The Independent's Christmas Cheer

It's nauseating. Here's the gist of it:

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Mary was not a Palestinian refugee, nor was the fruit of her womb, Jesus, though in today's world, third generation Palestinians living in Arab states are, thanks to UNRWA, perversely still considered refugees. Such an "honour" as UN slavery forever is conferred on no other unlucky people, thank God. As for Jesus, "He was born of the flesh and the seed of David," wrote Paul, born at Bethlehem, in the Roman province of Judea, which would be renamed Palestina 160 years later after the Philistines, not the Arab Palestinians who live there today. The Philistines, judging from their pottery and ironworking skills came from Mycenae. There is no racial relationship between the Philistines and the Palestinian Arabs who, like the Palestinian Jews, share the same ancestor, Abraham, who the Arabs call Ibrahim.

Anyway, read the whole nauseating thing here
.

Straight Talk About War

Victor Davis Hanson, author of A War Like No Other and The Soul of Battle, among others, has this concise analysis of the present situation. I can think of no other essay that so entirely addresses every important point upon which our futures all depend. Please read it here.

More Cock Robin Defections

Melanie Phillips, who should be read often, has some interesting information about the expansion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. This reminds me to go into the several reasons for Cock Robin’s recent Sky is falling obsession: human caused "Global Warming" See also here for her link to this interesting site about former believer and now enviroskeptic Claude Allegre, a French geophysicist.

Phillip quotes Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, saying that

[O]ver the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been cnstructed [sic]in this country - the phenomenon of ‘caastrophic’[sic]climate cange. It seems that mere ‘climate change’ was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be ‘catastrophic’ to be worthy of attention.

The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers 'chaotic’, ‘irreversible’, ‘rapid’ - has altered the public discourse around climate change. This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as 'climate change is worse than we thought’, that we are approaching 'irreversible tipping in the Earth’s climate’, and that we are ‘at the point of no return’.

I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric…

I would add that the alarmists have other agendas. Firstly, to redistibute both power and money to multinational political institutions which can be controlled by a large number of undemocratic and anti-democratic states, to the loss of the Americans above all and to any European state that bucks the general trend to humble the US. If Kyoto were really about the environment, why would the Russians not be forced to pay instead of being recipients of "bad environmental citizens?" Look at a nighttime view of the Urals. See all those bright lights? They aren’t cities: they are 24/7 natural gas burn-offs. This stuff could be moved to market but for a pipeline. Where will they get the money if capitalists (boo!) want 50% for their risk (the gas belings to the Soviet — oops — the Russian people)?

Another one is even more amusing. Freud got a lot wrong but he’s right about this: we are witnessing his "return of the repressed content:" i.e. Christianity of the most primitive pre-scientific kind. Though about 93% of "Greenhouse gasses" are water vapour, the infinitessimal contribution of humans is said to be the thing pushing us into unavoidable chaos. We humans are evidently back at the center of the universe, as in the time of Galileo, and our actions determine the events of the universe! We have been bad and WE WILL BURN! Sound familiar?

Justice in france

From Richard Landes at Augean Stables:

L’Express, a major French weekly had the decision up at it’s website within two hours, able to cite verbatim from a document that in principle cannot be released until signed by the court.... I remind readers that I do not have the judgment yet, so I cannot judge either the article or the Judges on the basis of any more than what’s written here. It may be that the language of this article has been cherry-picked to put Karsenty in a bad light. But harsh it is.

Unfortunately Landes’ link to L’Express doesn’t work; the closest I can get is this arrow at their site: http://www.lexpress.fr/recherche/default.asp , but it doesn’t go anywhere. Sorry, but here’s what they said as quoted by Landes:

The image of a Palestinian child felled by bullets, diffused by the French station France2 in 2000, and become the symbol of the Palestinian Intifada, cannot be considered a montage or a staged scene, the correctional tribunal of Paris judged.

Against the advice of the floor [i.e., the Procureur] who recommended dropping the charges, the judges condemned Philippe Karsenty, the animator of the websit Media Ratings (www.M-R.fr) for "public defamation" of Charles Enderlin and France2.

Philippe Karsenty is also condemned to pay one symbolic Euro of damages to each of the plaintiffs, as well as 3000 Euros of court costs. He announced to the journalists that he intended to appeal the process and promised that he will present the "proofs" of his claims would be up at his website in the coming days.

An extraordinary judgement since the procureur recommended dropping the charges because Enderlin did nothing whatever to make his case. He produced no witnesses and refused to produce the rushes on which Karsenty’s criticisms (and Landes’s) are based. The procureur was angry about that and thus her (ignored) recommendation. Since all Enderlin produced was a letter from Jacques Chirac, we can conclude that justice in France depends on who, not what, you know. The law in France has ever been in thrall to aristocratic brutality punctuated only by brief murderous episodes of mob revenge. Sue me.

Check out Landes's website, www.seconddraft.org

Life's a... bitch?

According to Mark Holland, Liberal Poodle of Canada, Peter MacKay answered a colleague of his in the clean air debate who'd said, don't you care about clean air for humans and animals? What about your dog? And MacKay pointed to Belinda Stronach's chair and said "You already have her." A clever crack, I thought, and I'm not talking about Belinda.

But is Belinda Stronach a bitch? Bitches are made that way by nature; Stronach is more cunning. When she crossed the floor was she a whore? Whores rent their pudenda, they don't sell their souls. She is, therefore, neither a bitch nor a whore.

Accusations of sexism abound, naturally but what’s really sexist is that women like Belinda hide behind their sex and dismiss all opposition to their wills with that catch-it-all accusation. And the fact that Jens can say this kind of stuff but Johns can’t. Here's Jen Z, for example, from www.thepinkseats.com, a great post:

The Canadian Press confirmed today that recently retired Maple Leafs enforcer Tie Domi and Liberal MP Belinda Stronach are linked. As we mentioned last week, it was reported that they were seen together at the Toronto International Film Festival. And now Stronach has been named as the "other woman" in a divorce application filed by his wife Leanne.

One of the incidents cited in the document is that a friend of Leanne's saw Domi and Stronach walking holding hands down Madison Avenue in New York. None of this has been proven in court yet, but if it is true, shame on them. Domi's a dummy - not only for cheating on his wife and three kids, but for being disrespectful enough to be seen in public doing it too. And Stronach's a homewrecker - becoming involved with a married man...we love politicians with outstanding ethics, don't you?!

We were pondering what these two could possibly have in common and it occurred to us that maybe it's chewing men up and spitting them out - Domi with his fists on the ice and Stronach with her man-eating ways -she's been married twice and broke up with MP Peter Mackay when she crossed the floor in the House of Commons and became a Liberal). Like we said before, Domi better watch out. She'll leave him for the opposition ... a retired Montreal Canadiens player.

Love that last paragraph so much I emphasized it.
Here’s another bit I like, right from the horse’s mouth:

"I have chosen a public vocation and I recognize the scrutiny and attention that comes with that. At the same time, I am an individual citizen and I respect the right of everyone to privacy in their personal life."

Exactly! She wants it both ways. Actually it's even more simple than that: She wants it her way.

Kim-il-ding-dong

I nominate this picture as the weapon of choice against the choicest dingbat on the planet. Copy, laminate, drop on Pyonyang in the millions.

Stomach-churning

From Augean Stables this awful story:

I have heard from Paris that Philippe Karsenty was found liable for insulting Charles Enderlin and France2 to the sum of 3000 Euros to Enderlin and 5 symbolic Euros to France2. I do not have the judgment and only a vague account of the reasoning, which criticizes Philippe for not having done more research.

The implications of this reversal of Madame le Procureur’s clear recommendations, for what appears to be — we’ll have a translation and analysis of the judgment ASAP — a critique of Philippe that somehow absolves Enderlin of all of his journalistic failings, failings that came out abundantly in court, are deeply troubling.

