90 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  3. The latest from the comedy team of O&B is panned.
    The re-do is panned.
    It’s George’s fault.
    Tinyurl thinks it’s hilarious and serves up this groaner: “com/bq9gag”.
    …-
    “Biden oath joke gets icy reception
    By Ben Feller, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
    “Obama did not laugh or even smile at Biden’s line. His look and body language were serious. Cable news outlets replayed the moment prominently.”
    “Apparently there’s a time and a place for jokes, because Obama offered one himself.
    He told reporters in the Map Room for the brief ceremony that he and Roberts were going through the drill again because the first time was “so much fun.”
    http://tinyurl.com/bq9gag

  4. Thanks ET. I WILL read the link this time; I really don’t understand the water issue. In the meantime, I hope you read my link too. It contains much news-reporting and CAMERA’s corrections. I was quite surprised to learn that Jordan had made an agreement to supply water to the West Bank and renegged. That Israel also supplied S Lebanon towns (at the time of the article, anyway).
    In the meantime, tho, I seem to remember an earlier comment of yours to the effect that West Bank water was a factor in the Six-Day War. Perhaps I misread you. If not, that surely is a presposterous claim.

  6. Indulgences collapse; the hoax/fraud melts into history.
    …-
    “The sell-off has sparked a collapse in carbon prices, which have fallen by up to a third this month and could drop as low as 5 euros from a peak of 31 euros last summer, analysts say.”
    “That has raised some uncomfortable questions about a scheme meant to fight climate change rather than subsidise companies during a downturn.
    “This was not designed as a scheme to give corporates cheap short-term funding options in the face of a credit crunch meltdown where banks are not lending,” said Mark Lewis, Deutsche Bank carbon analyst. “But that appears to be what’s happening.””
    …-
    “EU climate cash windfall for industry in downturn”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8298644

  7. glasnost – I resent, deeply, profoundly, your suggestion that my computer incompetence, which defines the pure essence of my original tribal nature has ended and that I have moved ‘forward’ to a modern lifestyle. I remain, as I was, ‘natural’..which some of you biased people define as ‘computer incompetence’.
    Actually, I HAD finally figured out how to post the links, (and that took a few days, I assure you) but, when I tried a few days to post one on water, I was sent to The Corner three times. I gave up and went back to my ‘natural’ (heh) tribal self.
    me no dhimmi- yes, the 1967 war was defined, in large part, as over control of water, in particular, both the Jordan river and the West Bank aquifers. Jordan had been thinking about diverting the Jordan River waters. Here’s one link (I hope) to that; it’s superficial but there are other more indepth analyses
    BBC article
    The situation is, as I noted, that the ME has a large water problem. Its ecology isn’t like that of Europe, which has bountiful water due to its rainfall ecology or like N. America with our lakes etc. Our problem is of our own making, pollution. The ME problem is natural; there simply isn’t enough water and inadequate rainfall to replenish that water. So, when your population increases, and you also move into industrial rather than sustenance agriculture, then control of water becomes critical. Very critical.

  8. The Bombers are dumping Glenn. Seems the quarterback world of the CFL is in flux. Printers being the starter in Hamilton is 50/50 according to reports.

  9. Another shooting in Toronto, closes down part of the subway system, Globe reports.
    Will we be seeing gormless Gopher Miller come out of his hole and call for a ban on handguns?

  10. For sure, I know there’s a water problem. My only interest in pursuing this is to get to the bottom of the anti-Israel spin, which you have to admit, is formidable, and fraught with, not mere error but, disinformation.
    Sorry, ET, water was not an issue in the Six-Day War: Israel BEGGED King Hussein to not attack in 1967 and promised that if it obliged it would not touch the West Bank. That is a indisputable historical fact. You do your case a grave injustice engaging in this kind of historical revisionism.

  11. Denis Dutton: The Art Instinct
    W. H. Brady Program in Culture and Freedom Luncheon
    American Enterprise Institute, 21 January 2009
    At this event, Dutton will discuss his widely acclaimed new book, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. He will show how Darwin’s evolutionary ideas not only explain the facts of animal and human biology, but have much to say about the moral, intellectual, and artistic lives of human beings. Evolutionary processes tell us why the arts are central to human life across cultures and ages. Human aesthetic tastes, Dutton argues, are not socially or culturally constructed, but are inborn traits shaped by natural and sexual selection. He will discuss how our sense of beauty is as much a part of human makeup as our binocular vision or opposable thumbs. Dutton’s provocative lecture will offer radical new insights into both the nature of art and the workings of the human mind.
    (Webcast available under “Event Materials.”)

