Red States....

Fat and happy.

Said Well.....

Zipperfish on Muslims.

Continental Europe....

Continental Europe has proved to be possibly even worse than useless when it comes to the world's security and impotent intervening in world crises. A wonderful piece by former UK Defense Minister, Michael Portillo, can be read here on bloviating French silliness and how their feckless intervention is impacting the rest of us. This quote really drives the point home...

But what exactly has the distinctive French alternative produced for the world or France? The softer European approach to Iran over its nuclear programme was decisively rebuffed, and Europe has had to join America in calling for sanctions. When France was invited to provide leadership over Lebanon, it vacillated. Its offer of 2,000 soldiers remains underwhelming. Chirac's pro-Arab policies have not even bought off Muslim discontent at home, as the urban riots showed.

Last week a former junior member of the Bush administration, Jeff Babbin, likened undertaking a military operation without the French to going on a deer shoot without an accordion - you just leave behind the noisy useless baggage. For France to have split so decisively with the globe's most powerful nation without having established a successful alternative approach to the resolution of crises is a major policy failure for Chirac. Whatever criticisms he may have of George W Bush, the American does not fail to put his troops where his mouth is.

The highlighting is mine, since I find this line so amusing. Who are the French trying to fool? Maybe they are trying to fool themselves into thinking that they matter. Its a kind of Kerryesque approach to life, lots of nuance and no substance.

Converted At Gunpoint....

Apparently, the 2 kidnapped Fox News reporters were converted to Islam at gunpoint by their captors...

In the videotape released earlier on Sunday, Centanni and Wiig were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading statements announcing that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Arab robes.

"I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word 'Allah'," Centanni said.

Wow, what value does a religious conversion have if it is done at gunpoint? When I got robbed by a black man and woman at gunpoint in Madison Square Park several years ago, I gave them my money and then ran.

If one has to convert a soul at gunpoint to a religion that accepts and sometime encourages beheadings, kidnapping, suicide bombing in children's school busses, car bombs in markets and funerals, mass executions, etc. what value does it have? Jihad schmihad. Religion is supposed to transform one's heart but this is nothing more than coersion. Kind of like getting executed or threatened as so many do for apostacy in the religion. Keep the morons in-line otherwise we will kill you. But it becomes form-over-substance when one is converted at gunpoint. Islam is such a crock of crap.

Convenient Anti-Semitism....

Arab and Muslims hate Jews. Some may say that this is really due to the conflict between Israel and the regional Arabs and this has manifested itself as hatred there. If the existence of Israel is truly the root of the problem then why are Arabs attacking Jews in the streets of Europe and desecrating graves there? Some may point or use the concept of Zionism as a convenient excuse but how does one distinguish between Zionist Jews and those that are European? Are all Jews Zionist and what the heck is a Zionist these days anyway? And how about the programs in Iran and Iraq since WWII that essentially cleansed those countries of Jews? Jews have resided in some of these countries for ages but have over the past century been cleansed out of several Middle-Eastern nations. Where did this hatred come from? All the way from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? I think not.

The bottom line, is that Arabs and Muslims are searching for a scapegoat for their problems and dysfunctional societies and have choosen Jews, like the Nazis did 70 years ago as a wedge against the West. This serves to further their narrow political aims in the region and the world and Europe is falling for the ruse.

But somewhat more troubling to me,is that it appears as if Europe is again willing to allow their anti-Semitism to bubble to the surface. It has become convenient for Europeans to ignore the problems of anti-Semitism in their midst. This is seen in the failure to address anti-Semitic activities by Muslim groups in Europe that is not being addressed as vigorously as I think that it should be.

At the University of Geneva, a Jewish researcher wearing a small Star of David necklace was attacked in a campus elevator by Arab students. When she reported the attack, she was told not to wear the necklace in public.

In Hasselt, Belgium, Muslim fans at a soccer match between the Israeli and Belgian national teams waved Hamas and Hezbollah banners, and chanted: "Jews to the gas chambers!" and "Strangle the Jews!"

The British Political Cartoon Society awarded first prize in its annual competition to a cartoon depicting a gigantic, naked Ariel Sharon biting off the head of an Arab baby. "What's wrong," reads the caption, "you've never seen a politician kissing a baby?"

In Germany, scores of Jewish graves and Holocaust memorials have been defaced. At the cemetery in Beeskow, for example, "Heil Hitler" and "Crap on the six million lie" were painted on gravestones. At Langenstein-Zwieberge, a sub-camp of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, vandals plastered the walls with copies of anti-Semitic Third Reich newspapers

Recent condemnation of Israeli defensive actions against a violent and ruthless enemy camped on their border drew strong criticism from Europe and the useful idiots at the UN. Where was the strong condemnation of Hezbollah or their backers, Iran and Syria. Probably due to this and this is very troubling...

An EU poll found that nearly 60 percent of its citizens believe Israel is the greatest threat to world peace.

Ahead of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, this is completely absurd and ultimately dangerous. Israel is not the threat but the Arabs and Muslims who have attacked and provoked Israel numerous times over the past 60 years. I heard it said 'if Arabs laid down there arms there would be peace. If Israel laid down their arms, there would be no Jews.' The conflict there is being driven by Muslim Arabs since this is part of their agenda. And Israel is being forced, in my humble opinion, to defend itself vigorously as we will be when they attack us.

Anti-Semitism, brewing in the Democracies of Europe and the US...

New anti-Semitism. Starting in the latter part of the 20th century, a new style of anti-Semitism began to appear. The basis of this anti-Semitism appears to be more political in nature, often overlapping, and being (intentionally) confused with anti-Zionism. This form of anti-Semitism pervades Left wing politics in both Europe & North America, and is characterized by borrowing language and concepts from anti-Zionism.

This writer, effectively illustrates the history, particularly Nazi strategy to conquer Europe, by driving a wedge in the populace by demonising Jews within those societies. Europe offered up the Jews as sacrifice to the Nazis in the hope of saving their own skins from Nazi brutality. It obviously didn't work.

With the hate filled Muslims, it appears as if they are doing the same thing again. Europeans are weakly offering up the Jews for slaughter in the hope that the bloodthirsty Muslims will not go after them.

That's just what is happening once again before our very eyes. Though the Jihadists have their own clear, even megalomaniac goals, and while they kill thousands in the US or fight for Shari'a in Europe, while they complain about East Timor or fight for Kashmir, it is enough for them to involve the Jews, particularly Israel, in their struggle or their declared agenda to get the active support or at least the indifference of those in Europe, the US and elsewhere who would like to believe that their complaints, grievances and goals are restricted to or only motivated by Israel. Of course, they also declare they're fighting against America, but then, for those who hate America anyway (and often the Jews and/or Israel too), the same logic works perfectly.

When they are done with Israel and the Jews, they will come and attempt to subjugate us to build their glorious caliphate and return the Earth to the laws of God as only they see fit.

