and Israel has calculatedly and systematically set about to make it impossible. In fact, that has been Israel’s unchanging goal since the 1947 partition resolution, and even before that.
As a starting point, the U.S. would have to 1) cut off all aid to Israel of any kind, 2) stop protecting Israel with its veto in the UN.
A worldwide campaign including a boycott and divestment campaigns similar to the anti-apartheid campaign against South Africa would also be very helpful. There IS a divestment campaign underway that has had some limited success, but it has a long way to go.
Susan, this “though and brutal” thing has been part of the Israeli ethos from the beginning.
The Zionists could never have established a European-based Jewish state in a country with a majority non-Jewish population without massive ethnic cleansing, and they always understood that. Theodor Herzl knew it, David Ben Gurion knew it, and systematically accomplished it. And the ethnic cleansing has not stopped. It is going on inside Israel today in various “quiet” forms, it has been ongoing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by both violent and “quiet” means since 1967. And in 1967 the Israelis systematically ethnically cleansed the Golan Heights of 95% of its Syrian population.
And then Israel puts on the face of innocence and whines to the world when its massive brutality is met by violent resistance.
We have to hear ad nauseum that “Israel has a right to defend itself”. Why is it that we never hear that Israel’s victims have a right to defend themselves?
When the Zionist were estatic in Europe about the possibility of their own homeland right after WWII, another non-Zionist Jew, Alfred Einstein said something to the effect, “I fear they will treat the Arabs as they were treated”
Prophetic wasn’t he?
Actually, by that time they had already been treating the Palestinians as they had been treated for quite some time. It was the Zionists who introduced terrorism to Palestine, not vice versa.
I think it was back in the twenties that Albert Einstein advocated a sort of Jewish migration to Palestine in which Jews and Arabs lived together as political and social equals within a single state. He was, of course, ignored as a naive physicist.
Well, that is, in a way, what the infamous Balfour Declaration was allowing for. In fact, the Zionist leaders were in the end quite disappointed in the wording of the declaration, despite the fact that they had had quite a bit of influence over it (while the Arabs were given virtually none, of course). But the Zionists were very good at taking what they could get and making believe to the world that it was something different.
And there WERE Zionists who had ideas similar to Einstein’s, but the problem was that the goal of those who had the power in the movement - and the original goal of Herzl - was not merely enjoying Palestine as the “Jewish Homeland”, but of “The Jewish State”, and the need to remove the non-Jewish indigenous population was a given. The only question was to do with the method of removal.
Shirin,
Who was that Knesset member who said that an elderly Palestinian woman reminded him of his grandmother who fled during the Holocaust?
He caught hell for saying it.
It was “Tommi” Lapid, a very nasty racist , by the way
Is there any comment here on this very creepy interview.
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8442&SectionName=After%20Words&PlayMedia=No
Why is Ignatius’ “hand on the reins” so conspicuously displayed?
It is this administration’s final go round. It cannot take on Iran for Israel because the USA doesn’t have the manpower and is probably not quite ready to just go nuclear on Iran. Just to damn many shiites in too damn many places to make going after Iran a profitable adventure. Logistically, ONE supply line and it runs through Shiite country, one port and it is in Shiite control. An army fights only as well as its supply train keeps it supplied.
Run out of POL, run out of water, run short on ammo and you are toast. That is why the navy is in the gulf in such force. The only ONLY tool the USA has in its military quiver vis a vis Iran is tomahawks, navy bombers, and nukes. A lot of destructive potential but nothing with which to hold or enforce.
The USA can make a wasteland but it cannot profit from that waste especially in the Iranian oil centers.
This administration cannot take on Hezbullah in Lebanon, tried that already and still waiting for the black eye to go down. It was enlightening to watch Israel try to fight this proxy war for the USA, and LOSE. Those two captured Israeli soldiers were the old “poisoned pawn” gambit from chess. In chess you use that gambit to take a higher value piece, in Lebanon that gambit resulted in the smacking down of the higher valued piece. Sometimes their is rough justice.
What’s left. Hamas. Small area, already blockaded on three sides and the sea. Weak. Gazah is the “low hanging fruit” with which to make a legacy pie.
Damn that Mubarak for allowing the Palestinians to actually buy stuff and breathe uncontaminated air. If the Bush legacy ends up as all failures, it will be Mubarak’s fault; for which I expect Hillary to reward him with another couple of billion dollars of tax theft monies from your pockets.
