Patterico's Pontifications

11/5/2006

L.A. Times Mocks Hussein Trial

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 9:11 am

The lede of today’s L.A. Times story about the Saddam Hussein guilty verdict is pure spin:

Deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity today, bringing to an end the first trial examining the alleged crimes of the former regime — a theatrical, yearlong televised odyssey dogged by questions of legitimacy.

Take it to the op-ed page, pal.

Here’s more:

The trial, or circus as it sometimes seemed, transfixed Iraqis as controversy swirled around every twist: its opening day when an imperious Hussein declared that he was still president and challenged the legitimacy of “this so-called court,” the slayings of two defense lawyers, the resignation of the chief judge and the naming of a successor, and a hunger strike that led to Hussein’s hospitalization for several days as the end neared.

Look. The Hussein trial operated by different rules than we operate under here in America. Hussein had the right to address witnesses himself. And he is a loudmouth.

That doesn’t make the trial illegitimate, or the overwhelming evidence of his guilt less compelling.

Yet the paper spins like a top, trying desperately to neutralize any sense of success Americans might feel at seeing this evil man brought to justice for his crimes.

The rest of the piece is simply a modified version of a previous story filled with similarly snide comments. I have already criticized that story, in this post.

UPDATE: Even the New York Times manages to keep this sort of editorializing out of its lede. As does the Washington Post.

Comments (141)

141 Responses to “L.A. Times Mocks Hussein Trial”

[…] UPDATE x3: The L.A. Times story about the verdict is a modified version of the story criticized in this post, and (unsurprisingly) manages to work the “doubts” spin into its lede. More about that in a new post. […]
Patterico’s Pontifications » L.A. Times Has “Doubts” About Hussein Court’s Legitimacy (421107) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:11 am
Well, that was quick. And utterly predictable.

The L.A. Times editorial board clearly can’t side with the good guys, because the U.S. is the root of all evil and tyrants like Saddam Hussein are the tumors generated by the carcinogenic effects of U.S. foreign policy.

Feh.
Mike Lief (ce60c1) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:28 am
I actually read a comment on another blog where some mental giant complained that the trial was “positively un-American.” Which may be one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
Stephen Macklin (4ea65b) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:32 am
Iran cut into their networks to make the announcement, rejoicing the verdict……nice to see them nasty mullah’s have a few prioritys straight.
Rovin (e4c3cf) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:39 am
“The voice that portends to the future”

– Here’s a few “truthiness’s” that it’s usefull to remind yourselves of, every time some soft-Marxist gadfly cracks stupid in a comment, and has you wanting to commit violence on his anti-American head….

– Numbers: The hard left “National Socialists”, you know the ones, their real leader’s, Marx, Stalin, and Hitler, have been dead for decades, comprise less than 5% of the population. They make up for the lack of numbers, by loud screeching, and obnoxious public displays, which the legacy Media flocks too dutifly, upholding the “sell-a-paper” meme of “if it bleeds, it leads”. They are as a few black ants among the hundreds of millions of red ants. Their main activities, day to day, is comprised of the “Big Lie”, demonizing the existing administration, and the President, whoever that might be, and generally spreading as much class/race warfare, and chaos as possible. If the biggest part of American Democratic voters understood what this malicious group of America haters is really up to, they would be appalled.

– Democratic Leadership: The mentally lazy, easy way to attain a majority, is to accept the support of any gaggle of misfits that comes their way. This because they don’t “believe” in the WOT, do not take it seriously, and therefore do not think any serious harm will occur if they follow the anti-American theme until they can regain power, and return to the “All negotiation, All the time”. Fundementally the same unworkable pacifist appeasement approaches of the past, ala Carter and Clinton, policies that have led to the steady growth of militancy all over the world since the days of the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. The real danger lies not so much in the Democrat’s retisence to act, but rather in their over reaction, once the appeasement policies have driven things past the point of no return. Something akin of the “Kennedy blunders” during the “Cuban/Turkey” missle crisus. In other words, too much too late, is the real failing of sitting on your hands, talking, and talking, and talking, while your enemies are busy plotting your destruction. Because of this tendency to react late, and over the top when they finally do, the chances of a nuclear conflageration is 10 times more likely under a Democratic administration. Add to that the historic reality that the electorate waffles on any change lo leadership during war time, and the Dem’s see it as a “no-choice” proposition. any success by Bush in the WOT has them facing 10 more years of incumbant Repulbican leadership. they think they have to root against America.

– The future: This senario of a “late, heavy handed, making up for lost time” disaster, is the one greatest danger of allowing the small vociferous gang of Eurospineys to hi-jack American politics. And make no mistake, it will happen if pacifistic dogma rules once again in Washington. No president, regardless of his party, could standby without extreme reaction if either Israel or America were attacked on a deliberate devestating basis.

– The voice is there if we will just listen: The past is the greatest lesson-master of our future – “The greatest enemy is the one that moves with stealth among you. The ones that preach to the methods, and means for your demise. You have no choice but to fight against that possibility with even greater urgency and resolve, or you don’t deserve the fruits of Liberty.” – Winston Churchill speaking before the British Parliment on the eve of WWII – 1939

– Get out and vote on Nov. 7th like you and your families lives and future depend on it – because it does!
Big Bang Hunter (9562fb) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:47 am
i’m afraid i have to agree with the los angeles times on this one. yes, saddam was a brutal dictator, but…
he was our friend. we armed him and propped him up back when we thought he would be a useful counterforce to iran.
he was the only secular dictator in the muslim world.
he was not responsible for 9/11 and he had no wmd’s. any statements to the contrary are lies.
george bush senior had him in the palm of his hand after the first gulf war, but allowed him to remain in power. stupidity runs in this family, and about 3000 american soldiers have paid the ultimate price for it.
we invaded iraq and set up a puppet executive, legislature and judiciary. what is the measure of a “legitimate court”? if this term means that the court in question is backed by the most powerful forces in the area, then yes, it’s legitimate, but i don’t accept that definition. judges are tribunes of the people, raised up by the people to serve them, and the courthouse is the palace of your civil rights. i don’t see this level of legitimacy in iraqi courts. an international tribunal would have been better, a la slobodan milosevic, but then we would have had less control. for instance, we couldn’t have timed a verdict to be issued two days before our election.
several defense attorneys were murdered during the course of the trial. in a legitimate court, defense counsel has free rein to act within the rules of evidence and argument without fear for personal safety.
the first judge at the trial (who suffered from the disability of being unable to control the proceedings) was mysteriously replaced on orders from one of the higher puppets on the totem pole. in a legitimate criminal court, the government doesn’t get to replace the judge in midstream.
i agree that saddam was guilty of gassing the kurds, but this is unrelated to the legitimacy of the court. outside of the echo chamber some of you people live in, many people are expressing reservations about the legitimacy of this court, and the times is correct in reporting this.
assistant devil's advocate (c01e93) — 11/5/2006 @ 10:28 am
Maybe there’s more than one reason they call it the Left Coast.
DRJ (1be297) — 11/5/2006 @ 10:57 am
“we armed him and propped him up back when we thought he would be a useful counterforce to iran”
No. We backed his rise to power, as we did for Reza Pahlavi in Iran. None of the begins in ’79. It begins in the 50’s and 60’s.
Post WWII

“Iran cut into their networks to make the announcement, rejoicing the verdict……nice to see them nasty mullah’s have a few prioritys straight.”

Again, No.
Iran got us to do just what it wanted: Saddam is gone and Iran is more powerful than ever. And we’ve strengthened the hand of the conservatives. We helped to set back the reform movement.

Imagine Ireland playing us off against Loyalists in the North.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:02 am
ada,

I have zero respect for the position of someone who criticizes this war — but also criticizes Bush I for failing to take out Saddam in 1991.

Yes, George H.W. Bush could have easily taken out Saddam in 1991, just as George W. Bush easily took out Saddam in 2003. The issues of international support (or lack thereof) were not significantly different (if anything, we had more support and justification for deposing Saddam in 2003), nor were the issues of preparing for the peace, or dealing with an insurgency.

You’re just spouting talking points. You’re not thinking.

The fact that defense attorneys were killed does not mean the court was illegitimate. It might say something about the security situation, but it could happen anywhere. If defense attorneys were killed in the U.S., would that, by itself, make a U.S. trial illegitimate? No. The issue is not the attorneys’ being killed, but how the court responds. I haven’t read a legitimate complaint about that in the articles I have read today, just a complaint that the assassinations happened to begin with.

And the judge who said Saddam was not a dictator needed to be replaced. Any judge who demonstrates bias like that has no business running a trial.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:11 am
Weren’t we allied with Stalin in WWII?

I guess we had no business engaging in the Cold War, then.
Patterico (de0616) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:12 am
Man,there sure are some really froot loops rewriting history to make their pathetic left wing scenerios look good.
jainphx (cca7dd) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:24 am
The LA Times can’t even support the conviction of a brutal mass murderer because it might seem to indicate something is going right in Iraq. Pathetic, absolutely pathetic, and clear proof of a deeply moral and ethical bankruptcy.
mokus (539ee5) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:28 am
“Weren’t we allied with Stalin in WWII?
I guess we had no business engaging in the Cold War, then.”

Was that a response to me?
If so: Did we help to install Stalin? Did we assist in his rise to power and offer support before and after aiding and abetting him in is crimes? We ended support when he invaded Kuwait. Do you know the circumstances of that invasion?

Chose your response: morality or realpolitik (you can’t have both). And if you choose the latter, defend how any of this follows even that cold logic.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:31 am
Read this Washington Post article (it’s the one you linked to in the update):

“Protesters in Tikrit attacked the local Iraqi army base with light weapons. No casualties were reported.”

Protesters? Protesters? Groups of people attacking an army base (anywhere, but in a war zone to boot) with light weopans are protesters?

Now how are we supposed to believe this from the same newspaper?

For a more likely explanation, go here.
Christoph (9824e6) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:53 am
A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making
By Roger Morris.
Op Ed NY Times. March 14 2003

“The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington’s role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America’s anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.

From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem’s harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington’s Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt — much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s against the common foe of Iran. By 1961, the Kassem regime had grown more assertive. Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s arsenal, threatening Western oil interests, resuming his country’s old quarrel with Kuwait, talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East — all steps Saddam Hussein was to repeat in some form — Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed.

In 1963 Britain and Israel backed American intervention in Iraq, while other United States allies — chiefly France and Germany — resisted. But without significant opposition within the government, Kennedy, like President Bush today, pressed on. In Cairo, Damascus, Tehran and Baghdad, American agents marshaled opponents of the Iraqi regime. Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.’s ”Health Alteration Committee,” as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.

Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ”Almost certainly a gain for our side,” Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.

As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.

According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq’s educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.

The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:57 am
Chose your response: morality or realpolitik (you can’t have both)

Why can’t you have both? The most basic foundation of morality is engaging in behavior that enhances one’s chance of survival. Then we move outward from an individual’s behavior to his/her own survival to the family’s survival, the community’s survival, the nation’s survival and finally to human species survival. At each one of those stages, one can examine behavior and deem it moral/immoral based on context.

If I kill someone else, it is a morally neutral act until the context is known. If I kill in self-defense, I haven’t acted immorally.

Taking Stalin as an ally in WWII in an effort to defeat the great evil and the immediate threat of the Axis powers wasn’t immoral, even as Stalin committed his own evil.

The small amount of support that the US provided Saddam during the 12 years of war between Iran and Iraq (Saddam remained primarily a Soviet client) was not one of “friendship” but was done just enough to keep Iran/Iraq at a stalemate position, exhausting both, providing neither with overwhelming advantage. It neutralized (for a while) the threat both posed to us.

Moral act.

Sometimes one doesn’t get a clear choice between 100% good vs 100% evil. Sometimes the choice is between bad and worse. Sometimes we have to deal with basically immoral people to ameloriate a greater immorality.

Adults understand this.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:06 pm
“The small amount of support that the US provided Saddam during the 12 years of war between Iran and Iraq”

My response to your ignorance is above. None of this information is new.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:10 pm
Alois Fahyling, I appreciate your bringing this to our attention, but while Justin Levine might disagree with me, I don’t think you should copy the whole article here.

It is the property of the New York Times, it is a felony to republish copyright material, and could open you (or Patterico if he leaves it on the site) up to civil penalties as well.

This is all very theoretical because I doubt the above would actually happen for reprinting one article… but it’s the principle that the NYT produced that content and they have the right to any advertising revenue gained from its sale/distribution.

Patterico advertises on his site and has every right to each dime of advertising revenue (not that this is his main occupation, unlike the NYT, which is a business), but he shouldn’t in good conscience allow others’ intellectual property to be posted on his website without their permission.

Accepted fair use of others’ intellectual property definitely is allowed, however. The legal and ethical way to promote that article would be to excerpt from it and link back (using the “link” button to the top of the commenting text box provided you have Javascript enabled) to the producer of the content.

I think as conservatives we should be respectful of others’ intellectual property: it is the fruit of their labor and often their livelihood. This goes for conservative publications and authors as well.

Now you may not be a conservative, which is why you don’t respect the New York Times’ right to decide when, where, and how their complete articles and opinion pieces are published. Still, the law applies.

And if the U.S.A. made a mistake in Iraq, decades ago, as that article seems to indicate, thank God you finally took steps to correct it.

Here are more examples of U.S. greatness and Iraq’s beauty.
Christoph (9824e6) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:14 pm
AF

MY ignorance? ahem

Good lord, France was a bigger supplier of arms to Iraq then the US!
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:22 pm
Everything this administration has done has made the world and us less stable and less safe. Saddam’s government was Secular. He invaded Kuwait for specific and limited reasons. He even made clear to us why he had done so. He was seen to have overstepped his bounds and we responded.

I am not defending Hussein. I would never be in favor of supporting him to begin with. I would not have supported his rise or his crimes. I would have supported the populist Mossedegh in Iran rather than the man, Reza Pahlavi whom we helped to install as King. I don’t believe in supporting kings unless it’s unavoidable. But I do not think it was practical to support these assholes any more than I think it was moral.

You waft back and forth from one defense to another, seemingly because it’s a way in your mind to avoid being ‘wrong.’ That’s your main fear. But you are unwilling to learn the history of these things so as to become anything else.
You have opinions without knowledge and when someone questions you you shout.

I’m not arguing with the commenters here, otherwise I would just be shouting back, and that’s useless.
I’m speaking to the readers who may not be as sure what to believe.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:24 pm
Everything this administration has done has made the world and us less stable and less safe.

Translation: the world was safer on 9/10/01 and if we just put the blinders back on and leave the Islamists alone, they will love us and leave us alone.

Saddam’s government was Secular.

DO IGNORE the Saddam commissioned a Koran written in his own blood, put up statues/paintings of himself as a modern Saladin and paid the families of Islamist suicide bombers “bounties” for dead Jews.

He invaded Kuwait for specific and limited reasons

Yes, he wanted control of the lion share’s of ME oil …

I am not defending Hussein

NO! Of course not! Why ever should we think so?!
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:30 pm
So you’re not going to apologize for or request that Patterico remove someone else’s intellectual property that you posted here illegally, Alois Fahyling?
Christoph (9824e6) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:34 pm
Saddam’s government was stable and he was not working with the Fundys, no. He manipulated them and was worried about them. You give me his PR stunts, but you give me so substantive information to back up your argument because there is none.
All the reports- don’t quote Cheney, give me reports please- say there was no association of Hussein with Al Qaeda.

The Iraq war was and is a distraction and worse. We have created a haven and a cause for fundamentalists where there was none.
We have made the situation less stable and therefore the world more dangerous. And after the invasion we had planned for nothing, nada, zilch. Even the Neocon assholes are turning on the idiots they seduced into this stupidity, and condemning everone else but themselves for ‘incompetence.’
—

“So you’re not going to apologize for or request that Patterico remove someone else’s intellectual property that you posted here illegally, Alois Fahyling?”

I didn’t print the entire article, and I’ll apologize to no one.

I’ll do it again;

The United States and its European allies have laws and policies designed to prevent arms and military technology from getting into the hands of developing countries, especially where there is a likelihood of their reckless deployment. If these controls were aimed at anyone, certainly they were aimed at the highly repressive, swaggering Iraqi regime, with its history of threatening both its neighbors and its citizens.

Still, when Saddam went to war against Iran, becoming the world’s chief practitioner of chemical warfare, U.S. realpolitikers dubbed him the lesser of two evils, and the one less likely to disrupt the oil flow. The essence of Iraqgate is that secret efforts to support him became the order of the day, both during his long war with Iran and afterward.

Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology — ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We’ve learned by now that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:52 pm
“Yes, he wanted control of the lion share’s of ME oil …”

No. Kuwait was overproducing from contested oil-fields that ran between their borders and was selling at below market prices, sabotaging the Iraqi economy.

And remember after we helped to restore the Kuwaiti monarchy one of the first things they did was to send out hit squads to assassinate democracy advocates.
Nice guys all around.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:56 pm
Butcher Of Baghdad Sentenced To Death | Update: Video Of Bush Responding Added…

By hanging. I’m expecting a lot of “So what’s” from the left side of the blogosphere, kind of like this one; “Yes, it’s a good thing, Saddam was a bad person, but….” You know the drill by now. Update: Charles……
The Political Pit Bull (64479c) — 11/5/2006 @ 12:59 pm
Saddam’s government was stable

And Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Color me underwhelmed.

Islamism is as much a threat to the 21st century, as fascism and communism were to the 20th. Nihilists see “stable” and want that status quo as long as dinner arrives on the table and netflix drops the DVD’s through the door.

Those of us with a stake in the future are not so sanguine.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:07 pm
Perfect justice for the conduct of the management and staff of the LAT, would be the purchase of the Tribune Co. by the Moonies.
How about Tony Blankley for Managing Editor of the LAT?
Another Drew (8018ee) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:11 pm
Saddam was not an Islamist. And his government was stable.
We would not agree on the correct policy vis-a-vis the Islamists, but we can’t even get to that discussion because you keep insisting that the attack of Saddam was an attack on Al Qaeda. It was not. It strengthen Al Qaeda. The intelligence agency reports all agree: Iraq is more of a danger now than it was.

There’s a good exchange here.
Democrats with balls for once. It’s hilarious.

It gives me hope.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:13 pm
I couldn’t tell whether you printed the entire article or not, Alois Fahyling, because there was no link. It certainly looked like a complete article.

At any rate, method #2 that you used in comment #23 was the preferred method. Thanks for coming down firmly on the side of a hard right-wing libertarian point of view as held by patriots like Benjamin Franklin.

I’m sure this will be the last time for a while.
Christoph (9824e6) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:14 pm
AF #23: All the reports- don’t quote Cheney, give me reports please- say there was no association of Hussein with Al Qaeda.

There’s this from our own Patterico. Note especially the statements by Democrat Lee Hamilton.
DRJ (1be297) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:17 pm
you keep insisting that the attack of Saddam was an attack on Al Qaeda

Where? AF, cite where I said that. ANYWHERE.

Deal with what I actually say, not some thing you THINK I said.

Get the straw outta your ears.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:18 pm
and if you think AQ is the sole proprietor of Islamism, then we are back to the 9/10/01 blinders again.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:20 pm
The attack on Saddam strengthened Islamists.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 1:24 pm
Yeah, like Islamists were on the brink of collapse before the US toppled Saddam.

AF, I’ve got a nice bridge you could buy …

Or maybe you’d just like to join all the leftists I’m running across who are greeting the Saddam verdict with “so when do we get to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld hang for the same crimes”
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 2:40 pm
Let’s consider war crimes from a full scope of objectivity.

http://www.bushflash.com/antiwar2.html
blubonnet (8d9f79) — 11/5/2006 @ 2:59 pm
“Yeah, like Islamists were on the brink of collapse before the US toppled Saddam.”

The Taliban were gone, and now they’re back.
We pulled troops out of Afghanistan. We diverted troops and money.

The attack on Saddam strengthened Islamists.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 3:06 pm
Let’s consider war crimes from a full scope of objectivity.

Mmmmm . . . that’s good objectivity!
Patterico (de0616) — 11/5/2006 @ 3:10 pm
AF

Yes, the Islamists are so strong, that’s why they want Democrats to win.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 3:24 pm
“Yes, the Islamists are so strong, that’s why they want Democrats to win.”

If you say it it must be true
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 3:26 pm
“Of course Americans should vote Democrat,” Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity […]

“This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud,” said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege. […]

Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats’ talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel “proud.”

“As Arabs and Muslims we feel proud of this talk,” he told WND. “Very proud from the great successes of the Iraqi resistance. This success that brought the big superpower of the world to discuss a possible withdrawal.”

Abu Abdullah, a leader of Hamas’ military wing in the Gaza Strip, said the policy of withdrawal “proves the strategy of the resistance is the right strategy against the occupation.”