I hear many people attempting to say that they support Jews, but do not support Zionism. I am not really sure what they mean by that. Do they support Jews and not the state of Israel? How does that work? Can one support the State of Israel but claim to not be Zionist? Does one listen to the madman leader of Iran that wants to wipe Israel off the face of the map or move the Jews to another place like Europe or Alaska? Is that even remotely reasonable? Then what does one mean by arguing against Zionism? Honestly, it is somewhat perplexing to me.

So what does Europe want to achieve by putting Israel in the penalty box? Would they allow Arabs to slaughter Israeli Jews under the flag of anti-Zionism? Would Europe condemn that action and support Israel? Or would they go through useless motions in the UN taking meaningless actions that have no effect? It just doesn't appear that they would be a useful partner in the case of conflict as they have shown in the recent fight in Lebanon. Europe is trying to appease the Arabs in the hope that they will be left alone. It won't work. Peace is not achieveable with a foe that does not want peace and wants and desires their won death. The blood will be on their hands again and like the Nazis, they will have been the useful idiots in the global jihadists plans for murder and mayhem.

The bottom-line is that I do not think one can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic. These people prefer to sacrifice the Jews to the bloodthirsty Muslims to appease not unlike Aztec priests that cut the hearts of virgins to appease their angry gods.

Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr identified and strongly condemned anti-Zionism stating

". . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews- this is God's own truth.

"Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so.

"Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.

"The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested - DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.

"How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfillment of God's promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.

This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.

Iran Cartoons....

Iranian cartoon contest and some of the entries here....



Jews compared to dogs, sharks and bats [bats?]. Like the Muhammad cartoons, are we expecting Jews to riot in the streets, burn embassies, and call for the murder of cartoonists?

You can see why teh Muslims are so enraged by cartoons such as this one...



How can Muslims tolerate this?

Paragraph Of The Day....

Whole piece, here.

Americans knew they'd heard something important last year when Washington Post editor Marie Arana said, "The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness ... If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat. I've been in communal gatherings at the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democratic candidates." Tell America that it's a media culture, not a conspiracy.

Myth: American media organizations are politically balanced reporters of news.

How The Left Thinks About Terrorism...

One of the mantras of the left, is that George Bush has made America less safe from terrorism. Of course, there hasn't been an attack on American soil for nearly 5 years, but lets not confuse that fact with the fantasy.

So this guy, despite saying over and over that one death from a terrorist on American soil is too much, goes on to calculate the advantages if there was an attack just days before the mid-term elections therefore giving both Houses of Congress to the [undeserving-ed.] DemNOcrats. All kinds of wonderful positive things that would magically happen that would save untold millions of lives and the world would be a happy place again.

Some of the good ones...

Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

Additionally, by winning the election, Bush would not have the ability to install one of his nutjob right-wing ideologues into the next vacant Supreme Court seat, therefore, Roe vs. Wade would not be overturned and hundreds of thousands if not millions of women would be saved from being forced into back-alley, dirty and dangerous abortion clinics risking their lives and civility.

So, of course, another attack would 'prove' that we are not safer from terrorism under GW Bush and people would skidaddle over to the magically more prepared DemNOcrats who would presumably capture Bin-Laden and make the world safer for everyone. Additionally, we would get all of those fringe benefits and we can all expect to live to be 150 years old since we will have all these great things happening.

I am not exactly sure how DemNOcrats would magically find the will or the way to achieve all of this but I also wonder if the terrorists would then lay down their arms and sing Kumbaya while holding hands with the rest of the world. We will withdraw from Iraq and the Iraqis would take responsibility for their own security and everything would be hunky-dory there. Peace would break out around the globe and the US would finally invade Israel and destroy it once-and-for-all. The war would be known as 'Israeli blood for oil.' Arabs would then become our best friends and we would get all the oil that we want for nothing and gas prices drop to 35 cents a gallon. Detroit makes a bundle of money selling monstrous SUVs that get 2 miles to the gallon but they are outlawed by the DemNOcrats and Toyota sells everyone in the US a Camry.

I have to say, that after reading the ramblings of people like this, I can see that the GOP has one huge insurmountable advantage in American elections..... and that is that they are thankfully running against Democrats. Democrats just aren't serious about the real world and live in a world of fantasy and hyperbole. If only the terrorists killed some of us a few days before the mid-term elections, everything would be great!

If This Is True, Then What Will Al Gore Do With His Spare Time?

A Russian scientist predicts a period of global cooling in coming decades, followed by a warmer interval.

Abdusamatov and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory said the prediction is based on measurement of solar emissions, Novosti reported. They expect the cooling to begin within a few years and to reach its peak between 2055 and 2060.

"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said. "The global temperature maximum has been reached on Earth, and Earth's global temperature will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol."

Since the Scientist is Russian, he shouldn't be trusted, anyway. Probably hired by GW Bushes cabal to destroy and control the earth anyway. We all know that GW Bush has been wrong on everything and that is the point. So, we can blame everything bad that is happening, happened and will happen in the future on him. This way, since we are blaming Bush for everything, we don't have to take any responsibility for anything. As the backbone of the philosophy of the Democratic party, we are all victims. That is why the Democrats should be in power in the US as the party of nothing. Since none of them are GW Bush and we are all victims of his and Karl Rove's mind control rays we don't have to be responsible for anything since we cannot possibly know right from wrong.

Outsourcing....

According to a recently released Princeton University study, outsourcing of some low skill labor intensive jobs to foreign countries actually improves wages of low skilled workers in the US...

Rising productivity associated with U.S. firms' moving some tasks offshore "have served to bolster U.S. wages ... contrary to the fears of Lou Dobbs and others," they said in reference to the high-profile CNN anchorman who has waged a campaign against outsourcing of U.S. jobs. Outsourcing has also been a political hot-button issue in the United States during recent election cycles.

Those wage gains are "far from exceptional" but not as bad as might be expected based on the improvement in U.S. terms of trade with non-industrialized countries, they said.

Traditional static economic thought argues that when each job moves overseas, that 1 job is eliminated at home leading to employment losses and lowering of the costs of unskilled labor. However, this study finds otherwise.

I suppose what does happen, is that by moving the lowest value added functions to the lowest cost environment, both monetary and labor capital is freed up for more productive enterprises.

And More On Outsourcing....

Of course its all Bushes fault that even these jobs are outsourced....

After confessing last week to the brutal 1997 slaying of Jon Benet Ramsey, John Mark Karr was dragged away from the only place a man such as himself could obtain a teaching job in this economy. Doubts have been raised as to the authenticity of his confession, but whether he admits to the murder is irrelevant. The real criminal here is not Mr. Karr, but George W. Bush - or more specifically, his unapologetic policy of outsourcing all the transgendered pedophile teaching jobs to Thailand.

Call the Democrats, they will straighten this mess out!

Need To Buy????

Need to buy a few hundred vaginal specula? They are available here on alibaba.com's hot products page.