  12. The country is on the edge of bankruptcy, the housing value collapses andthere are of course great investment opportunities.
    MSM implosion is a small side-effect of the Internet and the end of mass-production, mass-information, hopefully massive government spending. One of the coming consequences of decentralization will the end of the city as we know it. Historically, there have been only three reason while people where concentrating in one area: religious, trade and security. Today, these reasons either are not valid or the city is not the only one that can necessitate them. When you hear that your city needs bail-out, run!

  13. This essay by Ibn Warraq, “Apologists of Totalitarianism: From Communism to Islam, Part I” is interesting, particularly in the context of the current prosecution of Geert Wilders by trembling judges in the formerly Christian nation of Holland.
    http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/30778/sec_id/30778
    Warraq writes “The all-embracing nature of Islamic Law can be seen from the fact that it does not distinguish between ritual, law (in the European sense of the word), ethics and good manners.” (emph. mine) “In principle this legislation controls the entire life of the believer and the Islamic community, it intrudes into every nook and cranny: everything, to give a random sample, from the pilgrim tax, agricultural contracts, the board and lodging of slaves, the invitation to a wedding, the use of tooth-picks, the ritual fashion in which one’s natural needs are to be accomplished, the prohibition for men to wear gold or silver rings to the proper treatment of animals is covered.”
    Warraq’s essay includes a number of prescient/instructive quotes from the last century which note the striking similarities between Islam and communist/fascist movements in the west. Bertrand Russell wrote, in 1920: “Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam….Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahommet….Among religions, Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world”.
    Karl Jung, in 1930: “We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future.”
    Albert Speer, while he was imprisoned after the Nuremberg trial, wrote in his book “Inside the Third Reich”: “(Hitler believed the Mohammedans who penetrated France in the eighth century) could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire. [emphasis added] Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”
    Manfred Halpern wrote, in 1963, “The neo-Islamic totalitarian movements are essentially fascist movements. They concentrate on mobilizing passion and violence to enlarge the power of their charismatic leader and the solidarity of the movement. They view material progress primarily as a means for accumulating strength for political expansion, and entirely deny individual and social freedom. They champion the values and emotions of a heroic past, but repress all free critical analysis of either past roots or present problems.”
    It’s almost disturbing to see that the nature of the problem with Islam was more correctly identified back when before matter-of-fact, clear-headed observation was elbowed aside by the modern, from-academia-down notion that Islamists, including those in the Palestinian territories, are simply victims responding to provocations from colonialism and Jews.

  14. EBD: Thanks for the link. How true your last paragraph.
    A while back I read Ibn Warrag’s Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism..
    Heavy going, a bit too scholarly for this pedestrian non-erudite mind.
    Said was a highly successful fraud who was almost single-handedly responsible for the big lie to which you allude in your last paragraph. A good friend of Obama, I believe.

  15. From Warner Todd Huston at newsbusters.org:
    “So what do you get when you mix a Canadian TV hostess with the venerable Helen Thomas? An admission of bias so strong that it could ward off a vampire. Just why the image of the undead first came to my mind is anybody’s guess, but there you have it.
    “On a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation morning TV interview show called ‘Sun Day,’ Thomas was interviewed on how she felt about presidents past, present what was to be future with the Obama inauguration still then days away. She was also quizzed on her profession in which Thomas claimed only liberals should be engaged. And that isn’t all. She also said that conservatives are neither thinking nor caring people.”
    (….)
    “…it is…no surprise that Thomas feels that George W. Bush was the worst president. Fortunately, her biased and wholly uninformed view will be meaningless to real historians in the years to come. It really isn’t a surprise that she feels this way based on the segment in the interview where Thomas admits to being a liberal. Allahpundit from Michelle Malkin’s HotAir says that Thomas’ admission is a “sunbeam of candor,” but I call it more like a dagger into the heart of journalism.”
    The CBC interviewer (Carol McNeil) said “I’m sure that if somebody from the right was sitting here they would say…if you ask the question ‘what should a reporter be’ they will say, ‘Oh, I don’t know, how about objective?” Thomas replied — brace yourself — “You’re not asking people not to think (and) not to care, are you?…I did it for 57 years; I was never, never accused of bias…”
    Huston concludes, “You see, according to Thomas, one cannot be a conservative and be a thinking or caring person. It is clear in her reply to the interviewer. When the interviewer asks Thomas why reports must be liberal and cannot just be objective, Thomas replies with: “You’re not asking people not to think not to care are you?” To Thomas a conservative is not just wrong, mistaken, or even misguided. A conservative is uncaring and unable to think.
    “This is the hatred that Thomas harbors in her heart. With this slip of the mask, Thomas shows what a horrible person she really is; a hate wracked ignoramus. But at least she has finally cast aside her fake mask of civility and let the truth tumble out. And in this, she is surely not much different than her brethren in the rest of the Old Media.”
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2009/01/21/what-else-should-report-be-liberal