“We warned the Americans that this will be their end in Iraq,” said Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas’ declared “resistance” department.

Ignore at your own peril, AF.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 3:43 pm
Actus! Actus!!! ACTUS!!!

Dang it, actus, we need you now more than ever to bring your moral clairity and wisdom to this confusing swamp of moral relativism.

Help us, Obi wan-actus, you’re our only hope…
EFG (f0e683) — 11/5/2006 @ 4:18 pm
Nicely done, switching from Al Qaeda to Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Islamic Jihad. We were talking about “islamists” weren’t we?

But you’re arguing with someone is a Jew and not a supporter of Israel; never have been. If you want to get in this discssion you should try reading Helena Cobban on Hamas, and this on Hezbollah. The Wahhabi nutjobs of Al Qaeda are not popular on the west bank. Again it’s kind of like the Christians of Northern Ireland. You know how well they get along.

Israel is not Iraq. If you want to talk history fell free. But then you’ll have to tell me why I with my German surname (my real one) have a right to ‘return’ to land that other people have occupied for generations, and which was only my ancestral home 2000 years ago. Could the descendents of the Puritans claim to ‘right of return’ to England? When did you’re family come to this country? Do you have somewhere to ‘return’ to?

Palestinian nationalism, even terrorist nationalism, is not driven by apocalyptic nihilists who would be willing to slaughter millions to bring about Paradise or whatever the fuck Bin Ladin believes in. Hamas and Hezbollah are hardcore but practical.
Do some research before you get into arguments on this one.

On the issue of Iraq, in the past there have been plenty of reports on Al Qaeda liking Bush. Al Qaeda wants war everywhere, and our policy in Iraq is failing, and they wanted it to fail all along. But it is failing, and that’s what we’ve been arguing about today.
What’s our next move? If you admit Iraq is a disaster then we can go on to the next topic. But pretending that it is not failing, that is not not an absolute fucking disaster, is to delay discussion of wht to do next. This administration is no serious about the safety of this country.

My take is begins here:
I do not worry about Iran, even a nuclear Iran. It is a modernizing country. Education is rising. Our actions have supported the conservatives. The conservatives are smart survivors. Not ‘evil’ and not insane; just corrupt. And the people themselves; you should see some Iranian movies.
Good stuff.

Israel has got to clean up its act. We have to become fair partners in negotiations. Their enemies are smart and serious.
And again, Zionism is a problem not a solution.

Pakistan scares the shit out of me. They have the bomb. It’s a dictatorship, and unstable. That’s where Al Qaeda- the people who don’t give a fuck- will get their real weapons. Afghanistan is becomiing another disaster.
That area is terrifying. Everyone is worried. Iran is worried.
We all should be. That’s the issue. That and Saudi Arabia.

enough for now. I’m going to the gym.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 4:24 pm
Nicely done, switching from Al Qaeda to Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and Islamic Jihad. We were talking about “islamists” weren’t we?

Yes, we are. As I said, the ISLAMISTS want a Democrat win, and as Nancy Pelosi said today, echoing other Dems, a Dem win would mean pressure for immediate ~~surrender~~ “redeployment” of the US outside of Iraq. If Murtha gets his way, it will be Okinawa.

Maybe you missed it, AF, but Islamic Jihad was a signer of Bin Ladin’s 1998 declaration of war against Western Civilization. Hamas has in its covenant a complete rejection of any moslem that dare “give up” the Waqf. Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy for worldwide Islamist hegemony. Whatever their doctrinal squabbles, they are united in their goal of a new Caliphate and Sharia across the globe.

But you’re arguing with someone is a Jew and not a supporter of Israel

You mean “Jew” in the way Noam Chomsky is a Jew or Tony Judt is a “Jew.”

Which means one or more psychological states on why you feel you need to reject your Jewishness.

The prevalence of Jew-hating Jews would be no more than an interesting study of psychopathology were it not for one additional fact: All these Jews (except for the fringe Neturei Karta rabbis) also hate America. And they do the same damage to this country — aiding the enemies of America just as they do the enemies of the Jews.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 4:47 pm
The prevalence of Jew-hating Jews would be no more than an interesting study of psychopathology were it not for one additional fact:

Isn’t the idea of the ‘self-hating jew’ quite an old anti-semitic stereotype?
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 4:51 pm
I don’t know, actus. Care to offer up some cites?

What WOULD you call an ethnic Jew who claims the best thing would be the destruction of the nation of Israel?
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 5:00 pm
What WOULD you call an ethnic Jew who claims the best thing would be the destruction of the nation of Israel?

I don’t know, a cross between a bagel and an oreo?

So its at least interest group politics — that one’s opinion should be based on one’s ethnicity, and that there is what the ‘good jew’ does and to oppose this is to hate one’s jewish identity.

Its got a big history in the split between reform judaism and orthodox traditions. Also, due to some jews hiding their jewishness in the face of social anti-semitism. And of course the Israel issue also bring it up — that a real jew will not be just a zionist, but a particular sort of zionist — the farther right, likudnik sort. So the zionism of the kibbutz and socialism might not be enough anymore. That might make one a ‘self-hating jew’

But i’m curious if it doesn’t also rely on anti-semitic stereotypes, say of the jew as a doubter, as the waffling intellectual. Terrible stereotypes, to be sure. But does the label rely on them? specially as thrown by gentiles?
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 5:17 pm
Having my Judaism defined by a Shiksa. [that term can be used affectionately] …hmm.
Chomsky and Judt don’t get along that well, and I’m a little annoyed by both but I guess I’m in there somewhere.
—

I’m opposed to the “Jewish” state in the same way I’m opposed to a “German” state without Jews, and that’s what the Germans wanted once. Then they brought in Turks and until recently even the grandchildren of those immigrants, second generation native born Germans of Turkish descent were not allowed citizenship. To me a black man with dreadlocks who lives in France speaks French and condescends to everyone while shrugging, pursing his lips and going, “Pffffftt!” is a fucking Frog. The French, even if that man were born in Paris, often think otherwise.
As an American, I find that offensive.
—

In the long run there will be a bi-national state in Israel/Palestine. It will take a while though.
I don’t defend states based on genetics.
I leave that Jean-Marie Le Pen, Jorg Haider, Likud and Pat Buchanan.
And by the way I have family on these shores going back 300 years.
—
“Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy for worldwide Islamist hegemony?!”
JFK’s election was part of a Catholic plot.
—
I think you mean the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, where al-Zawahiri got his start. That’s not the same as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Just read the links I posted.
You’re ruled by fear, more than morality or logic.

Bush has weakened our nation.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 6:43 pm
I’m opposed to the “Jewish” state in the same way I’m opposed to a “German” state without Jews, and that’s what the Germans wanted once.

But the Jewish State has non-Jewish citizens.
sharon (dfeb10) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:03 pm
Alois Fahyling:

Did we help to install Stalin? Did we assist in his rise to power and offer support before and after aiding and abetting him in is crimes?

No, and no – exactly the same answers as would apply if you had asked about Hussein instead. Not sure why you think it matters anyway. If we had helped either tyrant rise to power – as you seem to be dishonestly implying we did in Hussein’s case – then isn’t that all the more reason why it is our job to clean up a mess we helped create?

We ended support when he invaded Kuwait.

We ended support two years before that, when the the Iraq-Iran War ended. That was the only basis of support we ever gave that regime in the first place. By contrast, we didn’t end our alliance with Stalin until years after he had invaded Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and too many other countries to count. And rather than invading Russia to liberate these countries (as we later did with Kuwait), we turned around and handed him the rest of Poland, along with Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and sizeable chunks of Germany and Austria.

So if your “support a tyrant once, support him forever” theory had any real merit, you’d have a much stronger case against the Cold War than you do against the 1991 and 2003 wars in Iraq.
Xrlq (58820f) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:05 pm
But the Jewish State has non-Jewish citizens.

I think he’s talking about the ‘jewish state’ whose specific (and not totally internally supported) policies jews are supposed to support. Ie, its as ‘jewish’ as the people who use the ‘self-hating jew’ trope make it out to be.
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:09 pm
You haven’t read much of what I posted.

read before you write
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:09 pm
Write less, say more, and you stand a better chance someone will read your gibberish.
mokus (539ee5) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:24 pm
Alois,

Learn what the fallacy of hypostasization is, eh? The “we” who propped up Sadaam were a different set of individuals from the “we” who took him out.

Or have you missed the part where every four years the American people gets to evaluate their leaders’ performances and policies, and, if they disapprove of them, vote in new leaders who will not keep acting the way the old ones did?

I don’t suppose you want me to say that you can’t defend the concept of faithfulness in marriage on the grounds that “you” went and ruined Monica’s dress, as if liberals are some sort of Borg-like collective organism. Dubya and his present team did not have anything to do with prior administrations’ behavior toward Sadaam. It is childish for you to attempt to hold the current team responsible for the behavior of prior teams, and your attempt to complain that Bush’s behavior means that “we” have behaved inconsistently (or whatever the point is you’re trying so incoherently to make), betrays a deeply fundamental failure to comprehend the whole point of regular elections.

Either that or you just don’t know what the fallacy of hypostasization is and don’t realize you’re making a complete ass of yourself.
Kenny (6d6969) — 11/5/2006 @ 7:28 pm
Kenny, your use of the “fallacy of hypostasization” encompasses too much terrain. A defense like that could be used in any circumstance where the actions of a prior administration are less than admirable. If I were to say “I’m a liberal, but Clinton’s Presidency is in the past and I have no connection to his policies or any inclination to defend them,” you wouldn’t take issue with that?
Psyberian (2a27d0) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:30 pm
AF

Why do you assume I’m a “Shiksa”?

Maybe I can assume I’ve attended Temple more times in my life than you.

I dare say you wouldn’t come up the statement “I have nothing against Italians, it’s just that I consider Italy an illegitimate nation and Italian national identity as racist” but you seem comfortable in denying the Jewish people their nation and their national identity.

You claim to be Jewish, but you seem to know (or pretend) precious little about Jewish history, heritage or culture.

Sad, but not unexpected of the Jew who wishes not to be Jewish.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:39 pm
Darleen: would it be a reasonable interpretation of your position to say that you believe it is impossible to be an observant, religious Jew, and still oppose the independant existence of the state of Israel?

(I’m not certain if you’re saying that; it seems to me that what you have said implies that position, but I don’t want to run off the implication, as I have a tendency sometimes to perceive unintended implications.)
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:48 pm
BTW AF

The Clicks came to the new world in 1697 as slaves

I can play the “300 years on these shores” game with you, too.