You can also buy some Sphygmomanometers, both the desktop and floor models on alibaba.com's hot products page, here.

10 years after....

10 years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed a bi-partisan bill to 'end welfare as we know it.'

Welfare reform was a perennial legislative issue during the 1980s and 1990s, but no matter what Congress did, caseloads grew, peaking at 14.2 million people in 1994. A watershed moment came when Mr. Clinton offered his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we know it." Momentum was also building in the states, where dozens of governors, led by Wisconsin's Gov. Tommy Thompson, were using federal waivers to revamp their welfare programs.
Mr. Clinton's initial welfare reform -- which would have cost an extra $9 billion -- fell to the wayside. House Republicans seized the moment and included welfare reform in their Contract With America, the banner under which the party swept into power in 1994.
The resulting 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passed with strong bipartisan support and was signed by Mr. Clinton on Aug. 22, after having vetoed two earlier versions.

Clinton, stole some of the show from the Republicans by moving to the center and grabbing this issue. This was a first step, albeit a baby step, in cutting the entitlement boondoogle that swept Washington in the 1960's. The bigger one, and ultimately more difficult cuts will come in the unaffordable retirement age entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.

Osama....

While trying to escape through Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden found a Bottle on a beach and picked it up. Suddenly, a female genie rose from the bottle and with a smile said: "Master, may I grant you one wish?"

"You ignorant unworthy daughter-of-a-dog! Don't you know who I am? I don't need any
common woman giving me anything" barked Bin Laden. The shocked genie said "Please, I must grant you a wish or I will be returned to that bottle forever."

Osama thought a moment. Then grumbled about the impertinence of the woman, and said "Very well, I want to awaken with three American women in my bed in the morning, so just do it and be off with you!" The annoyed genie said: "So be it !" and disappeared.

The next morning Bin Laden woke up in bed with Lorena Bobbitt,Tonya Harding and Hillary Clinton. His penis was gone, his knees were broken, and he had no health
insurance.

God is good.

Video Of A Suicide Averted In Hong Kong [Comedy]....

Somehow, I do not think that this is an actual commercial, since at the end, it says, "It Really Sucks." "Electrolux."

Great Quote....

"Embalm, cremate and bury - take no chances!"

Winston Churchill, 1947, when commenting on the death of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin uncharacteristically for Churchill, that was known for gentlemanly conduct even with his most ardent political opponents. Churchill blamed Baldwin [who served 3 times between 1924 and 1937] for being completely unprepared for the conflict with Nazi Germany who was the predecessor to the great appeaser, Neville Chamberlain [1937-1940]. He also commented to an aide, prior to Baldwin's 80th birthday, that it would have been better if he had never been born.

Italian Honor Killing....

This 21 year-old Pakistani women was savagely murdered by her father and uncle in a barbaric ritual called honor killings.



Her crime was that she wanted to integrate into Italian society, worked at a bar and had a relationship with an Italian man.

Italian police were searching yesterday for a man suspected of involvement in the killing of a Pakistani woman after her father and uncle were charged with slitting her throat because she dated an Italian man and refused to conform to an Islamic lifestyle.

Investigators believe the third suspect helped the father and uncle kill Hina Saleem, 21. The woman's body was found buried in the family's garden in Sarezzo on Saturday. Her father and uncle were taken into custody on Monday.

The UN estimates that around 5,000 girls and woman are murdered every year from this barbaric practice. Remember, that honor killings are where family members feel compelled to kill their female children, sisters or nieces.

So some argue that honor killings such as these are either due to brittle and unbending Muslim society or an uneducated people's tradition from rural backwards areas.

So, these people, since they cannot control their [female] adult or near-adult children, choose to kill them. What kind of cold-hearted parents are these? Arguably, the killing of children is not limited to certain ethnic or religious groups since it happens in other places, particularly to the young and those unable to defend themselves. However, the killing of precious children is considered to be taboo and typically caused by severely mentally disturbed people. However, honor killings are limited to older female children and males are rarely held accountable to similar 'crimes' whereas the mentally disturbed kill children of both sexes.

However, honor killings as those we see in Middle-Eastern and other Muslim dominated regions are sometimes excused by apologists using bizarre logic...

Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University states that honor killing is:

A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Arab society... What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.

An Amnesty International statement adds:

The mere perception that a woman has contravened the code of sexual behavior damages honor. The regime of honor is unforgiving: women on whom suspicion has fallen are not given an opportunity to defend themselves, and family members have no socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain on their honor by attacking the woman.

The typical honor killing has little to do about honor but is all about power as the above twisted logic indicates. Its like rape is not about love but violence.

Weak egos of Arab and Muslim males cannot tolerate females since they hold the key to reproduction. They are taught in their culture to disrespect women, are purposefully kept separate from them and rarely get to know them at a young age and cannot mesh that with the fact that woman are indispensable to the well-being of the society. So they retain the right to kill them if they think that they have been dethroned in their absolute right to control and dictate behavior no matter how arbitrary. It is the exercise of power that drives honor killing, it is a bizarre method to insure that children are scared into obeying their parents.

For me, it is very disturbing to see how people can rationalize the slitting of one's own child's throat and watching them die for such petty and self serving reasoning. How can the honor of one's family not be destroyed when the patriarch is murdering their own children? I do not see the honor killing as a complex issue but as a brutal medieval practice that Islam has failed to address over centuries. Islam is proving yet again to incapable of addressing the needs of their own societies and does not protect people but allows them to continue to inflict death arbitrarily.

But we in Western societies have used a similar argument built on the rights of women to kill unborn children by abortion. Its ok to terminate the unborn using the logic of 'right' but it still remains unacceptable for parents to terminate their children after a certain term or actual birth. But this is a topic for another time.

Pallywood....

Via Powerline, comes this 18 minute long video on staging scenes for the useful idiots of the mainstream press. The Pallywood productions, sometimes staged and created by Palestinian journalists for the benefit of foreign news organizations, I particularly enjoyed the 'walking dead' burial in Jenin. In this segment, a funeral bier was dropped twice on the way to the cemetery and the dead victim twice climbed back onto the bier, under his own power to continue the procession.

After much evidence surfaced on the staging of scenes of killing at Qana, Lebanon and the performances put on by people there for the benefit of the press to generate as much publicity as possible, the press has dropped the issue quickly. Either they are unable, unwilling or prefer this slant to 'news,' the press is not serving the purpose of representing and conveying in a truthful manner what is happening in the Middle-East.

Of Course.....

I can upload images in Firefox but not with Explorer now. Kind of strange I think.

For Some Reason....

For some reason, I can no longer post pictures on my blog. When I try to, the bottom of the blogger screen says 'error on page.' What can I do?

Art?

Naked woman hugging a dead pig is art?

Brawling Monks....

Peace protesters get beaten up by Buddist monks.

