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."

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Obama Administration's Michael Posner, Assistant Sec of State, Apologizes to the Chinese About Arizona



Now this is no accident that this little dweeb, this apologist, hand picked by Barack Hussein Obama has been caught up maligning The United States again. Mailigning the USA is one of the few things Obama is adept at. This is not a casual slip of the tongue. This is his MO.

Listen to him in Morocco in November 2009.




Maligning America -- again
Last Updated: 1:02 AM, May 18, 2010
NY Post: May 18, 2010


There they go again -- bashing America on the world stage.

Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner reports that in recent talks with China, US officials put America's human-rights record on a par with Beijing's.

"Part of a mature [US-Chinese] relationship is that you have an open discussion, where you not only raise the other guy's problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it, about your own [problems]," Posner said.

"We did plenty of that."

Moreover, he said, "experts from the US side" talked about America's "treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context."

They even ripped Arizona's new immigration law "as a troubling trend in our society." Bragged Posner: "We brought it up early and often."

No doubt they did.

It's hard to know where to begin here.

Perhaps with the way China deals with its Muslim population -- the Uighurs?
Last year, Chinese riot police killed hundreds of them.

America, by contrast, freely admitsMuslim immigrants (Pakistani-born Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad comes to mind) -- and the White House can't bring itself to use the term "Islamist terrorist" even as Islamist terrorists are doubling down on their efforts to kill Americans in the streets.

More misguided moral equivalence?

Posner notwithstanding, Arizona is merely trying to enforce a federal law meant to track lawbreakers who sneak across US borders -- by requiring immigrants to carry papers.

China, of course, ships North Korean refugees found on their side of that bleak border back to Pyongyang -- where certain, agonizing death awaits them.

There are no valid comparisons here.

China is one of the most flagrant violators of human rights on the planet, and for the Obama administration even to hint that America is on the same plane is despicable.



145 comments:

  1. OOPS!

    At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.

    “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

    There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

    The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

    In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

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  2. Sam's link to Eric Holder's appearance before the House Justice Deparment Oversight Committee is a prime example of this Administration's lunacy.

    As I posted in the previous thread, Eric Holder admitted on Sunday that he hadn't read the two pages of the Arizona law. Then this week, Janet Napolitano admitted yesterday that she hadn't read it either but this is not the kind of law she would have signed.

    Obama is looking more everyday like a one term President. His administration is so out of touch with Mainstream America that it's almost frightening.

    I can't imagine that his emissaries are taken seriously anywhere in the whirled.

    Jimmy Carter redux.

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  3. Has the National Security Establishment Forced Obama to Backed Down Over Israel?
    Monday, May 17, 2010, 7:54 AM
    David P. Goldman
    Jewish leaders remain unpersuaded by chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s mea culpa for “screwed up messaging” about Israel:

    The Obama administration has “screwed up the messaging” about its support for Israel over the past 14 months, and it will take “more than one month to make up for 14 months,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday to a group of rabbis called together for a meeting in the White House.

    “During the elections there were doubts about President Obama’s support for Israel, and now they have resurfaced,” Emanuel said, according to one of those who participated in the meeting. “But concerning policy, we have done everything that we can that is in Israel’s security – and long-range interests. Watch what the administration does.”

    One prominent rabbi–whose congregation was represented at the Rahm Emanuel meetings–said that Jews would have to wait and see whether President Obama was the man who stood in Sderot to say that he would do anything possible stop missile attacks, or the man who sat for twenty years in Jeremiah Wright’s congregation listening to the Chicago pastor spew hatred against America and Israel.

    But the shift in tone may be accompanied by a change in policy. DEBKA, the hawkish Israeli news site, claims that the US has done a turnabout, and not only because Obama is concerned about Jewish support in the coming mid-term elections:

    Our sources add that under new White House guidelines, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell should not try and extract from Israel more concessions that it is willing to offer, when he leads the proximity talks with the Palestinians starting this week.
    The Obama U-turn dashes Palestinian hopes of the US president holding his own solution ready to impose on Israel in the event of the talks foundering or winding down in September without progress.
    Political and Jewish circles see the change as an attempt win back Jewish voter support for the Democrats, eroded over the downturn in US-Israel relations, for the forthcoming midterm elections.
    debkafile’s Washington sources stress that the context is a lot wider. The US president knows the time has come to count his assets in the face of the dramatic big power realignment in the Middle East and the diplomatic impasse over Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.
    After fourteen months in the White House, Barack Obama has suddenly discovered that he has no other strategic ally in the region to rely on except for Israel.
    Netanyahu may be justified in crowing over his critics at home. His decision to stand up to the US president’s cold shoulder, insults and pressure, has been vindicated, whereas defense minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Tzipi Liivni have been confounded in their dire warnings that refusal to surrender in a big way to the Palestinians would gravely jeopardize US-Israel relations.
    A senior source in Washington told debkafile Sunday, May 16, that the Israeli prime minister has chalked up an impressive achievement; he can expect warmth and friendship from the administration in the foreseeable future in place of the coolness hitherto.

    This does not mean Obama has given up on his objective of a two-state solution of the conflict with the Palestinians, but the arm-twisting tactics have been set aside for now.

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  4. Obama’s new look on Israel was manifested in the words of Rahm Emanuel, when he met a carefully selected group of 15 rabbis from across the United States Thursday, May 13 along with fellow White House officials, including Dennis Ross, senior presidential adviser on Iran and Dan Shapiro, head of Middle East desk at the National Security Council.
    Emanuel was the most outspoken when he said the Obama administration had “screwed up the messaging” about his support for Israel over the past 14 months. He promised the White House would work to undo the damage, but said it would take “more than one month to make up for 14 months.”

    Whether or not the Netanyahu government will be satisfied with this crudely-worded White House “apology” -addressed to American Jewish rabbis rather than Jerusalem – remains to be seen. Much will depend on the actions the Obama administration takes to undo the damage to which it has now owned up.

    In Jerusalem last week, senior Israeli officials emphasized that they would go out of their way to demonstrate to the American national security establishment that Israel was a reliable ally. And the concerns of the national security establishment may be an important factor in the administration’s calculation.

    The official administration line, articulated by Defense Secretary Gates and CENTCOM commander Gen. Petraeus, is that Israel should cut a deal with the Palestinians to make America’s job easier elsewhere in the region. That is a rhetorical stance that has little real content, for the fact is that perceived Israeli weakness is most likely to encourage Iran’s proxies in the region.

    The fact is that America’s strategic position in the region is crumbling:

    1) Turkey no longer can be considered an American ally; the Islamist government of Tayyip Erdogan has aligned Turkey with Iran against the United States, and is prominently undermining American efforts to impose sanctions on Iran;

    2) Iran will probably exercise de facto hegemony over Iraq after American troops leave; and

    3) America’s Afghan campaign is going very badly.

    The massive investment of blood and treasure in Iraq with a view towards creating a stable, democratic American ally has failed. Turkey, for two generations the pillar of NATO in the Middle East, is off the rails and probably irretrievable as an American ally.

    That leaves Israel as America’s last ally in the region with real muscle. And given Iran’s efforts to dominate the region, including America’s Arab allies–Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf States–America needs Israel more than ever.

    The fact is that Israel needs the United States. There has been a lot of loose talk, for example by Walter Russell Mead (about Israel shifting economic and defense relationships to India) as well as this writer (about Israel acting independently as a regional superpower). But Israelis are keenly aware of their dependency on American hardware and military cooperation. Despite the bullying from the White House, Israeli-American military coooperation is doing quite well, according to sources on both sides. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum notes that when Turkey last November expelled Israel from scheduled NATO exercises, the US refused to participate.

    President Obama has deep personal sympathies for the Muslim world, as I have written on many occasions, and remains–to paraphrase the rabbi quoted above–the man who sat in Rev. Wright’s congregation for twenty years (and the man who wrote lovingly about the traditional roots of the Muslim poor in the markets of Indonesia, as opposed to the rootless anomie of the residents of Chicago housing projects).

    But in the American system, the President is not the only player. The errors of the Bush as well as the Obama adminstration have left the US in a weakened position in the Middle East, and that makes Israel all the more important an ally. It is possible that American national security interests will prevail for the time being over Obama’s emotional affinities.

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  5. Obama exhibited thin skin during the campaign and he looked very uncomfortable as he signed the Freedom of Press Act.

    Something has happened and it appears that the honeymoon is definitely over. I'm not sure if we can still claim that the press fawns all over him.

    We'll have to watch as this situation develops.

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  6. Who dragged Debbie Scheissel into the Bar yesterday?

    That person should be made to atone.

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  7. China welcomes a nuclear fuel declaration Iran released in talks with Brazil and Turkey, signaling that it may oppose a US-led drive to impose sanctions on Tehran.

    The presidents of Iran and Brazil and the Turkish prime minister issued a landmark nuclear declaration in the Iranian capital Tehran on Monday.

    Based on the declaration, Iran will ship around 12 hundred kilograms of its low-grade fuel to Turkey, giving Iran enough objective guarantees to exchange it with higher enriched uranium based on a proposal discussed with the West in 2009.

    Reacting to the declaration, Beijing said it hoped the deal would lead to a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear dispute.

    "We attach importance to and support this agreement," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said on Tuesday.

    "We hope this will help promote the peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations," he added.


    More from Press TV.

    Carter redux?

    Recall, if you will, that the US took direct military action against Iran, back then.

    It was a disastrous operation.

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  8. A Friend of Isreal, trish, which one, I have not a clue.

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  9. trish said...
    Who dragged Debbie Scheissel into the Bar yesterday?

    That person should be made to atone.


    I did...

    I stand by the post...

    I wonder why Miss USA was not asked to explain her position on Hezbollah...

    They asked Miss OK about the AZ law...

    and if you want to as people to "atone" start with the lies that the rodent posts...

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  10. Quick rat, Check under your bed...

    Jews are hiding there....


    Quick Rat... Better lock up your daughter, she may be dating a "friend of israel"

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Rat's on a role...

    Loving the Iranians, the PLO, La Raza...

    Rat's a rat to be sure...

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  13. The idea that the US would NEED Isreal, to balance Iran, a piece of pure propaganda.

    General P, the General everyone trusts, has stated, without doubt, that the air force of the UAE can meet the Iranians, and defeat them in air to air combat.

    Without air support the Iranians have no offensive capability on the ground on on the seas, in the region.

