In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
You may want to review this post in this same topic for more information.
All the Israelis did was engage in conventional war, not a plan of extermination. But you are interested in countering the Israelis making twitter posts in remembrance of their defeating Arab armies gathering to commit genocide by reenacting an actual genocide. No doubt you consider yourself a humanitarian and a sensitive soul. A pity the Jews have to go and ruin everything by not submitting willingly to extermination, eh?
>None of this can be justified in any way by the alleged rhetoric of some ill-defined "arabs" saying something that - if you are understood correctly - would amount to: "If you leave your property that you own, and your orchards and shops, then after you are refugees, you might be able to squat on the couple of Kibbutz those Poles stole from your parents, instead!"
You are on the wrong side of history, and pretty much all of the nonsense you refer to is coming from you. The Arabs in Palestine were following the orders of the Arab leaders to evacuate. They had been making it clear that a genocide was coming, and who wants get pulled into a genocide? If the Israelis hadn't been able to defend themselves and stop the many attacking Arab armies, it is very possible that any Arabs that had remained behind and ignored the commands to leave would have been killed along with the Jews.
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley,[9] by Akhbar al-Yom's editor Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Titled, "A War of Extermination," the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text):
Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific war that was in the offing saying:
"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre[10] or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.
"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world
"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle or the final one whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine monthsWhile en route to sign the truce, I was approached
The US already spends money on healthcare. The current law isn't likely to do much to improve outcomes for the general population It may result in some improvements for a small minority, and make care for a much larger percentage much more expensive.
In fact, the average 25 and 40-year-old will pay double under Obamacare what they would need to pay today, based on rates posted at eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH). More specifically, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoker, the average Obamacare “bronze” exchange plan in California will cost between 64 and 117 percent more than the cheapest five plans on eHealth. For 40-year-old male non-smokers, it’s between 73 and 146 percent more.
You also might want to look into the epidemiology of truck bombs. They can have a significant negative impact on the health of a community, and there have been a fair number of attempts by extremists in the US since 9/11. One of them was by a member of the Taliban.
The death toll from 9/11 attack was ~ 3,000. It resulted in approximately $100 billion in damage to the US economy. That is more that the incremental cost of the war to the US defense budget in several years, and half of the cost of implementing the Affordable Care Act per year once it is in full force.
I think you misunderstand. The ACA cost will be at least $2.6 trillion for the first 10 years, whereas that $4-6 trillion is an estimate of what the total cost of the war will be over future decades. Two decades of ACA gets you well into the cost of the war, three decades and you're past it. That is assuming the current estimates are on target. It isn't looking good.
The 9/11 attack resulted in an estimated $100 billion in damage to the American economy. That is more than the cost of additional war funding in several years. If civil aviation had collapsed as a result of 9/11 alone, or with follow-on attacks, a genuine possibility, it could have been far worse. Al Qaida was planning multiple follow on attacks. Various plots have been interrupted that were intended to be as bad or worse. There is no way that 9/11 would have been ignored.
The 9/11 attack killed about as many Americans as the attack on Pearl Harbor. How do you think ignoring the attack on Pearl Harbor would have worked out? No US aid to the UK, and Soviet Union. Would they have fallen or worked out a separate peace? How do you think that world would have worked out for the American people?
Al Qaida was training thousands of terrorists per year and sending them around the world to engage in Islamic extremist insurgencies. If they hadn't been disrupted, if the US hadn't assisted other government, it is unlikely the results would have been good over time.
National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the US federal government. Healthcare is not. In the world in which we live, giving up defense to provide healthcare is likely to mean eventually you are likely to have neither unless you have a strong benefactor to protect you. The US has played the role of benefactor to Europe since the end of WW2. Who will protect America if it gives up its own defense?
Defense spending is about 19% of the total budget. The cost of the war has varied considerably year to year, adding an additional roughly 15 - 30% to the baseline defense budget. On the other hand:
... Total spending under the Affordable Care Act will reach $2.6 trillion over its first full decade, according to a Senate Budget Committee analysis, which was based on Congressional Budget Office estimates and growth rates.
The Affordable Care Act will cost at least twice what the war is costing. If the road to ruin is the incremental cost of the war over the baseline defense budget, then we need to stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act now.