Protesters calling for an end to recent violence in Sri Lanka found themselves brawling with hardline Buddhist monks Thursday, after a rally dubbed a "peace protest" turned unexpectedly violent.

Wow.

The Oslo Syndrome....

You may have heard of the Stockholm Syndrome...

The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal.

During this time of great stress, the hostages bond with the captors in what is theorized as a psychological attempt to increase the odds of survival. The same kind of bonding that goes on between a mother and child, where the bonding helps in the survival of the offspring.

So now, we have the Oslo Syndrome, another syndrome from a different Scandinavian city and this syndrome is useful to describe how Islamists are holding us all hostage. I construct the term Oslo Syndrome from the Oslo Accords in which there was much hope of building a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In essence, the accords call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank and affirm the Palestinian right to self-government within those areas through the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian rule would last for a five year interim period during which a permanent agreement would be negotiated (beginning not later than May 1996). Permanent issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli settlements in the area, security and borders were deliberately excluded from the Accords and left to be decided. The interim self-government was to be granted in phases.

After Oslo, somehow, in the bargaining process where then Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered some large concessions, Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat walked away. Either unable to gain acceptance by his more militant Palestinian citizens or his inability to accept the existence of Israel that would essentially eliminate his ability to continue to fight [really all that he did his whole life] opted instead for a disastrous Palestinian uprising known as the 2nd intifada. The 2nd Intifada destroyed all hope to reach the agreements as outlined in Oslo. It shows that the people there have no desire for peace with the Isrealis and will continue to use their citizens as cannon fodder and their religion as the gunpowder to keep the conflict alive.

The hope of the Oslo Accords has now deteriorated into a situation that has little promise for resolution. Where Israel does not feel compelled to negotiate and the Palestinians are unable or unwilling to, very little can be accomplished within the context of peace. Its impossible for Israel to negotiate since they cannot negotiate with someone that can be held accountable to any agreement. The non-state actors, such as Hamas, that have gained a level of legitimacy through an irresponsible Palestinian election process, are supported by hostile regimes outside of the immediate territory that have no interest in creating a stable environment but desire to see continued conflict.

So what is the Oslo Syndrome as I am defining? Well, Islamists are holding us hostage to the hope that Oslo offered. Civilization views peace as the desirable objective and do not desire to see continuing destablizing conflict in Israel and the surrounding areas. We are being held hostage to the violence that Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist actors such as Iran offer, the same as a hostage in the Stockholm Syndrome fears since negotiation with Islamists has proved futile. The only hope is not to catch the attention is Islamists or try to get in their good graces so you are not executed like some barnyard animal about to become food. As a result in some unconscious response, some bond with the terrorists in the hopes of being given an ability to survive their brutality. A negotiated peace, such as that offered by Oslo is the preferable path but one that realistically offers little chance of success as we have seen but not learned with Oslo.

It has always surprised me how, particularly in Europe, I see the people there identifying with the terrorists and disparaging Israel as the aggressive one. The press there is especially ferocious in their attacks on Israel and tread lightly on the terrorists in the region. But, if we look at this in a logical sense, Israel offers no risk what-so-ever to safety and security of Europeans since Israel would never attack or invade Europe, whereas, the Muslims have and will do it again. Muslims kill people in Europe using barbaric bombing methods the same as they do to civilians in Israel. The risk to bombings and death in Europe and other civilized places around the world is from Islamic fanatics and not from Israelis, so why do Europeans behave as they do?

Muslims will kill Europeans again one time in the very near future. So, all of Europe and much of the world is being held hostage to the arbitrary will of Muslim fanatics and the European people are responding by emotionally attaching themselves and bonding with their captors. Much hope has been laid on the doorstep of negotiating peace though a process like the Oslo Accords but this is only possible in an environment where the other side seeks peace too. But it is not peace that they seek but domination and the use of innocent people around the world as pawns and hostages to their twisted ideology.

Who are the hostages? Innocent civilians such as the Lebanese [although they don't look as innocent as they did before], people on busses and trains in Madrid and London. People eating in restaurants in Morocco or commuting to work in Mumbai. People out for an evening in Bali or blown up at weddings in Jordan. People shopping in markets in Iraq or walking down the street in Turkey. People anywhere in Israel, whether they are Jews, Arabs, Filipinos, Rumanians are subject to arbitrary death at the hands of twisted Muslim fanatics. These people were all hostages and were gruesomely murdered and the rest of the living remain hostages to bloodthirsty Muslim fanatics. It is like the Stockholm Syndrome where Islamic fanatics hold us all hostage, the response in some circles is to become emotionally attached and bond with the perpetrators, ergo I create the term Oslo Syndrome.

Joe, You Should Read This...

Why the world hates the Jews, By Michael Medved

A very interesting piece arguing against the obsessive fears and deranged thought processes that Jew haters use to justify their hatred. The article focuses on three central themes frequently cited and argued as fundamental reasons for a debaters anti-Semitism.

This central, primeval charge that arrogant Jews seek global dominance originates from three distinct historical factors:

1- The emphasis on the "Chosen People" concept in the Bible
2- The prominence and prosperity of Jews in most nations in which they've established significant communities, and
3- The startling successes of the State of Israel in the mere 60 years of its existence.

These circumstances sometimes perplex even people of good will and therefore deserve deeper consideration and explanation.

This is a well written and heartfelt reasoning as to why anti-Semitic arguments are not very plausible when faced with evidence, observation and facts to the contrary.

American Guitars, The Most Popular Brands In Japan....

American manufacturing has been giving way to Asian competitors for several decades now, but the classic American made guitar is more popular than ever, particularly in Japan...

Nobuaki Suzuki, an editor at Guitar Magazine, a major Japanese publication, says more Gibson and Fender electric guitars sell here in numbers — not just in revenue — than Japan-made guitars.

"The Americans dominate in numbers," he said. "Then come the domestic-made guitars."

Although Gibson is making marketing pushes elsewhere where demand is expected to grow, such as China, Japan is still Gibson's biggest market outside the United States and twice as large as its biggest European market, Great Britain, although the Nashville-based producer of electric and acoustic guitars isn't disclosing numbers.

Some things just can't be massed produced I guess.

Now if we could only put wheels on the guitars and sell them as cars, we could finally bolster and turn around the American automobile industry.

A Lazy Post...

What changed Bush, here. An excerpt....

From those events, President Bush drew a fixed conclusion: as long as the Middle East remains a bitter and backward mess, America will not be secure. Dictators in that region survive by finding scapegoats for their failures—feeding conspiracy theories about Americans and Jews—and use religious groups to destroy reformers and democrats. Oil money strengthens elites, buys rockets, funds research into weapons of mass destruction, builds radical schools across Africa and Asia and finds its way to terrorist organizations. Terrorist organizers exploit the humiliated and hopeless—channeling their search for meaning into acts of murder—and plot, as London 2006 proves, to surpass the mad ambitions of 9/11.

