Click to Buy My Book
If you're interested in e-publishing, this is the book that tells you how to go about it:
everything from html to web sites to e-publishers and marketing, all discussed in simple,
non-technical language. Find out how easily you can become a part of what many have said
is the most revolutionary advance in publishing since Gutenberg. A Writer's Digest Book Club Main
Selection!
Saturday, April 27, 2002
TalG in Jerusalem links to an important JPost article by Barry Rubin that clarifies considerably the probable Israeli positions on many issues, including a reasonably sensible explanation of why Israeli leaders are tolerating the survival of Yasser Arafat, as well as good advice concerning what the world should not do regarding Arafat himself:
The worst thing the world can do is persuade Arafat that it is on his side, that terrorism will be overlooked, that Israeli retaliation will lead to a boycott of Israel, and that it will demand more Israeli concessions to get him to stop the violence.
For if they tell Arafat he is winning, why should he stop?
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AFP) — Two US trucks delivering food, toys and tents to the Jenin refugee camp were turned away by an angry crowd Thursday in protest at Washington's military aid to the Israeli occupation army, Jenin's parliamentarian told AFP.
I don't claim it's a one-size-fits-all theory, but evaluate this in light of my article on honor-shame cultures below.
Rice was asked if the administration is setting a double standard [for Israel], since Bush has repeatedly said the United States has a right to defend itself against terrorism.
She said Israel has the same right, but that its recent offensive against Palestinian militants could permanently damage hopes for peace.
As a confirmed rope-a-doper of late, this sort of talk coming from a clear and well-spoken source like Condee Rice, bothers me quite a lot. Why is this administration's answer to the question of Israel having the same right as the US to defend itself against terror always couched in the format, "Yes...but...?"
As for, "...permanently damage hopes for peace?" That's what some Euros spent weeks telling us about Afghanistan, and we rightly told them to go fuck themselves, then did what we had to do. Any way you cut this hunk of cheese, it's beginning to smell like rank hypocrisy to me.
Israel says it is only interested in the gunmen, and the others inside are free to come out at any time. And while some Palestinians have trickled out, most have stayed put, citing various reasons. Most priests and monks, totaling about 40, have said they want to stay to protect the church. Several nuns - the only women in the church - have also remained. One is a trained nurse who has patched up Palestinians shot by the Israelis. Four Palestinian policemen came out on Friday. However, more than 100 policemen are still inside, along with about 50 civilians, including 10 youths, who Abu Surour said are there to support fellow Palestinians.
This is certainly a different viewpoint, and from an Israeli media outlet, at that. Which leaves me wondering: Are there one hundred "gunmen" inside the church, or one hundred "policemen?"
Or, as many of us have believed all along, are the two one and the same thing?
Letter from Gotham's amazing memory (and her Nexus connection, which I lust after) cough up this NYT article from a 1983 version of NYT's Thomas Friedman named, ah, Thomas Friedman. Seems Yasser's staying calm and cool in Ramallah because this is all old hat to him.
Gary Farber delivers a rhetorical nuke to the feckless Numbwegians and their gag-inducing anti-Israel boycott. I was particularly fascinated to discover that Noway's supermarkets started labeling Israeli produce with special stickers. Jeebus, what a nice image! What label did they use, I wonder? A fucking yellow Star of David?
Charles Johnson speechwrites a rousing response to Amr Moussa’s filthy, disgusting statement that urges Muslims to enslave Jewish women. Now if only "Mr. E. Nough" was a genuine U.S. government spokesman....
CORRECTION: Charles didn't write the item, he just posted it. It was composed by one of his anonymous readers.
- Breaking out of the doldrums, the economy grew in the first quarter at a 5.8 percent annual rate, its strongest performance in more than two years and proof positive that last year's recession is history.
The headline of this article might as well be "Democratic Party Doomed In Fall Elections."
Probably why NYT stuffed it deep in the biz section.
Speaking to reporters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, Moussa said Arabs were feeling "humiliated, depressed and helpless" by the United States' policy in the Middle East but would not stand by and watch Washington let Israel stay "above international law". (Link courtesy Little Green Footballs).
Islamic Arabia is an honor-shame culture. In such cultures, the primary concern is what others believe about you. If others believe you are inferior, then you are humiliated and shamed, and you will hate not only those who perceive you in such a shameful way, but also the source of that perception.
