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Saturday, May 11, 2002
Alex Bensky comments on one of my posts about a letter from a gentlemen representing Peace Now:
Clearly, Mr. Quick, you've never met anyone associated with Peace Now. When you point to Yasser Arafat's entire history, not to mention the IDF documents showing his deep complicity with terrorism, they'll haul out some statement by some Palestinian somewhere, or point to a youth camp where Palestinian and Israeli childred can get through a couple of week without braining each other, and proudly tell you about the hope for peace.
My impression is that most are more concerned with maintain leftist credentials than anything else. Few will ever say, as Lezlek Kolakowski did in another context, "If that is left then hell, no, I am not left."
Some of them are simply saps. These are the sort of people who brandish the idea of multiculturalism but cannot deal with the idea that people from another culture might think differently and hold different ideals and values. Or they excuse whatever is different.
As an example, there is or used to be a group called New Jewish Agenda. Some years back they marched in the Palestine Day parade in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a large Arab population. Their signs called for a two-state solution.
I asked the local leader if they had asked in return that some Palestinians march in the Salute to Israel Day parade holding similar signs. He looked at me as if I were bonkers. And of course, if I'd posed the question seriously, I would have been.
Not the least of their sins is that, like the loony rabbis of the Neturai Karta sect, they allow the Arabs to drag them out, point to them, and say, "Here are Jews who object to Israel's depradations against an innocent population."
Screw them all.
Orwell may have repudiated his statement about pacifists being "objectively pro-Fascist," but he did say that, "The important thing is to discover WHICH individuals are honest and which are not..." And I can't help but feel that "pro-peace" groups who allow themselves to be used to further the credibility of those who favor machine-gunning children in their beds have passed far beyond the realm of honesty. I expect that even the post-repudiation Orwell would agree with me.
The start of the match at the Stade de France in Paris had to be delayed by about 20 minutes after Mr Chirac demanded that the booing stop and that the French Football Federation apologise to the nation.
As reader Randall Parker notes via email, how simplisme of him.
Gary Farber says that Ha'aretz "represents the best sense on Israel/Palestine..." Sez Gary. I think Ha'aretz is a miserable fantasy-ridden rag that has helped to paint Israel into the Oslo-corner that it is now desperately fighting its way out of, like a trapped animal gnawing off a limb in a vise. He also charges those of us who quote the JPost as incapable of "realizing or caring that they're generally quoting a often extremist, biased, right-wing perspective, as if, somehow, the current JP spoke for Israel, and held the position of authority it did decades ago..."
Andrew Sullivan reports that he's been blackballed at the New York Times Magazine by recently promoted editor and lefty ideological warrior Howell Raines, who finds himself "uncomfortable" with Sullivan's presence in the hallowed, scrupulously unbiased journalistic halls of "All The News That's Fit To Print."
Sure. All the news (and analysis) that fits Rainses's ideological bent, he prints. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboutit. It's the Old Gray Rag's call, of course. But please - in the future, spare me your pathetic bleats about NYT's objectivity. Like almost every other media outlet, they're only objective when their pet agendas aren't threatened. Beyond that, watch out. As Sullivan has unfortunately discovered, NYT's pretence of objectivity is only that - a pretense.
At least one opinion writer at the Harvard Crimson thinks recently departed (don't let the door hit you in the butt, Professor...) Cornel West is a "daffy, dubious academic."
The Smoking Gun has a complete archive on the Mailbox Bomber, Luke Helder. Here is a link to a six page typewritten "manifesto" Helder wrote. Short answer: Helder was no right-wing anti-government extremist. He was a left-wing anti-government nutball. Statements like this one:
"As long as greed persists, people will desire to capitalize, in turn forcing people to slave away..."
too obviously come from the Noam Chomsky/Ted Rall/Michael Moore ideological playbook to hold much interest for the elite media. As a consequence, you'll hear very little about Helder or his ideologies in the mainstream press from here on out.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said last Tuesday that the world's Muslims had only themselves to blame for the poverty, misery and violence afflicting much of the Islamic world. The veteran leader made his provocative comments in a speech to religious affairs ministers meeting for the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which groups 57 Muslim countries.
Only in the Muslim world (or the precincts of certain "peace-now", America-hating bliss-ninnies) would this be considered "provocative."
That said, a deeper reading of the article finds this:
Mahathir, who is a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause despite his comments last month, bemoaned the Muslim community's weak response to Israel's attack on the West Bank, and in particular the refugee camp at Jenin.
"It is shameful... that all we Muslims can do when the Israelis massacred the Palestinians in Jenin and elsewhere is to appeal to others for pity and help," he said.