You're writing some comedy gold there. Israel is a left leaning liberal democracy of about 5 million people surrounded by more than 100 million that would do them in if they could, not because of what they've done, but because of who they are - Jews. But the double minded thinking about Israel reaches astonishing heights. Just think about the question of gay rights. Don't you live somewhere in the Bay area? Maybe you've seen these guys:
No single group better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance on display at these rallies than Queers for Palestine, also known as QUIT -- Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. What is left to say about the fundamental self-contradicting nature of such a group?
In Israel, gays live openly and happily in a free and liberal society. There is a thriving gay scene, just as there is in the United States and many other Western democracies.
But in Palestine -- as in most Islamic countries -- being gay is not only frowned upon, it is a crime often punishable by death. Tales of what life is like for gays in Palestinian society are horrifying in the extreme. In fact, gay youth in Palestine frequently flee to Israel if they can get a chance.
So why in the world would gay activists in the most gay-friendly city on Earth protest against one of the other centers of gay liberation (Israel) and for one of the planet's most violently oppressive homophobic societies?
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity....more
Socialism, in the form of the Kibbutz - collective farms - was a strong early influence and institution in Israel before the country even existed, and they survive to this day.
Despite all that, many on the left still have a problem with Israel.
Some people confuse the unwillingness of Israelis to be exterminated with being "right wing."
and a single line written by goatherders about Jews in Zion...
You might be a few lines short. As a minimum, 66 books minus one line short.
ya know what? if their God is so damned weak that it can't keep a handful of people in one place without the US military?
I don't believe that the US military has ever fought alongside Israelis in any war other than putting a Patriot antiaircraft missile battery in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War as a concession to keep Israel from attacking Iraq when Saddam inevitably attacked them. So all of the major wars that Israel has fought for its existence have been by their effort, not American effort, Israeli blood, not American.
Then you have a shitty God and should really go elsewhere.
Not really an option. The Jewish people are tied to Jerusalem as the only place where they can build their temple. Christians are tied to it as well as an offshoot of Judaism, and the place where Jesus lived and was crucified. The truly sticky part is that Muslims consider it their third most holy site as well.
As a counterpoint to your statement, Blaise Pascal thought the continued existence of the Jews was a proof of the existence of miracles.
Those weapons would only fall under local nation control in the event of war and the authorization for nuclear release with US consent. Not really a proliferation problem per se.
As odd as it may seem, having nuclear weapons in alliance hands probably prevents a conventional arms race. Without the NPT, more countries would be willing to go nuclear.
Its the UN, have they EVER been anything but worthless, expensive, and ineffective?
Depends on your point of view. You could view it as a "convenient" place to bash Israel, or an institution with an enormous time wasting obsession with Israel.
... The Case For Israel... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel
I think that anti-Israel resolutions as a percentage of the cumulative total number of resolutions has actually fallen quite a bit over the last couple of decades. It might in fact be major progress getting it down to only 27%. On the other hand, what would the UN be if it didn't have Israel to bash? Would the 57 OIC - Organisation of Islamic Cooperation members still bother to show up?
White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned late Saturday after a simmering controversy over his past statements and activism erupted into calls for his ouster from Republican leaders on Friday....
Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, so he avoided the kind of vetting Cabinet officials were subjected to. In addition, as an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, rather than to Obama directly, his past was not reviewed to the same degree as the more senior "assistants to the president" and other top advisers inside the West Wing.....
Jones, who joined the administration in March as special adviser for green jobs at the CEQ, had issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
His one-time involvement with the Bay Area radical group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which had Marxist roots, had also become an issue. And on Saturday his advocacy on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of shooting a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, threatened to develop into a fresh point of controversy.
No, it is decreasing, at least from its potential at the time. The US managed to head off a number of major terrorist attacks. Al Qaida decided to cancel others on their own.
There are people around the world that have their own agenda unrelated to American actions. This includes Al Qaida. If Europeans hadn't defeated the invading Turk armies at the gates of Vienna, this wouldn't have been a problem. You would probably already be Muslim. As it is, they plan to keep fighting until they reestablish the Caliphate dissolved in 1923, conquer the world, and convert the world to Islam. If you aren't a Muslim now, you or your descendants will be in their crosshairs unless they are defeated.