Jaysus, what a tool.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:49 pm
I dare say you wouldn’t come up the statement “I have nothing against Italians, it’s just that I consider Italy an illegitimate nation and Italian national identity as racist” but you seem comfortable in denying the Jewish people their nation and their national identity.

Modern Italy is a relatively recent invention. At least when we’re talking of jewish homelands that are thousands of years old.
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:53 pm
Actus: modern Israel is also a relatively recent invention. Comparing pre-modern Israel to pre-modern Italy hardly seems fair.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:56 pm
Erm. That was badly written. Comparing pre-modern Israel to modern Italy hardly seems fair.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:57 pm
aphrael

It’s not impossible, infact there is a tiny sect of Judaism that opposes a secular state of Israel since its core belief that only the Messiah may establish Israel.

But I find when people hold Israel to a different standard than they hold any other nation, then they are opposed to Israel only because it IS a Jewish state.

anti-Zionism is anti-semitism.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 8:59 pm
Actus

When AF states he is against the nation of Israel, he is referring to the modern state of Israel. He obviously finds it “illegitimate”

Comparing it with Italy, or France, or Pakistan for that matter (establish about the same time and in the same manner as Israel) is a legitimate argument.

Should we deem French national identity as “racist” and deserving of obliteration?

Well, the Islamists who have defact rule over parts of French think so, but heck, isn’t that what we are discussing? Whether Western civ survives or whether it continues to commit suicide via “multiculturalist chic”?
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:04 pm
Actus: modern Israel is also a relatively recent invention.

Meaning the idea of jews as an ethnicity with a homeland is quite different from the idea of italians with a homeland. Ie: italians exist because there is an italy. Thats not the case with jews, or with other ethnicities and religions.

But I find when people hold Israel to a different standard than they hold any other nation, then they are opposed to Israel only because it IS a Jewish state.

Is Israel a secular state, or is it a Jewish one?
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:07 pm
Darleen — and this is an honest question, in that I don’t know — are non-Jewish Israelis considered to be “Israeli” by the majority of the population? I’m not asking if they are legally Israelis, i’m asking if they are accepted as members of the nation by other members of the nation.

If the answer is ‘no’, then arguably Israeli nationality functions in a different way than most other nationalities.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:23 pm
Actus: I’m sorry, your claim in #62 is laughably ahistoric. Both Italy and Germany are recent legal inventions, sure. But the notion of Germanness or Italianness is much, much older than the states themselves. You can find references to the notion of a “Germany” going back to the sixteenth century or earlier, and you can find references to the notion of an “Italy”, some common identity between the Italian states which was not shared by either the Greeks or the Germans, as long ago as the twelfth century.

The concept of the “Italian” and “German” nations antedates the creation of the states by centuries.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:25 pm
You can find references to the notion of a “Germany” going back to the sixteenth century or earlier, and you can find references to the notion of an “Italy”, some common identity between the Italian states which was not shared by either the Greeks or the Germans, as long ago as the twelfth century.

Are the residents of Alsace and Lorraine french or german?

But a fine point. The problem is that today, an italian is someone from Italy. But thats not the case with other ethnicities.
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:34 pm
I suspect they’d say they were Alsatian. 🙂

It’s not clear to me that “an Italian is someone from Italy”. There are Germans from Italy (in the Trentino), just as there are Slovenians from Italy, and Italians from Slovenia.

I suspect that “Italian” means “person from Italy” or “person of a particular ethnicity most closely related to Italy” in different contexts, and that the two meanings are not synonymous.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:41 pm
The only reason the Palestinians who were expelled are not allowed the ‘right of return’ to their land is a demographic argument in defense of a jewish majority in the state of Israel. And Palestinian citizens of Israel do in fact suffer systematic discrimination.

3 Million Russians have immigrated to Israel since 1990. Approximately 3 million Palestinian refugees are in and around the refugee camps. The majority of Palestinians accept they will never return, so that’s not the most important bargaining point; but as a matter of morality and of logic, no one has ever succeeded in defending to me the necessity of a Jewish majority. The logic to me is racist. A home for the Jews is not necessarily- I would say can not justly be- a “jewish” state.
I would not defend an English state defined by genetics. Pure-breeds have always been a myth, and now after all the empires and the migration, they are even more so.
Israel is a modern invention based on pre-modern logic.
It’s creation included a crime of expulsion, but what’s done is done. There is a large immigrant population in an area that was 50 years ago called Palestine. No one is leaving. We have to deal with it.
—

And I wasn’t trying to pull rank on anyone as far as my family’s history. We are American. That’s enough.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/5/2006 @ 9:50 pm
AF

Arabs as “Palestinians” is a modern invention. Yassar Arafat was Egyptian. There has never been a nation of Palestine, no currency/culture/history/ethnicity/architecture/et al. Even the designation of the area as “Palestine” was a Roman invention after the destruction of the second Temple in 70 AD in an attempt to obliterate the Jewish history of the area by renaming it after the Jewish enemy “Philistine”.

It is not JEWS that have refused to recognize Germans or Italians or Frenchmen…but all manner of nationalities that have looked at their own countrymen and seen “Jews” and thus rejected JEWS. From Dreyfus to Hitler.

Israel has welcomed all manner of Jewish peoples, from Russians to Ethiopians, yet Israel and Israel alone is held to a standard you wouldn’t DARE hold any other country…and certainly not the Islamists that forceably expelled and obliterated their Jewish communities when Israel was declared a nation to the tune of hundreds of thousands. (while a great many of the Arab “Palestinians” left because their Arab brethren said “just leave for a bit, after we’ve shoved the Jews into the sea you’ll have all their land, homes and goods for yourself.”)

I dare say Arabs who are citizens of Israel have it far better than any Jew (if you could find one) that is a “citizen” of a Islamist theocracy. Arabs sit on the Knesset. What Jew serves in the parliment of Egypt? Or Iran?

Saddam hanged Jews in the public square for sport.

Jews are a people, a nation, a religion, a culture and an ethnicity. All at the same time.

Demand that Jew’s wipe out their culture, their identity because it makes some secular Jews or non-Jews “uncomfortable” is anti-Semitic.

Period.

Once it was the proposal that if Jews would just be off by themselves in their own land, that would solve the Jew question

Now it is the proposal that Jews off in their own land is the problem and the annihilation of the state of Israel would solve the Jew question

But it boils down to such proposals are made by people who have only one solution to the Jew question…that Jews just stop being all together
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:00 pm
#63

non-Jewish Israelis considered to be “Israeli” by the majority of the population?

As far as I know (I know many people with ties to Israel, who have family there and who travel there frenquently)… YES.

BTW… Do you know of any non-ethnic Japanese in Japan that are considered Japanese citizens?

Do you think the nation of Japan should be declared “illegitmate” and dissolved due to this standard of citizenry?
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:05 pm
Hilarious !
Someone mentions, “Jew,” and then the morally confused Israel-haters emerge from the woodwork like hungry pigeons descending upon a bag of spilled french fries in a McDonald’s parking lot.

Hey, is this like the confessional box on MTV’s “The Real World”—you know, where Susie accuses Israel—er, I mean, accuses Ted, of being a member of both the Illuminati and the Tri-Lateral Commission ?
And Frank takes his turn in front of the MTV camera confessing that he wishes Laura would just “disappear of the face of the earth” !
But if everyone else in the house hates Laura, then Frank’s hatred of her is justified, right ?
Laura makes everyone angry—just by, you know, being Laura !
Come on, everybody, it’s the ‘root causes of anger.’

I realize its “blame Israel” day, but I just wanna say I’ve always felt Switzerland is illegitimate.

In fact, everytime I look at my watch, I’m reminded of their illegitimacy !

And nobody has ever properly explained to me why my feelings of Switerland’s illegitimacy are wrong.

Now I know that Bangladesh was carved out of India in 1948, displacing millions of Indians, so doesn’t that make Bangladesh illegitimate, too ?
And how about all of those eastern European countries which keep getting partitioned ?
Didn’t Serbia & Montenegro just dissipate ?

Ack ! It’s all too confusing for me—all I know is, western Europe would be a much more peaceful place if Switzerland would just disappear.
After all, Germany, France, and England never would have been involved in all those wars had it not been for Switzerland making them angry.
Desert Rat (ee9fe2) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:18 pm
Darleen: I did not say that I think that Israel should be declared illegitimate and dissolved; I made a much more measured claim, which is that if religion is the fundamental defining characteristic for national membership, then Israeli nationality works differently than most other nationalities do.

I would argue that there is something about using religion as the defining characteristic of nationality which is questionable by modern international standards; there are very few states which do that, outside of the Islamic world. (The Japanese analogy you posit is not quite apposite; a more apposite analogy would be, are there any non-Shintoist Japanese in Japan that are considered Japanese citizens. :))

That said, I have no objection whatsoever to the existence of Israel; I think the peculiarities of Jewish history mean that even if Israel were to define nationality based on religion, it is justified in doing so, even though it is a departure from international norms. My gripes with Israel are more protean; it often seems to me that it is politically incapable of engaging in productive ways with many of its neighbors, every bit as much as its neighbors are incapable of engaging in productive ways with it. The entire situation strikes me as bizarre: both the Israelis and the Palestinians seem to consistently act in ways which fail to serve their long term interests by setting up a situation in which the other side feels compelled to act in a destructive fashion.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:21 pm
Darleen, with respect to #68:

I would argue that all of the states of the Arab world are artificial modern inventions; there is no more historical justification for “Jordan” than there is for “Palestine”. I might make an exception for Egypt, although the Coptic culture seems largely obliterated (and, of course, the Berbers aren’t Arabs and never have been).
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:23 pm
Desert Rat – Switzerland’s legitimacy as a state outside the Empire was settled by treaty in 1648, and it hasn’t been seriously challenged by any state since then. Largely because through most of the period before it was an established historical fact, its military could pretty much wipe the floor with anyone else’s.
aphrael (9e8ccd) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:27 pm
Now I know that Bangladesh was carved out of India in 1948, displacing millions of Indians, so doesn’t that make Bangladesh illegitimate, too ?

India and Pakistan came into existence at the same time in 1947.One wasn’t carved out of the other. Pakistan used to include Bangladesh as “East Pakistan,” and it split off from Pakistan in 1971.
actus (10527e) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:39 pm
aphrael

This is a saying that if Arab Palestinians unilaterally gave up their arms tomorrow morning, there’d be peace tomorrow afternoon.