In other words, the only truly deplorable consequence of Islamic weakness is that Islam cannot wreak devastation and genocide upon Israel for non-existent massacres. What would this medieval artifact of a religion do without Israel to scapegoat? If Israel didn't exist, what shining symbol would they blame and seek to destroy next?
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher dismissed U.S. criticism of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as yet another "slip of the tongue." "Any bid to undermine Mr. Arafat's position by those who claim to represent a democratic state... proves the latter do not believe in peoples' right to choose their leaders, nor in the principles of international law," Maher said. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Tuesday was to present to George W. Bush a draft of an Israeli peace plan that excludes Arafat. When asked to react to the latest U.S. comments about Arafat, Maher said: "It's better to consider them as a slip of the tongue, which have added to others." Last Monday Bush commented on the Palestinian Authority chairman, saying: "He has disappointed me. He must lead. He must show the world that he believes in peace."
I'll consider paying some attention to the rantings of a minion of one brutal, thuggish Arab tyranny about President Bush's remarks about a non-democratically elected tyrant of another brutal, thuggish, Arab terror regime when either one of them change their "democratically selected" leaders more often than once a generation, or by means other than death from either old age or assassination.
THE Republican-friendly Bloomberg administration tried to block former President Bill Clinton from participating in the high-profile kickoff of the Tribeca Film Festival at City Hall this week.
What an odd way to phrase it. Bloomberg is a Republican. Why would his administration be anything other than "Republican-friendly?"
Oops, he did it again. Andrew Cuomo found himself back in hot water yesterday over something he said, this time with Latino lawmakers after he called on state Health Commissioner Antonia Novello to resign. Cuomo asked Novello to step down after reports about patient mistreatment at adult homes. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn), New York's lone Hispanic congresswoman, urged Cuomo to apologize to Novello, the state's top Latina official, and retract his demand. "[It's] very disappointing to me that Mr. Cuomo would seize on such an opportunity [to] needlessly attack one of the most accomplished women of color," Velazquez said yesterday. Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo (D-Bronx) said she was leaning toward backing Cuomo's Republican rival, Gov. Pataki. "As a Puerto Rican woman, how can I ask my constituents to vote for a candidate who is denigrating us?" asked Arroyo. The new barrage of criticism comes mere weeks after Cuomo, former U.S. housing secretary, took a beating for saying former Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the true hero of Sept. 11, leaving Pataki "holding the leader's coat."
I don't have much use for Mario Cuomo's favorite son, but at least here I don't see a problem. The only reason his detractors offer for excoriating his call for the "state's top Latina official" to resign over lousy performance is that she's, well, Latina. Yeah, and? Does her ethnicity somehow make her impervious to the consequences of lousy performance?
As for Cuomo's supposed "gaffe" in noting that Giulani was the true NY hero of 9/11, does anybody of any political stripe doubt that is a dead-accurate statement? I don't know about you, but Pataki isn't the guy who springs immediately to my mind when I think about that terrible first week in NYC following the WTC attacks.
The families of 11 immigrants who died illegally crossing into Arizona from Mexico have filed a $41 million claim against two federal agencies, saying the government's refusal to put water out in the desert contributed to the migrants' deaths. The action filed against the Department of Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asks for $3.75 million for each of the deceased, whose bodies were found last year in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge between Tucson and Yuma.
I found this listed in the usage notes for chutzpah in the OED.
Editor -- Your May 9 editorial about the terrorist attack in Rishon Lezion was right on the money. Only the terrorists win if Israeli Prime Ariel Minister Sharon overreacts to this bombing, as horrible and inexcusable as it was. It is imperative for him to remember that Israel's long-term security can only be guaranteed through a negotiated peace. His responses should be geared toward hastening a return to peace talks, not making them less likely to occur. LEWIS ROTH Assistant executive director Americans for Peace Now Washington, D.C.
No, Lewis Roth, you despicable, moral-equivocalizing bliss-ninny, the terrorists win if they achieve the goals they desire by machine-gunning five year old girls sleeping in their beds, or by blowing up innocent citizens peacefully shooting pool.
In fact, Israel's long-term security probably cannot be guaranteed in peacetime; Arab demographics and birth rates pretty much guarantee that. And why should terrorists whose most ardent wish is the utter destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew in it hasten to return to peace talks, when they are getting everything they want from committing atrocious acts of terror?
"Ordinary, peace-loving Germans" were unable to negotiate a peace until we had killed, destroyed, or captured their evil leadership and the apparatus of tyranny and terror they administered. Your blind, unquestioning faith in a "peace" the Palestinian leaders have no desire for is fascinating, in the same way all displays of profound stupidity are fascinating. Folks slow down to gawk at train wrecks, and your position is the moral equivalent of same.