The Very First Ever Blonde GUY Joke..... And Well Worth The Wait?

An Irishman, a Mexican and a Blonde Guy were doing construction work on scaffolding on the 20th floor of a building.

They were eating lunch and the Irishman said, "Corned beef and
cabbage! If I get corned beef and cabbage one more time for lunch, I'm going to jump off this building."

The Mexican! opened his lunch box and exclaimed, "Burritos again! If I get burritos one more time I'm going to jump off, too."

The blond e opened his lunch and said, " Bologna again! If I get a
bologna sandwich one more time, I'm jumping too."

The next day, the Irishman opened his lunch box, saw corned beef and cabbage, and jumped to his death. The Mexican opened his lunch, saw a burrito, and jumped, too. The blonde guy opened his lunch, saw the bologna and jumped to his
death as well.

At the funeral, the Irishman's wife was weeping. She said, "If I'd
known how really tired he was of corned beef and cabbage, I never would have given it to him again!"

The Mexican's wife also wept and said, "I could have given him tacos
or enchiladas! I didn't realize he hated burritos so much."

Everyone turned and stared at the blonde's wife. The blonde's wife said,

"Don't look at me. The idiot makes his own lunch."

Send An Email To Crazy Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad....

Here... I sent a nice obnoxious one. Also, word has it that 'his craziness' has a blog. You can have a look at the blog here.

Nothing Better....

Nothing better than sitting on a big deck.

The 50th Anniversary...

of hard disk storage. The first hard drive stored about 5 megs and weighed about a ton. Using the same technology, a typical Ipod would weigh about 200 tons, more than the maximum take-off weight of two 737 aircraft. Read it here and here.

Approaching The 50th Anniversary....

of hard disk storage. The first hard drive stored about 120 megs and weighed about a ton. Read it here and here.

Everything Is Not Bushes Fault Or Because Of Iraq...

An interesting piece here on the brutal stabbing murder of an Italian peace activist in Jerusalem that is believed to be racially motivated [read an Arab killing what he thought was an Israeli, Jew or Westerner] that distills the whole Muslim/Middle-East conflict into a few words.

The writer takes issue with the idea that one can diplomatically solve the conflicts there and that the skirmishes will continue into the foreseeable future. One of the quotes that caught my eye is this one...

But Bush's "military adventurism" bears the great benefit of changing an externalized conflict into the internal civil war it has to be - because only Muslims can square their medieval religion with the demands of modernity. We cannot.

[I added the bold] The writers also argue that Iran is a patient adversary, 'a bunch of carpet weavers and chess players.' Also, I know that they have been at this game for thousands of years, warring with the Greeks 2,500 years ago and occupying Israel and Palestine for ages.

They Have Already Won....

I have read this 'They have already won' meme over-and-over in both news articles and on numerous blogs that even though the terrorists that were caught in Britain were unable to complete their mission, that they have already won.

I have to disagree with this from many different angles since I think that this attitude portrays a serious lack of understanding and perspective.

Since there was chaos at the airports while travelers are forced to adjust to new security measures, some argue that the terrorists have achieved their goals and have won. First, their goal isn't TO INCONVENIENCE US but to KILL US. I don't think that in al Qaeda's charter that their stated goal is to 'inconvenience western travelers as much as we can.' They did not achieve their goal of destroying Western civilization and reintroducing the Muslim caliphate. I do not even think that they have even taken a tiny step in that direction unless one thinks that being restricted on carry-on luggage can be construed as or is a harbinger of the destruction of Western civilization. I argue that it will take quite a bit more to destroy us.

Also, there is a lack of perspective. We are at war with a brutal and barbaric foe that wants to kill and destroy our way of life. A war sometimes involves sacrifices and most of the time more than just inconvenience but true sacrifices. Some realize this, but others have insulated themselves from it. These people are now coming to the hard cold truth that this fight may be more encompassing and difficult than they originality were dreaming. Welcome back to the real world. The laziness that one has become accustomed to just won't last and was an indulgence that we may not be able to aford anymore. It will be a long difficult fight.

These people that were in a state of denial before are now being forced to face what they haven't had to face before and that is that we are having and will continue to have to slug-it-out with our bloodthirsty Muslim foes. I guess that some people are so soft, that even these minor inconveniences is a gigantic sacrifice for them.

I knew about a dozen people that died in the 9-11 attacks and a few down in the Bali nightclub bombings. These are not isolated incidents but a pattern of brutal killing that is being repeated over-and-over again. I do not think that these incidents indicate that the Islamists are being successful at beating Western civilization or will be unless the softees desire to appease the unappeasable Muslims killers. We could surrender to them now and then you will see a huge change in our lives! I think that our way of life, our children, our families and communities are worth fighting for and preserving, so a little bit of inconvenience does not bother me one little bit.

The Question Is Being Asked....

Does Al Gore actually exist?

Hunting And Killing Endangered Species In China....

This just doesn't sound like a good idea...

China is to auction licenses to foreigners to hunt wild animals, including endangered species, a newspaper said on Wednesday.

Of course this sport is only available to barbaric foreigners. I wonder how much one has to pay to hunt for a democrat in Hong Kong?

Fox News Reports...

Fox News just reported that the all of the 20 or so people arrested in Britain are British Muslims. They were targeting American airline companies flying out of various airports in Britain- London, Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester- and were planning to board 20 different planes departing what was termed as consecutive. I suppose that they planned to all be up in the air and planned to bomb the flights at near the same time.

I suppose if you see a person of Middle-Eastern heritage on a flight, one has to keep a close eye on them since they very well could be a terrorist intent on blowing up your plane.

BBC Coverage Biased?

As far as I am concerned, main stream media press coverage is not only biased but is dangerous. A lethal combination of political correctness, Vietnam and Watergate era hallucinations and the overwhelming political and social biases of editors and writers themselves has damaged the credibility of the press to the point where we have to question everything that they report.

I, for one, agree with the Israeli assessment of BBC press coverage of the Israeli Hezbollah conflict....

"The BBC's coverage has been overwhelmingly one-sided, with presenters and reporters editorializing against what they universally refer to as 'Israeli attacks on Lebanon,'" Pollard wrote.

despite my admission that I have yet to see or read one single report by them from the region, recently. I can no longer listen to the swarthy coverage offered by the new organization as I wrote about before.

Huge Terror Plot Thwarted In Britain...

Just heard on Fox News that a large terror plot involving plans to blow-up 20 jetliners [all 747s and 777s] crossing the Atlantic to the US has been thwarted. A plot of this type, would have cost upwards of 4,000 lives, and US$ 20 billion in direct damage. A plane crash is expected to directly cost about $1 billion each including huge lawyer fees, the cost of the plane itself, compensation to passengers that is limited to $75,000 under the Montreal Protocol but that can be significantly higher if carrier negligence can be proved and assundry expenses associated with this kind of tragic event. Obviously, the indirect costs can be a multiple of the direct costs and the ultimate goal of terrorizing people to worry about death or maiming in the most innocuous of everyday activities.