    The allies we NEED, to balance the Iranians, we have, they're Muslims, to a man.

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  14. On a similarly sour note: The weather is dreadful for the second day in a row.

    On the bright side: Wellies are fetching footwear.

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  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  16. No love for those that are not US, amigo.

    Other than a love of justice.
    Which La Raza does not qualify for, though they can make a viable case, if one believes in the group rights of hyphenated people.
    Which you do.

    Instead of individuals.

    That is not the Boy Scout way.

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  17. Rat's People Law Enforcement

    Hamas executes 3 convicted killers
    By ASSOCIATED PRESS
    18/05/2010 11:25

    Hamas Spokesman: Criminals executed in front of victims' families.

    Gaza's Hamas rulers executed three convicted killers and dropped off their bullet-riddled bodies at a hospital Tuesday, despite appeals by human rights activists to halt the practice.

    The United Nations's top human rights official has said fair trials demanded under international law before the death penalty can be imposed are virtually impossible in Gaza. The Islamic terrorist group seized the Palestinian territory by force in 2007 and has established a regime that allows little dissent.

    RELATED:
    Hamas to proceed with execution of ‘collaborators’
    Hamas executes suspected informants

    Hamas began carrying out formal executions in April, and Tuesday's killings brought the total number of prisoners put to death to five. In addition, rights groups say Hamas gunmen killed 17 prisoners, most suspected collaborators with Israel, during the chaos surrounding an Israeli offensive in the winter of 2008-2009.

    The Hamas Interior Ministry said the men executed Tuesday were convicted killers.

    One allegedly participated in the 2003 slaying of a young woman whose body was later tossed in a garbage bin. The killing provoked angry protests and calls from the public to execute the killers.

    The other two men were accused of murdering money changers in two separate incidents.

    Hamas spokesman: We don't want to terrorize citizens

    "They will be examples to others," Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Hussein told local Gaza radio. "We don't want to terrorize citizens. We want to prevent more killing."

    Following Arab tradition, the victims' families were contacted before the executions and asked if they would forgive the murderers, or accept compensation, Hussein said. They refused, and the executions were carried out in front of the victims' families and Hamas officials.

    The three bodies were dropped off at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital at dawn Tuesday, said a medical official. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

    Most Gaza residents appear to support the death penalty, but the executions were likely to deepen the international isolation of Hamas, branded a terrorist organization by the West.

    Hussein brushed off the criticism from rights groups. "We consider those who oppose these sentences to be inciting — even indirectly — to more crimes," he said.

    Hamdi Shakour of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the executions were "the worst violation of the right to life."

    Hamas gov't has little to show for 3 years in power

    The executions appeared to be an attempt by Hamas to demonstrate control over Gaza and burnish its law-and-order credentials. With Gaza under blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007, the Hamas government has had little to show for three years in power, except its claim that it has restored security to the once chaotic territory.

    The ministry did not say how many prisoners remain on death row. Some 40 other Gaza residents are on death row, said Samir Zakout of local rights group Mezan. Hamas officials could not confirm the numbers but said they intended to carry out more executions.

    While Palestinian law allows the death penalty, execution orders require a signature by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but he only controls the West Bank and has not sanctioned executions since taking power in 2005. Hamas does not recognize Abbas' rule and says it does not need his approval to implement the death penalty.

    Gaza-based and international human rights groups have urged Hamas to halt executions, especially of suspected collaborators tried in military tribunals.

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  18. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano admits she hasn't read the Arizona immigration law, but passed judgment on it anyway. "That's not the kind of law I would have signed," she declared.

    "I believe it's a bad law enforcement law. I believe it mandates and requires local enforcement and puts them in a position many do not want to be placed in," Napolitano said.

    "When I was dealing with laws of that ilk, most of the law enforcement agencies in Arizona at that time were opposed to such legislation," she claimed.

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  19. "I did..."

    Yes, I know that.

    Gal's a bit...mmm...frothy, don't you think?

    (Notice I did *not* say rabid bigot.)

    After reading her last night, I had to take a long, soapy bath and spend an hour or so at Informed Comment.

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  20. ISRAEL'S 150-KW SOLAR POND

    By the Mother Earth News editors

    "Salt" away usable electric energy in a backyard brine pool!

    Recently, one of MOTHER's technical editors and her tour director returned from a wonderfully informative ten-day solar tour of Israel . . . jointly sponsored by Jordan College, Solar Age magazine, and THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS ® . The trip was intended to both entertain and educate . . . and—judging from the enthusiastic response of the tour group—it fully succeeded on both counts!

    One of the most impressive sights of the entire excursion was a small power-generating station located at the southern end of the Dead Sea. . . where a considerable amount of electricity is being produced, using solar energy. You might well assume that the plant operates on photo-voltaic's, but—if that's what you're thinking—you'll have to guess again. The new power-generating facilities are solar ponds. . . inexpensive, often naturally occurring phenomena that may just hold the secret to a safe and reliable, middle-technology form of energy production!

    Needless to say, MOTHER is very interested in any power system that delivers a lot for a little. So—in addition to reporting on what we saw in Israel—we fully intend to research, first hand, the possibility of scaling down both the size and technology of the operation . . . in order to put it on the "little guy's" level, and maybe open up a whole new world of energy independence for us all!

    As anyone who's worked with solar energy knows, one of the major stumbling blocks to a successful "sun" system is the difficulty of obtaining effective heat storage, regardless of whether the collection medium is air or liquid. (With a fluid system, the problem is further compounded by the fact that leakage may be disastrous, and equipment costs can be prohibitive.) What's more, solar setups of any kind require collectors . . . which can often mean additional expense and headaches.

    So it makes sense that any solar energy system which does away with collectors and storage tanks has an obvious advantage over the more common techniques. The question is, how can a solar power operation get by without what are usually thought of as the two most important components? And the answer is . . . by using a saline pond. Yes, believe it or not, technicians from Ormat Turbines, Ltd.-an Israel-based manufacturer of Rankine-cycle drive turbines-have developed a system which uses heat that's gathered and stored in a pool of salt water to generate up to 150 kilowatts of electrical power!

    Ormat's entire system is actually quite straightforward. The firm's pilot project-located at En Boqeq on the Dead Sea—utilizes a man-made pond measuring 75,347 square feet and extending to a depth of just over eight feet. This pool is lined with a reinforced rubber "skin" that prevents seepage of the briny liquid into the ground—and into the fresh water table—below. (The En Boqeq installation uses no insulative layer between the earth and the water . . . however, under certain conditions, such thermal protection may be desirable-in order to maintain optimum water temperature-in addition to the brine barrier.)

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  21. The pond itself is filled with a dense salt solution, which naturally separates into gradient levels: In other words, a weaker salt mix exists near the water's surface, and the higher—and thus denser —saline concentrations settle to the bottom. The topmost layer is, of course, relatively fresh water. As the sun beats down on the brine reservoir, its thermal energy passes through the "lighter" surface levels and heats the heavy saline mass below. Because of the intense density of the solution at the bottom of the pond, the mixture resists the convection process which would cause mixing, and thus uniform warming, in a body of fresh water . . . and the result is that the dense salt solution-held at the bottom of the pool and thermally protected by the surface layer-can reach temperatures as high as 194°F (year-round working temperatures generally fluctuate between 158 and 176°F). The water at the surface of the pond, of course, stays at a warmth that's "normal" for the desert region: between 68 and 90°F, depending on the season.

    In order to take advantage of the heat stored in the salt gradient pool, Ormat engineers utilize a three-cycle (evaporation, drive, and condensation) system. Here's how it works: The hot salt water is pumped through a heat exchanger, which is surrounded by a vessel filled with a substance similar to Freon. This, in turn, is connected to a turbine that's specially designed to be driven by a much lower-temperature propellant than that used in a conventional steam turbine. Since the medium changes from liquid to gas at a relatively low heat, the sun warmed water instantly flashes the fluid into a pressurized vapor . . . which drives the turbine and its 150—kilowatt AC generator.

    After the vapor has done its work, it passes on to yet another chamber where it's condensed to the liquid stage again by cooler water—taken from the surface of the pond—that's pumped into a second set of heat exchange tubes within the vessel. The drive fluid is then ready to be recycled. In this manner, the "refrigerant" fluid—and both the cool and hot water reserves—are used repeatedly, within a closed system, to eliminate waste. The only liquid that has to be replenished now and then is—because of evaporation losses—the upper layer of fresh water.

    The beauty of the En Boqeq installation—and of any solar pond—is that it will function day and night, winter and summer, regardless of whether or not the sun is shining steadily . . . since the pool provides such a massive heat sink. The Ormat pilot project has been so successful, in fact, that the Israeli government is working with the firm to build a 5,000-KW power station that should be completed within two years, and the nation eventually hopes to use a 154-squaremile portion of the Dead Sea to generate enough electricity to supply all of Israel's power requirements for the future! (Of course, in a body of water this size—and even in a pool as relatively small as the En Boqeq test site—winds can cause undesirable disturbances. The problem is minimized by the use of plastic nets strung across the surface of the pond.)

    It's not difficult to imagine that solar ponds might just be the "new wave" of alternative energy . . . especially since costs (calculated by Ormat to be in the $2,000-per-kilowatt range) are even now competitive with conventional utility-supplied power. But if the technology can be reduced to a "backyard tinkerer's" level-and the environmental danger of brine leakage into the water table can be eliminated-there's no reason why anyone with even a few acres of land can't be totally energy self-sufficient . . . or, at the very least, enjoy the benefit of reliable solar heat at a minimum of cost.

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  22. trish: After reading her last night, I had to take a long, soapy bath and spend an hour or so at Informed Comment.


    Don't shoot the messenger...

    Miss USA and her history, her family and her love of Hezbollah are all reasonable questions...

    If Miss OK can be asked about AZ law (and get booed) WHy should miss MI NOT be asked about her support of a terrorist group that her own family is throughly connected to?

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  23. When Ms N was Governor of AZ, both Mr Kyl and Mr McCain opposed the kind of legislation that was just passed.

    It is easy to believe her claim that most law enforcement was, too.

    The City of Phoenix was opposed.
    They have the most policemen of any city, here.
    City of Mesa, opposed, too.
    The State Police, called the Department of Public Safety, they side with the Governor, whatever the official State position is, its' theirs, too.

    Most local law enforcement, excluding Sheriff Joe and the Maricopa County Sheriff Department, do not want to engage the migrants on immigration issues, as it distracts from real, local law enforcement.
    Against rapists, murderers and the like.