This is the primary reason why the Israeli-Arab "problem" is insoluble at this point. Israel, by its very existence, is a humiliation to its neighbors, who, in all their hundreds of millions, lack the power to conquer a tiny state with seven million citizens. Worse, the quality of Israeli existence is a humiliation: Surrounded, constantly threatened with attack, vilified, dependent ultimately on the goodwill of the United States for survival, and yet Israel, at least in comparison to any other country in the Arab world, thrives. Its people live in freedom. It is incredibly productive. It is the only nation in the middle east to make the desert flower wholesale. Everything it accomplishes, every new height to which it rises, is a living rebuke to Arabia, which has done none of these things.
To a shame culture, Israel's mere existence is absolutely intolerable. The Palestinians are a side issue. The Arabs don't care about Palestine, and they never have. They have slaughtered far more Palestinians than Israel has in all its history. What the Palestinians are is the handiest club with which the Arab world can attack Israel. If there were no Palestinians at all, there would still be Arab hate for Israel, and Arab lust after her destruction. This would be true even if there were no Jews in Israel either.
And there is no obvious peaceful solution. One approach might be to raise the Arab world to Israel's levels of success. But the sort of requirements necessary for such a plan to succeed - mass education, liberalization, a more secular, meritocratic society - threaten both the religion and the regimes of the region. Not to mention that the impetus for such a rise would come from the outside, from the lands of the hated "Great Satans," and hence would be tainted on its face.
Turkey is often touted as being an example of a "successful" Islamic nation. Well, yes, compared to the rest of the Islamic world, it is successful. But it would be considered third world by most of the west, and its regimes is, by necessity, a dictatorship, always on guard against a resurgence of Islamofascist fundamentalism. Turkey is always one successful revolution away from becoming another Iran, and that revolution is always bubbling just beneath the surface. So Turkey is no solution, either, because its secular government is, all by itself, a humiliation to Islam.
And Israel itself is not the ultimate problem, because the existence of the west itself is an intolerably shameful fact of life to Islam. The mere presence of the United States is an unbearable humiliation to a honor-shame culture that perceives any more successful group as a rebuke not only to its person, but its religion and even its God. God promised Islam that all other nations and faiths would submit to it; the continued existence of any non-submissive states or religions is not just a humiliation, it is a humiliation in the eyes of God - and it cannot be borne.
If Israel were to vanish tomorrow, the next day the shamed, humiliated rage of Islam would focus on the United States. For the west to live in peace, the entire culture must be changed, and I suspect that this is not possible without first defeating it so thoroughly that even its religion is discredited. Shame cultures make war on anybody more successful than they. They cannot help it. They cannot be reasoned with, only defeated. That's why almost every festering "struggle" around the world partakes of this equation: SomeNation<-->Islamic Foe.
Honor-shame cultures are culturally incapable of renouncing war unless one of two things happens: Either every other state or culture submits to them ("Islam" means "submission"), or they are defeated so decisively the culture itself is destroyed.
Imperial Japan was an honor-shame culture - and history records how that turned out.
In a sign of security concerns, reporters accompanying Rumsfeld were forbidden to report in advance which parts of Afghanistan he would visit.
Hmm. Evidently the reporters actually consider this news, since they report it as such. Let's send a few newshawks out to various places in Afghanistan, with a pre-announcement of their itineraries posted wherever al-Qaeda and Taliban sympathizers are known to gather. Maybe then they'll appreciate that keeping the U.S. SecDef's locations an advance secret isn't news, it's standard operating procedure.
Palestinian gunmen disguised as soldiers slipped into an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Saturday and went from house to house, shooting residents in their bedrooms and killing four people, including a 5-year-old girl, the army said.
Some questions for the NYT writers who composed this lead graf, as well as the rest of the article:1. Are these men "gunmen," or "terrorists?"
2. What sort of "soldiers" were they disguised as? American? Saudi Arabian? Palestinian? Could they have been violating the Geneva Convention and been disguised as Israeli soldiers?
3. Did they "kill" their victims, or did they "murder" them?
4. Does this advance, or retard the notion that the IDF should immediately pull back from the West Bank?Just asking.
UPDATE: In the comments here, Gary Farber feels I'm foolish for seeing bias in this treatment, because:
Possibly one of our differences is that I read the Times as a New Yorker, a city where some Jewish residents barely realize that there are non-Jews there, the city with the largest Jewish population on the planet, and where there is scarcely a shortage of millions of Jews to call up the Times to complain about bias against Israel, recognizing that, of course, the Times is run by, yes, Jews.