If Israel unilaterally gave up their arms tomorrow morning, there would be no Israel or live Jews by tomorrow afternoon.

You know that, so any moral equivalency argument between Israel and the neighbors seeking its annihiliation is specious at best.

Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us ~~ Golda Meir
Darleen (03346c) — 11/5/2006 @ 11:44 pm
The Saddam Verdict: Widespread and differing reactions…

As the stories trickle in, the reactions are fairly varied, and predictable.

Amnesty International, of course, condemned it.
Iraq: Amnesty International deplores death sentences in Saddam Hussein trial
Amnesty International deplores the decision …
Leaning Straight Up (16154e) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:16 am
This is a saying that if Arab Palestinians unilaterally gave up their arms tomorrow morning, there’d be peace tomorrow afternoon.

No more settlements? sounds like a good deal. I wonder why the palestineans don’t disarm. Maybe its because people outside of Palestine would then take advantage of them.
actus (10527e) — 11/6/2006 @ 6:19 am
No more settlements? sounds like a good deal. I wonder why the palestineans don’t disarm. Maybe its because people outside of Palestine would then take advantage of them.

Gee, like they haven’t been taken advantage of for the last 60 years? Used as political (and anti-semitic) tools? Interesting.
sharon (dfeb10) — 11/6/2006 @ 7:18 am
actus

Let’s see, there are Arab Israelis, but it is ok that a so-called “Palestinian state” be Judenrein.

yeah, no bigotry there.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/6/2006 @ 7:48 am
Darleen: Again, I made no claim of moral equivalency. I’m saying that as a tactical matter the Israeli government frequently chooses to do things which make the situation worse. This is something it shares in common with the Palestinian leadership, which also frequently chooses to do things which make the situation worse.

Having the moral high ground doesn’t make bad decisions wise ones.
aphrael (12fba5) — 11/6/2006 @ 9:54 am
No more settlements? sounds like a good deal. I wonder why the palestineans don’t disarm. Maybe its because people outside of Palestine would then take advantage of them.

In what way? What exactly do they have to take advantage of? It seems more likely to me they, or their leaders, just prefer to fight.
B Moe (aae6e1) — 11/6/2006 @ 9:55 am
Would someone explain to me how the Israelis have the “moral high ground.”

People were thrown out of their homes and off their land to make room for immigrants from foreign lands, backed by European money, who wanted not only to live on that land but to create a new soverign nation.

If 2000 years away from ‘home’ means nothing, than all of us should leave and give the Americas, North and South, back to the Inca and the Arapaho.
Golda Meir, who grew up in Milwaukee Wisconsin once said:
“There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

By that logic which Darlene shares, there were no Jews when there was no Israel. And there are no Jews when there is no state controlled by Jews. By that logic, there are no Kurds and no Gypsies. When Israelis, and more important for this country their American defenders, begin to take responsibility for the results of their actions, there will be peace. In the meantime, far more Palestinian children have been killed than Israelis.

“Let’s see, there are Arab Israelis, but it is ok that a so-called “Palestinian state” be Judenrein.”

“Judenrein”? You’re not fighting the Palestinians you’re fighting the memory of the war in Europe.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 10:21 am
People were thrown out of their homes and off their land to make room for immigrants from foreign lands, backed by European money, who wanted not only to live on that land but to create a new soverign nation.

That is bullshit, the settlers either bought property or homesteaded abandonded desert up until the Mandate. Most native Arabs hauled ass when the day old Israel was invaded, figuring it would make it easier for their attacking brethren if they could just shoot anything that moved, planning to return when Israel was destroyed. It didn’t work out that way, and in real life you don’t get mulligans, so they lost their property.

Yasser Arafat was a middle-class Civil Engineer who managed to die a billionaire by fucking over the Palestinian people. Nothing would be more profitable for Israeli business and the Palestinian people than peace, the Palestinians are a needed labor force and market for growth. Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership would rather follow the Arafat example, and keep their people pissed off, poor and ignorant.
B Moe (aae6e1) — 11/6/2006 @ 10:38 am
Baruch Kimmerling

At the beginning of the 1970s. I had begun to work on research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which, I hoped, would produce a Ph.D. thesis in sociology. The subject was the Zionist ideology of land and its relationship to other political doctrines. In the earlier stages of my research, I was shocked to discover that a major “purification” of the land (the term “ethnic cleansing” was unknown in that period) from its Arab Palestinian inhabitant was done during the 1948 War by the Jewish military and para-military forces. During this research I found, solely based on Israeli sources, that about 350 Arab villages were “abandoned” and their 3.25 million dunums of rural land, were confiscated and became. in several stages, the property of the Israeli state or the Jewish National Fund. I also found that Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Agriculture, disclosed that about 700,000 Arabs who “left” the territories had owned four million dunums of land.

Another finding was that from 1882 until 1948, all the Jewish companies (including the Jewish National Fund, an organ of World Zionist Organization) and private individuals in Palestine had succeeded in buying only about 7 percent of the total lands in British Palestine. All the rest was taken by sword and nationalized during the 1948 war and after. Today, only about 7 percent of Israel land is privately owned, about half of it by Arabs. Israel is the only “democracy” in the world that nationalized almost all if its land and prohibited even the leasing of most of agricultural lands to non-Jews, a situation made possible by a complex framework of legal arrangements with the Jewish National Fund, including the Basic Law: Israel Lands (1960), the Israel Lands Law and Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), as well as the Covenants between the Government of the State of Israel and the WZO of 1954 and the JNF of 1961.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 11:04 am
AF

You are still pretending to see things in my writing that aren’t there and that the war of 1948 also included almost equal numbers of Jews forced out of their ancestral homes across the middle east.

Israel took in these Jews while the Arabs kept their “Palestinian” brethren as ghettoized fodder for their own immoral agenda.

Non moselms were expelled from Pakistan when it was created. Whites who have been in Africa for generations have been expelled, murdered or driven off out of Zimbabwe and other places. Moslems were tossed out of Uganda when Idi Amin declared “Africa for blacks”.

Yet you hold Israel to a standard you don’t hold to any of them. ONLY Israel needs to commit suicide in order to “redeem” itself.

There is no moral comparison between Israel, wanting only to survive within secure borders, and Islamists, wanting to destroy it and wipe out all the Jews in the ME.

I read what Islamists actually write about it. Not what CAIR, or other terrorist-front groups try to spin.

Israel is the world’s Jew and much of the world demands it walk into the gas chamber of its own accord.

It is the CURRENT battle… and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” is a best seller in Islamist enclaves.

Keep pretending you’re not anti-semitic. Maybe it assuages your conscience, but it doesn’t fool me.
Darleen (03346c) — 11/6/2006 @ 11:33 am
Non moselms were expelled from Pakistan when it was created.

I hadn’t heard that the state actively did that. My understanding is that there was an enormous bi-directional more or less voluntary population exchange as non-Moslems decided they didn’t want to live in Pakistan and Moslems decided they didn’t want to live in India; that this bi-directional population exchange degenerated into an orgy of violence on both sides; and that the violence was (mostly) brought to an end by Gandhi’s hunger strike.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 11/6/2006 @ 11:48 am
Nice try, but I am not afraid of scare quotes.
B Moe (aae6e1) — 11/6/2006 @ 11:55 am
Darleen, I can’t respond to vitriolic mush.
You think somehow that because I criticise Israel I defend Amin or Mugabe. That makes no sense. I’ve made some comments on the history of Zionism and you and B. Moe make me out to be a Nazi apologist. I’ll leave it to others to decide if that’s the case.

In the meantime, the vast majority of Arabs and their leaders are willing to accept Israel within its 1967 borders.
And Israel is still building on occupied land.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:05 pm
“Nice try, but I am not afraid of scare quotes.”

???
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:06 pm
Alois —- it might be useful to make a distinction between decisions made by the government of the state of Israel, and decisions made by Israeli citizens.

That is to say: while I have problems with the state of Israel building facilities on occuppied land, I don’t really have a problem with Israeli citizens building homes on occuppied land as long as they have purchased it from its owner, and as far as I know, most of the construction is done by Israeli citizens, not by the state.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:09 pm
AF:
“There’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

By that logic which Darlene shares, there were no Jews when there was no Israel.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of Darleen’s position. It certainly isn’t a fair assessment of what I understand Darleen’s position here to be.

There are modern states which are constructed around well-defined national categories which had existed for centuries before the state did: Italy. Greece. Germany. Poland. Hungary. Slovakia. Israel.

Then there are modern states which are proudly transnational and have no real relationship to national categories: South Africa is one of the most striking examples of this.

Then there are modern states which were not constructed around national categories and which have sought to create those national categories in the minds of its people. Moldova, for example. Angola. Kenya. And virtually every state in the Arab world, including Palestine.

“Palestinian” is an ethnic/national designation which simply would not have occurred to anyone prior to modern times. The people there would have been described as Arabs, or they would have been described using a tribal descriptor.
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:16 pm
AF:

I stated that in the 1948 war most Arabs in the newly mandated Israel left to facilitate the invasion. When Israel won, they confiscated the land as victors do. To rebut this, you quoted someone saying the same thing, only putting “scare” quotes around select verbs, like “abandoned” and “left” as if this proved otherwise. The fact is some Arabs chose to stay, were unharmed during the war, and in fact remain in Israel to this day. That leads me to discount the notion that the evacuation wasn’t voluntary.

As I said before, you don’t get mulligans in real life, if you back the wrong side you lose. The molly-coddling nannystate social safety nets we have in this country seem to have made too many people lose sight of this.
B Moe (aae6e1) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:28 pm
I’m opposed to the “Jewish” state in the same way I’m opposed to a “German” state without Jews, and that’s what the Germans wanted once.

Yet we’ve already established that you’re not opposed to a “Muslim” state, especially a “Muslim” state that prohibits Jews. No word yet on whether you protest the establishment of the various Christian states. With no evidence to the contrary, apparently in your eyes, only the Jews are not allowed to have a state of their own.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:28 pm
“Yet we’ve already established that you’re not opposed to a “Muslim” state, especially a “Muslim” state that prohibits Jews.”

Remember that I answered your simple question, which you posited as a trap, by first stating that I belive in freedom for religious minorities and don’t defend monarchies, both on principls. You asked my if I supported the creation of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, right? I said I supported the creation of independent Arab States. You kept asking me if I suported the founding of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and said I was avoiding the question [by defending democracy!] Finally I gave up and said “sure I defend the founding of Saudi Arabia and Jordan!, What you got?” And you said I had just admitted to defending everything I had spent a paragraph attacking.