    Community involvement is vital to good police work, much as it is in COIN operations.
    Whether here at home or abroad.

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  24. Rogue Thai general dies of his wounds
    By ASSOCIATED PRESS
    17/05/2010
    Fears of more violence as paramilitary leader succumbs to sniper fire.

    A rogue Thai general who helped anti-government protesters and was shot by an unidentified sniper died Monday of his wounds, raising fears of new violence after five days of street battles that have killed 36 people in downtown Bangkok.

    Maj. Gen. Khattiya Sawasdiphol, a renegade army officer accused of creating a paramilitary force for the Red Shirt protesters, died Monday of gunshot wounds, the Vajira Hospital reported. The death came five days after he was shot in the head by a sniper in downtown Bangkok while talking to journalists inside the perimeter of the protest zone.

    The attack on Khattiya, more popularly known as Seh Daeng, triggered widespread street fighting between anti-government protesters and the army in central Bangkok.

    "Seh Daeng has accomplished his duty. All of us here have the duty to carry on the quest for justice," a Red Shirt leader, Jatuporn Prompan, said. He said that the only hope now to end the violence was intervention by Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

    The 82-year-old monarch, hospitalized since September, has remained publicly silent on the crisis unlike decades past when he stepped in to stop bloodshed.

    The Red Shirts have been protesting since mid-March demanding the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the dissolution of Parliament and new elections.

    Anti-government unrest that has boiled over in downtown Bangkok spread Sunday to other areas of the capital. The Thai military has defended its use of force, and the government flatly rejected protesters' demands that the United Nations intercede to end the chaos.

    Rapid gunfire and explosions echoed before dawn Monday outside luxury hotels bordering the barricaded protest zone, where the military has attempted to seal in thousands of demonstrators camping in the downtown streets. Guests at the upscale Dusit Thani hotel were rushed to the basement for safety, and the management Monday morning asked all guests to check out by noon.

    Reporters at the scene said the gunfire came both from government forces and protesters holed up inside the encampment who appear to have stockpiled a sizable arsenal of weapons.

    On Sunday, towering plumes of black smoke hung over city streets where protesters set fire to tires, fired homemade rockets and threw gasoline bombs at soldiers who used rubber bullets and live ammunition to pick off rioters who approached their lines. Army sharpshooters crouched behind sandbags carefully taking aim and firing to keep attackers at bay.

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  25. "Don't shoot the messenger..."

    No need.

    She's a living, breathing satire.

    You, on the other hand...You may need to be shot for spoiling my night.

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  26. The Middle East that could have been

    Efraim Karsh argues that the Palestinian-Jewish struggle might have ended peacefully in 1947-- if only Arab leaders hadn't opted for war
    Efraim Karsh, National Post

    "There is no place in Palestine for two races. The Jews left Palestine 2,000 years ago. Let them go to other parts of the world, where there are wide vacant places."

    --Hajj Amin Husseini, 1936

    "We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption--proven throughout all our activity in the Land of Israel --that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs." --David Ben-Gurion, 1937

    On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into two independent states -- one Jewish, the other Arab -- linked in an economic union. The city of Jerusalem was to be placed under an international regime, with its residents given the right to citizenship in either the Jewish or the Arab state.

    For Jews all over the world, this was the fulfillment of a millenarian yearning for national rebirth in their ancestral homeland. For Arab political and intellectual elites, it was a shameful surrender of (a however minute) part of the perceived pan-Arab patrimony to a foreign invader. In Jewish localities throughout Palestine, crowds danced in the streets. In the Arab capitals there were violent demonstrations.

    "We are happy and ready for what lies ahead," the prominent Zionist official and future Israeli prime minister Golda Meyerson(Meir) told thousands of revellers in Jerusalem. "Our hands are extended in peace to our neighbours. Both States can live in peace with one another and co-operate for the welfare of their inhabitants."

    To this, however, the response of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs, headed by the militant ex-mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, was an all-out war. In the five-and-a-half months between the passing of the UN resolution and the end of the British mandate, the former mufti's forces, assisted by a sizeable pan-Arab irregular army, carried out thousands of attacks on their Jewish neighbours in an attempt to prevent them from establishing their state.

    This failed, and by the time the last British high commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham, left the country and the state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, Palestinian Arab society had all but disintegrated, with 300,000-340,000 of its members fleeing their homes to other parts of Palestine and to the neighbouring Arab states.

    A concerted attack by the regular Arab armies on the nascent Jewish state within hours of its proclamation proved equally counterproductive. Rather than drive the Jews into the sea, as promised by the Arab League's secretary-general, Abdel Rahman Azzam, the assault served to confirm Israel's independence within wider boundaries than those assigned by the partition resolution, albeit at the exorbitant human cost of 1% of its population, and raised the number of refugees to about 600,000 -- nearly half the country's Arab population.

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  27. Yet nowhere at the time was the collapse and dispersion of Palestinian Arab society -- al-Nakba, "the catastrophe," as it would come to be known in Palestinian and Arab discourse -- described as a systematic dispossession of Arabs by Jews. To the contrary: With the partition resolution widely viewed by Arab leaders throughout the region as "Zionist in inspiration, Zionist in principle, Zionist in substance and Zionist in most details" (in the words of the Palestinian academic Walid Khalidi), and with those leaders being brutally candid about their determination to subvert it by force of arms, there was no doubt whatsoever as to which side had instigated the bloodletting and the attendant defeat and exodus.

    As Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo and no friend of Israel or the Jews, discovered to his surprise during a fact-finding mission to Gaza in June 1949: "While [the refugees] express no bitterness against the Jews (or for that matter against the Americans or ourselves) they speak with the utmost bitterness of the Egyptians and other Arab states. 'We know who our enemies are,' they will say, and they are referring to their Arab brothers who, they declare, persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes ... I even heard it said that many of the refugees would give a welcome to the Israelis if they were to come in and take the district over."

    ReplyDelete
  28. In his influential 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Catastrophe ( Ma'na al-Nakba), which introduced the term into the Palestinian and Arab historical vocabulary, the Syrian historian Qustantin Zuraiq spoke of the flight -- not the expulsion -- of some 400,000 Arabs. So did the prominent Palestinian Arab leader Musa Alami. "If ultimately the Palestinians evacuated their country, it was not out of cowardice, but because they had lost all confidence in the existing system of defense," he wrote in October 1949. "They had perceived its weakness, and realized the disequilibrium between their resources and organization, and those of the Jews. They were told that the Arab armies were coming, that the matter would be settled and everything return to normal, and they placed their confidence and hopes in that."

    It was only from the early 1950s onward, as the Palestinians and their Western supporters gradually rewrote their national narrative, that Israel, rather than the Arab states, became the Nakba's main, if not sole, culprit. The ex-mufti led the way by casting his countrymen as the hapless victims of a Jewish grand design to dispossess them of their patrimony, as a steppingstone to regional domination, and this fantastic claim was quickly picked up by many of his contemporaries.


    Some ascribed these supposed designs to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a virulent anti-Semitic tract fabricated by the Russian secret police at the turn of the 20th century, from which the Jewish leadership allegedly drew inspiration and operational guidelines; others attributed them to religious and historical sentiments. All viewed Zionism as omnipotent, with tentacles that reached the world's most powerful spots. In the words of the prominent Islamist leader in mandatory Palestine, Muhammad Nimr Khatib: "We are fighting an organized, educated, cunning, devious and evil people that has concentrated the world's wealth and power in its hands ... We are fighting the forces that have prevailed over the entire world, we are fighting the power that buried Hitler and defeated Japan, we are fighting World Zionism that has Truman in its pay, enslaves Churchill and Attlee, and colonizes London, New York, and Washington."

    Echoing this obsession with the demonic power of "World Zionism" some four decades later, Walid Khalidi attributed the Nakba to "the vast chasm in the balance of power between, on the one hand, the resources of the World Zionist Organization and its sponsors in London and Washington, and, on the other hand, those of the pre-industrial Palestinian community"; while Edward Said put the supposed Jewish machinations in similarly stark terms, claiming that "from the beginning of serious Zionist planning for Palestine (that is, roughly, from the period during and after World War I), one can note the increasing prevalence of the idea that Israel was to be built on the ruins of ... Arab Palestine."


    If it is understandable for leaders and politicians, culpable for their nation's greatest ever disaster, to revert to hyperbole and lies in their quest for personal and collective exoneration, it is inexcusable for future generations of scholars and intellectuals to substitute propaganda for incontrovertible facts. Yet such is the state of Palestinian and Arab historiography that the foremost, indeed the only comprehensive, study of the Nakba was written in the 1950s, without the necessary detachment and introspection, let alone access to the minefield of archival source material that has subsequently come to light, by the mandatory official, politician, journalist and historian Arif Arif.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Younger generations of Palestinian scholars and intellectuals have avoided the Nakba. They have, of course, evoked, lamented and apportioned blame for this tragedy at every possible turn, yet none has attempted to explore what actually transpired: why and how it happened.

    It is a historical irony that, since the late 1980s, much of the Palestinian historiography has been written by Israeli "new historians" -- younger, politically engaged academics and journalists who claim to have discovered archival evidence substantiating the anti-Israel case. These politicized historians have turned the saga of Israel's birth upside down, with aggressors transformed into hapless victims and vice versa. Rarely mentioned in these revisionist accounts are the Arabs' outspoken commitment to the destruction of the Jewish national cause; the sustained and repeated Arab efforts to achieve that end from the early 1920s onward; and the no less sustained efforts of the Jews at peaceful coexistence.

    Rather than unearth new facts or offer novel interpretations, the "new historians" have recycled the standard Palestinian Arab narrative of the conflict. The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate and Israel's early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the "new historians," paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record, and one that is completely at odds with the anti-Israel caricature that is so often the order of the day.

    They reveal that there was nothing inevitable about the Palestinian-Jewish confrontation, let alone the Arab-Israeli conflict, corollaries, on the one hand, of the total rejection of the Jewish right to national self-determination, and, on the other, of the desire to annex Palestine, or parts of it, to the neighbouring Arab states, or to a prospective regional empire; that the claim of premeditated dispossession is not only baseless but the inverse of the truth; and that far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the UN partition resolution.