Of course, one does not have to guess what the religion of the arrested potential perpetrators are. Not identified in the writings that I scanned so far...

Police arrested a number of people overnight in London after a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months, police said in a statement.

Fox News said that there were at least a dozen people arrested overnight, most believed to be Pakistanis. Of course, almost all of the Pakistanis living in Britain are MUSLIM. So are these Muslim terrorists or are they just a bunch of deranged individuals that happen to be Muslim? Chances are, that we will find, buried in the politically correct press, that ALL of the people arrested and planning the plot to bomb planes ARE ALL MUSLIMS.

Europe will be the front on fighting the Muslims that are prompted through their bloodthirsty religion to kill and maim innocent civilians through heinous and barbaric methods. Until we all realize that we have a problem with these insane people, we will never be able to protect ourselves from these fanatics.

Even the most friendly and innocuous neighbor that happens to be Muslim may be, in fact, a crazed Muslim terrorist.

Unbelievable...

Even more photoshopped Reuters pics discovered.

Zombie...

Has one of the best roundups I have seen on Reuters photo fraud, also known as fauxtography.

Michelle Malkin....

Has much much more on all the fake or staged photography that we are being fed. If there is so much fake photography, how much of the actual reporting can we believe?

Tenderizing household pets in China.

Festrunk Brothers...

Even The New York Times Is Getting In On The Fake Picture Act....

I guess the NYTs doesn't want Reuters to have all the fun with their fake war photos, so they post a few fakes of their own. See this post here. The 'dead' guy was also pictured scrambling over the busted up building in some of the other photos in the montage. In the picture in which he is portrayed as 'dead,' he is holding his hat in his left hand.

In Case You May Be Wondering....

The UN have never bothered to define terrorism so all their "counter-terrorism" and "counter-terrorism conventions" have no meaning what-so-ever. The term terrorism is left up to the country to decide so that one man's terrorism is another man's freedom fighter.

A former member of the now-defunct, outspoken U.N. counterterrorism-monitoring group, Victor Comras, explained to me in a phone interview last week that achieving a serious international definition of terrorism is a "huge issue." Once an objective criterion for terrorism exists, said Comras, "At least you have the foundation for asking that concrete actions be taken."

Without that definition, as Comras wrote this past March, "countries remain free to define for themselves which groups are terrorists and which are 'freedom fighters.'" Comras observed that "Saudi Arabia uses this distinction, for example, to get away with funding Hamas, while Iran and Syria use it to provide funds and support to Hezbollah." Beyond that, he noted, "Many other countries have also used it to avoid taking steps to freeze funds or take other civil or criminal action against those individuals or groups which they support."

So what is the UN supposed to be doing? If a group blows up civilians on a bus, the UN is unable to define what this group is even if its express intent is to destroy one of the member countries of the UN. Al Qaeda is therefore not defined as a terrorist organization according tot eh UN.

Why do we waste our time and money with the UN. Its silliness.

Media bias? Nah.

Can you spot the problem's with these AFP pictures and their captions? Would you have made the mistake with the first one, knowing basically how rockets work and that generally the engine streak and smoke follows the rocket and not leads it.

Proportion.

For American Political Junkies....

The Connecticut Democratic Senate primary battle between anti-war left-winger Ned Lamont and incumbent, former VP candidate, Joe Lieberman is being viewed in some circles as a backlash against Lieberman's pro-Iraqi war stance and his alleged embrace of Bush policies. Lieberman, sometimes accused of being too pro-Israeli due to his Jewish religion, is one of the few remaining centrist Democrats in the Scoop Jackson neo-con mold of yesteryear.

But, I think that the battle over political principles is complete hogwash and a smokescreen. What voters are really angry about is during Lieberman's primary campaign to win the Democratic nomination for President in the last election in 2004, Lieberman coined the phrase "picking up Joementum." I think that such a hokey and corny phrase coming out of a serious politician's mouth turned voters off so now they are willing to opt for the annoying yuppie Ned 'empty suit' Lamont instead.

For Israel....

With friends like these, who needs enemies.

The Disinfomation Campaign....

The useful idiots of the press and now the left, are giving Hezbollah and many other bloodthirsty Islamic killers just what they want, media frontpage headlines, sometimes untruthful as I discuss later, in order to win the media war as inspired by al Qaida number two, Zawahiri...

We are in a battle, and more than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media. . . . [W]e are in a media battle for the hearts and minds of our umma.

--Ayman al-Zawahiri, July 2005

So therefore, what is a useful idiot?

In political jargon, the term "useful idiot" was used during the Cold War by anti-communists to describe Soviet sympathizers in western countries (particularly in the United States) and the alleged attitude of the Soviet government towards them. The implication was that the person in question was naive, foolish, or in willful denial, and that he or she was being cynically used by the Soviet Union, or another Communist state.

So it was originally a term for the communist sympathizers in the West that were doing their bidding, unwittingly promoting an ideology very different from the utopian image that these people held for it. This ideology was twisted as to its true nature in these people's minds so that even Lenin himself recognized this misperception and acknowledged that it was not in these people's best interest, by coining the phrase "useful idiots."

So who are today's useful idiots. The press is one, willfully reporting bullshit about what is going on in the Middle-East. I don't know if it is just plain laziness, a vestige of their agenda laden editorial policies or the drive to scoop in short news life cycles that create this sloppiness in reporting. Maybe sloppy reporting was the norm pre-blog days when a monolithic press had little competition and rarely got caught making errors or identified as complicit in pushing a political point of view.

The problem with such journalism is that stories get promoted quickly that may not be true or are generated to create appearances or impressions that are clearly false. What drives the Reuters photojournalist Hajj to create fake pictures? Competition or complicity with Muslim killers? Why didn't Reuters catch these problems before? They were in the best position to opine on the pictures prior to publication. Were the editorial policies such that the fake photos met the storyline and expectations of the Reuters employees so therefore generating no questions? Some of Hajj's pictures were clearly photo-shopped so how did they get through the scrutiny that the big media touts as its advantage over the non-policed blogosphere?

Evidence of such poor reporting or taking the word of biased players in the Middle-east creates problems for the press and those that are truly interested in making the world a better place. For example, Reuters reports this...

"An hour ago, a horrific massacre took place in Houla village as a result of the intentional Israeli bombardment that resulted in more than 40 martyrs," Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told an Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut.

However, the problem with this statement by the Prime Minister is that there weren't 40 people killed, just one in that strike. And as Dinocrat asks, if there was really only one killed, how did they get the local villagers that they interviewed to say this?

Residents of Houla said they feared up to 60 people, including many children, had been killed. They said most of the people were shepherds who had refused to flee the fighting.

So were these 59 resurrected people out tending their sheep and there was confusion among the locals as to how many were killed? Did someone miscount the one body pulled from the rubble?