You claim you only desire "peace." The Palestinians want that too - the peace of the grave for Israel and Jews. But be careful what you wish for. Only Israel can really supply that ghastly peace - but if they did so, it would be the Palestinians themselves who experienced it.
John Hiler at Corante's Microcontent News (the Center for All Things Blog) is compiling a Weblog Glossary. Daily Pundit is pleased to discover that the first entry in this estimable work is "blogosphere," with full credit for the coinage assigned to, well, to DailyPundit.
Steven Den Beste asks a rather important question: What's more critical to you? The preservation of an obscure species of Mojave desert turtle, or of the lives of American soldiers in battle?
As far as I'm concerned, if you have to think more than a couple of seconds about this, I'd like to run you through some basic training - in Iraq.
The same sort of myth in center left circles that names NYT as "completely unbiased" is at work in the preference of those same center left circles for the Israel reportage of the newspaper Haaretz. Even some Haaretz writers(unsurprisingly) subscribe to the notion, as Gary Farber illustrates in a post at Amygdala:
THE BEST SENSE ON ISRAEL/PALESTINE almost always comes from Haaretz; here from Amira Hass.
The most annoying thing about reading blog comments on the situation is seeing either rightwing bloggers quoting the Jerusalem Post without either realizing or caring that they're generally quoting a often extremist, biased, right-wing perspective, as if, somehow, the current JP spoke for Israel, and held the position of authority it did decades ago, before being bought by Conrad Black
Uh huh. Why does this sound rather like the hysterical position I hear from NYT/CNN warriors who excoriate the NY Post or FoxNews because they are owned by Rupert Murdoch?
The fact is that all media is biased. Haaretz even admits that it is:
Ha'aretz is an independent daily newspaper with a broadly liberal outlook both on domestic issues and on international affairs..
I admire and respect Haaretz for its admission of bias. I wish that some of their lockstep "true-believers" could recognize that this liberal bias exists as well - and that a "broadly liberal" viewpoint is no automatic guarantee of superior reporting over, say, a newspaper owned by Conrad Black. In fact, ideological congeniality is no guarantee of anything except ideological congeniality - no matter which side it represents. It might help if certain Haaretz writers - like Amira Hass - or Haaretz readers (you know who you are) kept that in mind as they read their preferred paper's "About us" pages.
Just added Privateer's Savage Warblog to the permalinks. Lots of reasons to take a look at this Michael Levy operation. Here's one:
I've decided to call them "appeasement activists," because that's what they are. They support acts of terror and they think the rest of us should surrender.
Privateer tends to offer more pics than usual, but they are generally interesting, uncommon, and to the point. If you don't mind the somewhat longer site-loading times, the photos really do add a useful extra dimension.
The BBC's website includes a brief profile of the man accused of Fortuyn's killing. The alleged murderer is described as a "passionate" animal rights activist. The use of that vaguely benign-sounding adjective is a pretty good example of the values of the EU's center-left establishment. Fortuyn is routinely described as an "extremist", but the man who gunned him down is, however, merely "passionate".
Slate magazine founder and lifelong bachelor Michael Kinsley yesterday confirmed that he plans "in a couple of weeks" to marry Patty Stonesifer, the 46-year-old co-chairman of the $24 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I think this is just great. DailyPundit sends his best wishes to you and Ms. Stonesifer, Mike. May you have only happy days together, and may you have a hell of a lot of them.
How do the following two sentences from this article fit together, exactly? First, this:
...The student, Luke Helder, was ordered held without bond on the first of many expected charges that could send him to prison for life for allegedly blowing up mailboxes across the Midwest.
And then this:
Luke Helder, who was arrested Tuesday near Reno after a high-speed car chase, quickly confessed to making and planting the explosive devices, the FBI said Wednesday in court documents. The FBI has said Helder confessed to making a total of 24 pipe bombs out of tape, paper clips and Christmas tree bulbs and placing 18 of them in mailboxes in five states...
The American Heritage® Dictionary notes:
An alleged incident is an event that is said to have taken place but has not yet been verified. In their zeal to protect the rights of the accused, newspapers and law enforcement officials sometimes misuse alleged. A man arrested for murder may be only an alleged murderer, for example, but he is a real, not an alleged, suspect in that his status as a suspect is not in doubt. Similarly, if the money from a safe is known to have been stolen and not merely mislaid, then we may safely speak of a theft without having to qualify our description with alleged.
In other words, there's nothing "alleged" about Helder's having blown up those mailboxes. He's admitted to doing it.
I know. Just a nit. But it does bother me. How about you?