    Had these leaders, and their counterparts in the neighbouring Arab states, accepted the resolution, there would have been no war and no dislocation in the first place, for the simple reason that the Zionist movement was amenable both to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state on an equal footing, and to the two-state solution, raised for the first time in 1937 by a British commission of inquiry and reiterated by the partition resolution.

    That they chose to reject this solution and to wage a war of annihilation against Palestine's Jewish community amounted to nothing short of a betrayal of their constituents, who would rather have co-existed with their Jewish neighbours yet instead had to pay the ultimate price of this folly: homelessness and statelessness.

    -Excerpted with permission from Palestine Betrayed by Efraim Karsh. Published by Yale University Press.

    Copyright© 2010 Efraim Karsh.

    All rights reserved.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Trish: You, on the other hand...You may need to be shot for spoiling my night.



    Well Miss Hezbollah/USA spoiled my night...

    I am glad the pic's of her dancing on a stripper pole has come out...

    ReplyDelete
  31. "Well Miss Hezbollah/USA spoiled my night..."

    I'm thinking that in the brief span of two or three days, an otherwise little-noticed beauty queen has enriched the lives of many.

    Just, you know, a guess. : )

    ReplyDelete
  32. Now we're to be prejudiced against women that dance?

    Boo-hoo!

    Good to see that Miss USA 2010 can shake that money maker!

    Leave it up to the Donald to pick a real qualified winner to represent the beautiful women of the USA in 2010.

    ReplyDelete
  33. She'll be given the Nobel next!

    ReplyDelete
  34. France has first 'burka rage' incident

    A 60-year-old lawyer ripped a Muslim woman's Islamic veil off in a row in a clothing shop in what
    police say is France's first case of "burka rage".
    Peter Allen, Paris

    Published: 10:25AM BST 18 May 2010
    The astonishing scene unfolded during a
    weekend shopping trip after the woman
    lawyer took offence at the attire of a fellow
    shopper resulting in argument during
    which the pair came to blows before being
    arrested.
    It came as racial tensions grow in the
    country as it prepares to introduce a total
    ban on burkas and other forms of religious
    dress which cover the face.

    A 26-year-old Muslim convert was walking through the store in Trignac, near Nantes, in the western Loire-Atlantique
    region, when she overhead the woman lawyer making "snide remarks about her black burka". A police officer close to the
    case said: "The lawyer said she was not happy seeing a fellow shopper wearing a veil and wanted the ban introduced as
    soon as possible."

    At one point the lawyer, who was out with her daughter, is said to have likened the Muslim woman to Belphegor, a horror
    demon character well known to French TV viewers. Belphegor is said to haunt the Louvre museum in Paris and frequently
    covers up his hideous features using a mask.
    An argument started before the older woman is said to have ripped the other woman's veil off. As they came to blows, the
    lawyer's daughter joined in.
    "The shop manager and the husband of the Muslim woman moved to break up the fighting," the officer said. All three
    were arrested and taken to the local gendarmerie for questioning.
    A spokesman for Trignac police said that two complaints had been received, with the Muslim woman accusing the lawyer
    of racial and religious assault. The latter, in turn, had accused her opponent of common assault.
    The French parliament has adopted a formal motion declaring burkas and other forms of Islamic dress to be "an affront to
    the nation's values." Some have accused criminals, from terrorists to shoplifters, of wearing veils to disguise themselves.
    A ban, which could be introduced as early as the autumn, would make France the second country after Belgium to outlaw
    the Islamic veil in public places.
    But many have criticised the anti-burka lobby, which includes the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for stigmatising
    Muslim housewives.
    Many French woman from council estates are forced to wear the veils because of pressure from authoritarian husbands.
    The promise of a ban has prompted warnings of racial tensions in a country which is home to some five million Muslims –
    one of the religion's largest communities in Europe.
    Mr Sarkozy's cabinet is to examine a draft bill which will impose one-year prison sentences and fines of up to £14,000 on
    men who force their wives to wear a burka.
    Women themselves will face a smaller fine of just over £100 because they are "often victims with no choice in the matter",
    says the draft.
    The law would create a new offence of "incitement to cover the face for reasons of gender".
    And it would state: "No one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face."

    ReplyDelete
  35. That would be a decided improvement on the ranks of the Nobel.

    ReplyDelete
  36. New Year barbecue

    "Youths" from "poor, immigrant-heavy suburbs." It all started over the deaths of two teens. You would never know it from this news report, but this is an initiative of Muslim youths, mobilized against the French authorities by the accidental deaths of two young Muslims who were in the act of fleeing from the police. This is all part of the simmering contempt and hatred young Muslims in France and all over Europe have for Infidel society -- jahiliyyah. "Hundreds arrested in French violence," from CBC News, January 1 (thanks to Kris):

    New Year's Eve celebrations turned violent in regions across France as youths burned more than 1,000 cars overnight and police arrested nearly 400 people.
    Car burnings have become a regular occurrence in the poor, immigrant-heavy suburbs that ring France's biggest cities, but the incidents of arson are especially prevalent on New Year's Eve.

    The Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night, 10,000 more than last year.

    The ministry said 398 people were taken into police custody -- nearly twice the figure of a year ago.

    Such vandalism mirrors events in the fall of 2007, when a three-week wave of riots and other violence shocked the country.

    The violence flared again two years later in neighbourhoods outside Paris, following the deaths of two teens who were killed in a crash with a police patrol car in November 2007.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Chris Dodd's Democrat replacement Lied about Military Service, Just like our own Rat....

    Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in 2002
    REUTERS/Molly Riley

    When you’re the attorney general of Connecticut, you may be able to get away with fibbing about military service. But when you’re running for the state’s U.S. Senate seat? Not so much.
    Long-time state attorney general Richard Blumenthal found that out late Monday, when a report in the New York Times uncovered his whopper about serving in the Vietnam War. The truth? Blumenthal had five separate military deferments, never completing a day of active service.
    “My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,” Blumenthal told the Times.
    Blumenthal is the Democratic candidate for the Senate seat held by the state’s long-tenured senator, Chris Dodd, also a Democrat. Here’s some fast (and true) facts about Blumenthal.


    Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/05/18/richard-blumenthal-senate-candidate-lies-about-vietnam/#ixzz0oHmAzefg

    ReplyDelete
  38. The shape of things to come with Iran
    Tony Badran

    Iran is using its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to amplify its sway regionally.

    Just as Egypt’s judiciary handed down convictions in the case of a Hezbollah cell that it uncovered, reports surfaced that an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps cell had also been broken up in Kuwait. 


    This type of Iranian action, while hardly new, is a harbinger of what’s to come once Tehran, which is seeking hegemony over the Middle East and senses an American retreat from the region, crosses the nuclear threshold. It also highlights the precariousness of any containment policy against Iran and its regional proxies.
 


    The Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas first broke the story almost two weeks ago, and Kuwaiti and Saudi officials have since confirmed the existence of the cell. While officials have remained publicly tight-lipped about the specifics of the story, and an official order has been handed down forbidding the publication of any further information, several of the details in the newspaper reports are of interest. 
 


    The members of the cell apparently included two stateless citizens (known as al-bidoun), a Lebanese citizen who acted as the cell’s liaison with the Iranians, as well as several military officers. One report in Al-Qabas, quoting informed sources, claimed the spy network extended to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – which was roundly denied by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz. The Kuwaitis, however, are demanding an overhaul of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) security agreement (which Kuwait had previously refrained from signing) in light of “new challenges,” likely meaning the threat of Iranian security breaches.
 


    Kuwait has had something of a history with Iran and Hezbollah. In the 1980s, Kuwait suffered attacks and two infamous airliner hijackings at the hands of Hezbollah (in cooperation with the Iraqi Al-Daawa Party) and Imad Mugniyah, the man who would head the party’s external operations network until his assassination in 2008. 
 


    After Mugniyah’s assassination, a commemoration rally was held for him in Kuwait, praising his legacy and absolving him of any wrongdoing against the state. Shia parliamentarians involved in the rally were expelled from their parliamentary bloc and placed in custody on suspicion of belonging to the Kuwaiti Hezbollah. The Kuwaiti authorities deported foreigners who had participated in the rally, which reportedly included Bahrainis, Lebanese and Iranians. 
 


    The episode led to an intimidation campaign against Kuwait in Lebanon. Its embassy in Beirut came under bomb threat (followed by a telephone call from a Hezbollah official assuring the diplomats that they would be safe!). This led to a Kuwaiti government travel advisory warning its nationals to avoid Lebanon. And just to make sure the Kuwaitis showed respect to Mugniyah, a massive portrait of him was placed on the embassy’s wall by Hezbollah supporters. 
 


    ReplyDelete
  39. While it’s unclear whether the Kuwaiti cell indeed extended to Bahrain and the UAE, Bahrain has also been subject to subversive activities in recent years. On the eve of the Gaza war of 2008-2009, the Bahraini authorities announced the arrest of a group of Shia militants who had received training in Syria, accusing them of planning terrorist attacks during Bahrain’s national day celebrations. 
 


    At around that time, on December 19, 2008, a massive rally was held in Manama at the call of Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. The aim was to pressure Arab governments into helping end Israel’s blockade of Gaza. A few days later, the Gaza war started. 
 


    As for the UAE, it followed Kuwait’s lead by deporting foreigners, especially Lebanese Shia. Starting in summer 2009, scores of Shia were suddenly expelled. A representative of those expelled linked the deportations to being “part of a community that supports the Resistance.” What prompted these expulsions remains unclear. However, given the role of Hezbollah’s networks in Iran’s regional activities, the decision was not particularly surprising.
 


    All this shows how vulnerable Iran’s Arab neighbors are to Iranian manipulation, not least when it comes to their sectarian make-up. 
 


    While its conventional military power is limited, Iran has engaged in such manipulation through the IRGC’s Al-Quds Force, amplifying its sway through its surrogates and through arms smuggling. The potential interplay between a nuclear Iran and its regional alliances raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of a containment strategy directed against Iran – which is, nevertheless, fast emerging as a consensus strategy in Washington. Especially unconvincing is the notion that the United States can place the burden of its containment efforts on the shaky scaffolding of the Gulf Arab states. 
 


    Iran’s objective is to replace the US as the primary power in the Middle East, and to reshape the region’s security architecture. Tehran has been pushing the GCC countries to sign a new, collective security treaty with Iran, which has presented itself as the new regional security guarantor, therefore, implicitly, the acknowledged regional hegemony. Iran has been making it clear to its neighbors that the presence of American forces on their territory is a “source of instability” that must end. If Iran goes nuclear, it will have even more means to persuade these states of its displeasure.
 


