Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Old Testament is a bitch


Stay classy, Israel.

This "protest" in Tel Aviv begins with the crowd chanting their hatred for Ahmad Tibi, an Israeli Arab politician and physician . . . and member of the Knesset. In fact, he's deputy speaker of the Israeli legislative body.

"I wanted you to know the next child to get hit is yours. . . . I hate Tibi the Terrorist!" the protesters chant. "Tibi! Dead! Tibi! Dead!"

Then after calling for all Arab Israelis to be stripped of their citizenship, the crowd unveils another pithy chant about the military strike against Gaza:

"There's no school tomorrow. There are no children left there!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#mediaviewer/File:Gas_the_arabs_painted_in_Hebron.JPG
AND THEN you have the ongoing vigilante attacks against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. . . .

For the life of me, I can't imagine why Palestinians would want to fire rockets at a country where this is just another "slice of life." Funded in large part, by the way, by American tax dollars.

What could go wrong?

IN A LAND where the bloodiest parts of the Old Testament are never forgotten -- and, indeed, are still as new as tomorrow's sunrise -- it's always Mississippi 1959. With Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets and Israeli bombs and missiles.

For all this country's faults and sins, at least the U.S. government never bankrolled the Ku Klux Klan or the Black Panthers. At least not in this country.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Nostra culpa, nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa


Well, I think Pat Buchanan certainly summed up the Iraq War pretty thoroughly on the 10th anniversary of its start:
So, how now does the ledger read, 10 years on? What is history’s present verdict on what history has come to call Bush’s war?

Of the three goals of the war, none was achieved. No weapon of mass destruction was found. While Saddam and his sons paid for their sins, they had had nothing at all to do with 9/11. Nothing. That had all been mendacious propaganda.

Where there had been no al-Qaida in Iraq while Saddam ruled, al-Qaida is crawling all over Iraq now. Where Iraq had been an Arab Sunni bulwark confronting Iran in 2003, a decade later, Iraq is tilting away from the Sunni camp toward the Shia crescent of Iran and Hezbollah.

What was the cost in blood and treasure of our Mesopotamian misadventure? Four thousand five hundred U.S. dead, 35,000 wounded and this summary of war costs from Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

“The decade-long [Iraq] effort cost $1.7 trillion, according to a study … by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Fighting over the past 10 years has killed 134,000 Iraqi civilians … . Meanwhile, the nearly $500 billion in unpaid benefits to U.S. veterans of the Iraq war could balloon to $6 trillion” over the next 40 years.

Iraq made a major contribution to the bankrupting of America.

As for those 134,000 Iraqi civilian dead, that translates into 500,000 Iraqi widows and orphans. What must they think of us?

According to the latest Gallup poll, by 2-to-1, Iraqis believe they are more secure — now that the Americans are gone from their country.

Left behind, however, is our once-sterling reputation. Never before has America been held in lower esteem by the Arab peoples or the Islamic world. As for the reputation of the U.S. military, how many years will it be before our armed forces are no longer automatically associated with such terms as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, renditions and waterboarding?

As for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities of Iraq who looked to America, they have been ravaged and abandoned, with many having fled their ancient homes forever.

We are not known as a reflective people. But a question has to weigh upon us. If Saddam had no WMD, had no role in 9/11, did not attack us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us, was our unprovoked attack on that country a truly just and moral war?
THERE'S NOT really anything to add to this, is there? Except that a lot of us -- me included -- should have learned our lesson after Vietnam. But no . . . we f***ed up. We trusted our government.

The degree of the catastrophe we set in motion a decade ago wasn't exactly the sort of "shock and awe" we were counting on, now, was it? May God forgive us, because He's the only one who probably has it in Him.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Tomatoes and shoes be with you


Some loonies on the right-hand side of America's great divide think Barack Obama is a Muslim. Or a "Muslin," as the case may be.

They miss the point.

It doesn't matter whether the president of the United States is a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew or a Druid, the bottom line is that U.S. policy -- just as under the evangelical George W. Bush -- is to be very, very upset when Arab despots murder their fellow Muslims but not so upset when Christians get slaughtered by Islamists under "democratic" regimes in the region. In this respect, President Obama is no better than Bush 43 . . . and probably even worse.

The mainstream American press generally won't point this out. Americans by and large will not call "bullshit" where bullshit needs to be called.

Egyptian Christians will, though. It is their lives on the line and --
Boy, howdy! -- did they give Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the business Sunday. Good on them. The tomato-and-shoe toss rather made the point, methinks.


CHANTING "Monica!" was a little 1998, however. From the newly rebranded NBCNews.com (formerly MSNBC):
Prominent Christian Egyptians snubbed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday because they feel the U.S. administration favors Islamist parties over secular and liberal forces in society at the expense of Egypt's 8 million Christians.