A random Arab News survey of Saudi students studying at various levels in the education system has revealed that most of them do not know the number of planets in our solar system, or their names. The majority also admitted they were unaware of the existence of any heavenly bodies, except the moon and the sun. The vast majority, moreover, have never received any education on the existence of pre-historic creatures; nor have they received any lessons on computer science or the Internet, meaning they were left to learn it by trial and error.
Reader Randall Parker forwards this interesting analysis of the Saudi educational system. If this is a function of the influence of Islamic Wahhabism on the Saudi schools, Muslim fundamentalism is in the process of digging its own grave in the modern world.
Unfortunately, those are real kids they're burying in those theocratic intellectual cemetaries. And sadly, given Islamic and Arab indifference to the real-life "martyrdom" of their own children, I don't think they give a damn.
Differences over sex education and the plight of Palestinian children are holding up negotiations at a special United Nations session on children.
....Washington is also opposed to a resolution blaming Israel for the situation of the Palestinian children.
Yeah. As if it's Israel's fault that Palestinian schools, culture, and textbooks glorify jihad and "martyrdom," even for their own children.
Unless the United Nations can in some fashion exert influence on the great powers, it risks slipping into irrelevancy. But stories like this have the effect of convincing the American public that the UN has become nothing more than a rigged and biased forum where those who hate modernity, the west, and democracies gather to vent their spleen. It is this perception that has helped to make so-called American "unilateralism" on issues like the Kyoto Treaty or the International Court quite popular on the "American street."
Unrealistic or not, when the Associated Press ran a dispatch about the glut of business in Perth, there was trouble at home. The daily newspaper in Bremerton, Wash., the home port of the USS John C. Stennis, ran the item and the roof fell in on the Sun, and its editor, Scott Ware. The most obtuse reader had only to read between the lines of the kind of apology known in the trade as "the full grovel" to reckon the outrage of the moms of Bremerton, who are absolutely certain their sons, who they know spent their time in Perth at the library and in the bookstores, have been cruelly libeled. "We at the Sun used poor judgment in deciding to run the Associated Press story about Navy sailors and exhausted prostitutes in Australia," wrote Mr. Ware for his newspaper. "Let us not give any further life to the story by going into the details.
But what's the problem? It's nothing more than our boys holding the American flagpole high in the land of Oz. What do you expect, when the members of our navy find themselves in foreign parts? There's bound to be a bit of friction when two nations separated by a common tongue enjoy relations with each other. Surely nothing to cause hard feelings, and definitely nothing anybody need get aroused over.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Sukup on Wednesday began running radio ads linking opponent Doug Gross to controversial hog producer A.J. "Jack" DeCoster. "Jack DeCoster's way of running big hog lots threatens our small towns and groundwater," the Sukup ad states. "So who helped bring Jack DeCoster to Iowa? Doug Gross - lawyer, lobbyist and candidate for governor."
I suppose the good citizens of Iowa are used to hearing the names by now, but I wonder if any of them realize how...odd...they sound to an outsider.
Political author Taegan Goddard writes and edits a blog called the Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, a free-ranging compendium of political tidbits whose most immediately distinctive feature is huge and raucous participation in the comments sections. One item posted today already has eighty-four fervent responses. If you like to brawl with your peers over such questions as whether George Bush's terms as governor of Texas amount to more "real" political experience than that possessed by North Carolina Senator John Edwards, this is definitely the place to go.
An Italian Foreign Ministry official said that under the proposed deal, Italy and Spain would take some of the militants while Austria, Greece, Luxembourg, Ireland and perhaps even Canada might take the rest.
Does this strike anybody but me as using a nuke to deal with a gnat? Especially since these thug-level gunnies will no doubt be back in the Middle East in six months, doing what they know how to do best?
The 13 Palestinian militants flown to Cyprus after a five-week Israeli siege in Bethlehem are free men, not prisoners and not deportees, the European Union's envoy to the Middle East said Saturday.
The Angry Clam owns the Snehal Shingavi story at Berkeley. (Shingavi is the intructor who tried to exclude "conservative thinkers" from a course on The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance). Turns out this wasn't the only instance of Snehal's exclusionary tactics. See items here, here, and here. (Tip courtesy Brian Hoffman).
Having missed the turn on that damned freeway more times than I care to count, this is the sort of performance art I can really get behind. (Link courtesy PhotoDude.com).
Over at Blogs of War, Dr. Frank provides a link to that cool Clancy-porn Brit bomb disposal robot that snagged the would-be Palestinian 'splodeydope (who coined that word? Was it you, PhotoDude?) near Haifa the other day.
The militant Hezbollah organization is operating in the United States and could be planning attacks on U.S. soil, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham said Wednesday.
Graham has said in the past that there are 100 al-Qaeda terrorists still in the United States awaiting attack orders.
