COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Not that I'm complaining or anything, but wouldn't Ashcroft being trying to drape a blanket over that picture, 2164th?
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be great if his named turned up in that little black book that has DC perspiring?
ReplyDeletejust got to love a woman,
ReplyDeletemight i suggest that all jihadists be forced to stare at it for 9 hours a day?
Ah, shit, that would be perfect, Ashcroft. With all the details too. They take notes--I'm told.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thescreamonline.com/art/art7-1/griggs/gallery.html
ReplyDeletedan griggs
2164th: Wouldn't it be great if his named turned up in that little black book that has DC perspiring?
ReplyDeleteSo far there is more laughter than sweat:
Palfrey named Harlan K. Ullman as "one of the regular customers" of the business.
Ullman is one of the leading theorists behind the "shock and awe" military strategy that was associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"The allegations do not dignify a response," Ullman told CNN. "I'm a private, not a public, citizen. Any further questions are referred to my attorneys."
NAME: Ashcroft, John
ReplyDeleteJOB: US Attorney General
LIKES:
Cheerleader oufit
No crotch panties
Cowgirl Rider position
Enemas
Toe sucking
NICKNAME: LAWDOG
NAME: Kucinich,Dennis
ReplyDeleteJOB: US REPRESENTATIVE
LIKES:
Barney Frank ho-jo
Roto-Dilla 15"
Village People outfits, especially the motorcycle guy
NOTES: x-small rubbers, breath-mints
WiO: might i suggest that all jihadists be forced to stare at it for 9 hours a day?
ReplyDeleteYeah, after a while, if they squint their eyes, the lady might start to resemble a goat.
"She's a very ladylike person. She should be wearing white gloves," said Lee Mirabal, vice president for network programming of San Diego-based wsRadio.com, who conducted the interviews.
ReplyDeletePalfrey, 51, who lives in Vallejo, Calif., was interviewed last month at a studio and hotel for a new wsRadio.com program, "My Side of the Story." wsRadio.com has "partnered" with Palfrey to auction off the tapes, Mirabel said.
President Chris Murch would not disclose details of the contract but said Palfrey will donate 10 percent of the proceeds to charity.
For Sale on eBay
Speaking of goats, there is a death to morn. Sudan's most famous has passed away.
ReplyDeleteSuspected honor killing.
SOME SHIT
ReplyDeleteDems: Use intelligence funds to study warming
By Christina Bellantoni
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 3, 2007
4:03 p.m.
Senior House Republicans are complaining about Democrats' plans to divert "scarce" intelligence funds to study global warming.
The House next week will consider the Democrat-crafted Intelligence Authorization bill, which includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security.
"Our job is to steal secrets," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
"There are all kinds of people analyzing global warming," he told The Washington Times. "There's no value added by the intelligence community here; they have no special expertise, and this takes money and resources away from other threats."
Democrats, who outnumber Republicans on the committee, blocked the minority from stripping the warming language from the bill.
Intelligence panel Chairman Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat, said the climate-change study is one of several shifts his party has made to intelligence policy.
"We're concerned that global warming might impact our ability to maintain national security," he told The Times, describing the idea as "cutting edge."
"We want to get feedback from the intelligence community to understand if there are possible global issues," Mr. Reyes said.
The panel voted 11-9 to keep the provision that directs a National Intelligence Estimate "on the anticipated geopolitical effects of global climate change and the implications of such effects on the national security of the United States," according to a Republican staffer familiar with the hearing.
The study, which so far has an undetermined cost, would examine the science of climate change, among other things. Few details about its method were available.
The completed bill, mostly considered behind closed doors because it includes sensitive information, passed the committee on a voice vote after a more-than-eight-hour markup session.
If they discover that Al Queda is behind Global Warming, it will be time and money well-spent.
ReplyDeleteAllen is still Bloviating Away.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, with M Simon, not Doug.
(course I had to stick my big nose and mouth in)
Where are our carriers?
ReplyDeleteMigration tops death in Mexico
ReplyDeleteMigra tops death
Depends upon who you ask.
ReplyDelete"For Haditha to reach its present proportions, literally hundreds of officers and NCOs had to give approval for the case to pass muster and move forward.
ReplyDeleteHad any of those responsible for processing the cases suspected foul play or discovered wrong doing, all Hell would have broken loose.
Unlike much of the public, the military is not peopled by sheeple."
yeah where are our carriers?
ReplyDeleteFriday, May 04, 2007
ReplyDeleteThe Honor Of The Marines Is At Stake
I have been having a discussion with Allen about the Haditha case.