    The Iranian cell in Kuwait was reportedly monitoring, among other things, American movements and military bases in the country. While many might read such behavior as preparing retaliatory action in the event of a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, there is an alternative interpretation: a nuclear-armed Iran, through cells active in the weak Gulf Arab states, will seek to pressure those countries to terminate American basing rights on their soil and agree to new security arrangements that enhance Tehran’s regional influence. 


    Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Quirk,

    You are again mistaken, projecting I fear. No, I do not “disdain” conspiracy theories, i.e. I do not hold them in haughty contempt or as being beneath me. Those feelings I leave to you; and may I say, you are delivering the goods!

    No, Quirk, I “discount” conspiracy, e.g. in the case of the U.S.S. Liberty; where one would have to impugn the integrity of literally hundreds of folks – military and civilian – to arrive at the conclusion that all 10 official US investigations were hopelessly corrupt.

    There are those whose need to prove Jewish perfidy is so great that they would claim that perfectly decent people serving on boards of inquiry were somehow in the pocket of the global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Others need to see conspiracy because of the need to rant – to give vent to undifferentiated rage at their lots in life.

    The only disdain shown in the case of the U.S.S. Liberty was by you in your contemptuous, haughty dismissal of the findings of 13 boards of inquiry. You could not so much as name the commander of US naval forces in the region at the time of the attack on the Liberty. If a fact so easy to find was ignored, truth is not what you seek.

    ReplyDelete
  41. On the previous thread, 38/97 comments (39%) were posted by one player.

    Proving that prescription sleep aids do not always work as advertised, the serial opus scribbler posted 17 comments between the hours of 01:36:00 and 03:18:00 (that is one comment per six minutes).

    Does anyone out there know the record both for the highest percentage of posts per thread and the shortest duration between posts on a single thread by our little mouse?

    ReplyDelete
  42. Hardly a SEIGE.....

    Over 14,000 tons of humanitarian aid were transferred from Israel into the Gaza Strip last week, the IDF announced on Tuesday in its weekly summary of COGAT operations.

    "A total of 637 truckloads, consisting of 14,069 tons of humanitarian aid, were transferred into the Gaza Strip from Israel via the various crossings," read a statement by the IDF Spokesperson.


    According to the statement, the shipments consisted of hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel; 21 truckloads of milk formula and baby food; 897 tons of cooking gas, 66 truckloads of fruits and vegetables; 51 truckloads of wheat, 27 truckloads of meat, poultry and fish; 40 truckloads of dairy products; 117 truckloads of animal food; 37 truckloads of hygiene products; 22 truckloads of sugar; and 38 truckloads of clothing and shoes.

    In addition, 781 medical patients the Gaza Strip crossed into Israel and the West Bank along with their chaperones for medical treatment. Into Gaza, meanwhile, went four truckloads of medicine and medical equipment.

    Aside from humanitarian and medical supplies, 191 staff members of international organizations crossed into the Gaza Strip, and 202 crossed from the Gaza Strip into Israel.





    I wonder if any other "siege" by one Nation on a hostile group of people (numbered in the millions) has ever transfered so my food, water, clothes, medicine and general aid...

    Did the Nazis do this for the Warsaw Ghetto?

    Did Thailand do this for the Red SHirts?

    Did the North do for the south during their attack of Georgia?

    Did ANY Army any WHERE? ever supply their enemies?

    ReplyDelete
  43. allen, WiO rivals your nemesis with his rabid posting as well. Whereas rat tends to make short posts WiO just cuts and pastes and cuts and pastes and curses.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Quirk,

    To be perfectly clear, I do think that conspiracies occur everyday. I believe this because history is replete with examples. For example, Aaron Burr was involved in several and was tried for treason in one case.

    I just do not believe it possible to have 13 official boards of inquiry arrive at the same result because of conspiracy by all of the hundreds of players over a 42 year period.

    O, I also do not believe that Area 51 is the center of a vast government conspiracy...sorry...When probability approaches zero, one is left with the obvious.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Ash said...
    allen, WiO rivals your nemesis with his rabid posting as well. Whereas rat tends to make short posts WiO just cuts and pastes and cuts and pastes and curses.

    Tue May 18, 09:47:00 AM EDT



    By golly, you have stumbled across something heretofore unnoticed by me! Congrats!

    Now, go back over the past two threads and see how many of WiO's posts are anti-American.

    Now, go back over the past two threads and see how many of DR's comments are anti-Jew/Zionist/Israeli.

    Just as the matter of personal curiosity, do you believe that all 13 boards of inquiry into the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 were conspiracies aimed at whitewashing Israeli malice?

    ReplyDelete
  46. Ash said...
    allen, WiO rivals your nemesis with his rabid posting as well. Whereas rat tends to make short posts WiO just cuts and pastes and cuts and pastes and curses.



    But ash...

    Rat actually says nothing but a steady diet of jew hating, zionist hating, israel hating garbage...

    I on the other hand, am interesting, literate, has a wide variety of issues and I am not a criminal like the little mouse that roared...

    My quality and quantity of my interesting posts are without compare whereas the quality and quantity of Rat's posts are wonderful if you are a lifetime member of the Aryan Nation..

    ReplyDelete
  47. WiO,

    Re: Aryan Nation

    :)

    My friend, he is not alone.

    Want to wager on Ash getting back with the data?

    ReplyDelete
  48. who gives a hoot whether this Blumenthal politician served active duty or reserves during nam. All i care about, politics aside, is that he is an aggressive advocate for veterans. all politicians lie. would you rather have someone whose not so pro VA?

    ReplyDelete
  49. ”The only disdain shown in the case of the U.S.S. Liberty was by you in your contemptuous, haughty dismissal of the findings of 13 boards of inquiry.”

    The 13 Reports

    In the aftermath of the attack, inquires were rushed and limited in scope, military awards were downplayed, the crew was sworn to silence about the event, the crew was broken up and no two ever served on the same ship again.

    If you doubt the US capable of conspiracy I point you to the fate of the south seas islanders that were assured there was no residual danger associated with the A-bomb blasts we conducted there, or to the military personell who were sent to forward positions as "observers" of the atomic tests out west, or to the farmers in the states bordering those tests who sued the government for their mysteriously dying livestock, or to the government spraying pathogens in the NY subway system in the 40's, or to the syphilis trials run on poor sharecroppers in the south during the 30's which resulted not only suffering and death for the sharecroppers but also their wives and children. I don't know much about area 51.

    Where these merely conspiracy theories? Well after in some cases four or five decades of denial, the government, those
    "perfectly decent people serving on boards of inquiry", are now paying out millions in recompense to the victims and their survivors.

    Odd.


    .

    ReplyDelete
  50. ..."in the pocket of the global Jewish conspiracy to rule the world..."

    More silly hyperbole.

    I believe Israel lied to protect their own national interests.

    Likewise, I believe those in the US who did it did so because they thought it was in the US' interests to do so.

    I just do not agree.


    .

    ReplyDelete
  51. ”You could not so much as name the commander of US naval forces in the region at the time of the attack on the Liberty. If a fact so easy to find was ignored, truth is not what you seek.”

    Another of your illogical assertions.

    It is likely I have come across the guy’s name in the past since I have read quite a bit about the USS Liberty. The fact that I have not retained it signifies what?
    The fact that I still have not googled it proves what? My main concern in this whole incident is with LBJ and Robert MacNamara for calling back the navy planes and not letting them take out the attacking Israeli boats and planes thus leaving the crew to hang in the wind.

    ReplyDelete
  52. I’ve previously given the names of prominent people who join me in the conspiracy theory meme. Here are some additional ones that I pulled out of a publication that was supporting the Israeli position that the attack was not intentional:

    ”These findings notwithstanding, the case of the assault on the Liberty has never been closed. If anything, the accusations leveled against Israel have grown sharper with time. In recent years, an impressive number of former American officials have gone on record insisting that the Israeli action was, in fact, deliberate. These include Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) at the time of the Liberty incident, who has labeled the episode a "cover-up," adding that he "cannot accept the claim by the Israelis that this was a case of mistaken identity."

    "1 Paul C. Warnke, then Under Secretary of the Navy, has written that "I found it hard to believe that it was, in fact, an honest mistake on the part of the Israeli air force units.... I suspect that in the heat of battle they figured that the presence of this American ship was inimical to their interests...."

    2 "Similarly, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk has called the attack "outrageous," adding in a 1990 radio interview that "the Liberty was flying an American flag. It was not all that difficult to identify, and my judgment was that somewhere along the line some fairly senior Israeli official gave the go- ahead for these attacks...."

    3 David G. Nes, who at the time served as deputy head of the American mission in Cairo, puts it more bluntly: "I don't think that there's any doubt that it was deliberate.... [It is] one of the great cover-ups of our military history."


    .

    ReplyDelete
  53. (More from the same article)


    4 And George Ball, then Under Secretary of State, has called the American government's response to the assault an "elaborate charade.... American leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of its citizens."

    5 Support for these charges can be found in a wide range of publications on the Liberty incident. Assault on the Liberty, a 1979 memoir by former Liberty officer Jim Ennes, Jr., describes the attack as intentional and malicious, and argues that the truth has been obscured by a massive cover-up conducted by Israel and its advocates abroad. This allegation has been repeated in Richard Deacon's The Israeli Secret Service (1977), in John Ranelagh's The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (1986), and in Andrew and Leslie Cockburn's Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israel Covert Relationship (1991). The cover-up theory is also central to Stephen Green's Taking Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (1984), one of the best-selling of all anti-Israel polemics. Nor is the charge of Israeli premeditation confined to books aimed at a popular audience. It also features prominently in academic works such as The USS Liberty: Dissenting History vs. Official History by historian John E. Borne (1993), as well as Donald Neff's Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days that Changed the Middle East (1984), considered by many scholars a standard text on the Six Day War.6 Indeed, so powerful is the trend towards acceptance of Israeli guilt for having planned the attack that a 1995 issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence was able to carry the assertion of Reverdy S. Fishel that "all serious scholarship on the subject accepts Israel's assault as having been perpetrated quite deliberately...."