Hezbollah has been making vague threats in this general direction lately, but if they actually do initiate new terror actions within the US, the results will be the most serious miscalculation on the part of Arab/Islamic terror since the 9/11 attacks that resulted in the destruction of the Taliban government of Afghanistan.
Islamofascism and its sympathizers seem simply unable to grasp the danger with which they flirt: if they manage to frighten the US public sufficiently, the result will not be surrender, but the destruction of those Islamic nations regarded as threats on a world-wide basis.
Folks with no grasp of history, nor understanding of the wrath of a techno-industrial democracy that perceives itself to be fighting for its existence, will probably be unable to comprehend the fate that lies in store for any culture that attempts to wage war to the death against the United States. For them I offer the only two words that may help them understand more clearly:
A North Miami woman's claims that she was fired from her county courts job for not speaking Spanish has prompted a call for a boycott by a pro-English lobbying group -- and flooded Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas' office with letters and e-mails. Zita Wilensky said she was fired in November from her job -- which required her to answer a domestic abuse hot line and greet and guide victims -- because she speaks only English.
That isn't the case, said court spokeswoman Nan Markowitz. Wilensky was fired because of ''poor job performance and her repeated failure to comply with court administrative policies,'' said Markowitz, who declined to elaborate.
Those of us who are veteran readers of the news know exactly how to parse the statement of the "court spokeswoman:" "Wilensky was fired because of poor job performance," means that she couldn't speak Spanish, and "her repeated failure to comply with court administrative policies," means that she refused to learn to speak Spanish.
I will give The Nation this: they are an honest rag. Nobody with an IQ warmer than a bowl of Cheerios can be ignorant of their political/ideological stance, but they still find room in their pages for this rhetorical Weapon of Mass Destruction Christopher Hitchens unloads on noted liar, turncoat, and Nation-reader fave David Brock's head.
Drudge links to a report that some, even some faculty, at the University of California at Berkeley don't believe in, or practice, freedom of expression.
Since when did Drudge start pushing dog-bites-man stories?
Reader Brian Hoffman discovers an infuriating Minneapolis Star-Tribuneeditorial, in which the author indulges himself in a series of outright lies about the legal history of the Second Amendment. The screed is nothing more than a blatantly leftist, statist attempt to discredit the Justice Department's change in position on the meaning of the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.
Reader Don McArthur tips me to an interesting Solly Ezekiel speculation at the excellent GedankenPundit regarding what the IDF might discover about Egypt when they launch operations into the Gaza Strip.
Editor -- I take exception to conservative columnist Debra J. Saunders' assertion that "people of goodwill can disagree" on the (deceptively titled) Racial Privacy Initiative ("Colorblind bind," May 9). Equality of results has never been an anticipated byproduct of the implementation of so-called "colorblind" legislation. People of goodwill want to see concrete results and documentation that the results have been accomplished. On the other hand, Ward Connerly, and those who push him into the spotlight, see by their personal success, no need to move forward on race relations. People of goodwill "see things as they could be and ask why not" and then go out and do something positive about it. Sorry, Debra, to disagree on the racial privacy initiative is to accept things as they are, hardly a position expressing goodwill. PETER ROGOSIN Mill Valley
It is an article of faith among the race-hustling left that the differences between people are far more important than their similarities, isn't it, Peter Rogosin? Is that the reason you live in Mill Valley, one of the most expensive, whitest communities on the face of the earth? So that you can pontificate on the desirability of maintaining those differences, while avoiding the results of such permanent distinctions for yourself as much as possible?
The same media establishment that is quick to label right-wing extremists refuses to call admitted pipe bomber Luke John Helder a left-wing extremist.
Helder, an art student from Minneosta who plays in a punk rock band, sent a rambling letter to the University of Wisconsin student newspaper expressing his radical environmental views and wish to legalize marijuana. Sounding like Al Gore or John Kerry, he whines that "the icebergs are melting, and precious earth is heating up."
....In the letter he placed with his pipe bombs, which injured six innocent people, including elderly women, he claimed that "1% of the nation controls 99% of the nations [sic] total wealth." Move over, Dick Gephardt.
Yet the New York Times, CNN and all the usual suspects fail to point out Helder's views as left-wing. Of course, these are the same media that quickly branded Oklahoma City terrorist Timothy McVeigh, the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver, etc., as right-wing extremists - but seldom or never referred to Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski or the violent anti-globalization marchers, etc., as left-wing extremists.
My, my, what a surprise. I'm shocked by this, I tell you, shocked!
The next step: the Helder story will suddenly come to be considered non-news, and vanish off the elite media's radar screen entirely.