  16. EBD – I fully agree with that last paragraph and I’ve been saying here that defining Islamic fascism as a result of Israel’s existence and behaviour, is incorrect. A lot of people here have disagreed, insisting that it is a reaction to Israel and ‘the Jews’. It is far more complex than that.
    However, I disagree with any conflation of Islam with Islamic fascism. Halpern’s outline of the neo-Islamic totalitarian movements as fascist is, I feel, correct. Fascism is a political movement focused on an insistence that ‘at one time’ the group (ethnic, religious) was in a pure state of existence; that the modern mode has polluted this pure state, and that one must return to this fundamentalist past to regain that purity. That’s why Islamic fascism is fundamentalist; it rejects the modern industrial world. Since it is, as are all totalitarian movements, unable to critique itself, it doesn’t understand that it cannot return to a mythic non-industrial past.
    I’m not sure of his point about the ‘all-embracing view of Islam’. Such an intrusive, total control over lifestyle is hardly isolate in Islam. Orthodox Judaism is exactly the same, with the same precise and ‘intrusive’ outlines of all behaviour. Same with other tribal systems, including the old Chinese and Japanese kingdoms.
    I disagree also with Bertrand Russell’s views. He ignores that Judaism also includes a ‘love of contemplation’ and that Christianity promotes action rather than contemplation. His variables differentiating the religions are spurious. The real variables to use, I think, are whether the individual is expected to be a free and independent thinker, ie, does the individual have the capacity-to-reason? Islam, in its fundamentalist mode certainly rejects reason, individualism, science. Communism also rejects the individual and reason. In Buddhism, the individual is a transient expression of a greater energy. In Judaism, the individual is an important expression of a collective people.
    My point is only that Russell’s choice of variables is pretty weak.
    Can’t stand Jung, so I won’t comment. Said was actually a literary theorist, so his view, with which I strongly disagree, was a postmodern account of history – but he viewed history ‘as if’ it were a literary text. He ignored facts and empirical reality; he was focused only on perception – a highly subjective area.
    Again, it is an error to merge Islamic fascism with Islam. Islam, as a mental construct, a political and social system, can be modernized, and there are Muslims who are engaged in this area. Islamic fascism, as a political agenda, can only be confronted, militarily and legally and intellectually – and destroyed.

  18. I beg to differ, me no dhimmi, that water WAS an issue in the Six Day War.
    Just google ‘water and the six days war’ and you’ll find lots of links.
    Some says that there were seven causes of the war. Five were political.
    One – the Egyptian blockade of Israeli ships in the straits of Tiran
    Two- UN removal of the peacekeeping force between Egypt/Israel
    Three -massed troops by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon
    Four- Jordan being brought in, with its fear of internal civil war if it join the other arab states; and
    Five: Soviet interference
    Six: Jordanian-Israeli settler skirmishes; and
    Seven: WATER: ‘Site: Sixdaywar.co.uk
    ” The onetime Commander of the UN Observer Forces in the area, General Odd Bull, notes that the roots of the 1967 conflict started much earlier in 1964 (see Odd Bull, War and peace in the Middle East: The Experiences and Views of a UN Observer, Leo Cooper; London, 1976, pp. 72-78) On May 28, Israel started to pump water from the River Jordan to irrigate the Negev- the desert southern part of Israel. The quantity to be taken was within that allocated to Israel in Eric Johnson’s 1955 plan for sharing the combined water of the Jordan River and its tributaries between Israel and its neighbours. [5]
    The Arab governments at a meeting on September 7, 1964, objected to the development of the Negev in this manner and resolved to counter Israel’s action by drawing off water from two of the three tributaries to the Jordan (Hasbani in Lebanon and Baniyas in Syria), diverting them eastward and then southwards into the River Yarmuk within Jordanian territory. Israel reacted and notified the Armistice Commission and the UN Security Council that it would view the implementation of such plans as aggression and a breach of the Armistice Agreements. (Israeli Notes to the Security Council following th don’t do anything second Arab summit conference, S/5980, 18 September, and S/6020, 19-October 1964 [6] When the Syrian government, inside its own borders, actually attempted to divert the Banyas, Israel responded by three army and air-force attacks on the site of the diversion. [7]
    In passing, it is worth pointing out that Odd Bull’s observation that the conflict started in 1964 is misleading. In fact it started much earlier when Britain agreed to transfer its control over the headwaters of the Jordan to France of the under Franco-British [Boundary] Convention signed on December 23, 1920. ”
    Don’t underestimate the importance of control of natural resources, in this case, water. Nations don’t live by ideology; they live by their economy. That means keeping their population alive, and water is one key resource. Jordan, Syria and Israel are squabbling over control of the inadequate water supplies of the area.