In other words, no further or different explication is needed in this NYT article because NYC is full of Jewish readers who implicitly understand what is being said. Fine. Let's go to the same item, but with a treatment more to my liking. The paper just happens to be in Jerusalem, a city with even more Jews, even more closely attuned to the Palestinian troubles than the Jews in NYC - the Jerusalem Post:
Terrorists murder four in Adora
By Margot Dudkevitch, Jerusalem Post Internet Staff
At least two terrorists, wearing IDF uniforms including flak jackets, infiltrated the settlement of Adora near Hebron yesterday and murdered four Israelis, including a five-year-old girl.
That's how a newspaper owned by Jews and read by Jews writes the truth, Gary, and the number and location of your Jewish readers has nothing to do with it.
In the Democratic radio address aired Saturday, Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., said the party has an obligation to defend and strengthen Social Security.
In service of which goal the Donkeys have done nothing over the years but threaten the Social Security house of cards by recklessly raising benefits in order to bribe their various constituencies. Which they are setting about to do again with their proposals for a senior prescription benefit.
Earlier this week, Blair called on voters across Europe to reject the "narrow-minded racism and nationalism" of Le Pen, who faces a presidential election run-off against President Jacques Chirac on May 5 after coming second in the first round of polling last weekend.
Evidently Tony Blair considers nationalism to be as nasty as racism. Well, why wouldn't he? He's a Eurocrat, isn't he?
The Saudis view a commitment of American aid to the Palestinians as a way of restoring trust with the Arab world and demonstrating American commitment to a balanced peace strategy, one that shows "solidarity" with Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Another way might be for the state-run media in the Arab world to cease their 24-7 vilification of all things American, as well as their vicious, ceaseless, murderous anti-semitism.
ABC-TV's gossip show "Extra" reported that Clinton is a candidate to succeed retiring television host Bryant Gumbel as the co-anchor of "The Early Show" - a breakfast news program on rival network CBS-TV.
Great, just what I need. Another reason not to get out of bed in the morning.
Editor -- In light of the U.S. Senate's disappointing energy bill, as wisely described in "Foreign oil triumphs in Senate's energy bill" (April 25), the responsibility for securing a clean energy future falls on us. With year- round sun, wind and reservoirs of heat below the Earth's surface, California has tremendous potential for clean, stable energy -- and it's time we took advantage of that. The California Clean Energy Bill, SB532, would require power suppliers to get 20 percent of their power from clean, renewable sources by 2010. The state Assembly will decide whether to approve SB532 within weeks. Let us hope that they do. C. HARE CalPIRG Campaign Alameda
Yes, C. Hare, it's always a wonderful idea to have the state (any state) require private industry to do this or that to advance whatever your ideological or political hobby-horse might be. The state of California, for instance, has been so successful at overseeing energy production and distribution over the years.
If they are not already doing this, then they are unbelievably derelict in their duties. The United States constitution is not intended to be a suicide pact.
But James E. Akins, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said he saw no movement in the stated purpose of the meeting: advancing Mideast peace. "So far it harms the Mideast process. Absolutely nothing was moved forward," Akins said. "If Abdullah leaves there thinking there's no way of separating Bush from Sharon, things are going to be very bad when he gets back home."
Say, has anybody ever totted up how many former US Saudi diplomats have become bought and paid for Saudi propaganda pimps? It sure seems as if there are dozens of them.
Steven Den Beste and others have expressed disappointment in the results of the recent Catholic conclave in Rome that was supposed to deal with the pedophile scandals sweeping the American church. In a subsequent post, Steven thinks that transferring Cardinal Law to Rome is a dodge, and hopes that the Church doesn't think this can be used to prevent a deposition already scheduled for the Cardinal.
What Den Beste and others are mistaking is the relative position of the American legal system versus the international Church. The last thing the US needs right now is to be perceived as waging war on the Catholic Church, pedophilia or not. Many of the incidents that are crimes under US laws are not so under European laws. The age of male homosexual consent in Europe is generally no higher than sixteen, but in Spain, the age is 13, and in Italy, (home of the Catholic church) the age is 14. Further, homosexuality in general is not viewed with the horror that it often is in the U.S. Much of European attitudes toward any perception that the U.S. is attacking the Church on sexual issues will bring a Euro response along the lines of, "Oh, those crazy, uptight American prudes, always worrying about who is having sex with who. George Bush must really be under the control of those Radical Right Wing Christians we hear so much about."
Eventually this will all get thrashed out through the intermeshings of the various international legal agreements. But it won't be a slam-dunk for those who want to gut the Church and start over. And if the Church chooses to protect certain of its representatives by physically removing them from the purview of U.S. courts, it is by no means certain that those courts will be able to do much about it.