It's pretty strange to claim that Karsenty didn't do enough research since that's the gist of his criticism of Enderlin. How much criticism of the press, of political figures, of ideas is allowed in nominally free and democratic France? Were I there, would I be liable for making such a statement and "insulting the institutions of France?" Better shut me mouth then!

Here in North America, you'd have to prove, not that Karsenty was wrong but that he knowingly lied and did it maliciously in order to hurt Enderlin. Enderlin would also have to prove damages. Was he fired from his job, for instance? If Karsenty criticized Enderlin's decisions and coverage because he felt the story was wrong, that would clearly place him outside the laws of libel.

It shows how strongly aristocratic France is, despite its democratic pretensions. It's not just this story: there are plenty of issues where the ruling elite simply ignore the will of the people. The EU constitution is dead, for instance, but the bureaucrats go on, interpreting a no vote as a "yes-if-we-were-only-just-educated-enough-to-understand-it" vote. Who was the Frenchman who said that no-one really understands the whole document? That's a blueprint for autocracy and we've seen its smudged fingerprint today.

Or perhaps the justice just couldn't get a particular image out of her head: that of the Jew soldier standing at the foot of the Cross, a nail and hammer in his hand.

Witch Trials Ahead

I've always felt there was something missing in the global warming debate and that's the debate part. When proponents dismiss thousands of dissenting opinions and proclaim that there is a "consensus of opinion" on warming, there's something wrong.

I've always felt that the thing was a classic UN redistribution scam. Russia burns a dozen, dozen and a half natural gas fires east of the Urals 24/7. Look at a nighttime map of Russia. Yet they don't have to pay, they have to be paid - one of the world's greatest polluters. Why? no bread.

The whole thing seems to me a classic case of the return of the repressed content Freud spoke about. Having denied the consequence of action in the moral (and especially religious) sphere, it comes back into "science." Stripped of all the artificially scientific clothing, the emperor looks like this: "We've been bad and because we'ver been bad we will burn." It's the most primitive of terrors in the guise of science.

And what of the science? Can someone explain to me why different methods were used to determine relative temperatures in the centuries leading up to our day? No one has to my satisfaction and I don't need to believe something because someone else believes the sky is falling.

MelaniePhillips.com has an excellent piece on the fascist green movement and their plans to hold "war crimes" trials over those who refuse to accept their inquisition. I'm quoting the whole thing, it's so good.

The green witch-hunters
A charming new idea from the delightfully imaginative green lobby. David Roberts in something called Grist magazine writes:

When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.

Such is the contemporary progressive thinker. In an excellent article on Spiked OnLine, Brendan O'Neill rightly expresses horror and disgust at te obscene use of the phrase "climate-change denial" by the green lobby to demonise and vilify climate sceptics and thus shut down debate in totalitarian fashion:

Some take the moral equivalence between climate change denial and Holocaust denial to its logical conclusion. They argue that climate change deniers are actually complicit in a future Holocaust - the global warming Holocaust - and thus will have to be brought to trial in the future.

Green author and columnist Mark Lynas writes: "I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine and disease in decades ahead. I put [their climate change denial] in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial - except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don't will one day have to answer for their crimes." (11)

There is something deeply repugnant in marshalling the Holocaust in this way, both to berate climate change deniers and also as a convenient snapshot of what is to come if the planet continues to get warmer.
First, the evidence is irrefutable that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis; that is an historical event that has been thoroughly investigated, interrogated and proven beyond reasonable doubt. (Although as the American-Jewish academic and warrior against Holocaust denial, Deborah Lipstadt, has pointed out, even the Nazi Holocaust is not above debate and re-evalution; it is not a "theology".) There is no such proof or evidence (how could there be?) that global warming will cause a similar calamity. Second, it is, yet again, a cynical attempt to close down debate. The H-word is uttered as a kind of moral absolute that no one could possibly question. We are all against what happened during the first Holocaust, so we will be against the "next Holocaust", too, right? And if not - if you do not take seriously the coming "global warming Holocaust" - then you are clearly wicked, the equivalent of the David Irvings of this world, someone who should possibly even be locked up or certainly tried at a future date. At least laws against Holocaust denial (which, as a supporter of free speech, I am opposed to) chastise individuals for lying about a known and proven event; by contrast, the turning of climate change denial into a taboo raps people on the knuckles for questioning events, or alleged events, that have not even occurred yet. It is pre-emptive censorship. They are reprimanded not for lying, but for doubting, for questioning. O'Neill's article might be read in conjunction with a fascinating piece from 1999 by Wolfgang Behringer who points out a historical conjunction between witch-hunting and irrational anxiety about the weather -- particularly during the Little Ice Age in the 15th and 16th centuries. Behringer homes in on the year 1560, when a combination of exceptional coldness and wetness led to witch-hunts against women suspected of weather-making. The strange weather conditions were thought to be not the work of God but the work of mankind:

The resumption of witch-hunting in the 1560ies was accompanied by a debate about weather-making, because this was the most important charge against suspected witches. Though witches were certainly made responsible for all kinds of bad luck, in an agrarian society weather is especially important. Crop failure caused increases in prices, malnutrition, rising infant mortality, and finally epidemics. Through sources we can observe that while individual "unnatural" accidents resulted in individual accusations of witchcraft, in case of "unnatural" weather and collective damage whole peasant communities demanded persecution. In comparison to individual accusations, which tended to lead to trials against individual suspects, collective demands for persecution - when accepted by the authorities - regularly resulted in large-scale witch-hunts (Behringer 1995). Without going into details, the fundamental interdependance of meteorologicaldisaster, crop failure, and a popular demand for witch-hunts can be demonstrated by two further examples: the largest witch-hunt of the sixteenth century, and the largest witch-hunt of the seventeenth century, which occurred between 1626-1630 and was the climax of European witchcraft persecutions. The mechanisms detected in the background of these persecutions can be applied to all large witchcraft persecutions in traditional EuropeÂ… It can be shown from many individual witch-trials that meteorological events contributed decisively to many individual suspicions and accusations, and as we know now from climatic history, these events often had super-local, super-regional, or "super-national" character. Areas of low pressure could cover large regions; the advance of arctic air could harm at least the northern part of the continent or even the northern hemisphere. What we can learn from this is that contemporary lamentation about decreasing fruitfulness of the fields, of the cattle, and even of men where far from being just rethoric devices, but rested on empirical observation (Lehmann 1986). The rising tide of demonological literature did in no way ridicule such lamentations, but was written by members of the contemporary élites like the famous French jurist Jean Bodin, the suffragan bishop of Treves Peter Binsfeld, the chief public prosecutor of Lorraine Nicolas Rémy, or the King of Scotland James VI. who was about to become James I. of England. They all shared the idea that witches could be responsible for the weather theologically based on the theory that on the basis of the evil compact, the devil could exercise his wishes (Clark 1996). According to the status of scientific theory, however, these demonologists did not draw their theories from dogma, but from experience.

Sound familiar?

Insane!

North Korea has announced that it will test a nuclear device but has not given a time frame. That the "Dear Leader" thinks this kind of threat would get nations to drop sanctions says everything about his irrationality. Let me bomb or I’ll bomb! It’s blackmail and nothing less.

What is even more appalling is the reaction at the BBC News comments pages. (No wonder Melanie Phillips [read everything she’s written here] is in such despair, just as was Prophetess Oriana Fallaci) Here’s what the communist- and terrorist-sympathyzing news agency had to say about the events leading up to the present crisis:

• Sept 2005: Hailed as an historic breakthrough, North Korea agrees to give up nuclear activities
• Next day, N Korea says it will not scrap its activities unless it gets a civilian nuclear reactor
• US imposes financial sanctions on N Korea businesses
• July 2006: N Korea test-fires seven missiles
• UN Security Council votes to impose sanctions over the tests
• Oct 2006: N Korea threatens nuclear test

There's hardly a single word here that isn't an outright lie. But OK, believe the BBC, whose very lifeblood has been the lie: it all started in 2005. Well, as usual, in the penultimate paragraph, they mention that the Psychotic Leader kicked out IAEA inspectors in 2002. They didn’t bother explaining how they already had the "civilian nuclear program." No need to go back before devil Bush, right? Well, it was Jimmy Carter who let them have their reactor on a promise. The Dear Saint remembers the quandary in which he found himself: I paraphrase from memory:

I had to believe him. Not believing him would be like calling the man a liahh.