    7 The claim that Israel's attack on the Liberty was premeditated has also appeared persistently in the press. In 1992, nationally syndicated columnists Roland Evans and Robert Novak dedicated a column, "Twenty-Five Years of Cover-Up,"8 to this charge. Similar accusations have been aired on television programs such as ABC's 20/20 and Geraldo Rivera's Now It Can Be Told.9 The claim is particularly widespread on the Internet, where a search for the "USS Liberty" yields dozens of sites, from those of Arab propagandists (Birzeit.edu, Salam.org, Palestine Forever) and anti-Semitic hate mongers (The Tangled Web, Jew Watch) to the award-winning USS Liberty Homepage, posted by Ennes and other veterans. But while the tenor of these pages may differ - the veterans abjure any anti-Semitism, stressing that several of their crewmates were Jewish - their conclusions are indistinguishable: Israel wantonly attacked the Liberty with the intention of killing every man on board, and then thwarted attempts to investigate the crime.10 “



    .

    ReplyDelete
  54. In 2003, Israeli’s threw a commendation ceremony to celebrate the exploits of the Mossad members involved in the Levan Affair. In a way this made sense. The Mossad was merely caught up in the machications of the civilian authorities. However, years after the incident with the USS Liberty they also had a commendation ceremony honoring the crews of the Torpedo boats that attacked the ship. Pretty strange, at least to me, honoring a snafu, a clusterfuck, a tragic mistake.


    .

    ReplyDelete
  55. It is likely we will not agree on what happened to the USS Liberty.

    I mentioned that there was a number of documentaries put out on the incident.

    Below is one (in seven parts on YouTube) put out by the BBC.

    Anyone who wants to can look at it and draw their own conclusions. Each part is 10 minutes long.

    1 of 7

    2 of 7

    3 of 7

    4 of 7

    5 of 7

    6 of 7

    7 of 7

    .

    ReplyDelete
  56. I do this, so as to draw attention.

    I get a kick out of folks talking about little old me.

    In the real whirled, I have to be somewhat diplomatic, keeping the goal in mind, eye on the prize kind of a thing.
    This is where I hang out to do it, meaninglessly, for the pure entertainment of it.
    The Friends of Isreal sure do provide the entertainment.

    I call Israel a Vacation Club on the Med, for Eurotrash expats. Much to the objections of those that later post that Israel is one of the top ten vacation destination for Eurotrash expats.

    Really, it gets little better than that, in the blog battles at the Elephant Bar.

    Fun stuff, to be sure.

    ReplyDelete
  57. "Did ANY Army any WHERE? ever supply their enemies?"

    Admittedly the COGAT wear army uniforms, but you give the impression these are items being handed out by Israel as charity.

    In fact, it's a big source of income for Israeli farmers and merchants. Prior to Operation Cast Lead the Palis were allowed to import calves into Gaza. Of course, they had to buy them from Israeli merchants. For a number of months after the operation no calves were allowed into Gaza. Not sure where that stands now. But much of the aid is paid for by the $230 million authorized by the UN for Palistinean aid.

    (An interesting subject for another day is why the UN is handing out $230 million in aid to the Palis after 1300 of them were killed in Gaza but only $10 million in aid to Haiti after 230,000 of them died. I'm probably missing something here.)

    And lest we rejoice in the bountiful harvest Gaza is receiving lets take a look at the numbers. First you spent a couple pages the other day posting weekly statistics when it could have been summarized into one compact yearly summary. Of course, that wouldn't have looked quite as impressive.

    But let's take a look at the latest posting. 14,000 tons. 28,000,000 lbs. Damn seems like a lot. But then if you devide it by the 1.5 million people in Gaza and then by seven you get 2.5 lbs per person per day. Still seems like a lot of material. But then you have to take a look at what goes into the 2.5 lbs. There's food, medicine, elevators (kinda heavy), medical equipment, clothes, shoes, animal feed, cooking oil, etc, etc. etc. Gee the 2.5 bs. don't seem quite as large.

    And then of course you have to look at what is not included. Isreal won't allow "luxuries" such as apricots, plums, grapes, and avacadoes. They also won't allow cement even though the incursion a year and a half ago destroyed 5000 homes and damaged 25,000 others. In fact, the list of acceptable and unacceptable items changes often.

    That 2.5 lbs a day doesn't seem like such a lot; especialy, since the "Red Lines" document takes into account the minimum nutritional requirements (broken down by man, women, child)to prevent malnutrition but gives no regard for the consequences of the inevitable eneven distribution.

    Right now Gaza has a 63% unemployment rate, an 80% poverty rate, and a 13% malnutrition rate.

    This post didn't mention the continued rocket bombing of Israel by Hamas. The presumption that either side is guiltless in this conflict seems a little naive to me. Im merely posting this in hopes of preempting next week's COGAT report.

    .

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  58. Quirk,

    The guy's name was Admiral McCain, granted an easy name to forget.

    Boy that was a toughie! Senator John McCain knew him well.

    Was Admiral McCain a liar?

    ReplyDelete
  59. A liar and a career Federal, amounts to one and the same.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Dean Rusk, there is a credible man.

    One not part of eastern elites.

    Better credibility, with the self-made man, than a 2nd generation Federal.

    Rusk, being a Rockefeller man and a Democrat, spoke the truth, from the middle.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Mr. Posner has the most non-male delivery of any living creature on Earth.

    Non-human in any traditional sense.

    The Obama Admin is a freak show.

    ReplyDelete
  62. "Was Admiral McCain a liar?"


    That's your argument?

    That I forgot a name?

    Good lord.

    Since you didn't bother to say why you brought him up, I assume he didn't buy into the premise that the attack was not a mistake.

    If in fact that is the case, then I would say he is either mistaken or a liar.

    My opinion.


    .

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  63. Quirk said...
    "Did ANY Army any WHERE? ever supply their enemies?"

    Admittedly the COGAT wear army uniforms, but you give the impression these are items being handed out by Israel as charity.


    I'll snip your post to a quick point...

    It aint charity, and Israel does SUPPLY the Gaza strip with all sorts of goods and doesnt supply others...

    In a more perfect world, I'd advocate the complete sealing off of gaza from Israel and force Egypt to deal with them.

    I'd allow Gaza to import anything they wish..

    Of course the moment a fur-ball was thrown over or under a fence? I would carpet bomb the entire strip, driving the population into the Sinai. At which time I'd bulldoze the rubble into the med, creating more real estate to occupy.

    The gloves need to be taken off...

    Hamas advocates genocide, give them destruction... Total destruction, not your bullshit stat's about what was destroyed...

    The Palestinians deserve to be defeated.

    They can bitch for 40 years living a tent in the sinai on REM's and UN water for all I care...

    ReplyDelete
  64. USA Today reports almost as many homeowners are dropping out of the Obama adminstrations main mortgage assistance plan as those who've gotten permanent mortgage adjustments. 299,000 qualified for permanent load adjustments out of 1.2 million.

    About 277,000 homeowners or 23% of enrolled have dropped out in the 3 month trial program. Why?

    To complete the program, borrowers must make at least 3 payments on time.

    I had to laugh.

    ReplyDelete
  65. DeWayne Wickham, the bigoted columnist who writes for USA Today says black leaders are miffed because they were not consulted in advance on Kagan's nomination.

    There is a sense among them that they (blacks) are expected to blindly support any White House play even when they are not called into the huddle said Wickham.

    NAACP pres. Ben Jealous says there was a high level of discipline within the WH that keep the black group from getting advance notice of the nomination.

    I had to laugh (again).

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  66. Quirk,

    I just wanted to know if the guy who is so certain about the event knew squat.

    A Google "USS Liberty" yields 288,000 links. After going through the first several dozen pages it became obvious that there are as many conspiracy theorists on this matter as the JFK assassination. One would think there would be some "there" there. Alas, there is not. Indeed, it's one parrot following another.

    I stick with Admiral McCain and Senator McCain on this one.

    Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.

    As an aside, the Admiral and his father, John S. McCain, Sr., are the only father-son combination to hold the naval rank of Admiral (four stars).

    ReplyDelete
  67. In re: Admiral McCain

    desert rat said...
    A liar and a career Federal, amounts to one and the same.

    Tue May 18, 03:04:00 PM EDT



    ...Better credibility, with the self-made man, than a 2nd generation Federal...

    Tue May 18, 03:08:00 PM EDT



    Recently, Quirk said of you, "DR, you really are a slimy piece of shit."

    ...pearls of wisdom...Although I would quibble about the elevation in rank.

    Did anyone ever doubt that I am "an inclusive kind of guy?"

    ReplyDelete
  68. Kabul bomb attack on NATO convoy kills 5 U.S. troops


    "The attack was condemned by... Afghan President Hamid Karzai..."

    ...Right...One day the Taliban will hang him from a streetlamp...His brother will be in Switzerland.

    ReplyDelete
  69. "...The gloves need to be taken off..."

    WiO you have your views on the ME situation. I have mine. And others here have theirs. It's unlikely any minds will be changed.

    My comments were strictly on the weekly CONGAT reports.

    .

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  70. "Quirk,

    I just wanted to know if the guy who is so certain about the event knew squat."


    Gee, touche Allen. Although, I never professed to be an expert on the affair, only that I had read a lot about it.

    And to be truthful, I was much more interested in the men who worked for McCain, Admiral Wood the president of the inquiry and Cpt. Ward Boston the Chief Council on the Navy Court's Inquiry. Ward Boston's affadavit makes for very interesting reading.

    "I stick with Admiral McCain and Senator McCain on this one."

    Why doesn't this surprise Allen? You have a lot invested in Israel being right.

    As for Admiral McCain, let's see. Came from a navy family. His father was an admiral. He himself spend, what, 40 years in the navy. A four star admiral. High in the naval bureaucracy. Been taking and obeying orders all his life. And he decides to support his commander-in-chief's position on the incident. Who da thunk it?

    Oh yeah, now I remember. Admiral McCain, he was the one who told Admiral Wood to have the investigation completed in one week when this type of investigation would normally take 6 months. He was also the guy who told Wood that he couldn't visit or even talk with the Israeli's. Yea, it's all starting to come back to me now.

    A stand-up guy Admiral McCain. That must have been where the Senator got his steadfast resolve and constancy. Likely, none in that family would do anything merely because it was expeditious.

    As I said Allen, not likely either of us will change our minds or positions on this but I'll leave you with this little factoid:

    The National Archives in College Park, Md., includes in its files on casualties from the Liberty copies of the original telegrams the Navy sent out to family members. The telegrams called the attack accidental. The telegrams were sent out June 9, the day before the Navy court of inquiry convened.