Henry Hanks at Croooow Blog is staying well on top of the Brockophiles and their extended refashioning of Brock's evidently irresistible tendency to lie. (Hmm. Given certain other aspects of David Brock's persona, perhaps "staying well on top of" is not the best phrase I could have picked...)
Chris Kanis at Spoons caught the President's post-Prince Abdullah press conference today and posts (among other things) this:
In terms of the resolution I haven't seen it, but I'm not surprised that Congress would want to... uh... express its strong support of Israel. This is clearly a Congress that believes that our relationship with Israel is unique and Israel is a democracy. I also hope and believe that Congress recognizes we've got interests in the area, as well, beyond Israel, that we've got... have good relationships with the Saudis and the Jordanians and the Egyptians, and our foreign policy is aimed to do that. I, People know exactly where I stand, and that's, that's very important in the realm of foreign policy.
Well, actually, mushmouth, given this sort of meaningless gibber, no, we don't know exactly where you stand. In fact, we can barely tell you're standing for anything at all. Why, exactly, do we have to have good relationships with Saudi Arabia, the Wahabbist treasury of terrorism and font of virulent, raging anti-Semitism, not to mention those other thugocracies you name? Hell, Egypt and Jordan don't even have any oil to use as an excuse.
I've noticed that some sites, whenever they use "blogosphere," the neologism I coined, have taken to linking it to the post where I first suggested the term. I'm guessing this is because of some snarky asides I made about other writers who use the term without ever mentioning its genesis.
Folks, I can't tell you how deeply appreciative I am of this courtesy, but it ain't necessary. Really. My ire was aimed at those people who do meta-blog type reports - extended histories or surveys of the blogosphere wherein they detail tons of background on various prominent (usually) blogs/bloggers, mention various landmarks, and throw around the name they use for all this without ever noting where the term came from. To me, this has always seemed sort of like a history book blathering on about the history of America without ever mentioning Americus Vespucci, who was the source of the name itself.
So anyway, once again, thank you all. But go ahead and use the word as freely as you would like, no links necessary. And for you historians of the blogosphere, I'd really appreciate it if, in your incisive discussions you could find space in one tiny sentence to rememeber where the term first came from. After all, isn't that a part of the history too?
Not heavy duty politics or international disasters, but good stuff all the same: Ben Stein is always worth a few moments of your time and attention. (Link courtesy LargeAmericanPenis.com).
There is a truly puke-making article up at the Letter from Gotham blog. Sample:
Muslim Brothers in Palestine! Do not have any mercy nor compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them?
Who puts out this crap? A guy named Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik. And who might he be? Well, he's "an official Wahabi cleric, who preaches in the principal mosque in Riyadh, and whose patron is Prince Abdul Aziz Ben Fahd, a member of Crown Prince Abdullah's delegation in Crawford, Texas."
Really? That must be some bond. I just hope it's not too personal. Prince Abdullah grew up being attended to by slaves - real slaves. Slavery wasn't abolished in the Kingdom until 1962.
Jacques Chirac's plans for a triumphant re-election as leader of a country united against Jean-Marie Le Pen are summed up in a slogan being heard at demonstrations across France: "Vote for the crook, not the fascist."
I said earlier that I thought the runoff election would be closer than most folks expect. This report tends to solidify my thinking in this direction. France was already faced with one of the lowest voter turnouts in years. With the left effectively having no dog in this hunt at all, many of them won't hold their noses and go vote for a man they've despised for decades, they'll stay home. And somehow, "Vote for me, I'm a crook but at least I'm not a Fascist" doesn't seem like a compelling battle cry to me, so some percentage of Chirac supporters may be turned off as well. On the other hand, true right-wingers are usually the ones willing to crawl across broken glass on their naked bellies to cast a vote for their champion. As for the size of the potential Le Pen vote, well, let's just say I think a lot of his potential voters are lying to the pollsters. I know what I would say if I were one of his fans, and a pollster put to me a question phrased to sound like, "Are you going to vote for that fascist nazi scumbag whom no decent Frenchmen would even think of voting for, Le Pen?" And on top of it all, France is troubled socially and economically. Traditionally in such troubles, Europeans have turned to the extreme left or right.
It's early days yet, and I'm certainly not predicting victory for Le Pen, but I don't think Chirac is going to get a landslide triumph either.
Israeli public support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has hit a new high for the year after his military offensive in the West Bank, a poll showed on Friday.
Cut through all the peacenik bullshit, and this will always emerge: Governments who take effective steps to protect the lives of their citizens will always be appreciated by those same citizens.
