Sorry I haven’t been able to blog for the past few days. Lots happening worldwide right now but I’ve been very busy on non-blog things. (Which, as regular readers know, happens from time to time.) Readers can use this open thread to continue a discussion on breaking events that is constructive and friendly. Thanks for hanging in there! I’ll be back soon I hope.
32 thoughts on “Open thread, early April 2011”
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“We’re in an information war, and we’re losing.” –Hillary. Yep. “Where’s Next for #Revolution” is proof: http://www.narconews.com/nntv/video.php?vid=25
The time of Tom and Jerry is about to start
I heard the news Pdt Obama is about to announce for his second mandate. both of them Hilary Clinton and Obama admire the good living in the White House . If I may guess right we are going to see sharp differences between them in the next few months. Therefore,both of them are surely planning with their teams to work hard and hard and declare an open fight against each other in order to gain the support of their party and be the potential candidate to be able to run the elections for the presidency of 2012-2016.
Hafid
“Bromide (language), a figure of speech meaning a tranquilizing cliché.”
“This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases … can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one’s brain. ” — George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”
The inane babbling of bromides by America’s political and military “leadership” has long-since anesthetized the public brain. Ready-made phrases like “information war” have no discoverable meaning, either in the sense of “information” or “war,” as normally understood by the unwashed and unlettered hoi polloi.
Now, if we speak of the American government’s undeclared War ON Information, that seems to have predictably produced a uninformed government and a misinformed public. In her corrupt campaign of Manufactured Mendacity and Managed Mystification (my own preferred choice of words), Secretary Clinton can perhaps point to an occasional “victory.” But in her pathetic waging of propaganda, or image (currently, “optics”) wars on behalf of indefensible imperial-presidentialism, she has most definitely failed — and deservedly so.
The Asia Times has an interesting article about the Koran burning/UN slaying here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MD05Df03.html
Martelly, who probably didn’t really make the second round but who, at US insistence… (you know how that ends) has “won” the Haitian “elections.”
Another triumph for Obama’s foreign policy, the former Ton Ton Macoute fan will be as good a US ally as the Honduran government is proving to be. And in Bahrain…
These, and the war in Pakistan and the attacks on Libya, are all solid planks in Obama’s Foreign Policy platform.
Surprise! Helena of Arabia is still in hiding
and refusing to accept responsibilty for
her gleeful promotion of the fantastic lies
comtained in the Goldstone Report.
As the ancient proverb tells us, “Silence is also speech.”
Fully aware that the ragtag army of misfits
who post to her website are totally incapable
of mounting any kind of plausible intellectual defense for
her deplorable conduct because none exists, the “magnificent” Helena
is probably toughing it out in the back of a cave somewhere
(or maybe in bomb shelter designed to protect her from evil Zionist
fundraisers for yeshivas and orphanages), all the while
hoping against hope that the passage of time — and the
equally deplorable conduct of her friends and colleagues in the
bash-Israel movement — will somehow come to her rescue.
So, here’s my prediction, sports fans. Helena is now finished.
Yes, finished. The final nail in the coffin containing the
pitiful remains of Helena’s respectability was driven in
just this morning by no less a personage than Judge
Richard Goldstone who yesterday moved to the very
top of Helena’s Zionist enemies list — that I am reliably
informed contains more than 100,000 names, including
all performers, Jewish or not, who have ever entertained at a barmitzvah…
And on and on and on with his very childish ad-feminam drivel…. Had to snip it for length reasons. ~ HC.
Good grief people, have you seen this?
Here’s another Zionist operator who gets appointed by O. to a real high position.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/04/05/us/politics/AP-US-Democrats-Chairwoman.html?ref=global-home
Why does H. get all this abuse and never gets appointed to anything good
where they at least would pay for her air fare and give her a free lunch
once-in-a-while.
Sure, I know these Zionists get better marks in school than we do
and don’t smoke or drink or take drugs or gamble or drive as fast
as us or shoplift like we do in the 7-11.
And have parents who mostly stay at home and don’t run around
like ours sometimes do. If this keeps up much longer, I’m going to
have to get a job somewhere writing blogs like this. And I don’t
think the pay is gonna be very good and comes with health insurance.
Mark Dinowitz, you need to step outside your little propaganda world–not everyone thinks that overwhelming physical evidence of Israeli brutality simply vanished because Goldstone wrote one poorly reasoned column with very little factual content.