C’mon kid.

To give you the complex answer (again): I’d have a hard time supporting a secular utopia surrounded by barbarian hordes, if that utopia was built on land stolen from the barbarians.
But Israel is not a secular utopia and the barbarian hordes are not that. Still, I don’t like the Saudis. But most Arabs don’t like them much either.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 12:59 pm
“There are modern states which are constructed around well-defined national categories which had existed for centuries before the state did: Italy. Greece. Germany. Poland. Hungary. Slovakia. Israel.”

Israel does not belong on that list.
What percentage of the Israeli population is descended from Jews who were in Palestine before the beginning of the 20th century?

“Then there are modern states which were not constructed around national categories and which have sought to create those national categories in the minds of its people. Moldova, for example. Angola. Kenya. And virtually every state in the Arab world, including Palestine.”

The new Modern Israel belongs here.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 1:11 pm
I know that there are some Jew-haters who apply a paradigm of ‘illegitimacy’ to Israel which they don’t apply to any other country.

But in addition to feeling that Switzerland is illegitimate (which I addressed in an earlier post), I’ve always felt the New York Jets football team is illegitimate.
After all, New York already has a football team—the Giants.
Did New Yorkers who felt disconnected from the Giants truly need another team ?

Everyone knows that a good percentage of New Yorkers were not even born in New York—they migrated there—so, how can they honestly even call themselves true “New Yorkers” ?

And why does New York get two teams, while Des Moines, Iowa has zero teams ?

There’s even a dirty little secret about the ‘two football team solution’ in New York—both teams play their home games in…northern New Jersey !
They don’t even play in New York.

I can’t possibly be the only person who feels the Jets are illegitimate.

It’s a difficult situation I find myself in, because ‘some of my best friends are Jets fans.’
Desert Rat (ee9fe2) — 11/6/2006 @ 1:47 pm
Alois: Modern Israel was, in fact, constructed around a national category. The fact that the vast majority of the members of that nation did not live in the area which the nation claimed as its homeland is irrelevant. 🙂
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 11/6/2006 @ 2:22 pm
Alois,

I belive in freedom for religious minorities and don’t defend monarchies, both on principls.

Yet you don’t oppose the founding of Islamic monarchies, but you do oppose a Jewish democracy that grants equal rights to all citizens. You claim to defend democracy and religious freedom, yet you single out as illegitimate the ONLY Middle East country that has democracy, grants equal rights, including voting rights, to all citizens regardless of religion (or gender). While you “don’t like the Saudis”, you don’t object to the founding of Saudi Arabia.

You’re not making sense.

You also imply that Israel was built on stolen land, yet previously you rejected Israel’s founding based on its status as “Jewish state”. You wrote, I’m opposed to the “Jewish” state in the same way I’m opposed to a “German” state without Jews. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the impression I get from your previous statements is that, regardless of its location or land rights issues, you are opposed to a Jewish state in principle. Yes or no?
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/6/2006 @ 2:41 pm
the ONLY Middle East country that has democracy, grants equal rights, including voting rights, to all citizens regardless of religion (or gender)

Turkey?
aphrael (e0cdc9) — 11/6/2006 @ 2:44 pm
Apharael,

Is Turkey in the Middle East?

Okay, fine. Touche.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/6/2006 @ 2:47 pm
What percentage of the Israeli population is descended from Jews who were in Palestine before the beginning of the 20th century?

Here is an Israeli demographic chart.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/6/2006 @ 2:57 pm
“The fact that the vast majority of the members of that nation did not live in the area which the nation claimed as its homeland is irrelevant.”

And that justifies to you, the expulsion of a population.
Think about that. When in history has that happened before? You’ve justifying conquest as a method.
I live in the US. I was born here. That doesn’t mean I defend the morality of the Indian slaughter. It’s just something we live with, and should not deny.
—
The “someone” I quoted in those two paragraphs on ethnic cleansing is a Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A Jew and an Israeli.
—
“Yet you don’t oppose the founding of Islamic monarchies, but you do oppose a Jewish democracy that grants equal rights to all citizens.”

Israel does not grant equal rights to all its citizens. It never has.
And yet it claims the status of an enlightened western nation, unlike its neighbors. It is defended as such by the United States.
The world’s a messy place. There are a lot of countries with governments and policies I don’t approve of. Israel claims a special status it does not deserve.
Cynthia Ozick has said that as a Jew she is interested in justice for Jews more than justice for anyone else. That’s just tribalism.
Why should our multi-ethnic republic be in the business of siding with one tribe over another? Guilt? Oil?
If Israel wants to be treated as a modern state it should behave as one. it does not.
—
“You are opposed to a Jewish state in principle.”

Again; and again:
I don’t like racial nationalism. But when it comes part and parcel with ethnic cleansing I like it even less. Go back up the thread, you’ll find my comments on racism in France,
I like multi-ethnic states: less bullshit, fewer lies.
—
“Here is an Israeli demographic chart”
The chart does not answer my question. I did not ask about Jews from the Middle East, but about Jews from the area now known as Israel.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 3:48 pm
If Israel wants to be treated as a modern state it should behave as one. it does not.

Same for Palestine. The difference is, Israel is trying to behave as one, Palestine is not.

Read the last paragraph in post 84 and explain how I am wrong.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:20 pm
Looks like the republicans are already up to their dirty tricks. The NRCC is now robo-calling voters homes pretending to be speaking for democrats and urging people to get out and vote for the democratic candidate. They hope to call so many times it drives the potential voters crazy so they decide not to vote for the guy or gal supposedly doing the calling. Of course this will probably be reported in the “democratic media” after the elections if at all. Why can’t these pigs just play fair?
Paul (77818a) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:28 pm
From what I’ve read, the calls don’t pretend to be from the Democrat candidate. It says, “I have information about X,” which, of course, isn’t the same thing. The calls then proceed to give the voters information about the candidate’s positions–information the candidate would rather hide from voters until after election day, such as their views on taxes, abortion, gay marriage, the war in Iraq, national, security, etc.

It’s interesting that Democrats would work so hard NOT to tell their constituents what they believe in.
sharon (dfeb10) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:34 pm
Moe, you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.
Here’s Uri Avnery:

IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?
That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there…
How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?
In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?

Read the rest here

Asshole.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:38 pm
“From what I’ve read, the calls don’t pretend to be from the Democrat candidate. It says, “I have information about X,”

No. The calls come at odd hours of the day, and if you hang you get a call back, immediately, and up to 8 or 9 times. People then call the office of the Democratic candidate mentioned at the beginning [!] to complain. This is called voter supression.

More here, here and here.

BEING SICK in bed, which I was for the past couple of weeks, is bad enough.
But being sick in bed while living in a political combat zone – in this case, the 6th Congressional District – is enough to MAKE YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEBODY.
My God, the phone calls! Just as I’d begin to drift off to sleep, the phone would ring and it would be YET ANOTHER DAMN COMPUTERIZED MESSAGE ABOUT LOIS MURPHY.
One, two, three, four times a day it seemed, the phone rang with “robocalls” about the Democratic challenger to incumbent GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach in one of the nastiest races in the country.
I never listened to one word of it, just slammed the phone down and seethed with resentment.
Now, there’s an effective campaign strategy, I thought: Infuriate the voters so much that they won’t vote.
What part of “Do Not Call” don’t campaign advisers get?
Sure, “political speech” is exempt from FCC regulations prohibiting unwanted phone solicitations. But since most Americans consider unsolicited calls an invasion of privacy, why would any campaign flood voters with prefab rhetoric?
Yes, the tactic is cheap – in many cases, pennies a phone call, compared with the $15 to $30 an hour pols used to have to pay for telemarketers to call the old-fashioned way.
There are dozens of online computerized-call firms available to do the dirty work. And it’s much cheaper in a costly media market such as Philadelphia to use robocalls than to pay for TV ads.
But if they annoy voters rather than enlighten them, what’s the point?
That’s what I asked Lois Murphy’s campaign yesterday.
The answer was simple:
“It’s not us!”

read on
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:47 pm
How about addressing my question, douchebag? How hungry is Arafat’s widow? How hungry and helpless are the leaders of Hizballah and Hamas? If the Palestinian people renounced put down their weapons and renounced their leadership, how much western aid would be there within a week?

Answer these honestly, then tell me who is fucking over the Palestinian people? And being called an asshole by a fucking useful idiot like you is a badge of honor.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/6/2006 @ 4:49 pm
“Answer these honestly, then tell me who is fucking over the Palestinian people? ”
Moe that’s like Henry Clay Frick berating a foreman for theft.

My grandfather was a Pinkerton Man. They sent him to Pittsburgh. He rode into strikers on horseback and cut them down with a saber. He’d been in the cavalry.
They called him “The crazy Jew”
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 5:08 pm
My grandfather was a Pinkerton Man. They sent him to Pittsburgh. He rode into strikers on horseback and cut them down with a saber. He’d been in the cavalry.
They called him “The crazy Jew”

My grandfather was an organizer for the UMW. He carried a sawed off 12 ga. and didn’t have any nicknames. Sorry to hear insanity runs in your family.

How much you think the Arafat villa in Paris is worth?
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/6/2006 @ 5:15 pm
I’d trade your grandfather for mine.
Mine was a bastard. And on the wrong side.

“How much you think the Arafat villa in Paris is worth?”

Again, why do you think I defend Arafat? It’s your sense of scale that’s off that’s all. And it’s way off.
Next topic. This one’s done.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 5:29 pm
Israel does not grant equal rights to all its citizens. It never has.

Evidence?

I don’t like racial nationalism.

Judaism is not a race. Even if it were, Israel is not based on racial nationalism.

The chart does not answer my question. I did not ask about Jews from the Middle East, but about Jews from the area now known as Israel.

I don’t understand your point. Jews from throughout the Middle East faced centuries of persecution at the hands of Islamic regimes. Jews from Christian nations suffered similar atrocities. The whole point of the creation of Israel was to have a place of refuge where Jews could live where they wouldn’t have to depend on the goodwill of the ruler to guarantee their right to live as Jews.

If there were no Israel, then Jews in the Middle East would continue to be defenseless and live at the whim of the Islamist despots.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/6/2006 @ 5:58 pm
“Israel does not grant equal rights to all its citizens. It never has.”
“Evidence?”
You could begin at #85, And then at #107. Know Uri Avnery? You ccould even read Benny Morris. If you’re that involved, you know all this; stop bullshitting.