Rantburg's Fred Pruitt posts a report on a gang of Jewish terrorists who are taking credit for assassinating Palestinians:
A group called "Fighters of the Kingdom of Israel," named the places where the shootings took place and warned Palestinians to "prepare shrouds" for more burials. "In the actions of our fighters ... eight Arabs were killed and many wounded," read the leaflet, which was obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday. "Jews who are fed up have arisen and decided to get revenge against the Arab enemy!"
As Fred notes, "And the difference between them and Hamas is...?"
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Colombia overturned a lower court's decision and unanimously approved the appointment of Bush nominee Peter Kirsanow to the United States Civil Rights Commission.
Ex-commissioner Victoria Wilson has been using public money to pursue her court case against dismissal, so there is little to prevent her from appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court. My guess is that she will do so, although whether the SC will take the case is another matter.
The state Court of Appeals threw out a drug conviction on Thursday because a juror did not understand English.
The odd thing is not that the appeals court ruled this way, but that the lower court did not. How can anybody expect a fair trial when members of the jury are incapable of understanding the court case itself?
Barry Rubin takes a deep breath and then calmly, dispassionately exposes the Bush administration's "Middle Eastern policy" for the gabbling gibberish that it is.
When I say "the best option," I don't mean "best for the Palestinians". I don't think they have any good options. Being Arabs, they are incapable of constructing a rational polity, so their future is probably hopeless whatever happens. Their options are the ones I listed above: to be ruled by gangsters, or Israelis, or Jordanians, or welfare bureaucrats. Or to go live somewhere else, under the gentle rule of their brother Arabs. Would expulsion be hard on the Palestinians? I suppose it would. Would it be any harder than options 1 thru 4? I doubt it. Do I really give a flying falafel one way or the other? No, not really.
I wasn't overjoyed when George Bush finally put the US officially behind the notion of a Palestinian state, and I'm still not. I think the idea caters more to the preferences of those Arab states that already hate and despise us than it does to any clear understanding of what the Palestinian state would be - which is a cesspool of tyranny and terrorism, and a sovereign launching pad for attacks against Israel.
I quite often find myself in disagreement with Derbyshire, but in this case, I'm not. The Arabs caused the Palestinian "problem" in the first place, and by refusing to allow the Palestinians to assimilate, they have perpetuated it (with, as Derbyshire notes, considerable help from the United Nations). Let them "solve" it with their own millions of acres of empty land.
In Did Fortuyn have it coming?, UPI writer Steve Sailer offers a solid and useful survey of the attitudes evident beneath the officially expressed "shock and horror" at Pim Fortuyn's assassination:
More than a few members of Europe's political establishment appear to believe that Pim Fortuyn -- the frank anti-immigration Dutch politician who was assassinated Monday, allegedly by a leftist activist -- had it coming.
....Mainstream newspapers and politicians hinted that Fortuyn was a racist, a fascist or even a Nazi. The Irish Times went on: "Nevertheless the murder will serve to highlight the rise of the far right in European politics and may in the long run gain votes for those involved in simplistic, racially-motivated campaigns. Today, on the 57th anniversary of the defeat of fascism, such trends strike a sad note."
Norman Lamont, the former Tory chancellor of the exchequer, wrote, "Britain has been fortunate to avoid the rise of extreme Right-wing, hateful politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pim Fortuyn, the Dutchman who was murdered in Hilversum."
Aftonbladet, the leading circulation Swedish newspaper, weighed in with, "The brown parties of Europe have a new martyr." Brown was Hitler's color.
In this atmosphere of vicious resentment, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's grudging-sounding admonition against killing anti-immigrationists -- "No matter what feelings political figures arouse, the ballot box is the place to express them" -- seems like the height of liberality....
Elsewhere in the article, Sailer tosses off, almost as an afterthought, an observation I've not seen before:
The European Union has become notorious for its "democracy deficit." Without a common language in which to conduct political debates, the European Union lacks vibrant political debate and even some basic republican institutions. Many EU policy decisions therefore get made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels.
With all the focus on supposed EU "integration," it's easy to forget that the components of the proposed Eurostate can't even talk with each other. Imagine the chaos if, in the United States, Californians, New Yorkers, Hoosiers, Texans, and Floridians were unable to understand each others's language. (Yes, I know: We have a hard enough time as it is).
While the world remains fixated on how to revive the "peace process" between the Israelis and the Palestinians, time might be better spent understanding Yasser Arafat's extraordinary blunder in totally destroying his own Palestinian Authority's bargaining position.
As of yesterday, UPI reporter Thomas H. Lipscomb was firmly in the rope-a-dope camp of Middle Eastern analysis.