Allen directs me to something he said at the Belmont Club. Let me quote a bit.
Russia, of course, has remained India's largest defence supplier, notching sales worth roughly $1.5 billion every year. Israel is close next at $1 billion.
ReplyDeleteThe US, too, is keen to grab a huge chunk of the lucrative Indian defence market.
But so far, it has managed to clinch only two major deals. The first one was the $190-million contract in 2002 to supply 12 AN/TPQ-37 fire finder weapon-locating radars. The other deal is the recent $48.23-million one for the amphibious transport vessel USS Trenton, with the six UH-3H helicopters to operate from it costing another $39 million.
India Largest Arms Importer?
Doug and DR, now Allen is attacking me here. I am not sure what has twisted his knickers, but so it goes on blogger.
ReplyDeleteDoug said...Here Allen and J. Willie call me out for defending the troops.
ReplyDeleteSomehow that makes me like Murtha!
Thursday, May 3, 2007 2:17:00 AM UTC
M Simon said...
Doug,I looked at that thread.Those guys are insane.
The fact that they are not responding to what you post indicates they are some kind of 'bot.
Ignore them.
Thursday, May 3, 2007 6:16:00 AM UTC
Allen said...
re: Those guys are insane.
Hmm...Comment #18
Comment #77
In order to reach an influential and international audience, I have responded through the venue of the Belmont Club, where you post from time to time.
Be well.
Allen said...
Under other circumstances, I would like to believe that your integrity would place you on my side of the equation.
5/03/2007 06:59:00 PM
Doug said...
Anyone who disagrees with Allen has no integrity, Simon, deal with it.
5/03/2007 09:07:00 PM
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe Power of influencing
ReplyDelete" an influential and international audience I have responded through the venue of the Belmont Club"
Has gone to his head, methinks.
Luckily, the influence does not extend beyond his head.
There were tqo points in my comment, one referenced back to cutler and nepotism
ReplyDeleteThe other was whether Irgun was a terrorist organization. The British certainly thought they were and still are.
July 20, 2006
British anger at terror celebration
"... including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.
They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.
Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”
The Irgun were terrorists
Hezbollah are terrorists
or they weren't and they're not.
Here is a site that should cause Allen a little more concern than the mild jousting that takes splace here.
ReplyDeleteI am too lazy to feel like doing the translating for him but you can get the idea from the graphics.
Well right then. Allen challenged DR through me ( why he could not have been direct escapes me) and he got his reponse. WTF
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, commanders have become increasingly worried about the potential for leaks. In April 2005, military leaders in Iraq told milbloggers to "register" (.pdf) their sites with superior officers.
ReplyDeleteIn September, the Army made the first revision of its OPSEC regulations since the mid-'90s, ordering GIs to talk to their commanders before posting potentially-problematic information. Soldiers began to drop their websites, in response.
More bloggers followed suit, when an alert came down from highest levels of the Pentagon that "effective immediately, no information may be placed on websites … unless it has been reviewed for security concerns," and the Army announced it was activating a team, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, to scan blogs for information breaches. An official Army dispatch told milbloggers, "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be."
Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
ReplyDeleteby Patrick J. Buchanan
03/16/04: Between 1971 and 1973, he was commander of the Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA, which fought gun battles with British soldiers in a war that would cost 320 lives.
Arrested in Donegal near a car loaded with 5,000 rounds of ammunition and 250 pounds of explosives, he was sentenced to six months by a court whose jurisdiction he denied, "I am a member of the Derry Brigade of the (IRA) and am very, very proud of it."
A Londonderry official called him "a cold-blooded ruthless terrorist (who) will weigh up the consequences of his actions only in terms of benefit to the IRA, regardless of the cost in human lives." Another said he was a "fanatic ... responsible for mass murder."
He himself has spoken of the "legal and moral right of the IRA to kill a British soldier at any time," and was once quoted: "Freedom can be gained only at the point of an IRA rifle, and I apologize to no one for saying that we support the freedom fighters of the IRA."
He is Martin McGuinness. And the same March 13 New York Times that carries the picture of millions of Spaniards protesting the murderous terror attack on the Madrid trains has a photo of McGuinness chatting amiably with John Kerry before McGuinness spoke at Harvard.
Is it then true that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"? After all, many Irish consider McGuinness and his Sinn Fein comrade Gerry Adams, whom Bill Clinton invited to the White House for St. Patrick's Day, as freedom fighters in the tradition of the "martyrs" of the "Easter Rising" of 1916, celebrated by the poet W. B. Yeats.