Not really. The mention of "Lisa Jackson" (EPA Administrator) was from an incident in January -- 5 months ago.
It wasn't an "incident," it was a pattern of behavior stretching over a period of years. It involved secret email address like those being used at other agencies. This has been going on at multiple agencies for quite some time.
The article here talks about STATE-issued e-mail addresses to avoid spam and frivolous e-mail filling up their inbox. No public e-mail addresses were issued, and FOIA requests for e-mail included messages from the multiple addresses.
Not in all cases. That is unless the government now owns gmail.
Mr. Horner uncovered the existence of the secret emails . . . Mr. Horner said . . . two former EPA officials told him about the “Richard Windsor” email and said it was “one of the alternate email addresses she used.”
He said he has also discovered some EPA employees setting up private gmail accounts using their first and last names and the word EPA as a standard formula.
“They’ve been moving government over to private email,” Mr. Horner told The Washington Times. “In the book, I reveal private servers the White House had universities and pressure groups set up so they can conduct discussions.”
Carol Browner, former EPA director now serving as a senior Obama adviser for energy and climate change, a formerly nonexistent position created to avoid Senate confirmation to a real position,...
As we have pointed out, Browner once belonged to an explicitly socialist organization, a group called the Commission for a Sustainable World Society that is a formal part of the Socialist International. She worked in the administration alongside "green jobs" czar Van Jones, an avowed Marxist who believed in the government's pushing environmental justice and strangling the private sector.
Browner thinks the government should have absolute authority and control over our use of and search for energy, down to controlling our thermostats. In a March 9, 2009, interview with U.S. News & World Report, she said that with the smart grid, "Eventually, we can get to a system when an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air-conditioner won't operate at its peak." Or the government?
As columnist Michelle Malkin points out, Browner was also caught by a congressional subcommittee during her EPA stint using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grass-roots environmental lobbying organizations. Her agenda was clear, and she had no qualms about using tax dollars to push it...more
Left? the US doesn't have a left. it has a right and far right.
That is a mistaken idea commonly held by people without a strong understanding of the American political system and politics. The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists , and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route (see below after reading the rest of this). The difference is that people in the United States generally won't vote for Communists if they understand that is who is running for office. That is why many on the hard left camouflage themselves by rhetorically moving to the center and refer to themselves as progressives, or some other label, to merge into the larger body of the moderate left. If they make it into government, they are forced to govern by incrementalism using ordinary political means since they gain office by votes, not by revolution.
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. . . .
...We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build a new society.
And more....
The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism...
... I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
I think you have this wrong. There are already ways for government officials that actually need it to get confidential information and candid opinions. This is something different. The point of transparency is to provide information on current government operations so that the public can provide feedback to the government, and so that voters can hold the government accountable. The benefit to historians is ancillary. There is no way now to provide feedback to the JFK and LBJ administrations, they are long gone. There is no way to improve their effectiveness. All that is left is the history. Voters need to be able to act every 1-4 years, depending on the office. The actions at EPA and other agencies clearly undermines providing that information and subverts accountability. Part of the reason this is occurring is that many people currently in government aren't separating there personal views from their government job and are illegitimately using their government position to engage in activism. That at least partially explains why the IRS is now involved in so many scandals for suppressing conservative political groups, conservative religious groups, Jewish groups, pro-life groups, and even adoptive parents. That also explains why they want to hide their tracks.
They were violating their own regulation by charging a news organization.
Why should a "news organization" be treated any differently than anyone else? Last time I read the Constitution, it appeared to apply to everyone equally, not just a select list of government approved organizations.
You skipped over the inconvenient part in his post: "They were violating their own regulation..."
Slashdot Mirror
There are better sources.
Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
You may want to review this post in this same topic for more information.
All the Israelis did was engage in conventional war, not a plan of extermination. But you are interested in countering the Israelis making twitter posts in remembrance of their defeating Arab armies gathering to commit genocide by reenacting an actual genocide. No doubt you consider yourself a humanitarian and a sensitive soul. A pity the Jews have to go and ruin everything by not submitting willingly to extermination, eh?
This is a good general resource: sixdaywar.co.uk
You are on the wrong side of history, and pretty much all of the nonsense you refer to is coming from you. The Arabs in Palestine were following the orders of the Arab leaders to evacuate. They had been making it clear that a genocide was coming, and who wants get pulled into a genocide? If the Israelis hadn't been able to defend themselves and stop the many attacking Arab armies, it is very possible that any Arabs that had remained behind and ignored the commands to leave would have been killed along with the Jews.