But this has to be read to be believed! The reaction of Britons and others on BBC’s comments on this story is absolutely mind-boggling! I posted but doubt they will publish it. Here’s an example of the utter nonsense: I haven’t cherrypicked: I’ve chosen messages in order of publication to give you the picture:

Added: Wednesday, 4 October, 2006, 14:58 GMT 15:58 UK
Let´s remember which country actially USED a nuclear weapon - only a country that feels it should RULE THE WORLD and everyone else should bow down to them would have done so.Everyone NEEDS weapons because the biggest bully of all USA has them AND WILL USE THEM as they have in the past!!!
Carol Moss, TORREMOLINOS, MALAGA, Spain
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Added: Wednesday, 4 October, 2006, 14:58 GMT 15:58 UK
If a country such as Pakistan, Taliban and AL Qaeda's chief supporter, has the right to nuclear arms then why not North Korea? Hamed Etebar, Virginia, United States Hamed, not that long ago, about the time when Pakistan developed its nuclear weapons, America was also a major backer of the Taliban. Now that USSR does not exist Americans have found other priorities and other enemies to keep running their Ammunations industry. I think N Korea, like Pakistan has a right to nuclear weapons.
rizwan k, ohio, United States
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Added: Wednesday, 4 October, 2006, 14:57 GMT 15:57 UK
Yeah, sure! Many other countries have nukes and everyone has the right...Why should some countries have the right but not others? Why should the US police the whole world?
Ray Amaya, Little Rock, United States
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Added: Wednesday, 4 October, 2006, 14:56 GMT 15:56 UK
I think all countries, including the US and Russia should put a stop to their nuclear weapons programs and destroy those weapons. It isn't exactly fair to tell others they don't have a right to something that you have in abundance and hold over the entire world. The fact is that the US is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons against another nation and on its own people for testing purposes.These weapons are just too dangerous to exist.
[AndreeaNYC], New York City, United States
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Added: Wednesday, 4 October, 2006, 14:51 GMT 15:51 UK
If a country such as Pakistan, Taliban and AL Qaeda's chief supporter, has the right to nuclear arms then why not North Korea? The international community feels threatened at the prospect of North Korea having nuclear capabilities yet remain completely inactive towards Pakistan's already manufactured nuclear arsenal. It is not if but when Pakistan's nuclear weapons fall in the hands of Taliban and/or AL Qaeda it will be end of humanity as we know it.
Hamed Etebar, Virginia, United States
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Well, at least the last part of Hamed's piece is rational. "the right to nuclear arms"?

Update: Kaaaboomb!

Overpass collapse kills 5

From CBC.ca

Five people were killed when a highway overpass collapsed in Laval, north of Montreal, sending tonnes of concrete onto two cars, police said on Sunday.

In 2000, an overpass under construction collapsed, killing one man. Inspectors are now checking all bridges in the area to make sure they are sound.

The Quebec government will hold a public inquiry into the incident and has announced it has closed a second overpass of similar design and age.

But the same story says the collapsed overpass was just inspected!

And now, a look back: from 2000:

A highway overpass in Quebec was so weak when it crumbled last June, killing one, that the wind could have blown it over, according to a report.

An engineering report on the incident, tabled by Quebec Transport Minister Guy Chevrette, concluded that anything from high winds to vibrations from passing traffic could have caused the overpass' eight concrete supports to cave in.

A structural system should have been installed to prevent the shifting of supports during construction, the study stated.

The accident killed one and injured two others. The report stopped short of placing blame, however.

Beaver Asphalt, the City of Laval and a supervising company were all involved in the overpass' construction. While determining who was ultimately responsible will be up to the coroner and judicial authorities, politicians are already assigning blame.

Thomas Mulcair, a member of the Liberal Opposition in Quebec, said the Bloc Quebecois government helped Beaver Asphalt get the contract when it contacted its main creditor, the National Bank.

Premier Lucien Bouchard has denied the charge.

I'd like to know what was in the concrete and whether core samples were taken in 2000? Will they do so now? Who was the unnamed supervisory company and is it the same company that pronounced the just-collapsed overpass fit just a month ago?

It rouses my suspicions. Is someone pocketing money and using substandard material? Did the same companies get the contracts for all the overpasses being looked at? Did the 2000 collapse change the way contracts were awarded?

What? No Outrage?

Imagine if Jews did this:

Two people were killed, including a 15-year-old boy, and at least 32 were wounded when militiamen from the ruling Hamas party used guns and clubs to break up protests over unpaid government salaries near the parliament building in Gaza City and elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

The wounded included three schoolchildren and a TV cameraman...

"Protests" stretches the meaning of the word doesn't it? If there are guns, shooting and death involved, aren't words like, "riot," "insurrection," or "battle" more fitting?

Predictable

Is this the end of S.African democracy?

I guess when you have an ignoramus like Thabo Mbeki saying that AIDS isn't spread by sexual contact and only a myth invented to make Africans look like they have no self-control, this kind of thing is bound to happen.

Congratulations to the Cape Town mayor-elect, Helen Zille, from the opposition Democratic Alliance, and best wishes at surviving the onslaught. Why can't the DNC see that her victory is a signpost of their political health and just accept the defeat?

By the way, the Telegraph blogsite says:

South Africa needs a serious debate on crime

No less than 18,528 people were murdered between April last year and March this year. By way of comparison, Britain has about 800 murders a year – and its population is 50 percent greater than South Africa’s.

My brother, who works in the movie business, recently came back from South Africa with stars in his eyes I could discern through his rose-colored glasses. South Africa is wonderful he said, people there are really trying. I asked him, rather coldly, whether or not they were still pulling 2 or 3 bodies off the train to Johannesburg each and every morning. I guess the numbers above give the answer.

Musharraff: Canada's Losses Trivial

According to CBC News, Musharraff has told Canadians that this is war and they must toughen up. Harper is silent.

No doubt, Pakistan's military ruler is right. The losses are not only tiny, they are nearly nonexistent compared to the 1,500 Taliban our troops have taken out.

I wonder what the death count looks like for Canada in traffic accidents in the same period of time.

But it does put Harper on the spot. I wonder if that was the plan.

Unhappy? We'll Kill You! (for a fee)

See CQ for: Assisted Suicide: It's Not Just For The Ill Anymore. Many comments are mind-bogglingly stupid (except mine, of course).

What A Post!

From a reader at DanielPipes.com in response to "Finding Allah in Unlikely Places." He calls himself, believe it or not, Chayim Yenkel! My grandmother would've loved that! It is response to Pipes' story about Muslims getting Nike to recall Nike Air sneakers because "offended Muslims" claimed to see the name "Allah" where "Air" is written. Pulled out of the air indeed. I have a few posts there too. The whole string is interesting. But here is Chayim Yenkel's brilliant post:

Submitted by Chayim Yenkel, Sep 13, 2006 at 11:24

God alone is holy. Not His name, not His prophets, but God alone. Holiness that spreads from God first to this great prophet, then to this lesser one, thus to this king or this cleric, this teacher, this imam to this promising student to that student's beloved gerbil in his cage is a primitive and corrupt debasement of all that is holy.