Tres producers links to this Richard Starr piece in The Daily Standard, The Big Jenin Lie
Unlike the celebrated foreign-dispatch lies of the 20th century--the New York Times's Walter Duranty Pulitzer-winning cover-up of Stalin's murderous Ukraine famine, say, or Herbert Matthews's 1957 reports of Senor Fidel Castro's hopes for a "democratic Cuba"--the Jenin fraud has been almost entirely inflated and then deflated in the short space of a month. I think it's safe to say that no one will win a Pulitzer for reporting on the (non-existent) "massacre of the 21st century." This was amateur-hour propaganda, and any reporter who fell for it should be mortified.
As Eric Olsen, one third of the tres points out, the thorough and immediate debunking of this steaming chunk of Palestinian propaganda carried out by the blogosphere may have had something to do with its rapid deflation.
Too many of our European friends seem to have forgotten, so I will post this as a gentle reminder:
Fifty-seven years ago today, the Allies, led by the United States of America, completed the utter destruction of the last great fascist power to threaten the world. We did not defeat these monsters by negotiation, or attacking root causes, or dealing with their frustrations, or pretending there was some moral equivalence between them and us. We turned their cities into rubble, and their armies into graveyards, until they finally stopped trying to kill us or impose their filthy tyrannies on us.
Oddly enough, Franklin Delano Roosevelt never told the French that, no matter what Hitler did, eventually France would have to reach a political settlement with the Nazis.
Letter from Gotham is chock full of blogging goodness today. Every time Diane E. (coiner of the term "blogslut") gets a case of the blahs, my attention perks up - because when she comes back, it's usually with all guns firing broadsides. This time is no exception.
Check out: A startling revelation of the "hard time" Hamas prisoners of the PA are doing; a reminder that today is VE (Victory in Europe) Day, which celebrates the defeat of the last great fascist movement - with considerable help from us "cowboy" Americans; and a letter from Alex Bensky offering guidance to the French as to the proper approach they should take toward the recent al-Qaeda terror bombing massacre of their naval experts in Pakistan.
Some movie fans are blasting the next “Lord of the Rings” flick, charging that it exploits the World Trade Center tragedy. The next installment in the sequel is called “The Two Towers,” and a group calling itself Those Affected by September 11 is petitioning director Peter Jackson and studio New Line Cinema to change the name “to something less offensive.”
Here is vivid proof that putting a large number of idiots together only results in a group consisting of a large number of idiots.
University of California Regent Ward Connerly, who led the fight that ended group preferences in California state government, has moved on to promote an initiative that would forbid state agencies from identifying individuals by race. Decades ago, such a proposal was on the cutting edge of liberalism. Today, it is considered not only conservative but unrealistic.
The only designation that should matter for the citizens and legal residents of the United States is "American." I think this initiative will pass because, despite what the various race-hustlers and their allies in the elite media think, most Americans believe this as well.
Pakistani intelligence agencies believe Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network is preparing to unleash a wave of suicide attacks around the world, a report said on Thursday. The terrorists had hundreds of men ready to die in attacks on the United States and its allies, the Dawn newspaper reported a day after a suicide bomber killed 14 people including 11 French nationals in Karachi.
If al-Qaeda manages to pull off suicide attacks within the borders of the United States, the reaction will be swift and deadly. Despite the hypocrisy in the Bush position on Israel versus Palestinian terror, no American administration can survive in office if it is perceived to be soft on terrorists attacking our own people.
I think this may be one of the unvoiced fears of the Bush administration - that some series of acts such as these will force their hand before they are completely ready to act. However, I believe we are much more prepared to respond than we were even three months ago. And what form might such a response take?
To start with, the immediate and comprehensive destruction of the Iraqi regime, coupled with a sub rosa threat to the Saudi royal family that if they don't immediately cease financial support to Islamofascism, we will overthrow them as well.
Russian officials say 34 people, including 12 children, have been killed in an explosion in a southern Russian town during a parade for the country's Victory Day. The blast ripped through the main street of the town of Kaspiysk in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan as soldiers and civilians marched to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Russian victory in World War II.
By far the most momentous international summit to take place during George Bush's presidency occurred in November 2001 at Bush's ranch in Crawford between Bush and Vladimir Putin. What emerged from that meeting was a working agreement between the two men to support each other in the war on terror, and a mutual recognition that the best way to provide that support was to support each other in other ways as well - like oil and natural resource development in Russia, or Russian refusal to participate in Saudi or Iraqi-sponsored energy boycotts. There is a great deal more to the informal agreement, but at the heart of it is the recognition that the two nations share mutual threats from both Islamofascist terror and an ever-more volatile and reactionary Red China.
This latest atrocity will only serve to cement that relationship even more strongly.