As the president swears eternal war on terrorism, it is time to ask: Who is a terrorist? Exactly what is terrorism? Have we not ourselves sometimes breached our commitment "never to negotiate with terrorists"? Have we Americans also engaged in terrorism?
Terrorism has been defined as the murder or massacre of innocent men, women and children for political ends. In that sense, 9-11 qualifies, as do the Hamas bombings of buses in Jerusalem.
But looking back over the 20th century, no fewer than three Israeli prime ministers have been accused of terrorism: Menachem Begin, whose Irgun blew up the King David Hotel and carried out the massacre of Palestinian villagers in Deir Yassin in April of 1948. Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Stern Gang that murdered Edward Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944 – enraging Churchill, who gave Moyne's eulogy – and assassinated U.N. mediator Count Bernadotte in Jerusalem in 1948.
Ariel Sharon, as head of Force 101, is accused of massacring scores of Palestinian villagers at Qibya in 1953 in a reprisal raid for the murder of an Israel woman and her children.
Nobel Prize winner Yasser Arafat has been charged in the cold-blooded assassination of U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel in the Sudan in 1973. His PLO is an umbrella group embracing organizations for whom the weapon of choice in the war against Israel is terror.
Nelson Mandela, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, did not get life imprisonment on Robben Island for sitting in at lunch counters, but if memory serves, for plotting terror to overthrow the regime.
Jomo Kenyatta, the "Grand Old Man" of Africa in the 1960s, was the leader of the Mau Mau in the 1950s. Ahmed Ben Bella led Algeria's war of independence, in which terror was the insurgents' weapon and torture the counter-weapon of the French.
During Tet in 1968, the Viet Cong went through the city of Hue with hit lists, executing 3,000 civilians. Within months, America was negotiating "peace with honor" with the V.C. US ties are now improving with Hanoi, where the body of Ho Chi Minh lies in state, as does that of Mao in Beijing and Lenin in Moscow. All three employed terror.
What is Nagasaki – the atomic bombing of a defenseless city of a defeated nation – other than an act of slaughter, killing 40,000 men, women and children in minutes to force Japan's warlords to submit to America's will?
But that was war, we say, and Japan was the aggressor. Does that also justify Dresden? Is air terror permissible in a just war if a nation can demonstrate it was the victim of aggression?
Saddam's Iraq did not threaten us, did not attack us, did not want war with us, did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet, we attacked, invaded and occupied Iraq. And when Iraqis attack our troops, we call it terror and we call them terrorists.
Is terrorism, then, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?
John Brown murdered men in Kansas in reprisal for the killing of Northerners and killed civilians in his raid on Harper's Ferry to ignite a slave revolt. Brown was hanged as a terrorist. Yet the 1920s epic poem on the Civil War written by Stephen Vincent Benet would be titled, "John Brown's Body." And the first lines of the fighting song of the Union army were: "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on. Glory, glory hallelujah."
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Or so it would seem.
He won't debase himself, to converse with me.
ReplyDeleteIt seems some buttons were pushed. Though not sure which combination set him off on his lonely march to his wife's retirement. Still markin' time, on the government dime.
He was so sure of the integrity of the NCIS, no vendettas there, no Command influence. Influence that was plainly evident, even from here, or there would have been no PC drive to find new core values, for the Corps. Those educational Iraqi tours by the "High Command" set the tone.
NCIS selected the play list.
I think you should investigate "Stalking" behavior on the internet.
ReplyDeleteI think you may be at risk due to this blog.
All the better to wage a
ReplyDelete"Long PC Struggle for one thing or another,"
'Rat.
I've actually given that some thought, and taken some precautions. I have a license to carry. It would not be a walk down the garden path.
ReplyDeleteMore like the brutality of
ReplyDeleteThe Shining Path,
eh?
Sendero Luminoso
ReplyDeleteLawyers, guns and money.
ReplyDeleteBetter bring a bunch
Can't publish a local newspaper for almost thirty years and not create some animosity amongst some of those faceless readers.
AZ is open carry, no permit required.
I travel frequently and maintain an on site security guard service for my residence and use a driver and body guard when out of the country.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever get the racoon?
ReplyDeletePerimeter Fences, landscaped with cactus and century plants. motion sensors in the open area to the interior patio walls, dogs.
Shotguns inside the house.
Who Won?
ReplyDelete"In the instance, attacks upon the military system of justice based solely on prejudice and UNIFORMED emoting is an attack on the Marine Corps and is unpatriotic. Indeed, such unfounded (albeit perfectly legal) abuse of free speech adds fuel to the engine driving the pro-jihadist undermining of American foreign policy (this being quite apart from the Administration’s self-inflicted injuries)."