Nothing is holy but God. Put his name in the bottom of your sneakers, write it with ketchup in a urinal! God is still holy no matter what. His holiness is independent of ours. We can choose to come near or to stay away. It's our decision, our loss, our gain. This Nike complaint is all irrational primitive gibberish. Worship the Haram al Sharif or the Temple Mount, worship the bones of the saints, worship the images of your prophets: you are all idolaters locked away from God with no way in to His presence. Submit to God, not to His creatures or any representation of God or His creatures! God's name defiled on a Nike? What nonsense!

Isn't that glorious!

Tokyo Rose Redux

At The Muslim Question, Lance has an interesting comparison between WW2 Japanese propagandists and Democrats. Here's a quote from David Horowitz:

"During World War II, the Japanese...gave their psychological warfare script to their famous broadcaster 'Tokyo Rose' and every day she would broadcast this same message packaged in different ways, hoping it would have a negative impact on American GI's morale. What was that
demoralizing message? It had three main points:

• Your President is lying to you.
• This war is illegal.
• You cannot win the war."

—David Horowitz

Thank God For Fools

because without them we wouldn't have excellent arguments like that provided by Joel Pollak, who has had his article, "Kasrils and South Africa: apologists for Iran" published in the Mail & Guardian. Pollack responds to Kasril's shrill denunciation of Israel on September 1, titled "Rage of the Elephant"

Pollack chastised Kasrils for his stupid catagorization of Israelis as "Nazis."

Kasrils is right to invoke the Nazi era; however, he has got the labels the wrong way round. Like Hitler’s Germany, Iran is bent on regional domination at any cost, and is imprisoned by an official ideology of anti-Semitic hatred. (The very name "Iran" means "Aryan" and was bestowed on the country in 1935 by Reza Shah Pahlavi, an ardent admirer of Hitler and his racial theories.)

Today, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is determined to pick up where Hitler left off. Not only does he wish to destroy Israel, he also yearns for the collapse of what he calls "liberalism and Western-style democracy." Israel is playing the role of Czechoslovakia, circa 1938: a lone, vulnerable democracy encircled by hostile, totalitarian powers. Like Czechoslovakia, Israel is at risk of being abandoned by fellow democracies, such as South Africa, for short-sighted reasons.

And what are those reasons?

Lately, South Africa has become the chief apologist for Iran in the democratic world. During the war, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad attempted to deny the fact that Iran has been funding and supplying Hizbullah. Worse, our government has tried to shield Iran’s nuclear programme from action by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council.The minister’s contribution is to paint "the axis of Hizbullah, Hamas, Syria and Iran" as benign forces, merely seeking to restore a regional balance of power.

These are the primary sources of violent instability in the Middle East today, which have long sponsored terror in the region and across the globe. In Africa, for example, Hizbullah has been blamed for fuelling bloody civil wars in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kasrils, predictably, condemns Israel’s response to Hizbullah. We should not, however, indulge the self-righteousness of a man whose human rights record is indelibly stained by association with Quatro and the Bisho massacre. Last year Kasrils signed an intelligence and defence pact with Zimbabwe in the wake of Operation Murambatsvina, which saw about 700 000 Zimbabweans forcibly removed from their homes by their own government. That is roughly the same number of Palestinians who became refugees during the 1948 war, but Kasrils has nothing to say about the tragedy on South Africa’s doorstep. And while Kasrils professes sympathy for the displaced Palestinians, he fails to mention that Lebanon imprisons these refugees and their descendants in Apartheid-style separation from the rest of Lebanese society. [my emphases]

Sounds like a combination of guilt and ambition sans moral scruples. Please read the whole thing here.

Like Terrorism

Bloor and Ossington area, in front of a sports bar, less than an hour ago I witnessed a brutal assault and battery on a defenseless man whose friends did nothing but watch. I also did nothing but called the police when they were at a safe distance. I have medical reasons but I guess everybody does.

The suspects, all in their twenties:

1) a fat black guy with a blue baseball cap, dark pants and jacket, white t-shirt, about 230 pounds, mid-brown complexion;
2) a tall man, mid-brown complexion but redder, smooth long oval face with prominent dark eyes and cornrow hair, about 6 ½ feet tall;
3) a short black girl with a mid-brown complexion tending toward the grey, about five feet to 5’2", a triangular shaped face, no more than 120 pounds, wearing dark boots, jeans and a jean jacket.

The victim: about 55 years old, white and grey hair, paunchy, white roundish face.

The victim, so far as I could see, did nothing provocative but then I came on the scene when they were at the eyeballing phase. But I saw no provocation. The taller man delivered at least two or three vicious blows without the slightest look of any kind of feeling. The blows were in no way defensive but were intended to cause injury. When the man was good and down, the young "lady" ran up and kicked the man three times, once landing with her boot in his face. A last kick stomped his face from above. The fat guy went back for his knapsack waving his hands in defence, showing he meant nothing aggressive. In fact, I did not see him participate in the battery.

More Muslim Rage

Third Party and Independents debates the pope and politics.

Dawn posted this, among other things (but read the whole thing):

The man was discussing something that happened in the past.He is trying to understand how Islam works.He is not the only one who wants to know how people who claim Islam is peaceful, can also say that it is their duty to slit someone's throat in the 'name of Islam'.

David Remer answered:

Words have meaning, and those meanings conjure images of past events and experience, and words too, can be swords of their own. At this sensitive time between Muslims and Islam and the Western cultures, any leaders who proclaim to represent large numbers of the world’s population should discharge their words with forethought and acknowledgement of how those words may be perceived.

The Pope speaks to a wide audience. The first rule of public speaking is to identify who your audience is, and speak to their level of understanding to establish a bond, before seeking to change their minds and preconceptions.

The Pope screwed up, in this regard, just as Bush did when calling the war a Crusade. Such words have meaning, and those meanings conjure images of the past and experience. All words point to the past. Anyone who fails to understand this, will not be an effective public speaker capable of guiding public opinion.

Can he really be suggesting that a pope, speaking to German Catholics, should consider how a Muslim in Saudi Arabia would feel? Does he really suggest that the pope has some kind of interest or responsibility to "guide public opinion" in Islam and that they would acknowledge his leadership? Wow!

Paul Siegel wrote this:

I have no idea what the Pope’s intentions were. The first rule for a speaker is to know his audience. Yes, he was speaking directly to Germans. But he knew very well that what he said would be heard all over the world. The entire world was his audience.

If the Pope had thought about this at all, he would have known that Muslims would be offended. But he said Muslims were prone to violence anyway.

The Pope has a failing the vast majority of us have: we are sure we are right and everybody else is wrong. And, do you realize that what he said pushes many Muslims toward terrorism?

It may help a lot if the Pope apologizes to all Muslims for his remarks.

I posted this response:

People who absolve Muslims of responsibility for their violent actions do them no favours nor pay them any compliments. Muslims aren’t machines like guns whose responses can be “triggered” (to use the words Khatami’s spoke at Harvard) by this and that trivial word or image. To suggest so is to imply they are not human but some unstable chemical compound in our clumsy hands; to argue that they are above responsibility is to suggest a Muslim supercessionism that insults the rest of us. Those who excuse the behaviour of others that they would not tolerate in their neighbours and friends are nothing beneath their fine talk and polished principles but cowards.

Theocracy+Fascism=Peanut Butter Cups!

The Liberals sent Canadian troops but they just meant it for show. Now that troops have died they wanted to bring them home: the pretense is over. I guess a couple of dozen troops is what Canada's vaunted rights and freedoms are worth. I guess those women in Afghanistan will just have to stay indoors for the rest of their lives. So much for the deeply caring Left. I get it: these rights are for us, not them; to them we just increase foreign aid, buy them off, seat endless committees whose purpose is to show off our purported concern. What repulsive hypocrites!

Just because Harper isn’t duplicitous he’s insulted. As for Layton, who a lifelong (2nd generation) NDPer told me the other day is a buffoon, he wants to negotiate with a theocratic fascist terrorist party! What on earth makes him think they want to negotiate with him?