Time Now for a Declaration of Mideast Peace; Doomed Arab Refugees
In ''Semites and Anti-Semites'' (New York, 1986), Bernard W. Lewis quotes (page 270) from the memoirs of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, listing the factors that led to Israel's success:
''Fifth: the summons of the Arab governments to the population of Palestine to leave the country and take refuge in the neighboring Arab countries . . . this collective flight served the Jews and strengthened their position without effort. . . . Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes when we ourselves were the ones who induced them to leave them. . . . We doomed a million Arab refugees, by calling on them and insisting that they abandon their land, their homes, their work and their occupations, and we made them unemployed and homeless.''
Azzam's Genocidal Threat
An October 11, 1947 report on the pan-Arab summit in the Lebanese town of Aley,[9] by Akhbar al-Yom's editor Mustafa Amin, contained an interview he held with Arab League secretary-general Azzam. Titled, "A War of Extermination," the interview read as follows (translated by Efraim Karsh; all ellipses are in the original text):
Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha spoke to me about the horrific war that was in the offing saying:
"I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Tartar massacre[10] or the Crusader wars. I believe that the number of volunteers from outside Palestine will be larger than Palestine's Arab population, for I know that volunteers will be arriving to us from [as far as] India, Afghanistan, and China to win the honor of martyrdom for the sake of Palestine You might be surprised to learn that hundreds of Englishmen expressed their wish to volunteer in the Arab armies to fight the Jews.
"This war will be distinguished by three serious matters. First—faith: as each fighter deems his death on behalf of Palestine as the shortest road to paradise; second, [the war] will be an opportunity for vast plunder. Third, it will be impossible to contain the zealous volunteers arriving from all corners of the world to avenge the martyrdom of the Palestine Arabs, and viewing the war as dignifying every Arab and every Muslim throughout the world
"The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle or the final one whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew's morale! Most desert Arabians take pleasure in fighting. I recall being tasked with mediating a truce in a desert war (in which I participated) that lasted for nine monthsWhile en route to sign the truce, I was approached
The US already spends money on healthcare. The current law isn't likely to do much to improve outcomes for the general population It may result in some improvements for a small minority, and make care for a much larger percentage much more expensive.
Democrats' New Argument: It's A Good Thing That Obamacare Doubles Individual Health Insurance Premiums
In fact, the average 25 and 40-year-old will pay double under Obamacare what they would need to pay today, based on rates posted at eHealthInsurance.com (NASDAQ:EHTH). More specifically, for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoker, the average Obamacare “bronze” exchange plan in California will cost between 64 and 117 percent more than the cheapest five plans on eHealth. For 40-year-old male non-smokers, it’s between 73 and 146 percent more.
You also might want to look into the epidemiology of truck bombs. They can have a significant negative impact on the health of a community, and there have been a fair number of attempts by extremists in the US since 9/11. One of them was by a member of the Taliban.
Yazidis Live Among Reminders of Deadly Attack
The death toll from 9/11 attack was ~ 3,000. It resulted in approximately $100 billion in damage to the US economy. That is more that the incremental cost of the war to the US defense budget in several years, and half of the cost of implementing the Affordable Care Act per year once it is in full force.
I think you misunderstand. The ACA cost will be at least $2.6 trillion for the first 10 years, whereas that $4-6 trillion is an estimate of what the total cost of the war will be over future decades. Two decades of ACA gets you well into the cost of the war, three decades and you're past it. That is assuming the current estimates are on target. It isn't looking good.
The 9/11 attack resulted in an estimated $100 billion in damage to the American economy. That is more than the cost of additional war funding in several years. If civil aviation had collapsed as a result of 9/11 alone, or with follow-on attacks, a genuine possibility, it could have been far worse. Al Qaida was planning multiple follow on attacks. Various plots have been interrupted that were intended to be as bad or worse. There is no way that 9/11 would have been ignored.
The 9/11 attack killed about as many Americans as the attack on Pearl Harbor. How do you think ignoring the attack on Pearl Harbor would have worked out? No US aid to the UK, and Soviet Union. Would they have fallen or worked out a separate peace? How do you think that world would have worked out for the American people?