ReplyDelete"Below is a quote that sheds some light on why Doug and Murtha and the thousands of folk saying “coulda, woulda, shoulda” may be causing absolute harm to the process of military justice."
Which makes no sense, given his later statement that
"This case is getting lots of hype on the internet (millions of hits), on television, in the press as news and opinion pieces, and on blogs with the same result. Virtually none of that hyperbole will make it into the hearing, where sworn testimony will be the rule."
And then:
"This statement was made on your blogsite. It has gone uncontested by any of your subsequent commentary. Does it represent your sentiments?"
Stilted, pompous, and ostentatiously censorious. Not to mention inconsistent.
(Yessss, let's talk about that. How many times recently was Doug self-righteously chided by same for going off topic there, only to be followed by allen's off topic comments in later threads?)
Buttons pushed? How could one possibly reach the buttons of one so lofty?
If it's the tone that counts, I'll take the irritating (not without endearment, mind you) chihuahua, Doug, over Semper Sanctimonious.
thanks trish.
ReplyDeleteI posted this last...
ReplyDelete2164th said...
Two of the last six posts at the EB, by me, were positive stories about Israel. One was provided by Elijah. I cannot both maintain an open discussion and moderate and modulate the content on who does the posting.
The Elephant Bar was opended at the request and suggestion of Wretchard. It was done so when he closed down comments for several days last summer. You know that.
It was to serve the purpose of allowing for more frequent discussions. I cannot think of one one regular at the EB that would not be recognized here. There is one regular poster here that has very few posts thaqt do not criticize Israel and more pointedly Jews in general. I have engaged him here. He never posts at the EB. You have engaged the same man. Others ignore him. You do not and you do not always challenge him on his obvious dislike for Jews. Sorry Allen, but you are wrong to imply that the EB is an open house for anti-semites.
There are criticisms over Israeli policy. That is fair enough. Israel is a state. It is run by a government. Governments and states are fair game for criticism. Tens of thousands of Jews are in the streets protesting their government. Does that make them anti-semites? Do posters here at the BC who openly criticize Jews make Wretchard a sympathizer? If you have any more comments to me, please feel free to make them over at the EB.
5/04/2007 12:35:00 AM
let the dog out when you leave trish.
ReplyDeleteRoughly 100,000 people rally in Tel Aviv to call on PM, Peretz to quit
ReplyDeleteBy Barak Ravid, Roni Singer-Heruti and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and Agencies
More than 100,000 people rallied in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Thursday, in the first national protest calling on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz to resign over the damning Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War.
While police would only say the number of protestors was over 100,000, the rally's organizers said closer to 200,000 were in attendance. A banner reading "Failures, Go Home!" hung behind a podium set up at one end of the square in front of Tel Aviv city hall.
"Ehud Olmert, you said you work for us. Olmert, you are fired!" said the evening's keynote speaker, author Meir Shalev. "Amir Peretz - you said [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah will never forget your name. Neither will we."
___In polling of the American public, the military of the United States scores about an 85% approval rating.
ReplyDelete___In polling of the American public, the President, the Congress, and the Supreme Court score about a 20% approval rating.
We might, from this data, conclude that, while the American public feels its executive, legislative, and judicial branches suck (as it were), the public Loves, Loves, Loves its military.
Indeed, from the polling, the United States military is the single, sole, and only institutional or professional entity in which the American public vests its unwavering confidence.
- allen
I wonder what allen would think of the common sign-off to informal correspondence among servicemembers: FTA
I wonder what he would think of the periodical formal surveys of one branch of the military in particular that show, going back longer than I care to remember, a distinct lack of trust in officer leadership and integrity above the BN level (among officers and enlisted both)?
Which is not to say the Haditha Marines have been or are in the process of being railroaded. Not at all.
Only that those who are themselves members of that entity in which the public vests its unwavering confidence, have in the past and continue to express their own serious reservations.
Dang, I just a little while ago threw a steak bone and potato peel off the balcony for my almost pet skunk, and heard a noise so checked it out, and what do I see but a coyote, right here, first time ever. I have a cat, making it worrisome--it's tough all over, not only in a bar. I need a chihuahua, for protection:)
ReplyDeleteI've got this skunk so fattened up he can hardly waddle.
Sign in the bar says, 'Do not kick the dog'.
ReplyDeleteTrish, you are showing your ignorance, lack of integrity, and contempt for those who serve!
ReplyDelete(I'm practicing to be like Allen)
---
Addressed to M. Simon:
(but of course similar pompous diatribes have now been delivered to most of us!)