  19. “Barlow speaks against Bottled Water, Activist to give presentation in City friday”
    Owen Sound Sun-times 01/20/2009
    Owen Sound residents will have a chance to hear Maude Barlows reasoning behind giving up bottled water for tap water this friday when the senior advisor on water to the president of the United Nations general assembly arrives in the city as part of her “Unbottle It” speaking tour.
    Barlow says that not only drinking bottled water enviromentally unfriendly, as hundreds of millions of plastic bottles end up in landfills every year, the bottled water industry works hard to undermine the publics faith in tap water.
    Those assertations, however have raised the ire of the Head of the Canadian Bottled Water Association, who say Barlow & her tour companion CUPE President Syd Ryan, are feeding the public with incorrect & inacurate information about her industry.
    owen sound sun-times
    **our city council in there wisdom (which is made up of too many tree huggers)has joined many a Ontario community in banning bottled water from all City venues.
    *** i talked to a counciler at one of our ohl games(btw: we were having a Beer in a Plastic Cup)& pointed out the disgust of the drinking fountains in the complex, the water taste foul(most likly the Old Pipes), they are not cleaned of Germs on a regular basis during an event, there is a large amount of Plastic Bottled Pops & Juices avail. at the complex & are they going to ban those.
    Are they saying that No Bottled Pops, Juices, Energy drinks go to the Landfill?
    No it just another Wacky Looney Tree-Hugging idea of Council, Monkey See Monkey Do.
    All Products(Bottled)can be recycled if Managed properly, & i pointed out Go look at the Recycle Bin right here in the Arena Complex as compared to the Garbage, Owen Sounders Recycle.
    *He pointed out to me Studies done in Ireland & Europe.
    My rebuttal I Live In Canada Not Ireland or Europe so stuff your studies & work with the Plastic Bottled Industries to Recycle Better, As for the leaching plastic it applies to all also.

  20. ET — “I’m not sure of his point about the ‘all-embracing view of Islam.’ Such an intrusive, total control over lifestyle is hardly isolate in Islam. Orthodox Judaism is exactly the same, with the same precise and ‘intrusive’ outlines of all behaviour.”
    It’s true, but what differentiates Islam from, say, Orthodox Judaism — and this isn’t just a matter of degree — lies in the extent to which this all-embracing view (“controlling the entire life of the community…into every nook and cranny”) has become a *state* view wherein citizens of an entire country fall under the control of leaders, courts, police, etc. who enforce said all-embracing view.
    Israeli citizens, including non-observant Jews and the twenty percent of Israeli citizens who are Arab (mostly Palestinian), are not required to obey Jewish Orthodox rules.
    And of course, the fact that other religions or systems are similarly all-embracing doesn’t render Halpern’s point about Islam questionable or inaccurate, inasmuch as he didn’t suggest that all-embracing views occur only within Islam.
    BTW, I’m not a fan of Jung or his ilk either (during the Rodney King riots, I just happened to be reading one of Jung’s books in which he said that people’s frustration was a result of them not indulging in their dark side enough — this while Reginald Denny was being hauled out of a truck and having his head smashed in with a piece of concrete) but his observation, made seven years before WW II — “the emotion in Germany is…warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future” — was at least prescient. I don’t think he was saying Islam = Weimar Germany, more just expressing a sense he had about a similar tendency to combine an overheated brain-pan with, er, enforcement of “wild god” emotions.

  21. Agreed, EBD – what you have in a TRIBAL societal infrastructure is that emphasis on the group homoegeneity, which of course, must denigrate the individual. The Arab Islamic states that are tribal have set up Islamism as a state religion and sociopolitical set of laws that rejects individual interpretation of that religion and rules.
    Israel’s orthodox operates in this same manner (merger of state and religion) but Israel is not a tribal but a democratic political infrastructure and therefore, the government is in the control of the electorate, not the church or a tribe. Orthodoxy does, however, play an important political and social role,including even the right of marriage.
    As for Jung, the less said about him the better. He was part of a phase, which emerges from time to time, trying to link social behaviour to genetic causes within a defined group. During WWII, there were a number of sociologists and anthropologists trying to figure out ‘why’ the Japanese/Germans etc behaved the way the did.
    They came up with quite a host of theories, including, Ruth Benedict’s dreadful ‘Patterns of Culture’ which claimed that each culture ‘chooses’ (heh) a certain behavioural mode – the Apollonian calm, or the Dionysian ecstasy and so on. Her statements on Japan as a ‘shame culture’ were equally oblivious of causality.