For most of history the Jews were were better off in the Mideast than they were in Europe.
My question concerned “Jews from the area now known as Israel.” Not Egypt. Not Iran.

“If there were no Israel, then Jews in the Middle East would continue to be defenseless and live at the whim of the Islamist despots.”
Or be surrounded by European Anti-semites. I know. That’s your logic: Trust no-one.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 6:25 pm
I’d trade your grandfather for mine.

My Grandfather wouldn’t have you, he knew right from wrong.

Mine was a bastard. And on the wrong side.

I guess family traditions die hard.

It’s your sense of scale that’s off that’s all. And it’s way off.

My sense of scale is off? Why won’t you answer my questions? Then we can talk about scale and perspective. Let me rephrase them, maybe that will help:

What would happen if Israel unilaterally threw all their weapons into the sea tomorrow, and declared they were through fighting?

What would happen if the Palestinians unilaterally threw all their weapons in the sea, and declared they were through fighting?

What would be the outcome of each scenario? You can keep it fairly short, just please answer honestly.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/6/2006 @ 7:12 pm
So how many people who read this blog other than the two of us are impressed a Union Rep with a 12 gauge? And who do you think he used it on? If he used it. You say he knew right from wrong. Would our host the republican prosecutor agree?
—

Follow the links or comment on specific Israeli policy. How would the Palestinians respond if Israel took them seriously? That’s the question.
Arab leadership and a clear majority of people are willing to accept 1967 borders. But the only guarantee you accept is your own. How can I take your arguments seriously? You dodge and weave like a paranoid. You don’t want to negotiate.
You cede control of nothing.

Read This weeks Report:

19 October – 01 November 2006
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Escalate Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Threaten to Expand Military Operations in the Gaza Strip

27 Palestinians, 11 of whom including 2 children and a woman are civilians, were killed by IOF.
16 of the victims, including 6 members of one same family, were killed by IOF in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.
104 Palestinians, including 29 children and 4 women, were wounded by IOF.
IOF have continued to launch air strikes on houses and civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip; 4 houses were destroyed and a number of others were severely damaged.
IOF conducted 45 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 8 others into the Gaza Strip.
IOF have initiated a wide scale offensive on Beit Hanoun town.
IOF arrested 93 Palestinian civilians, including 8 children, in the West Bank, and one in the Gaza Strip.
IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT; IOF arrested 7 Palestinian civilian at checkpoints in the West Bank
IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall in the West Bank; Palestinian farmers have been denied access to their agricultural lands to cultivate olives.
Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property in the OPT; Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers and prevented them from cultivating olives.

I’m done with you son, and your need for Lebensraum.
And of course you’ll attack me for linking to a report written by Palestinians, but say nothing about anything I link to written by Israelis
Moral high ground? You’re not on it.

goodnight.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 7:43 pm
My grandfather was a Pinkerton Man. They sent him to Pittsburgh. He rode into strikers on horseback and cut them down with a saber. He’d been in the cavalry.

He sounds like a jerk.
actus (10527e) — 11/6/2006 @ 8:10 pm
“Israel does not grant equal rights to all its citizens. It never has.”
“Evidence?”
You could begin at #85,

Sorry, but a tendentious screed by an anti-Zionist professor whose scholarship is shoddy and who has previously stated support for Palestinian terrorism does not constitute evidence. Even if it did, the article does not even mention, much less address the issue of comparative rights of various groups of Israeli citizens. Do you have any germane evidence from a less-biased source?

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel declares that the nation “…will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex…” Is Israel perfect? No. Like other democracies, it struggles with issues involving the rights of minorities. But its record is infinitely greater than the Muslim neighbors whose establishments you do not oppose.

My question concerned “Jews from the area now known as Israel.” Not Egypt. Not Iran.

You’re missing the point. Jews in Egypt and Iran face persecution. Jews from Egypt and Iran now living in Israel are assured of protection by their government.

I know. That’s your logic: Trust no-one.

If you have a better solution to the problem of anti-Semitism, I’m all ears.
aunursa (c0b9eb) — 11/6/2006 @ 8:59 pm
I realize that this has devolved into a thread for the frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semites to tell lies in order to de-legitimize the great state of Israel.

Instead of doing combat with the liars, I figure it’s a good opportunity to voice concerns I have about entities which I feel are illegitimate—and NO, I ain’t talkin’ anyone’s out-of-wedlock child, Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes !

I’ve already established in earlier comments that I feel that the nation of Switzerland and the NFL’s New York Jets football team are illegitimate. And it’s also obvious to me that Pakistan and Bangladesh were illegitimately carved out of British India, merely to placate the feelings of the angry Muslims.

But ever since I was a four year old and first saw the letter “Q” highlighted as the letter-of-the-day on “Sesame Street,” I’ve felt it was an illegitimate member of the alphabet fraternity.
I think the letter should be wiped off the face of the earth, and we should transfer most of “Q”‘s duties to the combination of the letters ‘kw.’
And in instances where a “kw” sound is not called for, the letter ‘k’ will do just fine.
For example, the Minnesota National Guard had the right idea in their “Halp us, Jon Carry” sign when they spelled Iraq, “I-r-a-k.”

I’ve been informed that the letters “P,” “R,” and “S” have long been angry at the letter “Q.”
And if they are angry at the letter “Q,” then we need to respect their anger, and force the letter “Q” to make concessions.
Let’s start by making “Q” disappear—many feel that is the only way to bring peace to the alphabet fraternity.

Twenty-five letters is plenty—-can somebody please explain to me why we need a twenty-sixth letter, especially when it’s a letter which is so useless as “Q” ?
I’m pretty sure everyone could adapt to using a ‘kw’ to spell any words that presently ‘rekwire’ the letter “Q.”

I challenge anyone to go to a computer keyboard, or to a typewriter.
Tell me where you see the letter “Q.”
For all you one-fingered typers, I’ll tell you—it’s position on the keyboard rekwires being struck by the pinky finger of the left hand—and that is conventionally the weakest finger for 93% of the population (which happens to be right-handed.)
Thus, it’s no big loss.
I rest my case.

If “Q” is banished, I suppose it might elicit some copyright difficulties for Creedence Clearwater Revival and their song, “Susie Q.”
Perhaps, they could just spell it, “Susie Cue.”

And “Q-tip” might have a product identification problem for a year or so—how about “Cue-tip” ?

I’m sure the Kween of England will have to spend some coin having the letterheads of her personal stationery re-printed, but I don’t think she wants to stand in the way of “world opinion.”
Desert Rat (ee9fe2) — 11/6/2006 @ 9:23 pm
So how many people who read this blog other than the two of us are impressed a Union Rep with a 12 gauge? And who do you think he used it on? If he used it. You say he knew right from wrong. Would our host the republican prosecutor agree?

He wasn’t a Union Rep, he was a coal miner in southern West Virginia in the 20s trying to form a union. He shot back at Pinkerton agents who shot at him. I think Patrick would probably call it self defense.

And of course you’ll attack me for linking to a report written by Palestinians…

Nah, I am attacking you for being a disingenuous sack of shit apologist for a bunch of goons and thugs. I had hoped you were just a fool, but your refusal to answer my questions shows you for the bastard you are. Like grandfather, like grandson, huh? Only you are sacrificing the Palistinian peasants to achieve your goals.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/6/2006 @ 9:37 pm
“He wasn’t a Union Rep, he was a coal miner in southern West Virginia in the 20s trying to form a union. He shot back at Pinkerton agents who shot at him. I think Patrick would probably call it self defense.”

You called him an organizer, I called him a union rep. I won’t quibble. And I’ve already said I’d choose him over my own grandfather. So would his son, my father.
And neither of us would give a damn if he shot first.

“Nah, I am attacking you for being a disingenuous sack of shit apologist for a bunch of goons and thugs.”

And now you defend the IDF, who are worse than my grandfather’s goons.

What Questions haven’t I answered The value of Arafat’s house in Paris? I got no idea. Lots But do you think Arafat’s corruption compares with 40 years of occupation? Let alone the history in those two paragraphs I posted (oh so long ago).
Zionism is racism, son.
Which side are you on, boy?

too bad.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/6/2006 @ 10:11 pm
Zionism is racism, son.

Black is white. Night is day.
aunursa (76cdf3) — 11/7/2006 @ 6:29 am
What Questions haven’t I answered

Just so everyone can see the real you one more time:

What would happen if Israel unilaterally threw all their weapons into the sea tomorrow, and declared they were done fighting?

What would happen if the Palestinians unilaterally threw all their weapons in the sea, and declared they were done fighting?

I am not going to argue semantics with you, it is pointless. Israels right to survive doesn’t revolve around whether you define their existence an occupation or not. No Arab entity has ever negotiated in good faith with Israel. Ever. For over 50 years they refused to negotiate at all. The Arabs must take the first step, by laying down their arms.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/7/2006 @ 7:02 am
What would happen if Israel unilaterally threw all their weapons into the sea tomorrow, and declared they were done fighting?

What would happen if the Palestinians unilaterally threw all their weapons in the sea, and declared they were done fighting?

Both states would dissapear.
actus (10527e) — 11/7/2006 @ 7:07 am
Both states would dissapear.

Both states? Huh? There no state of Palestine.
aunursa (76cdf3) — 11/7/2006 @ 7:39 am
Those last few comments after mine were pretty good; almost Brechtian.

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders. You are not. The Palestinians are willing to negotiate. Hamas kept a unilateral ceasefire for a year, or was it more? You are intransigent.

And why again should I with my European background and my German surname have more right to land in the desert than the people who’ve lived there for generations, if not longer?Why should people be thrown out of their homes for me? Zionism is racism. The destruction of the Native American peoples and cultures was racism; but what’s done is done.

It’s the paranoia and hypocrisy of the victor who refuses to make peace that is obscene. At this point you win every battle but you’re losing the war.
That’s Israel’s fault. Not the Palestinians, and not the Germans.
You refuse to link to anything I’ve posted, even though it was written by men who’ve fought wars for Israel. You bloviate and lie because of what you know, you “just know’ is the truth.

And of course you know, you “know” that while republicans are making robocalls at 6 in the morning and calling back 8 or 9 times if you hang up, and each time beginning with the words “I have news about “xxxxx” the local democratic candidate, so that the democrat’s office gets barraged by angry voters; again you know that democrats are doing the exact same thing. Well,
they aren’t.