Goldstone backtracked, but there’s not much substance to his recent op ed. Kenneth Roth at Human Rights Watch agrees that there is no evidence of targeting civilians as a matter of policy, but there is plenty of evidence that Israel targeted civilian infrastructure and used indiscriminate firepower in urban areas.
link
OK, so you release an undisciplined armed mob of racist/religious bigots — what the Apartheid Zionist Entity calls a “self-defense-force” — against trapped and brutalized Palestinian “sub-humans” and then claim that you didn’t do all the killing and property destruction in a “targeted” way (as opposed to some implied “other” way which makes it all acceptable). And this little bit of shabby, primitive word-magic aims to fool precisely whom?
The Apartheid Zionist Entity — or Tenth Crusade — will eventually come to the same end as the previous nine. Sometimes these aberrant adventures take a century or so to unravel. But they always do. Call it the “Samson Syndrome.”
There’s something for everyone in Judge Goldstone’s non-retraction of his UN Cast Lead report in a WaPo Op Ed in April.
For people favorably impressed by the report’s substance and painstaking detail, Judge Goldstone made several damning observations about Israel’s devious and cowardly conduct before and after the report was published.
1. Israel refused to co-operate with the official UN investigation into Cast Lead.
2. Israel waited until the report was published before launching an investigation of its own. But the Israelis didn’t investigate Cast Lead; they investigated the UN report, found details they didn’t like and, without offering a shred of evidence, assured Judge Goldstone that they investigated those.
One need not be gullible to believe that Israel investigated itself with timely open-ness and honesty, but it would help.
For people who feel that Judge Goldstone’s WaPo Op Ed absolves the Jewish state of any responsibility for wrong-doing during Cast Lead, he ensured that it was published on April Fools Day – something Zionists prefer not to mention, or think about.
Donald, Michael, Neil M and Helena (the Princess of Arabia) and “progressive” people everywhere never
bother to inform the world how they themselves would have reacted to thousands of indiscriminate
rocket attacks against their own neighborhoods, homes, schools, kindergartens, churches, mosques
and Quaker meetings. This is because they don’t mind, in fact admire, applaud and otherwise feel the need to justify in every way they can, acts of terrorism oerpetrated against Zionists, many of whom “just happen” to be Jewish.
http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=211780
Just to follow up with bad news of Bush Freedom and democracy in Iraq followed by Obama Bush who follow same steps.
The Mind of Muammar
I think the rocket attacks are atrocious. I think Israel’s much greater acts of violence (which didn’t start in December 2008) are also atrocious, as is the blockade on Gaza, the settlements, and so on. If I were worried about rocket attacks, I’d do two things–
A) Stop the racist immoral policies of my government against the Palestinians
B) Take limited precise action against those actually committing violence against civilians. This would include both Palestinians and Israelis.
Put them under arrest in the case of Israelis, and do very precise strikes in the case of those launching rockets.
The accusation of anti-semitism was funny. That sort of idiocy doesn’t work.
Gadaffi was blamed, but who really killed Yvonne Fletcher in 1984?
http://www.copi.com/articles/target.html
http://z13.invisionfree.com/julyseventh/index.php?showtopic=774
sill salah:
lets take a look at Gadaffis green book:
THE PARTY
The party is a contemporary form of dictatorship. It is the modern instrument of dictatorial government. The party is the rule of a part over the whole. As a party is not an individual, it creates a superficial democracy by establishing assemblies, committees, and propaganda through its members. The party is not a democratic instrument because it is composed only of those people who have common interests, a common perception or a shared culture; or those who belong to the same region or share the same belief. They form a party to achieve their ends, impose their will, or extend the dominion of their beliefs, values, and interests to the society as a whole. A party’s aim is to achieve power under the pretext of carrying out its program. Democratically, none of these parties should govern a whole people who constitute a diversity of interests, ideas, temperaments, regions and beliefs. The party is a dictatorial instrument of government that enables those with common outlooks or interests to rule the people as a whole. Within the community, the party represents a minority.
http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb1.htm
so why is this laughable? Whats laugable is the way people keep being sucked in by western propaganda…unfortunalty that folly leads to support for mass bombings by the inhumanitarian interventionists.
I find it disgusting that you demand “friendly” discussion. No. Hell no. I won’t be a friendly discussant with those who defend evil, ie. who defend Israel’s crimes, or Obama’s warmongering, etc.. No decent person should be.
“Below I have copied a section (from the Google Cache) on relationships with Total – the Paris based oil major. It is clear that Total is thick with the Gadaffi regime.” Libyan national Oil Corporation
“In some ways it reminds me of the line (jokingly) attributed to Rumsfeld when asked how he knew Saddam had WMD’s – I know because I sold them to him.”