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  71. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  72. I’m pretty sure it’s good sign to upgrade Mel’s phone when T-9 doesn’t recognize the word “fuck”.

    Don't ya think?

    ReplyDelete
  73. Sorry Melody.


    I'm a bad boy.


    .

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  74. What is amazing....

    Rat makes a statement that Gaza is a fate worse than death, that Israel is in violation of the Geneva Accords, that's it's very existence is a crime and not a peep out of most people here...

    After I post posts that contain the very fact that Gaza aint a fate worse than death and that all of rat's points are infact racist not a peep out of most people...

    But then quirk decides that Israel are not angels for their supplies...

    Hey Quirk, why not nip the shit in the bud and just admit that Rat is full of crap and Gaza AINT a fate worse than DEATH, that the Israelis provide medical care for THOUSANDS of Gazans and they DO in fact supply ADEQUATE aid..

    But no you want to nitpick bullshit..

    ReplyDelete
  75. Quirk said...
    "Did ANY Army any WHERE? ever supply their enemies?"

    Admittedly the COGAT wear army uniforms, but you give the impression these are items being handed out by Israel as charity.



    No, I responding to Rat's claim that Gaza was under siege and it was a fate worse than death...

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  76. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  77. I am not full of crap, Gaza is a refugee camp. Administrated by Israel.

    Your posts confirm that, misdirection.
    That administration is a War Crime, under the Geneva Accords, so stated by the United States, at the UN, in 1972. Confirmed by the Swiss just last year.

    Nothing has changed, since 1972.

    As to supplying their "enemy", what a joke, those folk in Gaza, they are Israelis, even if the Eurotrash in charge of Israel will not admit it.

    Nor will the Eurotrash extend basic human rights to the Gazans, though the Israeli military controls the ingress and egress.

    As you have so gallantly posted.

    That Israel is a vacation hot spot, a Club on the Med, you confirmed, as well.

    The vacation posting proves that Israel is not at war, has few, if any, enemies that pose any real threat to Israelis or their guests.

    Or it'd not be one of the top ten vacation destinations of the whirled.

    Your rants are tiring.
    As to my military experience, believe what you want to.

    It does not effect reality or history.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Your posts confirm the charges.

    Israel administrates the Occupied Territories, that is a violation of the Geneva Accords, a war crime.

    You admit to the administration of the territory, the litany of supplies you published proves it.

    That the US subsidizes the Israeli government, to the tune of $7,000 per Israeli, undeniable.

    It's in the CIA fact book.

    Keepin' our enemies close, closer than we keep our friends..

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  79. desert rat said...
    I am not full of crap, Gaza is a refugee camp. Administrated by Israel.



    Now rat says...

    It AINT a fate worse than DEATH?

    And your NEW grasp of the situation is AMAZING...

    Gaza is NOT administrated by Israel.....

    IS that your new claim?

    Gaza has it's own GOVERNMENT, Elected by the people!

    After all Hamas threw FATAH members off the roof after they TOOK control, not Israelis...

    As for the ENTIRE gaza being a refugee camp?

    If only that were true...

    Show me another "refugee camp" with 20 story buildings, machine shops, foundries, industry?

    There are NINE refugee camps in Gaza, but alias, Rat your point and you? Full of it....

    The interesting thing the population inside the refugee camps has grown quite well, proving that WHEN Gaza was run by Israel, the Gazans bred quite nicely, growing their numbers with tens of thousands bouncing babies jihadists...

    Any more lies, misdirections or outright fantasies tonight Mr Mouse that squeaked?

    ReplyDelete
  80. Rat Squeaks: The vacation posting proves that Israel is not at war, has few, if any, enemies that pose any real threat to Israelis or their guests.


    Talk of tiring? Your a nitwit...

    Really....

    ReplyDelete
  81. "Hey Quirk, why not nip the shit in the bud and just admit that Rat is full of crap and Gaza AINT a fate worse than DEATH,..."

    Obviously, rat's observation is hyperbolic at a minimum and I would assume false on a couple of levels. First, determining a fate worse than death is hardly his to decide, not for 1 1/2 million people. Secondly, that determination is kind of a personal thing I would imagine. When pain becomes too intense, is that a fate worse than death? I've heard it's so and can believe it. Would betraying your country be a fate worse than death. Again, there are those that would think so. But being hungry and out of work? I don't know. If that were true, it's likely the Palestineans in Gaza would attack Israel en masse rather than live in their current conditions.

    You and rat ranted about this for what two or three days just a short while ago. That's fine. If you go back you will notice that I didn't get involved.

    I got involved today because it appeared your intention was to start giving us regular updates on this shit with each weekly issuance of the CONGAT report.

    "After I post posts that contain the very fact that Gaza aint a fate worse than death and that all of rat's points are infact racist not a peep out of most people..."

    Sorry for the semantic point of order but wasn't it you that instructed us that the Jews are not a race? As for the main thrust of your statement, it assumes that most at the bar are actually interested in participating in your and the rat's little throwdowns most of which quickly devolve into the typical name calling.

    How many times can one be expected to jump in and respond to "Your an illegal occupier!" or "Your a nazi." It's not a matter of not taking sides, it's a matter of not giving a shit.

    "But no you want to nitpick bullshit..

    :)

    Yea, I guess that's what I was doing.



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  83. At least I have some wits about me, which is more than can be said of you, misdirection.

    You post claims, with pride, that invalidate your previous arguments, then get upset when it is noticed.

    You post lists that confirm the Israeli violations of the Geneva Accords, then get irritated with the facts presented by your posts.

    That, misdirection, is being witless.

    It is true that I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.

    You relish being on your knees, that much is clear.

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  84. According to the daily, Israeli forces are training for the possibility of another Gaza offensive, after which it would be "compelled to govern the areas for an extended period."

    “We were told that as part of the readiness for all scenarios, an officer has already been chosen for the task, who will know how to manage the situation in the Gaza Strip if the governmental bodies should cease to function,” the newspaper quoted a military source as saying, allegedly repeating what he heard in closed-door meetings.

    Israel withdrew its forces and citizens living on illegal Gaza settlements in late 2005, however it maintains strict control over the Strip's borders, the movement of its residents, and its nautical territory, the import and export of goods, with legal experts saying the restrictions still constitute occupation under international law.


    Military Governor

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  85. ... with legal experts saying the restrictions still constitute occupation under international law.

    Rouge criminal States, with no concern for international conventions.
    Israel leads the list, the Norks a distant second.
    Iran, not even in the same league.

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  86. To hell with tha gazans. They tore the greenhouses down.-----"In the 1980's there were estimated to be more than 16,000 elk in the Lolo Zone. But the herd had been in a long, slow decline prior to wolf reintroduction in the late 1990's. The decline steepened following the harsh winter of 1996. The department increased bag limits on bears and lions, limited the number of elk hunters and joined with the Forest Service to improve habitat. In 2006 there were about 5,100 elk in the zone. With the lower numbers, biologists expected the elk population to stabilize, but counts continued to drop. Today there are about 2,100 elk in the Lolo Zone. 'We have ongoing research in the Lolo that shows wolves are the primary factor in mortality and keeping elk numbers down' " No shit, they don't have a population big enough to replacement breed now. The hell with the Idaho Fish and Game Department, and the Feds, too. From an article in today's paper about hiring some professional hunters to try to do something. The hunters say, it's a hard place to hunt wolves. What they should do is poison them.

    ReplyDelete
  87. As for making any anti-Jewish statements, find one I have ever made.

    Please.

    They do not exist, I never comment upon religion, only individuals and countries.

    That you conflate Jewishness with Israel, your bad, not mine.

    I justly consider Israel a rouge and criminal State, as you have validated.

    Governed by and for expat Eurotrash, living the life, at their Club on the Med.
    As you have validated.

    That many Israeli are not Jewish, you have told us, many times.
    I do not even chastise Israeli citizens, just their government.

    ReplyDelete
  88. And its' Jim Crow policies that deny millions of people their basic human rights.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Unmoved by the latest Iranian offer, the Administration is pressing ahead with the new sanctions resolution, and it says that Russia and China remain onboard. If, despite Tehran's gambit, Obama can still get all five permanent members of the Security Council (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France) and four of the rotating members to vote for new sanctions, that would not only be a win for his effort to tighten the screws on Iran but also a validation of his strategy of outreach to rivals and the international community.

    ...

    The downside, of course, is stark. If any of the permanent five breaks ranks - if China even abstains rather than use its veto - or if the U.S. can't rustle up the nine votes needed to pass the resolution, it will suggest that Obama's months of outreach failed to net any significant international advantage in dealing with rogue actors.

    Iran would then gain the fuel for its reactor while hanging on to a stockpile of enriched uranium as well as strike a body blow on Obama's attempt to rebuild the international security cooperation that collapsed over the Iraq war.


    Nuclear Showdown

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  90. The ROK was very wise to put off their formal announcement until this week.

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  91. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  92. If those are "Jewish" policies, then I have extra dose of disdain for that religion.

    But that is based upon those real whirled discriminatory actions, rather than any frivolous religious rhetoric.

    ReplyDelete
  93. None of the rouge States of the Middle East pay heed to the US. They have not for decades, on any side of the sectarian divides.

    All three of the major sects, of the Middle East, through their various sectarian governments, have done damage to the interests of the United States, since 1948.

    Some worse than others.

    But all should be cut off.

    End the oil addiction.
    The solution is in the weeds.

    ReplyDelete
  94. That the NK Gov didn't get what it likely was aiming for, a nice touch.

    I'd rather not think about future, similar attempts to goad the ROK, however. Are the North Koreans going to try make this a biannual event? Wouldn't put it past them.




    SecState has enormous bags under her eyes.

    I would, too.

    I. Would. Too.

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  95. Hi Trish.


    Got something we can argue about?


    .

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  96. I recall the tree cutting incident, US soldiers killed by NorKs, with shovels and such.

    We did not react, militarily.
    Well, not really, though we did fire some artillery, at the trees.

    Much as the RoK will now.

    Check the NorKs history of terror and murder victimizing the South. Those North Koreans, they must think they're better at murder than the Mossad.

    ReplyDelete
  97. A refugee camp, with buildings and such, Warsaw, in 1939, 40, 41, 42, 43.

    ReplyDelete
  98. Ru Paul took Kentucky, Quirk. Can you believe that shit? Kentucky!




    My husband was under Keith Dayton at the G2 in Seoul. Loved that job, loved that group - and he'll never change his mind about the sheer insanity of the Norks. Every day those nutty fuckers were actively up to no good.