Layton's duplicity is especially striking. Don't socialists claim to be opposed to theocrats and fascists? Oh, I guess not. As I've said before: theocracy=yuck! fascism=yick! but together they're mm-mm-GOOD!

Canada's Weird War

What a way to fight a war! Report all the deaths and none of the victories! See this commentary by David J. Murrel. Hat tip to Dan.

THE GREAT FISKING

Terrific post at Augean Stables: An Open Letter to Jostein Gaarder. The very finest post about European anti-Zionism and its many roots deep in anti-Semitic supercessionist fantasies.

Ground Kofi Dumped

Kofi Annan was left hanging in the wind by the president of Iran, that blessed man who talks to the hidden imam (though he's been dead—oops: in "grand occulation"—since 941) and dreams of a chaos great enough to bring him back and end history. Captain's Quarters has it here. Amedinijad was asked not to go on about Holocaust denial (there's an exhibition in Teheran with cartoons to belittle Jewish suffering) and the nutter went to the mic and announced a new conference to "study" the "exaggerations."

Well it looks good on him! Any useful (if not treacherous) idiot who says Syria will guard the Syrian-Lebanese border to ensure weapons don't get to Hiz'b'allah, deserves to be snubbed and publicly humiliated. He also deserves it for saying "I believe the Holocaust is a fact..." He believes? It's a matter of belief? He's already well on his way to Amedinijad's position anyway. And look at the result: he gets stranded there because he didn't come all the way. Anyone thinking compromise is possible with such as he is deluded.

Khatami Insults Muslims

Jihad Watch has some of Khatami's speech last night in Chicago. Here's the business end:

"Public opinion can be rescued from the grips of ignorance and blunder and the domination of arrogant, warmongering and violence-triggering policies will end," said Khatami,...

Muslim are guns? we hold them to our heads and fire them? Is he really telling us Muslims have no free will? that they are machines and not human? that their actions are "triggered" by our actions, as if they were some unstable explosive compound in our clumsy brutish hands? Has any Islamophobe ever said a more insulting thing about Muslims?

Mental Illness Epidemic

Captain's Quarters blogs that "[t]he State Department and the National Institue of Stantards and Technology both released reports this week to stem the tide of conspiracy theorists eager to deny they are targets of terrorism and the whole thing is George W. Bush's fault. Terrye posted this:

I think fear drives a lot of this, After all if it is Bush and a few other dangerous people, then all of this will be over when he is gone. It is safe to go after Bush.

I kind of agree with Terrye, who says a lot of this is just fear, though I would call it cowardice. It's a lot like Holocaust denial. Part of that is the sheer terror that someone could just drag you and your family to a death camp because you were fool enough to pick your mom's womb to gestate in.

Of course, this falls hard on reality even with a cursory glance. As the NYT points out, it would take many thousands of explosives to bring the towers down by design, especially if one rejects the science behind the heat of jet-fuel fires and its effect on steel girders. When exactly were these explosives planted, and how did they get planted with no one's notice? And if the building was primed for demolition in this manner, how did the explosives keep from detonating at impact, or at least in the heat of the jet-fuel fire? For that matter, why design a demolition from the top down when building demolitions always take place from the ground up?

Conspiracists refuse to believe Americans were targeted because they are Americans, Israelis because they're, well, Jews actually, and that Death stalks us all just because we are alive which is true, though the characterization of Death as a personnage is, not so much crazy as a necessary imaginative tool. What do their imaginative tools tell us about the conspiracy theorists? What are those tools supposed to help them face? Well, nothing - they are shovels to dig themselves a hole to hide in so as not to face reality. In those holes they'll die, stalked by their terrors. If that ain't insanity, I don't know what is!

But is mental illness communicable? I'd say so! After all, my neighbor watched Michael Moore and "believes in it," to quote her, and believes capitalism is evil 'cause of a documentary ("The Corporation") she saw. "I believe in it," she says again. Are these shades a substitute for the religious mumbo-jumbo they reject as "irrational" and "controlling?"

Is this funny or tragic? and where is the W.H.O. when you need 'em?

CBC's Peanut Butter Cups!

IAEA finds highly enriched uranium! CBC turns and coughs!

Why is it that, when there is a real news story out of Iran, the CBC would rather publish this questionable piece of pro-Iranian propaganda? Note the ridiculous (even if it were true) assersion of the reason for the crash:

While air crashes are infrequent in Iran, Tehran says U.S. sanctions against the country have prevented it from buying new aircraft parts to repair their American or European-built planes.

CBC, seeing the sanctions-against-Iran-writing on the wall, is quickly taking its default anti-American position. Why is it that so many on the Left who profess to despise fascism and theocracy separately seem to think that, together, they're better than peanut butter cups?

Annan Must Go!

Fox to guard henhouse. See here.

Anti-Semitism and its causes

Captain's Quarters has an link to a der Spiegel interview with Charlotte Knobloch, who survived the Holocaust and became head of the German Jewish Council. More evidence that anti-Zionism is the acceptable (and legal) way of expressing anti-Semitism. Scroll down for my post, in which I write:

Lots of people have armies and defend themselves. There's a reason why Israelis, under attack constantly since the founding of their state, are perceived, not as defensive but "militaristic." There's a reason why the Israeli is seen as a persecutor of the innocent.

These reasons are at the very basis of our culture and acts of defence by Israelis (Jews have long had self-defence restrictions in both the West and Islam) reverberate so powerfully. Arafat and others since have succeeded in portraying the Isreali as the persecutor and the Palestinian as Christ (he even went so far as to suggest that Jesus was not a Jew but a Palestinian) because it's an image that lies at the core of Western culture. That core is a Christendom long denied in order to pursue internal peace.

Everyone bought the fraud that a missile was fired right through the center of the red cross on the roof of an ambulance ("in Qana, where Jesus turned water into wine, and now it's blood," as the helpful CTV news anchor said), thus proving how effective Muslim propaganda plays in Christian lands.

The blood libel against the Jew starts at the cross and it flows down to our day. The armed Israeli is perceived as the Jew with a spike and hammer, standing at the foot of the Cross.

No, you don't have to be anti-Semitic to be anti-Israeli but it sure helps. The interview with Knobloch, I think, proves that, or at least gives powerful evidence.

Hopes of Peace Dashed?

Those of us hoping for a moderate Islam to use muscle against radical Islamic fascists must be dismayed by the babblings of Miss England. See also here.

The Media War

Please see Melanie Phillips's blog here for her analysis of the media's mishandling of the war. She only leaves out two things, firstly, that the media guys in Lebanon are junkies. More important is the war of symbolism.

Why does everyone want to believe every bad thing they hear about Jews? The reason is cultural.

A hole right in the center of the Red Cross. A missile targets an ambulance, fisked thoroughly at zombietime. Why did the fraud work? Symbolism.

Here is an earlier attempt to use Christian symbolism to turn Christian populations against Israelis.

It is important to note that the rise of secular culture in the West, formerly known as Christendom, has not erased the basis of Western culture, which is founded on its myths: it is still Christian and attempts to eradicate it and its values through nationalism and other systems have failed spectacularly. Christian imagery channelled through the unconscious is stronger, not weaker than that apprehended consciously within its own, recognizable, context.

Secular institutions are projections of the faith institutions upon which the culture is grounded but with all reference to their origins expunged. The institutions subsume the content of their origin and become holy in themselves. This, I think, explains the perverse near-holiness of abortion and buggery to the Left. After all, gay rights & feminism have weakened the legal and popular basis of their own ideas by failing to reproduce at a rate necessary to keep their ideas afloat. Blue states in the US are bleeding voters and, therefore, representation in the House of Representatives. Their success has been phyrric. When I asked a friend in the arts whether this points to a flaw in democracy or that the ideas themselves were unsustainable, she did what leftists do best: she avoided reality and embraced the dream which, it must be pointed out, leads to elitist undemocratic rule by an effete pseudo-intellectual class.