French intelligence on Libya
Philip Girardi gut punches “humanitarian” interventions: “Many countries are not shy about massacring civilians. The United States has itself killed tens of thousands of them in Iraq and Afghanistan…By any metric Israel should be attacked first to prevent massacres of civilians as it has killed thousands of Arabs in internationally recognized war crimes carried out in Lebanon and Gaza…Both Republican and Democratic doctrines should be rejected because experience suggests that they do not save lives anywhere, quite the contrary, and each unfortunate overseas adventure only represents a new burden that has to be borne with no discernible gain for the American people.”
http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/04/06/humanitarian-interventionism-by-the-numbers/
The burden on the American people includes huge deficits that are gutting programs for education, health and Social Security. People need to start talking more about “guns vs. butter:” military adventurism vs. the health and welfare of the American people.
I was up here this morning and saw a post by somebody about two Jewish scientists who recently died. NOW IT IS GONE. I didn’t think Helena engaged in CENSORSHIP like this. I am disappointed in her.
تصعيد إيراني بعد الفشل في البحرين
م يعد المعيار الأساس لاستقرار منطقة الخليج أن يوجد فيها من يمارس دور «الشرطي»، أصبح المعيار حسن جوار ومصالح متبادلة. ومن شأن إيران أن تعي أن تربصها العدواني سعياً الى نشر نفوذها قد لا يكون في النهاية سوى وهم، بل إن طموحاتها لم تعد متناسبة مع المتغيرات، حتى لو توصلت الى «وفاق تاريخي» مع أميركا. يكفي أنها، بعد الثورة وإطاحة الشاه، أضاعت فرصة تغيير مسار المنطقة نحو علاقات تعاون ولإخراج إيران من الإرث الشاهنشاهي، لكنها تذهب الآن أبعد بالإصرار على إشهار «الورقة الشيعية» والعبث بها كأداة لزعزعة الاستقرار في الإقليم. وها هي تسمع للمرة الأولى تحذيراً سعودياً بأن ليس من حقها إقحام نفسها في شؤون أي دولة خليجية. وليس أمام دول الخليج خيار آخر غير تضامنها وتماسكها، لأن اختراق أي منها ستكون له أسوأ الانعكاسات على الخليج والعالم العربي.
http://www.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/252648
Thanks, Salah! (For those of you who do not read Arabic, Salah has posted a beautiful tribute to Israel and the Jewish people.)
Dream on Freiwitz!
It would be interesting to know why Salah linked to the piece, which talks about how Saudi Arabia considers that it has changed the situation in the Persian Gulf by defeating “Iranian intervention” in Bahrain.
I don’t know where JohnH is getting his information, but Salah’s article really is a tribute to Israel and the Jewish people praising, among other things, the beauty of its landscape, the remarkable productivity of its farms,
the comeliness of its women and the fairness of its judicial system.
Possibly someone is playing a adolescent joke on both JohnH and Salah.
Prof. Michael Freitag
Dept. of Semitic Languages
Capetown University
Thanks very much Prof. Freitag for clearing that
matter up. It’s amazing the number of people who
go up on the internet pretending to be knowledgeable
about Middle East affairs and don’t have the foggiest notion what they are talking about.
Freiwitz (translates Free Wit), Freitag, and Clapstein are trolls. Try googling Freitag’s supposed credentials, and see what you get (nothing).
Also, two questions for the trolls:
1) How many times does the word “Israel” appear in the article?
2) How do you translate the second and sixth words in Salah’s post? These words should be obvious to the most elementary student of Arabic.
The trolls have no clue.
JohnH,
One wonders what Semitic language Prof Freitag is a professor of. Definitely NOT Arabic!
“It’s amazing the number of people who
go up on the internet pretending to be knowledgeable
about Middle East affairs and don’t have the foggiest notion what they are talking about.”
Amazing indeed!
In the memory of the famous massacre that early Israelite terrorist militias when they slaughtered all the inhabitants in Palestinian village of “Deir Yassin”.
On this Friday is 63 years past for the memory of a terrorists acts
Hope this memory will move Prof. Michael Freitag a specialist in the history of Semitic Languages from Capetown University as an cadmic who respect his degree & his specialty with very close linked to the behaviors of the group of his specialty to start search for the truth to give us the full truth but NOT what it happen with Goldenstoen report….
Rice: Goldstone report should simply ‘disappear’
Peres to ask UN chief to cancel Goldstone report, sources say
Goldstone report: the unanswered questions
The terrorist State in ME?
Sudan threatens reprisal over ‘Israeli airstrike’
Tomorrow its the time of two very horrific events in ME
1- 9th of April 2003, A Mission completed by war criminal and Shoe recipient GW Bush
2- Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.
In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.
I apologize to all regular and good-faith readers for the troll attack here. I have IP-banned the bogus professor and his hench-people and shall close down this thread. Matters in Gaza and elsewhere are far too serious to allow their childish attacks on the concept of free, fact-based discourse to continue.