The critical theme was repeated by others Sunday in Cairo and Alexandria despite Clinton denying U.S. interference in Egyptian elections.

The politicians, businessmen and clerics who snubbed Clinton were supposed to take part in meetings between Clinton and influential members of civil society.

Coptic Christian businessman and politician Naguib Sawiris and three other Coptic politicians said in a statement they were objecting to Clinton's policies in solidarity with the mainstream Egyptian.

They also said that since the revolution, the U.S. administration and Clinton have paid many visits in support of Islamic political currents in society while ignoring other civil movements.

The four prominent Copts consider the meeting with the Islamist parties a form of external pressure to push the Islamists to power and ignore other civil movements. They blamed the U.S. for even showing a preference for an Islamist presidential candidate.

Egypt, a nation of nearly 84 million, is 90 percent Muslim, 9 percent Coptic and 1 percent other Christian denominations.

Two church leaders also turned their back on Clinton.

Coptic Bishop Morcos and Evangelical church leader Safwat al Bayadi refused to meet with Clinton because of what they characterized as interference in Egyptian internal affairs and U.S. support for Islamists while ignoring the majority of Egyptians.

A few hundred protesters chanted the same message in front of the Garden City Four Seasons hotel where Clinton overnighted.

I WONDER whether Obama will offer aggrieved Middle Eastern Christians the same kind of "compromise" he's offered Catholics and others over contraception coverage in the health-insurance mandate? In other words, not much of one at all.

For the sort of people who populate the Obama Administration, some lives are more important than others. At home, it's anybody's over A) the unborn or B) Christians with principles differing from those of secularist, "progressive" Democrats.

Everywhere else, it's anybody's over Christians who stand to be A) slaughtered by the winners of "democratic" elections or B) driven by the same from lands where they have lived since the dawn of Christianity itself.

Of course, thanks to the constitutional separation of church and state, the United States has no state religion. That is right and good.

But this is ridiculous.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

'The New York Times killed me'


When New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid died while clandestinely in Syria this past February, the hagiography passed for the official version of events.

Brave reporter sneaks into repressive state to document Bashir Assad's massacres, dies of acute asthma attack.

Read all about it in the
Times.
Jill Abramson, the executive editor, informed the newspaper’s staff Thursday evening in an e-mail. “Anthony died as he lived — determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces,” she wrote.

The assignment in Syria, which Mr. Shadid arranged through a network of smugglers, was fraught with dangers, not the least of which was discovery by the pro-government authorities in Syria. The journey into the country required both Mr. Shadid and Mr. Hicks to travel at night to a mountainous border area in Turkey adjoining Syria’s Idlib Province, where the demarcation line is a barbed-wire fence. Mr. Hicks said they squeezed through the fence’s lower portion by pulling the wires apart, and guides on horseback met them on the other side. It was on that first night, Mr. Hicks said, that Mr. Shadid suffered an initial bout of asthma, apparently set off by an allergy to the horses, but he recovered after resting.

On the way out a week later, however, Mr. Shadid suffered a more severe attack — again apparently set off by proximity to the horses of the guides, Mr. Hicks said, as they were walking toward the border. Short of breath, Mr. Shadid leaned against a rock with both hands.

“I stood next to him and asked if he was O.K., and then he collapsed,” Mr. Hicks said. “He was not conscious and his breathing was very faint and very shallow.” After a few minutes, he said, “I could see he was no longer breathing.”

Mr. Hicks said he administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation for 30 minutes but was unable to revive Mr. Shadid.
IT'S KIND of like The Washington Post of All the President's Men -- only dirtier, dangerouser, and with an Arabic soundtrack.

Not.

So now the Pulitzer-winning reporter's cousin has come out with a different story about the story. It sounds less like Ben Bradlee's
Post -- as interpreted by Jason Robards, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman -- and more like The Office. With Steve Carrell as Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin Paper Co., fame.

Reports Politico:
"The phone call the night before he left [Turkey for Syria], there was screaming and slamming on the phone in discussions with editors," Ed Shadid, a cousin to the late reporter, said last night at the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee's convention in Washington, D.C.

"It was at this time that he called his wife and gave his last haunting directive that if anything happens to me I want the world to know the New York Times killed me," Ed Shadid said.

A spokesperson with the ADC confirmed those remarks to POLITICO, which were first made available in a rush transcript provided by ADC member William Youmans, who attended the event. Other attendees also tweeted the remark last night, noting the audience's surprise at Ed Shadid's statements.


(snip)

In his conversation with editors, Anthony Shadid is said to have complained about logistical issues regarding his transfer into Syria. Ed Shadid also told the audience that his cousin was suffering from health issues prior to his entry into Syria. Anthony Shadid died from an acute asthma attack on February 16.
DR. EDWARD SHADID'S audience at the ADC gala was shocked, shocked.