But back to the point: the Israeli with a weapon in his hand is a Jew with a spike and hammer at the foot of the Cross. Muslim warriors know very well how to pluck these strings. They know us better than we know them. That's trouble.

Cultural Vandalism

Is the new Hallmark production of Gulliver’s Travels an act of cultural vandalism? Not literally. After all, not a single copy of the book is burned. But if this is the only Gulliver people are exposed to—and to many it will be—those people will not get anything like what Jonathan Swift intended. Were Jonathan Swift alive, Hallmark could be sued for moral rights violations and they'd lose. That's a good way to think before starting a project using someone else's ideas.

Swift’s masterpiece is an extraordinary vision of humanity. Through his hero, Gulliver, he travels to places that make him feel big, small, shat on and… human. The little people in Lilleput are small in every way. Petty and stupid, they fight, the big-enders and little- enders, interminable wars of annihilation over which end of their soft-boiled eggs are opened at the breakfast table. Sounds a bit like us.

I forget most of the rest: it’s been years since I read it. The TV show reminded me of a few things and, on the bright side, it made me want to read it again.

This gift to mankind has been shat on, like Gulligan under the boughs beneath the vulgar yahoos, and Danson, Steenbergen and especially two great actors, Peter O’Toole and Edward Fox, ought to be thoroughly ashamed. Some "Creative Person" got the bright idea to put the focus on "the star:" Gulliver, played by Ted Danson, whose acting is just plain bad. He portrays Gulliver as insane. All his travels were made up. Weeeeel. Yeeeaaah! Of course Swift made up Gulliver! Naturally, the lands he visited were imaginary: that's called fiction. His purpose was to talk about humankind and our, often awful, relations with each other. The travels of his imaginary character to imaginary lands is his method. But these people treat imagination as a disease and anyone who has a moment that Hallmark couldn’t turn into one of its anodyne cards is suspect.

I can sure see why Hallmark would produce this shit—and I mean shit. It’s so bad that O’Toole, always profound, seems as little as his Lilliputian character. He’s in character, of course, while commenting on the character simultaneously, as many, if not all great actors do. Informing the character sheds light on it. Our light completes the character. It becomes three dimensional through this act of psychic triangulation. Most actors do this very subtly, like Hopkins in "The Remains of the Day." Others, like Nicholson, in most things in the last twenty years, play the two parts pretty broadly apart. Nicholson actually plays on the relationship of his two points and with us too: with him it’s all cat’s cradle and he, chuckling away, holds all the strings. Great fun, as is O’Toole. But something here is lacking. He is shouting into a megaphone (as great as ever) and all one senses is a hollow shell standing under him.

That’s because it is. Look up "anodyne" and there ought to be the word "Hallmark" as a synonym. Harmless, bland, inoffensive: Hallmark is the doll who can’t pee because she has no genitals: it is the norm, the average, the person of no distinction. Hallmark’s hallmark is to have no hallmark. I never suspected that such people despise those who have imagination quite so much. Suddenly, Pound’s "Disney against the metaphysicals" stands out in bold type. Or Einstein’s "Men of genius always will be violently opposed by mediocre minds."

Indeed, anyone, to this mediocre type, who has an answer to any question other than "a)" or "b)" is suspect. Who more distinctive then that a man who journeys to the darker places of the human soul and shines his little flashlight to illuminate what can be found there?

Hence the act of vandalism. The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas in Afghanistan, the Palestinians the oldest synagogue in the wortd at Jericho, the barbarians the great statuary of the Classical age and these things are obviously vandalism. Hallmark endeavours to protect us from foreign foes by undermining our own culture; the one that feeds and sustains them. And us.

Please buy a copy of Gulliver’s Travels wherever you live, and read it. Or order it online. I like to use ABE Books. I own no stock in the company and they aren’t paying me for the plug. How could they? As far as I know, no one reads this stuff.

Sometimes the crocodile doesn't eat you last!

Does Japan have a right to exist as a Japanese state?

Ostentatious Caring In Toronto

The cab driver wanted to know if I had been part of the AIDS conference as he drove me from my home to the airport. It was over and a lot of people were leaving town that day.

No, I told him, I hadn't partaken in the glitzy concernfest though it had been active just down the street at the glorious Tent City the night before.

I hadn’t known what to say to my neighbour when she asked me if I’d been to see it, her eyes wide and steamy, as if she had perhaps just caught sight of either of Moses on the Mountain or Jesus rising from the Crypt.

"Um, no," I said, awkwardly.

What I wanted to say was that never had so many performed so many feats of ostentatious caring in so short a time. If any one has the injury reports of dislocated shoulders from patting themsleves on the back, let me know.

And how perverse it all is too! The progress of AIDS represents the greatest public health failure in human history. Unlike the plague, we knew how the disease was spread and we had the opportunity to stop it. We chose to quarantine the helathy instead of the ill and now, millions of dead later, we still want to quarantine the well and let the ill get on with infecting or not infecting—it’s the honour system—as many as taste and opportunity permits.

Let me be brutally frank on two points. Firstly, if we had ignored the human rights ninnies and quarantined the sick in the 80s we might have stopped this illness in its tracks. Secondly, from a purely epidemiological point of view, there is no percentage in prolonging the lives of people who may spread the disease.

Quarantine is primary, treatment is secondary. But the "activists" have turned reality on its head. Drugs are being withheld, people are being killed. By whom? The government, of course. That same government that failed to protect its population from AIDS when it mattered.

AIDS, according to another neighbour, was started by "the government." It is surprising how many conspiracy theories there are these days that otherwise intelligent beings seem to be prey too—a kind of intellectual AIDS it might be called—existential doubts about the very worth of our societies, our form of government, our lives. We exagerate every flaw of reasonably-but-not-absolutely- good cultures and romanticize very dangerous and destructive cultures based on a strage notion that all cultures are created equal.

My neighbour has a grain of truth here but it's just a grain: Governments, by not quarantining the ill, certainly participated in the spread of the disease. Ditto for the World Health Organisation and the UN.

My cab driver had a memory I thought conveyed pretty well my general sense of what the mob (as David Peterson might describe the unwashed body of non-Liberal Party cognoscenti) really thinks in spite of the opinions of the cowed crowd that poses as the illuminated. He told me he remembered a City TV interview wth a man who had AIDS but didn’t want to make love with a piece of rubber and didn’t see why he ought to give up his God-given right to his pleasures.

My cousin (who I was being taken to the airport to travel to) said, when I told him and his wife the story, "He should be arrested." Nice guy, my cousin, and always partly right (sometimes wholy): they should all have been "arrested," which was the misleading way human rights advocates misrepresented quarantine.

For how many years now have so many avoided sex because of AIDS? How badly has it coloured our world? If the only way to be free of the illness is abstinence or prophylactics and the infected die, it doesn’t take a genius to see that, between life and death here, something’s got to give.

I had a great weekend with my cousins and aunts and, upon return, as I ran with my suitcases to catch the bus, the driver, seeing I was a mere 5 feet away, gunned the engine and peeled away. The AIDS conference being over, the caring is put back in the cupboard and the everyday cups are brought out. Tannic acid, anyone? [spit] Welcome to Toronto.

UNSCR 1701: Munich, 2006

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain arrived in London waving a piece of paper upon which Herr Hitler had affixed his signature. Chamberlain, beaming, proclaimed "peace in our time." Within months, the Germans had taken all of Czeckoslovakia. Knowing England would not go to war to protect the Sudeteland or even all Czeckoslovakia, Hitler tried his luck with Poland. No reaction but diplomatic condemnation. Austria was soon annexed and within a year of the Munich pact, Germany invaded the low countries and was within striking distance of England.

Many tens of millions dead later we hail UN Security Council Resolution 1701 a diplomatic success because we have deluded ourselves into thinking that it has stopped a war . The international community has expressed its resolve to disarm Hiz'b'allah. But who will do it?