The big mistake the US (and Israel as well) has made is to assume that this “might makes right” set piece will hold forever. As long as the American press could focus on insane suicide bombers they could keep alive the narrative of poor little Israel without many people asking what was driving the Palestinians insane. And the “Christian Zionist” movement is strong enough in certain sectors of American society to keep support for Israel alive for religious reasons.
But I think these images of poor, starving people pouring across the Egyptian border to obtain the simple necessities of life, and the Egyptian soldiers standing aside for them out of mercy is really going to alter peoples’ perceptions of the whole situation. The American and Israeli governments had kept the people safely out of view. I don’t think these images can be erased.
And there’s another thing. The coming economic crash that we’re all bracing for. We all know that this bloated American military machine has almost reached the point of nonsustainability. And Israel has bet the wrong way in its approach to its neighbors. It has relied on US armaments and a policy of terror and force rather than on diplomacy and negotiation. If the US ceases to be a superpower capable of supplying it with an endless supply of armaments, Israel will find itself in an untenable situation.
“for religious reasons”
Which, in order, are:
1. The rebuilding of the Temple on Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Al Aqsa Mosque.
2. The destruction of Israel by Gog, popularly thought to be Russia (Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel), during the final moments of the Seven Years Of Tribulation.
3. The second comming of Christ, the final battle of Armageddon on the Plain of Jezreel with the forces of the Gog.
4. The Millennium Of Peace.
5. Last Judgement.
6. End Of Time.
No Israel, no Temple. No Temple, no Gog. These Christian believers are using Israel as a lamb staked out for Gog.
These nutters now are in possession of the launch codes.
Have a nice day.
Nur-al was the first mention of the reporter’s capital sentence that I had seen online.
This saga will tell us exactly how much footing we really have there.
IMO this is a bait and switch, the Unocal exec running Afghanistan will use this as a chance to prove how far ahead he brought the country. Then we cans end more money into the black hole of a deficit these wars have helped place us in.
Granted, the tax cut for billionaires was unsustainable and had us in a deficit already, this is just icing on the cake. Icing on the yellowcake?
The best way to enact change for Israel’s policy is to elevate its own critics who live in country.
Reward their calls for tolerance.
Like him?
While American Jewry Sleeps, Leading Israeli Calls for Sanctions and Denounces ‘Lobby’ Here
Amazing news from Israel. Richard Silverstein passes on the information that the novelist A.B. Yehoshua has called on the Bush Administration to remove our ambassador till the Israelis begin to dismantle the settlements. And, notes JTA, Yehoshua lashed out at the lobby here:
Yehoshua further described all West Bank settlements as illegal and described the “Jewish lobby” as having “become a powerful tool of influence on Israel’s behalf within the U.S. administration.”
JTA then notes that Yehoshua is a leftwinger who has “flouted convention” for decades. Trying to delegitimize him. He is actually mainstream.
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/01/while-american.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2246124,00.html
Teakwoodkite, ..”are there any other examples of a state not being a single plot of land with a continuous border?…” Answer: The United States of America i.e. Alaska & Hawaii + territories
Absolutely correct. Of course, reaching Alaska and Hawaii does not require passage through the territory of a country that is bent on preventing Americans from travelling between those parts of its territory. For example, Alaskan or Hawaiian students studying at universities in the mainland (and vice versa) are not refused passage between their homes and their universities such that they are denied the ability to continue their studies after returning home for the summer break, or a family emergency or other such event.
test
Another test
I will now assume that I have been banned from this blog because I have tried 3 times to post something other than test and I first got the duplicate message but now nothing, if this posts then I guess its adios.
HUH? Bill Keyes; something else tech wise is going on I think.
Bill, don’t be so paranoid.
Ok I’ll try it again I did three times and all I got was the Duplicate warning again. I did have three links in it could that be the problem????
Did you try another thread?
Probably got stuck in the spam filter the first time around.
Most definately could be the problem. Happened to me several days ago. If your post has more than two links, include some verbiage between them, otherwise the spam filter sends your post to devnul. Bloviation is rewarded with publication.
Hi
I`m new to this forum and I want to say hello to all the members!
hmm! thanks, usefull
Thank you so much, usefull +1
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