  22. “It was only four years since the last baby-milk scandal, when at least 13 children died after being fed fake baby powder that had no nutritional value. They died of malnutrition – their swollen bellies disguising that they were starving to death.”
    …-
    “Little comfort in milk scandal verdicts
    At Sanlu’s headquarters, in the grimy city of Shijiazhuang, most of the signs have been removed from company buildings.
    The large Chinese characters are missing; only the skeletal frame remains.
    But the company slogan still stands tall. “Make quality milk products, serve the people”, it proclaims in Chinese and English.
    Sanlu, and its executives, failed on both counts.”
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7845545.stm

  23. Peter O’Donnell at January 22, 2009 2:11 AM
    HAHA…
    I am a non-woman of non-color I guess. And I guess that makes me a non-person in the lefties eyes.

  24. ET: Everybody understands the importance of resources in political affairs. And economics of course. But again, the golden era for the “Palestinians” was from roughly 1967 (after Israel’s “occupation”) to 1987 when the first intifada was launched. And not just an excellent economy: a huge improvement in many other life factors as well.
    SO, obviously economics can’t have been the main issue.
    Your seven reasons for the Six-Day War, the 7th of which was “water”. We all agree that water is a key issue all through the region — a cause of conflict between Arab countries, even Egypt and Africa, I believe.
    BUT, water was not the casus belli of the war, which more accurately was the madman Nasser’s nascent pan-Arab nationalism and his aggressive war-mongering behaviour (covered in your reasons). AND — and you always refuse to acknowledge this — Islamic humiliation in having a formerly dhimmi people (and the lowest of them, the sons of pigs and monkeys) running their own country inside the muslim ummah. A no-no.
    As to your suggestion on the water-Six Day War nonsense — that I just “google it”, I have a suggestion for you:
    The Mossad and the CIA did 9/11. No really. “Just google it”. Lots and lots of hits. Even some university professors are keen on the theory.
    YOU say:
    Islamic fascism, as a political agenda, can only be confronted, militarily and legally and intellectually – and destroyed.
    Agreed! HOWEVER, you were against Israel’s Gaza operation, the main objective of which was the destruction of the islamo-fascist Hamas, which, sadly again, they fell short of completing, due to western pressure to appease and poor and cynical leadership.

  25. *”Diggers, most of them kids, were covered from head-to-toe with sand having done the labor of re-opening the tunnels Israel had just closed with 22 days of a withering air campaign.”
    …-
    “Obama urges Israel to open Gaza borders
    FT”
    …-
    *”[Gaza/Egypt Border]The Smuggling Tunnels are Open for Business!
    Just when I thought I’d seen every surprise the Middle East had to offer, I showed up on the Gaza/Egypt border. To understand why this is such a surprise you need to remember that Israel said the war in Gaza had two goals: 1) To stop the rocket fire and 2) To stop the smuggling of rockets into the Gaza strip and close the tunnels through which they are smuggled from the Egyptian side.
    So, I arrive at the border and find an entire community digging away like prospectors during the gold rush. It was all out in the open. They were pulling broken wood out of the opening of tunnels. Diggers, most of them kids, were covered from head-to-toe with sand having done the labor of re-opening the tunnels Israel had just closed with 22 days of a withering air campaign.
    One of the first I visited needed just a little patch up work and was back in the business of running goods underground from Egypt. I asked the owner of the tunnel if I could have a look at it he said, “Ahlan wa Sahlan,” welcome to everything.
    The problem is that the entrance of the tunnel had been hit. It was about 90 feet down and the ladder was broken away in the middle.”
    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2169830/posts

  26. It’s really almost too surreal to even fathom seeing in print, “Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr”….
    What’s Canadian about the entire Khadr terrorist family is beyond imagination. They are not Canadian except for the fact they were allowed entry into this country and proceeded to breed in the safe and secure environment we provided.
    What’s Canadian about going to Pakistan or Afghanistan to train as a terrorist and fight against our military or the military of our allies?
    How do we get that past the Leftard brains?