Editor -- Now that the "smoking gun" Enron memo has been found, I want to encourage Sen. Dianne Feinstein and others in Congress to do whatever they can to shine the bright light of public scrutiny on the shady dealings between the president and his energy cronies. It is a perfect example of how his administration is stealing from the people to line the pockets of the special interests. When the next election comes around I hope that his smug, empty speeches are drowned out by calls of "shame!" JIM EVA Castro Valley
I'm no fan of giant corporations engaging in criminal conspiracies, and I'm even less of a fan of giant government colluding with them to further the crime. However, Jim Eva, no shred of evidence of such collusion between Enron and the Bush administration has yet been found. The "smoking gun" you pant about deals with Enron only. Until evidence surfaces that members of the Bush administation (or the Clinton administration, which also had deep financial ties to Enron) helped Enron to "steal from the people" (itself by no means a certain proposition) I'll reserve my calls of shame for those who write smug, empty, reflexively anti-Bush letters to their local papers on the matter.
He is also, as far as I know, the first mainstream journalist to credit the DailyPundit with coining the term "blogosphere." Much appreciated, Mr. Manjoo.
I had a .45-caliber pistol hanging low on my hip many years ago when I was in the Army. And I can tell you, I'm not anxious to think about that kind of weapon (or something smaller and easier to conceal) being in the pockets and the purses and the briefcases and the shoulder holsters of the throngs surrounding me in my daily rounds in Manhattan.
Disingenuous nellie-ninnie Robert Herbert evidently believes he's in danger from law-abiding citizens exercising their Constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. He ignores that the record of holders of concealed-carry permits nationwide is better than that of the police, and he ignores that states which allow their citizens to carry concealed weapons experience a drop in crime. The truth is, he would probably be safer with .45 caliber pistols in the pockets and purses and briefcases of those around him than he is now.
But the truth has never been allowed to impede one of the left's acknowledged unconstitutional religious cults: mindless fear and hatred of firearms. Herbert is evidently bucking for a bishopric in the sect of Handgun Control, Inc. (Or whatever name it's calling itself this week).
UPDATE: Cut On the Bias's Susanna Cornett links to my post on Herbert's screed, and despite the appearance of blogrolling in I'm going to link right back to her article on the same subject, because she adds valuable data to a more extensive refutation of Herbert's dishonest idiotarian views.
If you're tired of reading about the ongoing moral train wreck in the Middle East (Jeebus knows I'm tired of writing about it), then I think you should know that Jason Rubenstein is up to his poopik in tomatoes, peppers, and radishes
Secretary of State Colin Powell Wednesday urged the Israeli government to look toward political negotiations with the Palestinian Authority a day after the first suicide bomb attack in nearly one month hit Israelis south of Tel Aviv. "No matter how many military operations one conducts or how many suicide bombs are delivered, at the end of the day we have to find a political solution," Powell told reporters after meeting with British Foreign Minister Jack Straw.
"No matter how many al-Qaeda terrorists slam into NYC skyscrapers, no matter how many highjacked planes are crashed into the Pentagon, at the end of the day we have to find a political solution with the Taliban, Mullah Omar, al-Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden."
Why do Colin Powell and George Bush think this sort of egregious crap is any more fitting for Israel than it would be for the United States?
"There is no other cure than to kill Matt Drudge," O'Reilly charged on the IMUS in the MORNING radio show on Wednesday.
"I just want to tell everybody that Matt Drudge is smoking crack - right now, in South Miami Beach on Washington Avenue... And the authorities should know it."
FOXnews megastar Bill O'Reilly offers a calm and reasoned rebuttal to Drudge charges that stations are being slipped payola to carry his radio show.
Via Oxblog comes a link to a Ha'aretz report of what, if true, would be a tectonic shift in US policy toward Yasser Arafat:
Earlier Wednesday, sources in Sharon's entourage to Washington said that U.S. President George Bush had agreed that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians must wait until internal reforms within the PA have brought about a governing body that "would be headed by a different person or different people" than the current leader, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
"It was clear that the chief [Arafat] must be moved to a different role within the PA, customarily to a symbolic position and the administrative responsibilities would be transferred to others," the sources said.
In plain English, these "sources" are saying that, after forty years, the United States has finally rejected Arafat as a negotiating partner, and is now committed to removing him from power within the Palestinian authority.
This is of course a hopeful sign, but it will take a bit more than leaks from "sources" to convince me. Something like a public repudiation of Arafat from President George Bush - or even SecState Colin Powell - would be just the ticket. But given the unforgivable squishiness of the Bush team toward Arafat's terrorism recently, "seeing is believing" is probably still the most prudent policy.
UPDATE: I was afraid of this. Already the usual suspects are denying this report. Damn it.
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