They oughtn't have been. The nation's newspapers are populated by humans, not superheroes, and they can be derailed by a lot less than Kryptonite.
Take mathematics, for example.

And the
Times is a lot more like The Office than you -- or they -- would like to think. Your local paper is probably even more Office-ier than that, and it's full of Michael Scotts.

That's life, into which --
like the rain -- the posturers, the excessively ambitious, the unimaginative and the incompetent must occasionally fall. It's not like the movies, and it's not at all the way journalism evangelists spin their own story.

Only sometimes lives hang in the balance. And sometimes journalists die because Robert Redford plans are hatched with Dunder Mifflin forethought.

Don't misunderstand. Journalism is a noble profession, and newspapers
(still) are invaluable resources that grease the gears of a modern democratic society. This despite journalists propensity toward epistemological closure, to bandy about a favored catchphrase for our postmodern times.

In other words, believing your own PR
(and discounting others') can be hazardous not only to your worldview, but also to your health. You're not Robert Redford. Your editor is not Jason Robards. You work in something that looks more like an accounting office than it does The Front Page . . . or Lou Grant.

But the guy in the cubicle next door just might be Rainn Wilson.

Friday, October 14, 2011

The left calls out Obama


This is about to get big. As if it weren't already, this whole Occupy Wall Street thing.

What we have here (above) is a pretty damned effective piece of propaganda -- one with at least a grain of truth to it. It's on a MoveOn.org forum and featured on the organization's home page.

In other words, the left is calling out its own man, President Obama, juxtaposing administration rhetoric about the rights of Middle Eastern protesters with footage of New York's finest beating the crap out of peaceful Americans "occupying Wall Street."


AND NOW, later this morning, New York cops aim to evict all the protesters from the park they use as a home base. All hell is going to break loose, barring one side or the other blinking first.

MoveOn has raised the stakes here, giving its de-facto imprimatur to the notion that Cairo's Tahrir Square equals New York's Zuccotti Park.

Does that make Michael Bloomberg our very own Hosni Mubarak? And what does that make Obama, according to his own erstwhile supporters? Something even worse . . . or just the feckless hypocrite in charge?


TUNE IN in a few hours. The country in which we lay us down to sleep may not be the same one where we wake up in the morning.

Pleasant dreams . . . because our American reality has become nightmare enough.

Tuesday, February 01, 2011

It all makes sense if you're nuts


Punxsutawney, Pa., is all snowed in, and Phil, being a sensible groundhog, refuses to come out and see (or not see) anything, so America has been forced to go to Plan B.

So . . . Glenn Beck has come out from under the rock where he keeps his survivalist provisions, only to see the shadow of
THE COMING INSURRECTION.

It works something like this. Hang on to something.

Tunisia is in flames because the Muslins are unhappy. That spread to Egypt, which is going down. That's spreading to Jordan, where there are riots, and it's going down. Libya's in flames, too, which the lamestream media isn't going to tell you about, because it's run by the Muslins, or communists, or Nazis or something.

Yemen's in flames, and so is Pakistan, but he's run out of little flamey magnet thingies to put on the chalkboard, so trust us on this. Iran's in flames, and that means they're going to come after Saudi Arabia, another of our "frenemies," because them Saudi royals are hardcore scumbags, who you know have to be shaking in their sandals while their camels are scared spitless.

And then you got Lebanon . . . in flames. The Gaza strip . . . in flames. But the Muslin Brotherhood Muslins hate the Hezbollah Muslins who are just like the Iranian Shiite Muslins, so they're canceling one another out or something . . . but they all have it in for the Jews in Israel.


SO YOU GOT the Shiites pushing on Israel one way and the Sunnis pushing on Israel the other, and the Chinamen is thinkin' . . . "WHOA! KNOCK THAT STUFF OFF, MAHMOUD!"

And then the Chinamen go
"Ching chong ching chong chang bing bong sham-a-lama-ding-dong. . . ." Oh, wait, that's what Rush Limbaugh said the Chinese said, so never mind. . . .

Anyway, you got China pushing one way, and then the flames spread to Spain, which is on fire, and come to think of it, so is Great Britain and Ireland . . . FIRE! . . . and you don't think the radical Islamists in England and France are going to sit on their hands with all that fire all over the chalkboard, do you?

SEE, you got flamey chaos in the Middle East, and China's pushing west. And then you got abject flames on the chalkboard that is Europe --
no, look, there's Europe on a chalkboard -- and Russia's gonna start moving on Europe thataway, because the Muslins blowed s*** up in Moscow, and what that shows us is that what Tunisia really is is Sarajevo 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand got offed by Gavrilo Princip, which started World War I, because everybody's pushing on Israel, and the Jews got the Bomb now.

We'll have more on how
This Is All Gonna Blow Up Good right after these messages from Goldline and Food Insurance.