  28. me no dhimmi – when I listed water as ‘7’ this wasn’t an ordinal number. The numbers were not set up in any order of priority.
    As for my suggestion about googling on water, I repeat my suggestion to do just that. After all, you ought to be able to separate the riff from the raff, so to speak, and for you to assume that ANY and ALL Google hits are junk, is, of course, without merit.
    I repeat therefore, that water played an enormously important role in the six day war.
    I reject the ‘dhimmi’ argument. After all, with your perspective, such ought to have been the same attitude when the British governed that entire area after WWI.
    I disagree that the main object of the current Gaza war was about destroying Islamic fascism. Why? Because their tactics would never destroy fascism but actually serve to encourage it.
    They were trying to separate the people from supporting Hamas by showing the disastrous results of a Hamas government and agenda. What Israel is ignoring is that people don’t necessarily make that connection: IF I support Hamas, THEN Hamas will lob rockets into Israel and THEN Israel will come in and destroy my home.
    People won’t make such a connection; instead, they’ll make the connection that SINCE I am Palestinian, THEN Israel wants to destroy me. So, I think I’ll join Hamas.
    No, they didn’t fail because of Western pressure; they failed because fighting a war against Islamic fascism within a densely populated area must, absolutely must, involve the killing of civilians and the destruction of the homes of civilians. No ‘smart bombs’ have the capacity, yet and even ‘if ever’, to ‘know’ the difference between a civilian and a terrorist; all they can do is hit a geographic area.
    Therefore, the result of this war is to inflame the anger of the civilians and DECREASE any hope of a gap between the radicals and the non-radicals. I keep saying that the tactic to deal with fascism in the Palestinian area is not military but economic. This can be an ‘intellectual’ strategy.
    Focus on creating a gap; do this by economically strengthening the non-radical, the average Palestinian – then, he will, as has happened in Iraq, turn against the disruptive radical.
    Focus on making the average Palestinian secure, economically, with health care, food, water, job opportunities and a voice in his own governance- and Islamic fascism will have no ground in which to exist.
    But Israel has chosen the opposite strategy. It destroyed the greenhouse economy of Gaza by cutting off water and hydro and closing its borders to the export of the agricultural produce. This left the people turning to the radicals.
    I repeat – Israel ought to enable the Palestinians to have their own state; it ought to move out of the West Bank – but it won’t, because of the water, the arable land, their concern about close borders with Syria and Jordan. It ought to set up a close economic system with Gaza, but it won’t, because it doesn’t want a Palestinian state.
    Since the Arab nations don’t want the Palestinians to have a DEMOCRATIC state, and since Arabs consider Palestinians as ‘scum’, they won’t help.
    It is, in my view, therefore up to Israel to set up a kind of ‘binary state’; two states, one Judaic, one Muslim, both economically entwined, both democratic. That Binary State will be a great blow to Islamic fascism in the region. But, it takes a willingness to risk, and what is called ‘la longue duree’ perspective to do this. What’s the alternative? More wars, more fascism, more hatreds.

  29. ET:
    Well, I agree with some of this, but I completely disagree with you on water-Six Day War. I find it utterly ridiculous to think that Nasser started this war … because of water. I find this out loud laughable. Just more Israel demonization.
    I have the very opposite view on the recent Gaza war. Think of WWII and it’s complete and total destruction of Shintoism. NO, if Hamas had been hit much much harder — but Israel would require the support of the West to do this — and had been totally unequivocally defeated, I believe its appeal would diminish. I think you have it backwards. Hamas WINS when it doesn’t quite lose (with due deference to Monty Python’s skit on the cut up knight!) and it is this status which bolsters recruitment.
    I know you don’t like these simplistic notions, but never underestimate the honor-shame paradigm in the Arab world.
    Yes, it would be terrific if Israel could by-pass the terrorist groups, but this is actually not possible. It can’t be done. It could be done, however, if they were mercilessly destroyed.
    As to a state, again we have a problem: there’s no one on the ground there to actually DO a state. The territories are basically terrorist bootcamps, and UNRWA itself is a terrorist operation. If you could get rid of all 5 terrorist groups – including PLO/Fatah, there could have been a state. And again, they rejected the state — which included all the WB and Gaza — in 1947. Water?
    Finally, all your posts seem to START with Israel action, as if it happened out of the blue. You never seem to give enough weight to what preceeded Israeli action — always reaction.
    It’s always Israel that has to “enable” a state. Your posts are utterly silent on what the Arabs need to do to “enable” a state, which is more their responsbility than Israel’s.
    The thing is: there’s no negotaiting with terrorists. No feasible “outreach programme” for terrorists. You always seem to suggest that these groups are just foisted on the poor “Palestinians”, that they are not party to this aggression. But as we all know now, Hitler couldn’t have succeeded without at least the passive support of the highly cultured, cultivated German population. Same deal with the “Palestinians” who have been ruined by the PLO. Ruined!

  30. “Obama Urgent on Warming, Public Cool
    By Andrew C. Revkin
    The latest in an annual series of polls from the Pew Research Center on people’s top priorities for their elected leaders shows that America and President Obama are completely out of sync on human-caused global warming. Mr. Obama stressed the issue throughout his campaign and several times in his inaugural speech, mentioning stabilizing climate in the same breath as preventing nuclear conflict at one point.
    According to the survey of 1,503 adults, global warming, on its own, ranks last out of 20 surveyed issues. Here’s the list from top to bottom, with the economy listed as a top priority by 85 percent of those polled and global warming 30 percent:
    the economy, jobs, terrorism, Social Security, education, energy, Medicare, health care, deficit reduction, health insurance, helping the poor, crime, moral decline, military, tax cuts, environment, immigration, lobbyists, trade policy, global warming.”
    http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/obamas-urgency-on-warming-meets-cool-public/