"Your insinuating that a single person could be responsible for bringing about the Haditha matter confirms for me both your ignorance of military justice and your contempt for those who serve."
---
Well whoop de friggin do!
Hard to imagine an adult feeling entitled to regularly go around addressing other adults this way!
"The Irgun were terrorists
ReplyDeleteHezbollah are terrorists
or they weren't and they're not."
They were both terrorists. One, however, was more uncivilized than the other.
A midrange retired officer, doug.
ReplyDeletePompous in his certitude.
Always talks down to subordinates, he's entitled, by his own air of superiority.
Ass gas, my kid used to call it.
Something else that is somewhat relevant is that the Hagannah purged the Irgun during the War of Independence. Hezbollah is more likely to purge its rivals.
ReplyDeleteOne came earilier in the cycle, thus the level of violence, to induce the terror, did not have to be so great.
ReplyDeleteIf needed those Irgun terrorists would have upped their bet, killing more non-combatants as they went.
It was the British response that was civilized. When the Romans were faced with the same challenge the response was much different.
Terror only works when those being terrorized are more afraid of their own darkside, than of the terrorist's actions.
When mentioning civilization, I wasn't referring to their actions in war (which I agree with you, would have gone to the wire), but their program for the post-war period.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, ends do matter. We bombed Dresden and the Germans bombed London (less brutally for lack of means), but there was no moral equivalency between us.
On the other hand, even as far as tactics are concerned, the Irgun was more limited than Hezbollah, because its population wouldn't tolerate as much wanton violence.
For example, it had to claim [true or false I do not know, it is one of the most controversial acts in Israeli history] afterwards that it had given prior warning to the King David Hotel to evacuate it, but that the British had not heeded the warning that there was a bomb in it. That's a reflection of how controversial the bombing was in Israel. Hezbollah doesn't face all that much scrutiny in comparison.
That process only went on for 3 years at BC.
ReplyDeleteOh! The Humanity!
We would become like them!
(the MSM and the Ivy Leagues tell me so!)
Horrors!
(I was refering to 'Rat's darkside comment)
ReplyDeleteAnd the progeny of the Irgun sit at the highest levels of Israeli government, so it would seem more a political reshuffling, then a classic "purge".
ReplyDeleteI am no expert on Israel politics, but it seems that they are quite disjointed. Such a small place, with 12 million inhabitants.
From the Jordan River to the sea.
Half those inhabitants disenfranchised, by the political realities imposed, first by England and then the UN and Israel.
Blood will run, before the story is done. There is historical precedent for that, fer sure
Right after 9-11,
ReplyDeleteIt was:
If we defend ourselves,
They have won.
We will have become like them.
(but in Al's high-falutin language)
"Terror only works when those being terrorized are more afraid of their own darkside, than of the terrorist's actions. "
ReplyDelete---
That's what caught my immagination as summing up 3 years of mental masturbation on BC Comment threads, and all too often, the lede.
"And the progeny of the Irgun sit at the highest levels of Israeli government, so it would seem more a political reshuffling, then a classic "purge"."
ReplyDeleteAs individuals yes, but the main organization was dismantled during the war by Ben Gurion. Ironically, they were brought into the Hagannah at gunpoint, probably more because they were a threat to the nascent Israeli government than due to any moral concerns.
Which is probably what we would hope to happen would their be any miracle and the Lebanese government acquire the means to do so in Lebanon.
*there
ReplyDeletethe perils of shooting from the hip.
So yeah, you're right Desert Rat, it was a political reshuffling that locked them into the system by removing their independent capabilities.
ReplyDeleteTalk Show Host Says He's Glad Radio Rival's Mother Is Dead
ReplyDeleteMcGee and Sykes have been publically battling for years, but even in the world of talk radio, some are saying the comments made are extreme.
"Mother Sykes, she dead. To me it's the vengeance of God. I ain't got no tears. Matter of fact a woman that would have a fool like that deserve whatever is coming her. She raised a sure enough idiot," McGee said on his radio show. "My instincts say Charlie Sykes killed his momma, cuz she live out in this big palace in Mequon all isolated. He got tired of waiting for her money."
McGee's comments came about 15 minutes into his show. He went on for about five minutes and then moved on to a different topic, but later in the show a caller asked about it.
"Mike McGee Senior," the caller began, "You really don't mean that, about your enemies families members being dead -- killed."
"Man, you don't think I mean that, man, you out of your mind," McGee replied.
"She raised a sure enough idiot,"
ReplyDelete---
Can we say that of Al, now?
Curious minds,
ReplyDeleteyou know.