Officials said President Bush met with some of his top national security advisers at Camp David last weekend and discussed war options.
Which should give you some idea of just how far Crown Prince Abdullah got in his efforts to sway Bush from attacking Iraq when he visited five days later.
Editor -- Anna Badkhen, author of "All they are teaching gives peace no chance," seems to have missed the KQED special showing the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children. An Israeli boy reads from the Torah that God has given this land exclusively to the Israelis. As far as he has been taught, end of story. It is important to report that children on both sides are being taught that the other side had no rights. The school lessons must be changed for both children. Both children should be taught that both peoples have rights and that the escalating violence of their elders leads nowhere! WILLIAM GOODSON San Francisco
Yes, William Goodson, but that Israeli boy is not then taught as a consequence that the highest purpose to which he can aspire is to strap on a Semtex vest and go blow himself up amidst as many innocent Israeli children as possible. In its zeal to bring "balance" to its lettercol, the Chron has matched an intelligent, thoughtful letter (see below) with one written by a moral-equivalizing, agenda-driven idiot. And for all I know, the Chron actually believes the two viewpoints should have equal weight. Which leads me to wonder why they never print "balancing" letters to Jesse Jackson fans from "thoughtful" folks who believe David Duke has the right slant on things.
Editor -- I applaud you on the article, "All they are teaching gives peace no chance" (April 25), showing that part of the conflict here isn't just about land or homes, but about hatred that many Palestinians have toward the Jews for centuries now. Germany's schoolbooks prior to World War II taught children that Jews are like dirty mice that must be exterminated. Not much later, 6 million Jews are murdered. History is obviously repeating itself and we can't just sit back and watch it happen again. People must know that peace agreements will only go so far. These Palestinian children will grow to hate and kill not even knowing why. I believe the most crucial part of peace in the Middle East is promise and proof that Palestinians will treat Jews the same way as they want to be treated. I grew up in Israel and was never taught to hate, not by my family and not in school. ANAT LEVIEL San Francisco
Anat Leviel says, "I grew up in Israel and was never taught to hate, not by my family and not in school." And that pretty much says it all about what is crucial in the difference between the two societies.
But scholars and critics also became skeptical. Bellesiles has been accused of ideological bias, selective scholarship and misleading statements. Some corrections already have been made in the paperback edition, and Bellesiles' editor at Knopf, Jane Garrett, has said that ``other corrections will be made in subsequent printings.''
This is how the NYT characterizes Michael Bellesiles's wholesale fabrications. Well, at least they did finally cop to giving the book a good review.
Argentina can fiddle with its peso rate, change finance ministers like dirty socks, and offer all the other cosmetic obfuscations it can dream up. But nothing will improve until the country and its citizens face up to the hard, bitter core of their problem:
...some private economists ridiculed the deal with the governors and possible plans to fiddle with the exchange rate, saying neither dealt with what almost all agree is Argentina's main problem: decades of runaway public spending.
Peronism, the ideology which has controlled Argentina for decades, is often called the "fascism of the left."It glorifies a military state, but it uses socialistic methods to keep the urban and rural lower classes pacified. (It helps to recall that the"Nazi Party" was the "National Socialist German Workers's Party.") As an ideology, it is as bankrupt as Communism or pure Fascism, and bears more than passing resemblance to both.
Until the doctrine that the state can provide everything for its citizens, or even a substantial part of them, (no matter what the doctrine is called) vanishes from Argentina, that poor, long-suffering country will never know a truly stable economy. But the lesson to be learned here is that the largest part of that suffering is self-inflicted, by classes of people who believe it is possible to obtain something for nothing indefinitely.
The president drove the crown prince around his property for a half-hour after their private talk. "He's a man who's got a farm, and he understands the land. And I really took great delight in showing him the trees and my favorite spots," Bush said. "And we saw a wild turkey, which was good."
Answer: The most substantial and meaningful statement to come out of the "summit" between President George Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
Only, Black knows a bit about publishing, and he's richer. But Riordan's pretty rich himself and has rich friends, such as Rupert Murdoch; this digit's got to wonder if Murdoch has anything to do with his reported interest in an Aussie as managing editor of his Terrible Examiner.
Which sheds a bit of light on Ozzie Tim Blair's mysterious last minute trip to Los Angeles, don't you think? (I'd link to the cryptic note in Tim's blog, but &^%&^% Blogspot is apparently down again).
Man, is this new LA rag going to be hot shit, or what?
Everybody in the blogosphere will be linking to this at Megan McArdle's Live From the WTC, and if they aren't, they damned well should be. Go read it. Bring a hanky.