  31. me no dhimmi – the six days war and its causes was far more complex than one cause – Nasser. I suggest you take a look at what was going on for some time with Syria and Jordan. And water. Not just Nasser.
    No, the economic construction of Palestine has to primarily involve and start with Israel. That’s because they are occupying the land base and control access to the water, hydro, gas, borders and roads. These basic resources are the infrastructure of a state, and if Israel won’t permit Palestinian use of them – there’s no state.
    The fact that the Arab states (not the Palestinian people who weren’t asked) rejected a Palestinian state in 1947 ought not to be held as a ‘so there, you bad people’ in 2009. It has no weight and ought to have no weight. At one time, we rejected the right of women to vote; should this have affected modern legislation?
    No, there is no way to militarily completely defeat a terrorist group. That’s because Islamic fascism is not simply a person/persons but is an ideology whose members can be immediately replaced. Nor is Islamic fascism a nation, which can be militarily defeated, as was Japan and Germany. It is an ideology. The only way to defeat it is to disable the generating infrastructure of that ideology.
    The generating infrastructure of Islamic fascism, dare I repeat, is a tribal political/economic infrastructure that denies power to the population. And the way to defeat Hamas in Palestine is to strengthen the capacity of the Palestinians to have a robust economy so that they will turn their backs on fascism. Again, because Israel controls the land use, the water, hydro, gas, borders, roads – it’s up to Israel.

  34. Thanks ET. A good exchange I feel.
    I think we have a lot more common ground that we sometimes think. It’s usually a matter of a different perspective on agreed-upon facts:
    For example, you say:
    Again, because Israel controls the land use, the water, hydro, gas, borders, roads – it’s up to Israel
    I say, yes, but this control was foisted upon Israel when it won an annihiliationist war launched by several Arab countries, and ended up retaining this control out of a survival instinct because the Arab countries wouldn’t negotiate (The Three No’s)– wouldn’t grant Israel what it desperately needed: A guarantee of peace and security within defensible borders. And the PLO continued this rejectionist approach bringing ruination to the Pal-Arabs to such an extent that a two-state solution is now well-past its expiry date. There’s no leadership for a state!
    Finally, the Israeli public, at one point, was massively in agreement with the idea that they would have to give up the WB in any two-state solution. But, sounding like a broken record, Arafat wasn’t sincere and launched an intifida which resulted in the deaths of 1000 Israeli civilians. Even Israeli peaceniks awoke to this chilling and depressing reality.

  35. ET you are relentless in your – it’s all Israel’s fault. “Again, because Israel controls the land use, the water, hydro, gas, borders, roads – it’s up to Israel”. You really must think Jews are superhuman.
    I have never said that water is not an issue, I just think it is a canard to lay all blame for water issues with Israel. I have never been unrealistic about Jews or Israel. I definitely know that Israel makes errors, acts in self interest, and has many faults.
    Reading your many many long posts on this subject it appears that for you, Israel can do nothing right. You’ve picked a side which is fine.

  36. “The ME problem is natural; there simply isn’t enough water and inadequate rainfall to replenish that water. So, when your population increases, and you also move into industrial rather than sustenance agriculture, then control of water becomes critical. Very critical.” – ET
    One can last 3 days without water and indefinitely without oil.
    Let the bastards drink oil. Or water at $100 a barrel.
    At that stage, I suppose, the west can spread immigrants, church steeples with extra loud bells and bikinis into their countries without regard and by sheer force based on the revenues gained from human need, rather than want.
    “I’ve been saying here that defining Islamic fascism as a result of Israel’s existence and behaviour, is incorrect. A lot of people here have disagreed, insisting that it is a reaction to Israel and ‘the Jews’. It is far more complex than that.” – ET
    Quite right. It’s the ideology spread and aped by the mostly uneducated, the educated – the inculcated alike. Mohammad hated Jews more than Hitler. Muslims are commanded to emulate Mohammad. The complexity is in understanding why Mohammad arbitrarily replaced Isaac with Ishmael on Abraham’s alter. And it really doesn’t matter if you believe in religion. Generationally perpetuated hate is sufficient.
    Though I agree. The answer isn’t war. Unless it’s total war, including the absolute annihilation of Islams roots in the schoolroom, law, politics and how you wipe your ass.
    Muslims are mostly uneducated in their own scripture, including the actions and sayings of their prophet. Their innocence is beaten into the brass of war through the generations that proceeded them. Without thought. Without knowledge. Without criticism. And typically not expressed in their own language.
    Mushrooms.
    Exposure and ridicule is the best weapon against the Islamic ideology. And the weapon that their political/religious leaders are most aware of and therefore defending themselves against through the actions of the OIC and the acquiescence of the UN.
    And Holland.