And how about Qana, where there are still lots of unanswered questions on the Israeli bombing of a building there where early reports of 50 dead were reduced to 28. I haven't seen the meida firestorm seeking truth there. As the media reports, there were 13 children killed in that attack as well as many women. But one of the questions that I have never heard asked by the media and never dealt with there, if it was truly middle of the night, where were the men?

Is Hezbollah using the tactics and "useful idiots" in the press as Ayman al-Zawahiri promotes in the first quote at the top of this piece? The goal of Hezbollah is to make it appear that Israel is the one that is indiscriminate and not their own firing of hundreds of rockets wildly into northern Israel with the express intention of killing civilians? "Useful idiots" like the reporters and editors at Reuters make this fiction a reality through their actions.

Reuters and other media organizations have become the useful idiots for the frothing at the mouth Islamic militant. They are ready and willing to report anything suitable that meets their anti-Israel or anti-American criteria and creates negative headlines for both countries. Either that or they are just plain incompetent and shouldn't be in the news business at all.

But The American Thinker delves into the why the useful idiot is so dangerous in this conflict with Islam...

The Useful Idiot, among other things, is a master practitioner of scapegoating. He assigns blame to others while absolving himself of responsibility, has a long handy list of candidates for blaming anything and everything, and by living a distorted life, he contributes to the ills of society.

The Useful Idiot may even engage in willful misinformation and deception when it suits him. Terms such as "Political Islam," or "Radical Islam," for instance, are contributions of the Useful Idiot. These terms do not even exist in the native parlance of Islam, simply because they are redundant. Islam, by its very nature and according to its charter --the Quran-- is a radical political movement. It is the Useful Idiot who sanitizes Islam and misguides the populace by saying that the "real Islam" constitutes the main body of the religion; and, that this main body is non-political and moderate.

By legitimizing Islam's prejudices and only characterizing them as radical when manifested in deadly and barbaric behavior, creates the illusion that these are deviations from the body teaching. Unfortunately it is not. Islam never went through the Reformation and Renaissance

The 'humanism' of the Renaissance period stimulated unprecedented academic ferment, and a concern for academic freedom. Ongoing, earnest theoretical debates occurred in the universities about the nature of the church, and the source and extent of the authority of the papacy, of councils, and of princes.

and continues to teach and preach hate, violence and a way of life better suited to the 7th Century than today's world. Violence is taught to Muslims as a solution to their ills. Until we realize that these people as a whole are dangerous and that it is difficult to distinguish the "good" or "moderate" Muslim from the crazy ones that gun down women in a synagogue in Seattle our world will continue to deteriorate.

AS one Iranian writer says...

The lesson is clear. Beware of the Useful Idiots who live in liberal democracies. Knowingly or unknowingly, they serve as the greatest volunteer and effective soldiers of Islam. They pave the way for the advancement of Islam and they will assuredly be among the very first victims of Islam as soon as it assumes power.

Israel's Primer Minister Olmert Tells European Plutocrats To 'Get A Grip.'

Bloviating European plutocrats quacking over unfortunate civilian deaths in Lebanon overlook their own responsibility in civilian deaths in recent conflicts....

"Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll.

"European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket.

"I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."

Of course, mooing Europeans hide behind the consensus actors such as the UN and NATO so that they can plausibly deny responsibility for any action what-so-ever. But Olmert has it right, these clowns are not looking at this conflict through anything but muck-caked glasses.

Democrats And Republicans Are Different....

According to a Washington Post poll, half of the respondents believe tat the US should still align with Israel. However, Republicans were firmer supporters of this alignment than Democrats, and this is no surprise to me. Either the Democrats want to sell Israel out to the Arabs as appeasement or just are not prepared to fight to keep our way of life.

Overall, 50% of the survey's respondents said the United States should continue to align with Israel, compared with 44% who backed a more neutral posture. But the partisan gap was clear: Democrats supported neutrality over alignment, 54% to 39%, while Republicans supported alignment with the Jewish state 64% to 29%.

But I think that this guy has gotten it right on his observation....

"I feel badly for Israel. They don't run around looking for trouble, but they are constantly being harassed and attacked by Hezbollah," said Rick Poleck, 54, of Huntingdon, Pa., a poll respondent.

Sung To The Tune Of Kokomo....

Camel Toe.

The Domesday Book....

The 1,000 year-old Domesday Book is now available online. My Grandmother's family is one of the landowners listed on the ancient registry.

The Domesday Book was compiled on the orders of William I, who became England's king when he defeated the Saxon king, Harold, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. In 1085, he ordered a survey to determine the taxable value of his kingdom.

Officials fanned out across England to assess who owned the land and what was on it. The result is a detailed record that lists more than 13,000 places. Farmland, woodland, meadows, pastures, mills and fisheries are enumerated; there are estimates of the number of freemen, indentured peasants and slaves on each estate.

All kingdoms need taxes, so this exercise was designed to ensure that the sovereign got the taxes due.

I always thought that it was the Doomsday Book, not the Domesday Book. The name of the book is a biblical reference to the last judgement. The end of time is doomsday but they slightly changed the name to Domesday for some reason.

Jackie Mason Comments On Mel Gibson....

Very funny. Talks about how silly it is to keep asking for more and specific apologies. He thinks someone will ask him to get circumcised to atone for his comments. Spike is right, Jews are funnier at telling jokes.

A Sensible Arab?

A sensible Arab voice on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, the Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Times, Ahmed Al-Jarallah.

Revisiting One Of My Favorities....

Vile Palestinian Commentary....

Vile Palestinians call the American Secretary of State...

media outlets controlled by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party the past few days have been using racist rhetoric in their reports, referring to the American representative as the "black woman," "raven," "colored dark skinned black lady" and "black spinster."

Alright, Palestinians have proven over-and-over not to be the brightest people on the planet but they also published this piece of crap...

Condoleezza Rice depicted in Al Quds as pregnant with a monkey. The image's caption read, "Rice speaks about birth of new Middle East."

Ok. So they don't like Americans, I can handle that. I can handle some of the hateful shit they spew out on occasion. They are a vanquished people and they rightfully deserved to be, so they are also an angry people. But this just shows how juvenile they are and how they have sunk down to become a vile, spiteful, hateful, useless people.

But racial attacks are nothing new for Condi, when she visited China in early 2005, this was seen to happen on the internet but not through official Chinese media channels...

While there, she made a few statements mildly critical of China's belligerent "Anti-Secession Law" aimed at Taiwan, and urged the Chinese government to embrace more democratic virtues. Many Chinese burst into racist tirades against African Americans in general and Secretary Rice in particular on many of China's government-sponsored Internet BBS forums. "Black b***ch!," "woman n**er," [should be n***er] "Americans IQ is so low that they have chosen a black b***ch to be their Secretary of State," "Rice is nothing but a lackey of the American hegemonism," are among the ugliest racist commentaries that remained uncensored by the otherwise ubiquitous Internet police in the world's most monitored cyberspace.