Al-Jubeir said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon must withdraw Israeli troops from Palestinian cities and towns; end the sieges of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at Ramallah and around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; and submit to a swift U.N. fact-finding mission in Jenin.
Let's try to put this as clearly as possible: in the larger scheme of things, the Israel/Palestine conflict only matters if it bears on the war on terror. Otherwise it is a sideshow, a distraction, no matter how many suicide bombers go boom, or how many IDF tanks roll over houses.
f the conflict does begin to bear on the war on terror - for instance, if Palestinian "martyrs" begin to attack US targets - than we will either destroy the remainder of the Palestinian infrastructure ourselves, or permit the IDF to do it in our stead.
Otherwise, Saudi Arabia has no leverage on the US. They have to sell their oil. Without the cash flow, their regime will collapse. Their military leverage is rapidly vanishing. The US has nearly finished relocating critical systems and bases to Qatar and elsewhere. Saudi can make threatening moves at Israel, by mobilizing their military at the border, but if they actually attack Israel, either we will destroy them, or (likelier) we will permit the IDF to do it in our stead.
Here is a truth: We will destroy Saddam Hussein, and we will do it whether it takes a single assassin's bullet, or a quarter million man army and the full use of our overwhelming air superiority. If Saddam resists by using gas or other WMDs, we will destroy him in place, even if it takes nukes to get the job done.
This will come to pass whether Saudi Arabia likes it or supports it; whether Europe likes it or supports it; whether the Arab street likes or supports it; whether the Arab governments remain in the (nearly non-existent) anti-terror coalition; whether China or North Korea or Cuba likes it or supports it; whether the American peacenik left likes it or supports it.
In short, this much, at least, will happen. Post-Saddam, the picture is hazier. I can make a good guess at the goals. If George Bush could wave a magic wand, tomorrow the middle east would be missing the brutal regimes running Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya. I think that most of these are in the Bush sights at some point down the road. I think that most of this will come to pass, one way or another, by the time Bush leaves office.
Prediction: the "summit" in Texas between the President and the Prince will come to nothing. There will be some announcements of vaguely worded agreements in principle, or somesuch, but they won't mean anything. The Saudi royal family is cooked. The only question is how soon they come to the boil - and meetings like this won't change that one bit. George Bush understands that Saudi is as much an enemy of the United States as is Iraq or Syria or Iran. He'll make as much use of them as he can, while depending on them for absolutely nothing. And when the time comes, the axe already sharpened will fall on seventy years of Saud rule.
In the background, very quietly, very steadily, the beat goes on:
The U.S. military is moving Air Force B-52 bombers on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, shown here, to Qatar, on the Persian Gulf.
The most important part of this article is the steps the United States has taken to render dependence on Saudi facilities obsolete. Expect no Bush concessions to Prince Abdullah when His Bloatedness visits Texas shortly. One more indication that the Saudi royal family's days are numbered, one way or another. (Link courtesy USS Clueless).
Sarge Stryker pretty much trashes an article from Jim Dunnigan's Strategy Page. (Link to Sarge courtesy VodkaPundit). Now, I have a lot of respect for Sarge's opinions in general, but here I think he goes overboard in depending on his (implied) "real-world" knowledge versus what he thinks is "book knowledge."
Sarge, go read Dunnigan's biography. Much as I respect you, compared to him, both in real-world and theoretical (and practical) experience, you're just a, well, a Sarge. I've got a whole shelf of Dunnigan's work. His How to Make War is an absolute classic of practical warfare.
Dunnigan, for instance, was dead-on right in his predictions about the rapidity and thoroughness with which American power would destroy Iraq in Desert Storm, unlike just about every other so-called "expert." Which is why I have to say I'd give considerably more credence to any military-political analysis appearing on Dunnigan's site than I would yours. Sorry.
"We don't know where he is and it's outrageous," said Abdeen Jabara, one of the sheik's lawyers. "It's like we're in South America. People can really disappear here."
Much as I hate to say it, as a libertarian, I agree. We're not some freaking banana republic. People in our jails don't disappear. Or they shouldn't.
I wish I could say "Damned Ashcroft," but he takes his orders from the top. So start acting like an American president, please, George Bush.
Sorry. Did anybody pay any attention to this one? Did anybody even notice? These "alerts" are turning into the car-alarm sirens of the war on terrorism. Whoop, whoop, whoop.
Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, head of the military's planning branch, told The Associated Press that in the West Bank "almost the entire leadership" of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, had been killed or arrested. But Eiland said they could rebuild, and the relative lull in attacks "might not last years or even months."