Al Qaida was training thousands of terrorists per year and sending them around the world to engage in Islamic extremist insurgencies. If they hadn't been disrupted, if the US hadn't assisted other government, it is unlikely the results would have been good over time.
National defense is a constitutional responsibility of the US federal government. Healthcare is not. In the world in which we live, giving up defense to provide healthcare is likely to mean eventually you are likely to have neither unless you have a strong benefactor to protect you. The US has played the role of benefactor to Europe since the end of WW2. Who will protect America if it gives up its own defense?
Bin Laden's stated goal [cnn.com] was to goad the US into a prolonged and expensive war that would cripple the US. He achieved that.
Your abacus must have suffered an overflow error. The cost of the war against Al Qaida and associates is a pittance of the total federal budget.
Medicare and Other Entitlements Are Crowding Out Spending on Defense
Defense spending is about 19% of the total budget. The cost of the war has varied considerably year to year, adding an additional roughly 15 - 30% to the baseline defense budget. On the other hand:
Analysis: Obamacare to cost $2.6 trillion over first full decade
... Total spending under the Affordable Care Act will reach $2.6 trillion over its first full decade, according to a Senate Budget Committee analysis, which was based on Congressional Budget Office estimates and growth rates.
The Affordable Care Act will cost at least twice what the war is costing. If the road to ruin is the incremental cost of the war over the baseline defense budget, then we need to stop implementation of the Affordable Care Act now.
Entitlement Spending Will Nearly Double by 2050
Sarah, She Wolf of the GOP
Do what I say, not what I think!! (At least not that particular thought.)
... a bunch of right wing loony tunes
You're writing some comedy gold there. Israel is a left leaning liberal democracy of about 5 million people surrounded by more than 100 million that would do them in if they could, not because of what they've done, but because of who they are - Jews. But the double minded thinking about Israel reaches astonishing heights. Just think about the question of gay rights. Don't you live somewhere in the Bay area? Maybe you've seen these guys:
Queers for Palestine
No single group better exemplifies the cognitive dissonance on display at these rallies than Queers for Palestine, also known as QUIT -- Queers Undermining Israeli Terror. What is left to say about the fundamental self-contradicting nature of such a group?
In Israel, gays live openly and happily in a free and liberal society. There is a thriving gay scene, just as there is in the United States and many other Western democracies.
But in Palestine -- as in most Islamic countries -- being gay is not only frowned upon, it is a crime often punishable by death. Tales of what life is like for gays in Palestinian society are horrifying in the extreme. In fact, gay youth in Palestine frequently flee to Israel if they can get a chance.
So why in the world would gay activists in the most gay-friendly city on Earth protest against one of the other centers of gay liberation (Israel) and for one of the planet's most violently oppressive homophobic societies?
This is the essence of cognitive dissonance -- the condition of holding two differing beliefs that are so incompatible and contradictory that the only way to internally reconcile them is to, well, go insane (to use the layman's term). Because, try as I might, I can't comprehend any other justification for being a member of QUIT other than insanity. ...more
Socialism, in the form of the Kibbutz - collective farms - was a strong early influence and institution in Israel before the country even existed, and they survive to this day.
Despite all that, many on the left still have a problem with Israel.
The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews
Some people confuse the unwillingness of Israelis to be exterminated with being "right wing."
and a single line written by goatherders about Jews in Zion...
You might be a few lines short. As a minimum, 66 books minus one line short.
ya know what? if their God is so damned weak that it can't keep a handful of people in one place without the US military?
I don't believe that the US military has ever fought alongside Israelis in any war other than putting a Patriot antiaircraft missile battery in Israel during the 1991 Gulf War as a concession to keep Israel from attacking Iraq when Saddam inevitably attacked them. So all of the major wars that Israel has fought for its existence have been by their effort, not American effort, Israeli blood, not American.
Then you have a shitty God and should really go elsewhere.
Not really an option. The Jewish people are tied to Jerusalem as the only place where they can build their temple. Christians are tied to it as well as an offshoot of Judaism, and the place where Jesus lived and was crucified. The truly sticky part is that Muslims consider it their third most holy site as well.