If these racist outbursts reflect some extreme tendencies among the extreme elements in China's society, internalized chauvinism in China's popular culture remains pervasive among ordinary Chinese citizens. The Chinese government in its vigorous campaign of "Patriotism Education" strongly endorses "patriotic songs" that blatantly advocates chauvinism.

It seems as if this extreme nationalism allows people to think that they can respond in a juvenile and childish manner. But a better explanation, particularly when it come to this type of international political response is that people just do not have an intellectual argument against what is being dealt with, so they descend to a lower level and feel compelled, probably without regret, to poke at race.

An Arab, desperate for water, was plodding through the desert when he saw something far off in the distance. Hoping to find water, he walked toward the object, only to find a little old Jewish man sitting at a card-table with neckties laid out on it.

The Arab asked, "My thirst is killing me. Do you have water?"

The Jewish man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie? They are only $150. This one goes very nicely with your robes."

The Arab shouted, "Idiot! I do not need an overpriced tie. I need water!"

"OK," said the old Jew, "it does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie, and that you insult me. I will show you that you have not offended me. If you walk over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant. Go! Walk that way! The restaurant has all the water you need!"

The Arab staggered away toward the hill and eventually disappeared. Four hours later the Arab came crawling back to where the Jewish man was sitting at his table.

The Jew said, "I told you, about two miles over that hill. Could you not find it?"

"I found it all right," rasped the Arab. "Your brother won't let me in without a tie".

Some Interesting And Appropriate Quotes For the Day....

I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats... ~Benjamin Franklin

The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses... ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

Our children are not born to hate, they are raised to hate. ~Thomas della Peruta

An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. ~Thomas Paine

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. ~Mahatma Gandhi

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. ~Voltaire

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~Issac Asimov

About the quote: The character Salvor Hardin speaks these words in Asimov's "Foundation."

All nations want peace, but they want a peace that suits them. ~Admiral Sir John Fisher

Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. ~Thomas Mann

Weighing In On Mel Gibson.....

I hate doing this, since I think that most, if not all Hollywood actors and actresses are ill deserving of our time particularly when they are chattering about politics. Who cares what Johnny Depp or others think.... about anything. Other than offering a convenient pretty talking head, what do these people offer as far as experience or scholarly contemplation of the day? Let me venture to guess, that they offer very little.

So Mel Gibson said some unfortunate things in a drunken rant that got incredible press coverage. Too bad for him. He did more damage to himself than to any ethnic or racial group, in my humble opinion. Despite it being inexcusable, these things happen. Hopefully sensible people learn from these mistakes. But more importantly to me, and the point that I want to illustrate here, is that I didn't care about his or any other entertainer's politics, prejudices, religious affiliations, club memberships, thoughts and most of the other personal landscape issues before, and I still don't care what they or he thinks now. What these imbeciles think is a fantastic waste of time and energy and risks diverting attention away from the real issues that we as Americans need to tackle. Also, if entertainers offend, we can deal with them by not supporting their product. Its as simple as that.

What is most disturbing to me, is that it appears that there has been much more press commotion surrounding Mel Gibson's drunken rantings, than the crazed Islamic man that walked into a Jewish synagogue in Seattle a few days ago and shot unarmed women in cold blood, murdering one.



Why is it that we try to excuse the behavior of twisted Muslims killers and vilify people like Mel Gibson? If Mel Gibson is guilty then there are lots of others that should be treated in a similar vain.

There are a billion Muslims wandering this earth and it appears to me as if there are many more of them that are prone to violence targeted against unarmed civilians, whether in Seattle, Madrid, London, Iraq, Bali, etc. in such situations such as in Seattle than there are non-Muslims that do these things to Muslims in those same countries. Why is it that the outrage is directed so ferociously towards Mel Gibson, Israel, George Bush, The USA than to Iran, Hezbollah or such strange hateful groups such as the Islamic Thinkers Society [not much thinking going on there these days].

The reason that I think is that people are afraid to confront Muslims on their twisted way at approaching the world. When at risk, people strike out at ones that will not arbitrarily strike back. People are afraid of Muslims, they are terrorizing people, and as a result, people feel compelled to strike back. So they do at those that won't hit back. Its like going home and kicking the dog when one has a bad day at work. This behavior itself is disfunctional and will only cost us in the long-run.

Plutocrats Fail To Recognize Hizbollah As A Terrorist Organization....

I just wonder what it takes....

EU officials have said the situation in Lebanon is too delicate to freeze out Hizbollah.

Levey called the EU's reluctance so far to take action against Hizbollah "regrettable."

"This isn't a Clearing House issue, but the need for consensus on these things has resulted in the continued non-recognition of Hizbollah as a terrorist organization in Europe, which I think is regrettable," Levey said.

Their fear of defining Hizbollah as a terrorist organization probably stems from the thought that they don't want to piss off the blood thirsty terrorist Muslims potentially resulting in another attack on their soil. The Muslims have the Europeans in such appeasement mode, that they have become an unreliable partner to drive terrorists out of the fabric of life in Europe and in the Middle-East. Europeans are now unable to stand up in even the most symbolic of terms, and that is defining an obvious terrorist organization such as Hizbollah as one.

Appeasers in Europe will fail at this task, since the Muslims don't want peace but to defeat and destroy Western values in Europe and around the world. Appeasement will only allow Muslims to take a little more ground before they attack again. As Winston Churchill said of appeasement...

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

China, Way Over Heating....

The capital will also add an estimated 1 billion square feet of high-end property by 2008, according to Jack Rodman, a partner at Ernst & Young in Beijing.

A billion square feet of office space is around 2 and a half times the amount of office space in New York City. A billion square feet is around 6 miles by 6 miles or almost 10 kilometers by 10 kilometers. Its enough new office space, assuming 150 square feet per employee, for almost 7 million more employees. It is the equivalent of 1,275 IFC #2 office towers. Or the equivalent space to an IFC #2 office building that was 325 miles tall.

Just assume for a moment, if it does all get leased up, that there will have to be housing for 7 million more people, transportation to get them around, restaurants and supermarkets to feed them. 7 million more people is doubling the size of Hong Kong by 2008.

And if they don't lease up this space for new businesses, then what becomes of it? Problem assets for the banks that already have over US$150 billion of bad assets on the books. And a billion square feet of office space is for just one city. Actually I never really understand this whole Beijing office party anyway. Its like if a company decides to set up in the US, they open an office in Washington, DC. What? Do they want to get shot and robbed by ruffians on the street there. Everyone always tells me 'that is where the power is' and all of that hoo-haa. But if that is what doing business in China is all about, then it is arbitrary and silly. Bureaucrats should not be involved. All that they can do is make it more inefficient. White people will have a difficult time making money in China, so get out now.

A not too good assessment for China's prospects here.