Gosh, it's terrible how Bush's "wobbliness" permitted Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians to triumph over Israel. "Even months" doesn't sound so good, but it's still better than what Israel faced before. And it gives plenty of breathing room to the Bush administration for their upcoming efforts against Iraq, the results of which will change everything in the middle east, and make Arafat's future position entirely untenable.
Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is expected to tell President Bush in stark terms at their meeting on Thursday that the strategic relationship between their two countries will be threatened if Mr. Bush does not moderate his support for Israel's military policies, a person familiar with the Saudi's thinking said today. In a bleak assessment, he said there was talk within the Saudi royal family and in Arab capitals of using the "oil weapon" against the United States, and demanding that the United States leave strategic military bases in the region.
The Saudi royals are probably doomed anyway, but if this report is true, Abdullah will only be planting the seal on his fate. It hasn't quite sunk in yet in the Arabian middle east that the Bush administration won't buckle to pressure - especially from those who finance and otherwise support terrorism. Ask Yasser Arafat - if his cell phone batteries haven't run down today.
With a landmark state study on slave-era insurance policies about to be released, Gov. Gray Davis addressed the issue of possible reparations to California minorities yesterday, saying, "Clearly, we want to right any wrongs and do justice to people who were taken advantage of." Davis made the comments while appearing with the Rev. Jesse Jackson at the Digital Connections Conference, a small business gathering organized by Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in San Jose.
Two observations: first, the state is facing a 20 billion dollar shortfall, though such things have never bothered legendary spender of Other People's Money Davis when he's playing Bribing for Votes; and, second, Jesse Jackson.
Editor -- Howard Roth's April 24 letter decrying the rise of anti-Semitism is a clear indication of one of the difficulties in bringing peace to the Middle East. He equates Arab anger at Jews with Nazism, and sees a rising tide of world anti-Semitism. Please, Mr. Roth, take off your blinders and try to imagine what it feels like to be an Arab in Europe or America today. The traditional anti-Semites are making a comeback on an anti-Arab platform. Jean-Marie Le Pen supports Israel and appealed to French Jews. The real anti- Semites in America, the Christian right, support Israel, 8 to 1. The struggle of the Palestinian people is not about hatred for Jews. It is about justice -- about ending a military occupation, achieving a homeland and preserving a national identity. Doesn't Mr. Roth ever wonder why both here and in Europe it is the liberals, who oppose anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, that support the Palestinian's cry for freedom? This fight isn't about Arabs or Jews. It's about justice. MATTHEW B. HALLINAN Berkeley
Gosh, Matthew B. Hallinan, scion of a noted San Francisco political family which includes the current SF prosecutor, doesn't seem to think there's a "rising tide of anti-semitism" in the world. I'm not even going to bother citing incidents and facts that render this notion ludicrous, despite what he probably believes is the killer evidence that "the Christian right" (who are anti-semites) supports Israel. (Um, and how does that work, anyway? I guess in Berkeley, believing two impossible things before breakfast every day is SOP). I'm simply going to say that anybody who has a functioning brain connected to working eyes and ears, and who doesn't live behind the iron bong-wall surrounding the Berkeley boobocrats, knows that Mr. Hallinan's opinions here are idiotic. So I expect he'll be running for political office shortly.
Diane E. of Letter from Gotham offers a contrapuntal take on the notion that Iran is ripe for revolution. I'm not quite sure I agree, but her reasoning is well worth a look. For another view, try Jim Dunnigan's Strategy Page.
But if European governments become more self-assertive — and, even more importantly, if they start to adopt more business-friendly economic policies while Washington runs up immense foreign debts to finance its military build-up — America will face much tougher competition, on the cultural and the economic front. That is where real global leadership will be decided.
More convoluted wishful thinking from yet another Brit bed-wetter.
NEW YORK - As a team of three Israeli experts arrives in New York today to hash out the details of a United Nations fact-finding team to be dispatched to Jenin, Israeli officials pledged to press Secretary-General Kofi Annan to act against the establishment of terrorist centers in Palestinian refugee camps.
"I think this should be the first point to be looked at - how it came about that supposedly civilian refugee camps have become infrastructures of terror," said Deputy Ambassador to the UN Aaron Jacob. He noted that 23 suicide bombers from Jenin exploded themselves among Israeli civilians before the IDF took action against the camp.
It's a good idea, but the UN will handle it easily. "Terror, you say? But there are no terrorists among the Palestinians. Only struggling resistance fighters. You, Israel, are the only "terrorists" we see."