As a counterpoint to your statement, Blaise Pascal thought the continued existence of the Jews was a proof of the existence of miracles.
Those weapons would only fall under local nation control in the event of war and the authorization for nuclear release with US consent. Not really a proliferation problem per se.
As odd as it may seem, having nuclear weapons in alliance hands probably prevents a conventional arms race. Without the NPT, more countries would be willing to go nuclear.
Its the UN, have they EVER been anything but worthless, expensive, and ineffective?
Depends on your point of view. You could view it as a "convenient" place to bash Israel, or an institution with an enormous time wasting obsession with Israel.
From: Middle East Quarterly - Winter 2004
The Case for Israel
... The Case For Israel ... Dershowitz points out that a full 27 percent of the U.N.'s country-specific resolutions critical of a state have been directed against it. In contrast, no resolution in the history of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights has condemned Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe, all of which are self-evidently far worse violators of human rights. Israel, asserts Dershowitz, has a "far better record on human rights than any other nation in the Middle East and most other nations in the world." As evidence, he notes that "Israel is the only nation in the world whose judiciary actively enforces the rule of law against its military during wartime" and that "Israel has killed fewer innocent civilians in proportion to the number of its own civilians killed than any country engaged in a comparable war."... The Case for Israel
I think that anti-Israel resolutions as a percentage of the cumulative total number of resolutions has actually fallen quite a bit over the last couple of decades. It might in fact be major progress getting it down to only 27%. On the other hand, what would the UN be if it didn't have Israel to bash? Would the 57 OIC - Organisation of Islamic Cooperation members still bother to show up?
Somehow it seems oddly important for its size: Israel is only 1/6 of 1% of the landmass of the Middle East
I can see how the UN might appear to be largely worthless.
The Light Horse did good work back in 1917.
Great movie, if you've never seen it: The Lighthorsemen
A brave man might have charged the Turks, back in the day. Only a fool would charge an Israeli tanker defending Israel in a Merkava.
Stay cool. ;)
And the IRS was not politically targeting conservative groups.
Just to make sure everyone understands that is sarcasm:
Lawmakers say IRS targeted dozens more conservative groups than initially believed
A Frequent Visitor to the White House
Enemies List: IRS Wanted Names of Tea Party Members
What's going on between the IRS and True the Vote?
Criticism of IRS grows amid allegations of targeting beyond Tea Party
The IRS’s Tea-Party Targeting
Looks like more information is needed:
White House Adviser Van Jones Resigns Amid Controversy Over Past Activism
White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned late Saturday after a simmering controversy over his past statements and activism erupted into calls for his ouster from Republican leaders on Friday....
Jones's position did not require Senate confirmation, so he avoided the kind of vetting Cabinet officials were subjected to. In addition, as an adviser to the Council on Environmental Quality, rather than to Obama directly, his past was not reviewed to the same degree as the more senior "assistants to the president" and other top advisers inside the West Wing.....
Jones, who joined the administration in March as special adviser for green jobs at the CEQ, had issued two public apologies in recent days, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
His one-time involvement with the Bay Area radical group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which had Marxist roots, had also become an issue. And on Saturday his advocacy on behalf of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of shooting a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, threatened to develop into a fresh point of controversy.
The resignation (and coming MSM/left-wing martyrdom) of Van Jones; Obama “thanks him for his service”
Van Jones, 'Green Jobs Czar', a self-described 'communist' arrested during Rodney King riots
No, it is decreasing, at least from its potential at the time. The US managed to head off a number of major terrorist attacks. Al Qaida decided to cancel others on their own.
There are people around the world that have their own agenda unrelated to American actions. This includes Al Qaida. If Europeans hadn't defeated the invading Turk armies at the gates of Vienna, this wouldn't have been a problem. You would probably already be Muslim. As it is, they plan to keep fighting until they reestablish the Caliphate dissolved in 1923, conquer the world, and convert the world to Islam. If you aren't a Muslim now, you or your descendants will be in their crosshairs unless they are defeated.
The Future of Terrorism: What al-Qaida Really Wants
American forces withdrew from Iraq several years ago.
The Chinese already enjoy the major benefit of Iraq's oil.
China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom
War pretty much ended fascist rule in Europe in the 1940s, and the holding of slaves in the United States in the 1860s.