Not the USA! Condi Rice says:

I don't think there is an expectation that this force is going to physically disarm Hezbollah. I think it's a little bit of a misreading of how you disarm a militia. You have to have a plan, first of all, for the disarmament of a militia, and then the hope is that some people lay down their arms voluntarily. [my italics]

see also here.

and....

confirmation of how bad this "resolution" is:

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy made clear in an interview with Le Monde newspaper that the mission of the larger UNIFIL would not include disarming Hizbollah by force: "We never thought a purely military solution could resolve the problem of Hizbollah," he said. "We are agreed on the goal, the disarmament, but for us the means are purely political. [my emphasis]

So Hiz'b'allah will not be disarmed. Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

RAFSANJANI SAYS MUSLIMS SHOULD USE NUCLEAR WEAPON AGAINST ISRAEL [December 14, 2001]

also here.

Denial is a river in Iran too!

IRAN DENIES WILLING TO NUKE DOWN ISRAEL [December 30, 2001]

And now, presenting, the madman pursuing [oops! allegedly pursuing nukes!] nukes, communicating with the dead:

Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed "the nuclear club", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into "grand occultation" in 941. -Amir Taheri, April 16, 2006 in the Telegraph.

1701

Open letter by Dan Goorevitch at Overful to Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs here hits all the right notes on the diplomatic piano. See my next post for its utter futility at avoiding war. Here's the big bell:

How can non-state actors who use violence to either destroy fellow states or coerce their policies be stopped if the nations in which they operate can not be held responsible? Lebanon, and all nations, have to be held responsible and accountable for every act, no matter by whom, that is initiated from within its borders. What otherwise is the meaning of national sovereignty but the right to make law, balanced by the responsibility not to harm others outside its jurisdiction? It is this contract that lies at the heart of the nation state and why it works.

That's right! A state has a border and within that border it has laws. We respect their national borders and they respect ours. That's how it works. Then we cooperate and help each other against common threats. Lebanon was let off the hook at the UN when UNSCR 1701 was passed.

Crystal Clear

from Powerline:

According to Netanyahu, that situation is that the Sunnis and the Shiites are competing to create an Islamic empire. Both understand that this objective starts with the destruction of Israel. Shiite Iran, by moving to arm itself with nuclear weapons, has become the primary threat.

The proper division of labor for dealing with the threat is as follows: Israel should dismantle Hezbollah and the U.S. should disarm Iran. As to the latter, President Bush has emphasized his commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran, and Netanyahu believes that Bush is truly committed to that imperative. As to Hezbollah, the recent war was only the first round in a protracted battle that Israel will win.

Read more here.

A Masterpiece of Deceit!

Below is A Washington Post opinion piece by the prime minister of Lebanon in full, with my fisking in italics.