You don’t debate policy. You “know the truth.” We are all fools and traitors while you are strong and loyal. I’ve been arguing because I believe in debate. I’ve given facts and records. opinions of people on the ground. You give me what? Ignorance and fear, and questions I’ve already answered or that aren’t woth answering.
Why is this country falling apart? laziness and irresponsibility.
I hope to god the republicans get ripped a new one today.
Because by treating everything as if it were a football game, and voting for that fratboy Caligula who couldn’t think himself out of a dime-bag, because “he has a plan” you’ve fucked us all.

This country is less safe, the world is less safe, thanks to him and thanks to you. You don’t live in the world you live in your dreams.
go back to the TV.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 9:01 am
The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders.

Obviously, that’s why they elected a group that has a virulently anti-Semitic charter (dating to 1988, not the Intifada) and repeatedly states as its goal the destruction of Israel.

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders.

Obviously, that’s why Palestinian kindergarteners are taught that the highest goal in life is to die as a suicide bomber to kill as many Jews and infidels as possible.

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders.

Obviously, that’s why Muslim government-controlled television stations feature weekly hate-filled sermons by imams calling on the faithful to murder Christians, Jews, and Westerners, including children.

The rest of your post is just the same old gobbledygook.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/7/2006 @ 9:31 am
You treat them like scum, what the fuck else do you expect?
You’re losing. And fewer and fewer people care.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 9:38 am
Nicely done. Throw a few “sirs” in there and you could write for Olberman.
B Moe (aae6e1) — 11/7/2006 @ 9:44 am
Speaking of fundamentalists, here’s a little fundamentalist love story.
“Judea and Samaria” check it out.
Here’s more.
“Occupied territory” taken and lived on by “Settlers.”
Yeah, I know. God gave it to you: the kinder gentler children of nazis.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 10:26 am
You’re losing. And fewer and fewer people care.

In fact it’s exactly the reverse. More and more people around the globe, suffering from terrorism and other forms of Islamic extremism, are beginning to realize that Israel is merely the canary in the coal mine.
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/7/2006 @ 11:07 am
It’s fundamentalism that’s the problem kiddo, not just the Islamic variety. Your case for “The Protocals of the Elders of Islam” is silly.

You say that keeping your foot on your enemy’s throat is the only way to stop him from killing you, when it’s your foot that caused the problem to begin with.
And don’t try to tell me that there has ever been an Arab plot to exterminate the Jewish people. That was the Christians of Europe. There’s never been a Utopia for Jews or anyone else, but listening to you you’d never guess that there are still 20-30,000 Jews living in Iran, or that they are even allocated one member of parliament, along with one each for Armenians, Chaldeans (Assyrian Christians) and Zoroastrians.
Fair? No. Nazi? Exterminationist?
No.

Shalom/Salaam
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 12:32 pm
Alois,

Please do not put words into my mouth. Your post #132 is full of straw men, assigning to me extreme statements which I do not hold, nor have I even suggested anything remotely resembling them. If you are going to attack my position, and if you are unwilling to quote me, at least attempt to provide a reasonable representation of my position.

I’m confused by two posts of yours that contradict each other. You wrote,

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders.

Then when I provided eveidence to refute the statement, you essentially conceded my point when you wrote,

You treat them like scum, what the [****] else do you expect?

Well which is it? Are the Arabs willing to accept Israel within the green line? Or do you admit the overwhelming evidence that the Arabs are not willing to accept Israel within the green line (but it’s all Israel’s fault anyway)?
aunursa (1b5bad) — 11/7/2006 @ 4:25 pm
Gush Shalom
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 5:53 pm
Was it you who said I was an evil anti-semite-nazi-self-hating-jew just like Tony Judt and Noam Chomsky, or was it the other asshole? Was it you who’s refused to read any links? Has anyone read them? I doubt it. So what’s the use of linking to Haaretz? What’s the use of asking about the 2002 Arab League Proposal which the Palestinians accepted. Go read it. Meanwhile:

Did you know that Hezbollah hasn’t been invloved in any significant terrorist activity since the mid 90’s? It in a US Government report. Did you know that it is responsible for perhaps 6 civilian deaths since 2000? That this summer’s assault on Lebanon had been planned for almost a year? That it was triggered by a minor Hezbollah atack on a military- not a civilian- target. Perhaps you’re willing to admit that the bullshit began with an Israeli kidnapping of two men in the occupied territories a few days before.

“Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza, supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished.

“One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press, basically IDF handouts. And there were a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US.

“Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, and no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A Google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later.

“The paired events, a day apart, demonstrate with harsh clarity that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud. They reveal that by Western moral standards, kidnapping of civilians is just fine if it is done by “our side,” but capture of a soldier on “our side” a day later is a despicable crime that requires severe punishment of the population.

“As Gideon Levy accurately wrote in Ha’aretz, the IDF kidnapping of civilians the day before the capture of Cpl. Shalit strips away any “legitimate basis for the IDF’s operation,” and, we may add, any legitimate basis for support for these operations.

“The same elementary moral principles carry over to the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanon border, heightened, in this case, by the regular Israeli practice for many years of abducting Lebanese and holding many as hostages for long periods.

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders. Stop defending israeli terror.

You can drag an ass to knowledge, but I’m tired of doing it.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 5:45 pm
Was it you who said I was an evil anti-semite-nazi-self-hating-jew just like Tony Judt and Noam Chomsky

No.

Was it you who’s refused to read any links? Has anyone read them?

I read one — a lengthy screed by a discredited anti-Zionist. Merely providing links to tendential sources does not validate one’s argument. If you want to convince your opponent, you must provide links to facts.

the 2002 Arab League Proposal which the Palestinians accepted.

Actions speak louder than words. The Palestinians also accepted the 2003 Roadmap to Peace and then refused to implement any portion of it. While they may talk the talk, the Palestinians have never shown a willingness to fufill their responsibilities in an agreement. Israel, by contrast, has a 27 year record of successfully carrying out its responsibilities in its peace treaty with Egypt and a successful 12 year old peace agreement with Jordan.

Did you know that Hezbollah hasn’t been

Stop changing the subject.

Are the Palestinians willing to accept Israel within the green line or not? What actions have the Palestinians taken (not just words) to demonstrate a sincere desire for peaceful relations with Israel?
aunursa (76cdf3) — 11/7/2006 @ 7:46 pm
I posted a few links, including Gush Shalom. Chomsky, Uri Avnery and others. “Discredited” who? Baruch Kimmerling?
I looked back: Roger Morris.
But discredited by whom? Anyone who says anything you don’t like is “discredited.” Morris is just reading from the record. Look it up. But then that was also about Iraq, wasn’t it?

You read what I send- or you don’t- and you ask the same questions. You aren’t taking this seriously. You’re not acting in good faith.
Par for the course.

See you on another thread.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 8:29 pm
And don’t try to tell me that there has ever been an Arab plot to exterminate the Jewish people.

I think that pretty much says it all. You can’t have a rational discussion with someone this delusional.
B Moe (bcf321) — 11/7/2006 @ 8:29 pm
No. More than that:

Beit Hanoun: Israelis pull out leaving trail of death
Hours after the Israeli military pulled out of the town of Beit Hanoun yesterday morning, Talal Nasr was at the cemetery to search for a spot to bury the body of his 13-year-old daughter.
It was the first time for six days that any of the town’s residents had been allowed out of their homes, the duration of Israel’s biggest military operation in the Gaza Strip for months. The streets quickly filled and many headed out to mourn and bury their dead.

The cemetery at Beit Hanoun is small and overcrowded, and it took Mr Nasr three hours to find a space for his daughter Wala’a, the victim of an Israeli sniper’s bullet to the forehead. In the end he found a spot almost on top of a grave dug 30 years before, and he and his family filled the new hole, setting up six folded palm fronds to shade it.

Wala’a died last week in the middle of the military incursion. It was dusk and Mr Nasr, 52, was at home with his four young daughters and his sister-in-law. Through loudspeakers the Israeli military had called all men in the town between 16 and 45 to appear for questioning. Mr Nasr’s son and brother, who lived in an apartment next door, went for interrogation.

Israeli troops appeared outside the family’s house and began shouting. “They were screaming but we couldn’t understand what they were saying,” Mr Nasr said. “I asked my sister-in-law to open the window a little.” There was no electricity so the family lit a candle. “She shouted out of the window to the soldiers: ‘What do you want? Do you need anything from us?’ Suddenly the firing started.”

Lets see this on the front page of your ‘liberal’ NY Times.
And remember: Hamas held a unilateral ceasefire. That must have scared the shit out of you.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/7/2006 @ 8:38 pm
You read what I send- or you don’t-

The first link to which you referred that I read was a lengthy opinion piece that did not discuss the issue under discussion (whether or not Israel grants equal rights to all its citizens.) If you don’t provide a link to a source with actual evidence for your point, I see no reason to waste my time with other links in the (probably futile) hope that one of your links will actually provide evidence for your point.

and you ask the same questions. You aren’t taking this seriously. You’re not acting in good faith.

You bet I ask the same questions. When you (a) fail to give a direct answer; (b) contradict a previous answer; or (c) when backed into a corner you attempt to change the subject, I will continue to press you until you provide a straight answer or explain your contradictory answers.

I haven’t deliberately constructed straw men or deliberately placed words into your mouth. I don’t think you’re in a position to accuse me of debating in bad faith.
aunursa (76cdf3) — 11/7/2006 @ 10:16 pm
The first topic under discussion was Iraq and Hussein.
The passage was from an Op Ed in the New York Times. I gave the title the author and the date. How about just googling the title:
“A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making”
—
As to what the topic became:

“I see no reason to waste my time with other links in the (probably futile) hope that one of your links will actually provide evidence for your point.”

This is your response to Israeli citizens: historians, journalists and military veterans with whom you disagree. I suppose they must all be lying traitors and Nazi apologists.

The Arabs are willing to accept israel within its 1967 borders.
Every link I’ve posted is to those who make concrete proposals, responding to the complex history of events. You sit on your ass, kicking and pound your fists in the sand; and scream.

And no, the Israeli’s are still building on the occupied territories, and they have never stopped building. Neither side has kept to the “Roadmap,” but Israel wants to keep the territories and it maintains the policies that it thinks will ensure that outcome.
Israel is the aggressor.
And Egypt and Jordan are not the Palestinians.
Alois Fahyling (6aa211) — 11/8/2006 @ 10:33 am

11/5/2006

L.A. Times Mocks Hussein Trial

141 Responses to “L.A. Times Mocks Hussein Trial”

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