Both Europe and the United States seemed to have prospered since.
Not really. The mention of "Lisa Jackson" (EPA Administrator) was from an incident in January -- 5 months ago.
It wasn't an "incident," it was a pattern of behavior stretching over a period of years. It involved secret email address like those being used at other agencies. This has been going on at multiple agencies for quite some time.
The article here talks about STATE-issued e-mail addresses to avoid spam and frivolous e-mail filling up their inbox. No public e-mail addresses were issued, and FOIA requests for e-mail included messages from the multiple addresses.
Not in all cases. That is unless the government now owns gmail.
Congress demands EPA’s secret email accounts
Mr. Horner uncovered the existence of the secret emails . . . Mr. Horner said . . . two former EPA officials told him about the “Richard Windsor” email and said it was “one of the alternate email addresses she used.”
He said he has also discovered some EPA employees setting up private gmail accounts using their first and last names and the word EPA as a standard formula.
“They’ve been moving government over to private email,” Mr. Horner told The Washington Times. “In the book, I reveal private servers the White House had universities and pressure groups set up so they can conduct discussions.”
It looks like time for more facts to fight suppression of speech with more speech.
Carol Browner Goes, Draconian Policies Stay
Carol Browner, former EPA director now serving as a senior Obama adviser for energy and climate change, a formerly nonexistent position created to avoid Senate confirmation to a real position,...
As we have pointed out, Browner once belonged to an explicitly socialist organization, a group called the Commission for a Sustainable World Society that is a formal part of the Socialist International. She worked in the administration alongside "green jobs" czar Van Jones, an avowed Marxist who believed in the government's pushing environmental justice and strangling the private sector.
Browner thinks the government should have absolute authority and control over our use of and search for energy, down to controlling our thermostats. In a March 9, 2009, interview with U.S. News & World Report, she said that with the smart grid, "Eventually, we can get to a system when an electric company will be able to hold back some of the power so that maybe your air-conditioner won't operate at its peak." Or the government?
As columnist Michelle Malkin points out, Browner was also caught by a congressional subcommittee during her EPA stint using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 grass-roots environmental lobbying organizations. Her agenda was clear, and she had no qualms about using tax dollars to push it ...more
Left? the US doesn't have a left. it has a right and far right.
That is a mistaken idea commonly held by people without a strong understanding of the American political system and politics. The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists , and Communist Party. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route (see below after reading the rest of this). The difference is that people in the United States generally won't vote for Communists if they understand that is who is running for office. That is why many on the hard left camouflage themselves by rhetorically moving to the center and refer to themselves as progressives, or some other label, to merge into the larger body of the moderate left. If they make it into government, they are forced to govern by incrementalism using ordinary political means since they gain office by votes, not by revolution.
William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. . . .
...We need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build a new society.
And more....
The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be "re-educated" into communism...
... I bought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.
And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.
The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them... how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what's going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
Who is BILL AYERS?
William Ayers says Weather Underground, Boston bombings not same
I think you have this wrong. There are already ways for government officials that actually need it to get confidential information and candid opinions. This is something different. The point of transparency is to provide information on current government operations so that the public can provide feedback to the government, and so that voters can hold the government accountable. The benefit to historians is ancillary. There is no way now to provide feedback to the JFK and LBJ administrations, they are long gone. There is no way to improve their effectiveness. All that is left is the history. Voters need to be able to act every 1-4 years, depending on the office. The actions at EPA and other agencies clearly undermines providing that information and subverts accountability. Part of the reason this is occurring is that many people currently in government aren't separating there personal views from their government job and are illegitimately using their government position to engage in activism. That at least partially explains why the IRS is now involved in so many scandals for suppressing conservative political groups, conservative religious groups, Jewish groups, pro-life groups, and even adoptive parents. That also explains why they want to hide their tracks.
The second address is used to do actual work, not bypass any process.
Your first quote applies:
No. You're wrong. Actually, you're assumption is wrong.
E-mail Scandal at the EPA - The Obama administration embraces secrecy and stonewalling.
They were violating their own regulation by charging a news organization.
Why should a "news organization" be treated any differently than anyone else? Last time I read the Constitution, it appeared to apply to everyone equally, not just a select list of government approved organizations.
You skipped over the inconvenient part in his post: "They were violating their own regulation..."