InstaGlenn links to a Melissa Seckora blog at NRO's Corner to the effect that noted liar Michael Bellesiles's Bancroft Prize may be revoked:
Roger Lane, a winner of Columbia University's coveted Bancroft Prize tells Gun Owners of America, that those individuals who awarded Bellesiles the 2001 Bancroft Prize for his controversial book Arming America, are "thinking about revoking it."
Fair enough. But Lane, who gave Bellesiles's falsehood-laced book, Arming America a favorable review, goes on to say:
that he is "mad at that guy. He suckered me. It is entirely clear to me that he's made up a lot of these records. He's betrayed us. He's betrayed the cause."
Betrayed us? Betrayed the cause? Are historians supposed to have "causes," perhaps causes like gun control? And if you screw up in some way, so that the cause is not advanced, are you then a traitor?
These are the people who are writing today's account for tomorrow's students and the future's understanding? Silly me, I thought they were supposed to be objective, to be truth-seekers, not advancers of causes. I wonder what other "causes" "us" historians are pushing?
Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal links to a surprising editorial from an unlikely source:
HAS EUROPE forgotten the lesson of the Holocaust so soon -- or did it never learn it?
Either anti-Semitism or anti-Israeli sentiment has emerged at various strata of European society -- from the intellectual elite that wants to take back Shimon Peres' Nobel Prize, to the racist hooligans who burn synagogues, to the French reactionaries who voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The Holocaust is the 800 pound invisible gorilla in the middle of the room. Much as Europeans would like to pretend it doesn't exist, it is the heart and core to understanding modern Israel and its actions. That Europe can so easily "forget" what happened in the camps sixty years ago, or pretend that it has no relevance today, it both shameful and despicable. The answer to the question, I'm afraid, is that yes, Europe learned a lesson of the Holocaust - it's just not the one everybody thinks it is. It learned that many, many of the guilty can escape all responsibilty for genocide.
John McWhorter makes an excellent point about what would have been true racism in Cornel West's case: If President Summers had not called him to account for his lousy record of scholarship simply because he was black.
I should make Randall Parker an official stringer for the gigantic DailyPundit news cartel - he brings in so many juicy links like this one:
Three Armenian monks, who had been held hostage by the Palestinian gunmen inside the Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, managed to flee the church area via a side gate yesterday morning. They immediately thanked the soldiers for rescuing them. They told army officers the gunmen had stolen gold and other property, including crucifixes and prayer books, and had caused damage. The three elderly monks were assisted by soldiers. One of them held a white cloth banner with the words "Please help." One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, later told reporters: "They stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything... they stole our prayer books and four crosses... they didn't leave anything. Thank you for your help, we will never forget it."
For some odd reason, this isn't being heavily reported at NYT, "The Paper of Record," which buried a three sentence report in the fourteenth and fifteenth graf of this article, while WaPo mentions it in passing in the eighteenth graf of this story.
What ever happened to those glorious days of front page headline news about the brutal IDF attacking innocent Palestinians who were only seeking shelter inside the Church of the Nativity, or about the priests who stayed with them of their own free will? I guess the tale of these three escaped clerical hostages and their account of the brutality of their Palestinian terrorist captors is the wrong kind of stuff for headline news these days.
Remember when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy characterized Washington, D.C. as a town possessing "northern charm and southern efficiency?" Well, this delegation of former presidents would possess the bravery and strength of Jimmy Carter, the honesty of Bill Clinton, and the predictive and political skills of George Bush.
Apparently, readers of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution think so; in an unscientific, on-line poll, nearly one-half (48 percent) of those responding agreed with McKinney's call for a probe. They reached this conclusion despite an onslaught of anti-McKinney rhetoric.
One of the comments on my site disputes my contention that Congressloon "Ninny" McKinney won't be re-elected by saying more or less that her constituents are as crazy as she is. I found that hard to believe, but this poll indicates I may be wrong.
Folks, you get the government you deserve. Is this sort of idiocy what you really want?
UPDATE: Oops! I missed that part about an "unscientific online poll." You mean like the late, unlamented CAIR poll? Oddly enough, the poll turns out to be more like the CAIR poll than you might imagine:
Though over 23,000 Atlanta Journal-Consitution readers had responded by midafternoon, the poll has been mysteriously withdrawn from the paper's web site. But the web site FreeRepublic.com tracked results throughout the morning, with posters there encouraging visitors to vote against McKinney.
The Freepers can swing a load of online votes when they put their minds to it. Without them, th
![[Powered by
Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