End This Tragedy Now
© Washington Post
Israel Must Be Made to Respect International Law
By Fouad Siniora
Wednesday, August 9, 2006; Page A17
BEIRUT
A military solution to Israel's savage war on Lebanon and the Lebanese people is both morally unacceptable and totally unrealistic. Israel's attack on Hiz'b'allah in self defence is neither against Lebanon and the Lebanese people, nor is it savage, morally unacceptable or unrealistic. Hiz'b'allah crossed an internationally recognized frontier, murdered eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two more, which it continues to hold for ransom. Self-defence is always morally defensible; it is the only realistic option to wars of aggression. Time and again, Israel has sent leaflets warning civilians to get out of the way of attempts to destroy Hiz'b'allah rocket launchers which are being used to send thousands of missiles into Israel, a favour Hiz'b'allah does not extend to its victims in Israeli cities and towns which it targets mercilessly. Mr. Siniora is confused about who is being savage. Hiz'b'allah purposefully places its missiles and missile launchers on and in apartment buildings and other residential neighbourhoods because it knows Israel doesn't take life with pleasure: it is Hiz'b'allah who is guilty of savagery, both to Israel and to their own people who they hold hostage. We in Lebanon call upon the international community and citizens everywhere to support my country's sovereignty and end this folly now. Lebanon has two armies with two commanders: the only threat to Lebanese sovereignty is Hiz'b'allah and its commander Nasrallah: this terrorist militia, which precipitated the present war, is never mentioned in the following (except in its alternate role as one political faction among many) in this long article. We also insist that Israel be made to respect international humanitarian law, including the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, which it has repeatedly and willfully violated. Crossing international frontiers to kidnap and hold soldiers for ranson is undoubtedly a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Siniora has not named a single instance of Israel's violations though that should be easy for him since he claims that they have been repeated and willful.
As the world watches, Israel has besieged and ravaged our country, created a humanitarian and environmental disaster, and shattered our infrastructure and economy, putting an intolerable strain on our social and economic systems. Israel has not beseiged Lebanon: Hezbollah has! Israel's sole purpose is to get their kidnapped soldiers back and to disarm Hiz'b'allah so they can’t attack Israel again. The Lebanese government had plenty of opportunity to disarm this terrorist group but it didn’t. Claims of damage are wildly overstated and made to look deliberate. In Beirut, water flows and lights go on precisely because Israel has gone out of its way to spare Lebanese infrastructure Fuel, food and medical equipment are in short supply; homes, factories and warehouses have been destroyed; roads severed, bridges smashed and airports disabled. This is indeed unfortunate and we all feel for the people suffering in this war on both sides of the border. One million people have been displaced in Israel and many more have been shut into bomb shelters for a month. No mention of Israeli suffering is ever mentioned in what follows.
The damage to infrastructure alone is running into the billions of dollars, as are the losses to owners of private property, and the long-term direct and indirect costs due to lost revenue in tourism, agriculture and industrial sectors are expected to be many more billions. This ought to be a lesson to all states: look at what happens when any state allows a challenge to their rightful monopoly of men under arms! Lebanon's well-known achievements in 15 years of postwar development have been wiped out in a matter of days by Israel's deadly military might. A nation unable to disarm a terrorist organization that holds its country hostage has no achievements worth talking about. Wisely, he hasn't.
For all this carnage and death, and on behalf of all Lebanese, we demand an international inquiry into Israel's criminal actions in Lebanon and insist that Israel pay compensation for its wanton destruction. The destruction has not been wanton but defensive. Is Hiz'b'allah not responsible for the much larger bill for its destruction in Israel?
Israel seems to think that its attacks will sow discord among the Lebanese. One nation, two armies and two commanders: no, there’s no discord in Lebanon and only the evil Jewish empire is attempting to create it; if you believe this, you’ll believe anything. This will never happen. It already has. Israel should know that the Lebanese people will remain steadfast and united in the face of this latest Israeli aggression -- its seventh invasion -- just as they were during nearly two decades of brutal occupation. The Lebanese people are not united and have been wracked by inter-religious civil war for decades. Israel's response, I must repeat since the lie is repeated, is defensive and not aggressive: it is a response to Hiz'b'allah’s aggression. Each and every Israeli invasion has been precipitated by attacks on Israeli towns from south Lebanon. The people's will to resist grows ever stronger with each village demolished and each massacre committed. There has not been a single village "demolished" (though some have been damaged) and not a single massacre: not one civilian has been targetted, in contradistinction to the Hiz'b'allah attacks on Israeli cities and its people: a purposefully murderous attack. The Lebanese are in a state of civil war. The army is unable to disarm Hiz'b'allah because half the army is on Hiz'b'allah's side and half are against, divided on religious lines. The announcement last night on CTV news by Emile Lahoud that the Lebanese army will fight alongside Hiz'b'allah is proof of a coup d'etat by Islamist forces. The Lebanese people have never been more divided or more brutally abused by their warring leaders.
On July 25, at the international conference for Lebanon in Rome, I proposed a comprehensive seven-point plan to end the war. It was well received by the conference and got the unanimous and full backing of the Lebanese Council of Ministers, in which Hezbollah is represented, as well as of the speaker of parliament and a majority of parliamentary blocs. This is the only mention of Hiz'b'allah in the entire essay: there is not even a hint of its military power. Representatives of diverse segments of Lebanese civil society have come out strongly in favor, as has the Islamic-Christian Summit, representing all the religious confessions, ensuring a broad national consensus and preserving our delicate social equilibrium. If it had a broad national consensus there wouldn't be two Lebanese armies run by two different men.
The plan, which also received the full support of the 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, included an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive cease-fire and called for:
· The release of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners and detainees through the International Committee of the Red Cross. thus rewarding the murder and kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers.
· The withdrawal of the Israeli army behind the "blue line." That was done in 2000. It was Hiz'b'allah which crossed that line.
· A commitment from the U.N. Security Council to place the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shouba Hills areas under U.N. jurisdiction until border delineation and Lebanese sovereignty over them are fully settled. The blue line has already been decided and Israel withdrew beyond it in 2000. Shebaa Farms has never been Lebanese territory: the dispute is between Israel and Syria. Note that the author doesn't entertain any other possibility except Lebanese sovereignty over the dispute areas. Is the UN therefore to act as Lebanon's proxy army?
Further, Israel must surrender all maps of remaining land mines in southern Lebanon to the United Nations.
· Extension of the Lebanese government's authority over its territory through its legitimate armed forces, with no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state, as stipulated in the Taif accord. Rubbish! "The extension of the Lebanese government's authority over its territory through its legitimate armed forces, with no weapons or authority other than that of the Lebanese state, as stipulated in the Taif accord" has only one power of opposition: Hiz'b'allah, which the Lebanese government has refused to disarm, leading to the present crisis. We have indicated that the Lebanese armed forces are ready and able to deploy to southern Lebanon, alongside the U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border. Oh! They are ready and able, are they? This is a bald-faced lie. A successful coupt d’etat has occurred and Hiz'b'allah now rules Lebanon.
We in Lebanon call upon the international community and citizens everywhere to support my country's sovereignty and end this folly now. You needn't call so far! Why not just place a call to Nasrallah and ask Hiz'b'allah's commander to support your country's sovereignty? Is it possible to have a sovereign state with two armies led by two different men? The disarming of the terrorist Hiz'b'allah militia is the only item on Lebanon's agenda if it is truly interested in recapturing its sovereignty.
· The supplementing of the U.N. international force operating in southern Lebanon and its enhancement in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, as needed, to undertake urgent humanitarian and relief work and guarantee stability and security in the south so that those who fled their homes can return. The only stability the UN force guaranteed was the buildup of Hiz'b'allah arms, leading to the present war. As for its "mandate and scope of operations," this is all mud: what is clear is that the UNIFIL force didn't even make a move to fulfill their present obligation under Security Council Resolution 1559. Could it be that the author means, by a new mandate, one that strikes down 1559?
· Action by the United Nations on the necessary measures to once again put into effect the 1949 armistice agreement signed by Lebanon and Israel and to ensure adherence to its provisions, as well as to explore possible amendments to or development of those provisions as necessary. By changes in the 1949 armistice, does he mean, perchance, the diplomatic elimination of the state of Israel?
· The commitment of the international community to support Lebanon on all levels, including relief, reconstruction and development needs. Get Iran to pay the bill. They bought the missiles that Hiz'b'allah sent into Israeli towns and cities. Not one word in this whole essay of destruction wrought against Israel.
As part of this comprehensive plan, and empowered by strong domestic political support and the unanimous backing of the cabinet, the Lebanese government decided to deploy the Lebanese armed forces in southern Lebanon as the sole domestic military force in the area, alongside U.N. forces there, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border. Nonsense! If Lebanon had been interested in (or capable of) "deploy[ing] the Lebanese armed forces in southern Lebanon as the sole domestic military force in the area," why on earth haven't they done so? It is not Israel who prevented the Lebanese army to be the sole military force in the area -- or any area of Lebanon -- it is Hiz'b'allah and only Hiz'b'allah.
Israel responded by slaughtering more civilians in the biblical town of Qana. Such horrible scenes have been repeated daily for nearly four weeks and continue even as I write these words. Israel responded, not to the "deci[sion] to deploy the Lebanese armed forces as the sole domestic military force in the area" but to missiles send from the "biblical town of Qana," from where dozens of rocket attacks were initiated against Israel. Israel attacked the rocket launchers and allegedly killed a number of people in the act. There is nothing illegitimate about self-defence. (Note the "biblical" crack: a typical sideswipe at the Christ-killers, like Arafat's Norma Desmond impersonation in 2002: "They're crucifying [H]im again!" in response to Israel's attempt to end the Palestinian siege of the Church of the Nativity.)
The resolution to this war must respect international law and U.N. resolutions, not just those selected by Israel, a state that deserves its reputation as a pariah because of its consistent disdain for and rejection of international law and the wishes of the international community for over half a century. There is a UN resolution that calls for the disarming of Hiz'b'allah, isn't there? Since this is the greatest threat to Lebanese sovereignty, the absence of the mention of the militia is glaring. Israel's pariah status comes from its insistence on survival against half a century of attempts to destroy it.

Lebanon calls, once again, on the United Nations to bring about an immediate cease-fire to relieve the beleaguered people of Lebanon. Only then can the root causes of this war -- Israeli occupation of Lebanese territories and its perennial threat to Lebanon's security, as well as Lebanon's struggle to regain full sovereignty over all its territory -- be addressed. Israel left in 2000: it was not in possession of a single inch of Lebanese territory before this unwarranted attack on Israel. It is tiresome to repeat this but since he repeats the lie, I must repeat the truth: sovereignty depends on one nation having one army and a single authority. None of this is Israel's fault. As to Israel's perennial threat, every single incursion of Israel's has been defensive: the Arab states have been trying to destroy Israel for about 60 years now.

I believe that a political resolution rooted in international law and based on these seven points will lead to long-term stability. If Israel would realize that the peoples of the Middle East cannot be cowed into submission, that they aspire only to live in freedom and dignity, it could also be a stepping stone to a final solution of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, which has plagued our region for 60 years. "[A] stepping stone to a final solution". Yes, no doubt. They aspire to live in dignity and live instead under governments that afford them neither. This is really a hard swallow. In the end, all people are responsible for their governments and probably get the leadership they deserve. It is the Arab world that has tried to beat Israel into submission. The word "Islam" in fact, means "submission." The state of Israel always has been violently opposed for one reason only: it's Jewish.
The 2002 Arab summit in Beirut, which called for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace based on the principle of land for peace, showed the way forward. (The "All the land or we kill you all" principle.). A political solution cannot, however, be implemented as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights and as long as it wages war on innocent people in Lebanon and Palestine. As Jawaharlal Nehru said, the only alternative to coexistence is co-destruction." Israel, for the umpteenth time, left in 2000. It also completely withdrew from Gaza. All these lands were occupied in a defensive war against a dozen Arab nations who waged wars of annihilation against Israel in 1948-9, 1967 and 1973. The author reveals the deep racism inherent in all his arguments by characterizing all these lands, not as Syrian, Jordanian or Lebanese but as "Arab land."
Enough destruction, dispossession, desperation, displacement and death! Lebanon must be allowed to reclaim its position in this troubled region as a beacon of freedom and democracy where justice and the rule of law prevail, and as a refuge for the oppressed where moderation, tolerance and enlightenment triumph. Amen to the first part: disarm Hiz'b'allah and stop trying to destroy Israel and there will be peace. "[A] beacon of freedom and democracy where justice and the rule of law prevail, and as a refuge for the oppressed where moderation, tolerance and enlightenment triumph?" Full marks for an excellent description of Israel!

The writer is prime minister of Lebanon, now ruled by Nasrallah's Hiz'b'allah.