    Even so, this is quite the provocation for them. I think they're desperate.

    The South Koreans, God bless 'em, are doing the right and sane thing.

    ReplyDelete
  99. As those South Koreans always have, trish.

    As the history shows.

    The South prospers, the NorKs, don't.

    I think they are desperate, too.

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  100. I passed on the opportunity to spend two years in Seoul. The only time I've declined an invite to PCS.

    He brought back a taste for Kimchi that stinks up the fridge.

    ReplyDelete
  101. Ru Paul eh?

    Your claws are showing Trish.

    Give the Tea Partiers a break. They will make it a little more interesting this year.

    .

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  102. I spent a year there, came back smelling like a Korean.

    My brother powered down the windows in his truck, after picking me up at the Phx airport. It must have been, maybe, three minutes after we got in the truck, and it was well over 110 degrees outside, the A/C worked great ...

    Kimchi & soju!

    ReplyDelete
  103. Something "interesting," for a change. Drudge reports Pot Prices are plunging in California.

    ReplyDelete
  104. No, Ru Paul winning the Kentucky primary would be interesting.

    Rearranging the actors on the right, reciting the same old tropes? Not so much.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Any bets on how generous the Germans told themselves they were, to those Poles, in Warsaw?

    ReplyDelete
  106. Blogger trish said...

    "The ROK was very wise to put off their formal announcement until this week."



    ooooohhhh trish, you are such a pragmatist!! Where is your spine? Don't you have the courage of your convictions???




    :P

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  107. Soju is...rubbing alcohol by any other name. My God, we had bottles and soda pop cans of the stuff that made their way to Belgium. And back again.

    Korean culture in general never much caught on with him. And it wasn't the fact that everyone oozes garlic out of their pores. It was the fact that they're so loud in public. Especially the women. Drove him up a wall.

    The Loud Thing...does not go over well.

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  108. Don't know how the poor man made it through two years of LOUD in South America.

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  109. Good news, there, rufus.

    If pot prices plunge, the Cartels of Mexico will feel the economic squeeze.

    As long as California grown supply maintains market share. Although a lot of California grown is now controlled by the Cartels, it's been said, farming on our National Forests.

    We catch a couple of growth patches here in Arizona, on occasion. If one goes off the beaten, patrolled trail, go armed.

    If confronted, retreat, given the opportunity. You will be out gunned, more than likely.


    The East Bay Express calls some of the claims in the report disingenuous, suggesting that unsubstantiated claims and the vast difference in product quality could account for price fluctuations.

    "What's happening is the people that don't have quality product aren't selling it," said medical cannabis grower Tim Blake.


    Pot farming, recession proof?

    A 'good' Hard inventory?

    What once was 'illegal', now 'regularized'.

    With or without "comprehensive reform".

    There is a lesson, there.

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  110. PHILADELPHIA – U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday lost a Democratic primary in his bid for a sixth term after taking the risky step of switching from the GOP.

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  111. This con team couple, just to much fun.

    Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the infamous couple dubbed the White House Gatecrashers, are demanding the White House apologize to them for the embarrassing State Dinner fiasco last November.

    In a brand new interview about the incident that created a national security scandal and cost presidential Social Secretary Desiree Rogers her job, the Salahis have also exclusively told RadarOnline.com the congressional investigation on Capitol Hill was a "charade" and a waste of tax-payer dollars.

    "It would be nice if somebody apologized to us and for (the White House) to call it quits," Tareq Salahi, along with his wife Michaele, told RadarOnline.com.


    Fronting for a nonexistent Polo Charity, such low lifes.

    They even have a letter from George Bush, on White House stationary, congratulating them on their wedding, dated 14Oct03.

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  112. There was mention of them on Fox or CNN or whatever. They were complaining about event-crasher protocol, which in their world apparently dictates being sent off with a nice bottle of wine and...well, not a Congressional investigation and shit-canning of at least one WH staffer, surely!

    Whatever. They're buffoons.

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  113. "Rearranging the actors on the right, reciting the same old tropes? Not so much.


    I took a couple of test tonight that were supposed to identify where you stand on the political spectrum.

    One was at a Libertarian site. It indicated "my libertarian beliefs were obvious but that I need to keep working on them."

    The other was a quicky test at Advocates for Self Government.

    Quiz

    I always considered myself a Conservative/Libertarian but in fact the test shows I'm a Liberal tending towards Libertarian. Perhaps I have evolved (or perhaps devolved). I hope it at least means "Liberal" in the classical sense.

    .
    .

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  114. Though I did like Wedding Crashers.

    Mostly because I'm a Vince Vaughn fan.

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  115. I'm a social liberal. Always have been. And that's without animus whatsoever toward, for instance, religious feeling or devotion - for which I have civil respect even when it's batshit insane. And genuine admiration when it's not.

    Live and let live.

    Almost everything else at this point is highly ambiguous and uncertain.

    I can do without ideology altogether and just go with capable, forthright, and humane management.

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  116. "I'm a social liberal...

    Really.

    The imagination runs wild.


    .

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  117. "Solid libertarian."

    Yea, but where are you from Sam. Offshore some place right?


    .

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  118. Trish's idea of religion.

    Make My Day


    .

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  119. If you can be described you aren't very interesting.

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  120. "If you can be described you aren't very interesting."


    Sounds like a guy at one of those dating services trying to convince some girl to go out with him.

    .

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  121. I always just told'em I wuz rich.

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  122. Then, tried to get'em drunk.

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  123. Heck, Ruf. You know that add for Dos Equis, the most interesting man in the world?

    Don't you believe it.

    My dog is a stud and it took me almost a year to get him to stop trying to hump my leg. Even now he still gives me the look sometimes.

    I have the same issue with hairy animals of all stripes.

    Most of them French or Eastern European.

    It's kind of a curse.

    But hey.

    .

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  124. It's seven hours til Allen wakes up. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. - Hit it

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  125. Funny stuff, Quirk.

    From Seattle, temporarily residing in Adelaide, SA.

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  126. Why would the Chinese care about the AZ immigration legislation, anyway?

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  127. By Candice Zachariahs and Ron Harui

    May 19 (Bloomberg) -- The euro reached the weakest level in more than four years and the pound slumped to a 13-month low as Germany’s ban on some speculative sales triggered concern that Europe’s debt crisis will worsen.

    The yen gained against all 16 major counterparts amid heightened demand for safety after Germany prohibited naked short-selling and speculating on sovereign debt, and the Bank of Italy allowed lenders to exclude losses on government bonds. New Zealand’s dollar dropped a fourth day as central bank Governor Alan Bollard said gradual depreciation was desirable. The euro pared losses on speculation recent declines were excessive.

    “If you don’t feel like you can sell bonds and equities in Europe, you’re left with selling the euro to express a negative view,” said Greg Gibbs, a foreign-exchange strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Sydney. The German ban “creates a view that the authorities sense bigger problems than what may appear on the surface, creating more nervousness and fear.”

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  128. KEY WEST, Fla., May 19 (Reuters)
    ...
    In a sign of the widening environmental impact, the United States nearly doubled a no-fishing zone in waters seen affected by the oil gushing from the blown well, extending it to 19 percent of U.S. waters in the Gulf. [ID:nN18155760]

    And tests were being done on tar balls found on a Key West island resort to see if they came from BP's well, as Florida braced for the spill's potential impact on its $60 billion-a-year tourism industry.

    Oil debris and tar balls have been reported in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Protective booms are being used to try to defend the shore.

    "No one knows where the tar balls are from, but they predict doom and gloom," said Charlie Bauer, a resident of Key West

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  129. Heck, Sam. I didn't even know there was a South Austalia. At first I was thinking Adelaide, Saskatchewan? Adelaide, South America? Adelaid, South Asia? Naw, none of those can be right.

    I had to Google it.

    I guess that's one of the reasons I'm so interesting.

    Well, this kinda explains the "solid libertarian" and the pube cutting. I mean living down under with all those descendants of the English convicts. You gotta be able to let it all hang out.

    Crikey.

    I envy you.


    .

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  130. "Our intent is to pay all legitimate claims," said Lamar McKay, president of BPAmerica. "The word 'legitimate' makes me nervous," interrupted Sen. JayRockefeller, D-W.Va.

    ...

    Salazar denied reports that MMS had approved a number of new oil drilling applications in deep waters of the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill. He said no new deep water drilling has begun since April 20, and no wells will be drilled until a safety report is completed on the BP spill later this month.

    Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told the committee that about a dozen applications were approved after April 20, but were suspended on May 6 before work began.


    Oil Regulation

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  131. Heck, Trish gets you all worked up about a road trip and then takes off without you.

    Time for bed.


    .

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  132. Dear Mayor Villaraigosa,
    I was dismayed to learn that the Los Angeles City Council voted to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based companies — a vote you strongly supported — to show opposition to SB 1070 (Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act).
    You explained your support of the boycott as follows: “While we recognize that as neighbors, we share resources and ties with the State of Arizona that may be difficult to sever, our goal is not to hurt the local economy of Los Angeles, but to impact the economy of Arizona. Our intent is to use our dollars — or the withholding of our dollars — to send a message.” (emphasis added)
    I received your message; please receive mine. As a state-wide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the “resources and ties” we share with the City of Los Angeles. In fact, approximately twenty-five percent of the electricity consumed in Los Angeles is generated by power plants in Arizona.
    If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation. I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands. If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.
    People of goodwill can disagree over the merits of SB 1070. A state-wide economic boycott of Arizona is not a message sent in goodwill.


    Sincerely,
    Commissioner Gary Pierce

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  133. It's not bad down here. Plenty to see and do. You could spend a lifetime exploring. Easy.

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  134. Boycotts are so, well, Cesar Chavez.

    Chavez considered an iconic labor leader and hero, to many, was thought to be a criminal by our contemporaneous Governor, "One Eyed Jack" Williams.

    He was insulted, and said so, when the more modern and politically correct leaders of Arizona honored Chavez's memory.

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  135. Chavez was adamantly opposed to illegal labor, knowing that it was inimical to his goal of improving the pay and working conditions for legal farmworkers.

    Today's activists and La Raza types ignore history and act as if Chavez is one of THEIR icons.

    Taint so.

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  136. Kyle and McCain called out this pencil-necked fag on his weak shit moral equivalency between Arizon law and the Chi-Coms.

    Big Time.

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