  37. brianr:
    If Eddie Sargent was still alive and Mayor, this wouldn’t have even been on the agenda.

  38. me no dhimmi and ex-liberal.
    The point should not be to defend Israel no matter what (ex-liberal) or to link current behaviour to past events (me no dhimmi). The fact that in 1948 the Arab States didn’t want the British Palestinian base divided and went to war; that some of these nations have continued to reject Israel and to fight while others have formally acknowledged it as a state – in a way, that’s not the issue and shouldn’t affect one’s current decisions and actions.
    In my view the only issue is the current reality on the ground. The local ground in this case, which consists of a large population (Palestinians) who were ‘promised’ a state of their own (how can an international or other body have the authority to divide up a foreign country?)…and who have now lived for a generation in poverty and occupation, used as a pawn by various other nations.
    The first reality is: These people exist; they can’t be defined as ‘similar to’ other Arabs because it is a grave error to merge all Arabs into one identity. They aren’t going to disappear either in a magic fog or be taken in by other Arab states.
    Second reality is: can and should the world support them as dependents? That is, should these people live their entire lives as, yes, ‘dhimmi’ of Israel? Or should they be in charge of their own economy and political system?
    Third reality is: Islamic fascism, which is a fascist political action, caused strictly by internal Arab/Persian political dysfunctionality but which is sidelined by the governments of these nations to focus, instead of the internal cause, on the West; Israel and the USA.
    How does one deal with these three realities in this location? I’m saying that the best defense for Israel is to expand both its economic capacities AND its Wall-of-Defense against those states that wish it harm (Syria, Iran) and against the emotional hysteria of Islamic fascism. How?
    By enabling, by setting up around it a new Arab state, not a tribal state but a democracy, one whose economy is intimately linked with that of Israel. This framework will develop a population whose loyalties are to their own nation, their own economy, their own well-being. That is, a Palestinian state.
    Like it or not, the key agent in this agenda has to be Israel because it occupies the land base and controls the resources. So far, it has rejected this task and has instead, made what I feel are the grave errors of a simplistic defensive and destructive strategy. Put up walls, go to war, cut off water and hydro, bulldoze homes as punishment. Result? The population has become more militant, vulnerable to an Islamic fascist take-over.
    Why not try an offensive and constructive strategy? Deliberately enable these people to set up robust economic activities, within a democracy and within close political and economic ties. Such an arrangement would have been impossible with Arafat because he didn’t want a separate Palestinian democracy (he’d lose power). But I maintain that it’s possible now – and Israel and the US and other nations should collaborate to make it happen.
    Such a structure – a ‘double-democracy’ of a Muslim and a Judaic state, economically intwined, would be a formidable base against the reluctant Arab states and against fascism.

  39. ET: I read the water piece which I found most excellent. I, however, did not find in it what I expected to find: a demonization of Israel, tho I note it refers to water as one of the causes of the Six-Day war.
    I was pleasantly shocked by the last paragraph:
    Despite fears that water could become a flash point for conflict, Israel and its neighbors have for the last several decades been more successful in cooperating to resolve water disputes than other issues. Moreover, past negotiations and proposed peace plans have demonstrated that water will not be the principal factor in determining territorial concessions; strategic, economic, and political concerns will hold greater weight in the calculus of decision makers. The complexity of the issue led both sides to delay resolving it, but an agreement must be reached to avoid future conflagrations over water.
    To be clear I find your compassion for the Pal-Arabs laudable, and I share it. I really do. The difference is I blame the the Arab-terrorist-leadership (Fatah and Hamas) for the disaster and see no possibility of executing what you propose with Fatah or Hamas there. And I notice that Obama’s very first call was to Abbas, who represents NOBODY.

  40. Water is a key factor in the ME because it is a scarce resource; we, who live in N. America and especially Canada, don’t realize how vital it is.
    Certainly, I think that Israel will be able to come to agreements with Jordan etc over water, but there’s still trouble with Syria and Lebanon. All sides have legitimate concerns that IF water is in the control of only ONE side, so to speak, that control can transform into a crippling economic function.
    After all, Israel has crippled the Gaza and West Bank Palestinian economy with its limitations on their access to water. Water can’t be ignored.
    As for my suggestion, which I, in my naivete, think is the only viable and best solution for Israel AND Palestine, I think it has to be done under the feet of Hamas and Fatah, so to speak. It has to be done directly with the local Palestinian farmers, mayors of towns, local business groups, etc to enable them to develop a viable agricultural economy – and – even, a non-agricultural service economy linked to that of Israel.
    Hamas would try to prevent this! But the people would start to turn against Hamas if they did so, and at this stage, the international world would have to come in to assist the local people against Hamas (the surge in Iraq).
    It can be done, and Israel’s normative strategy of defense and war, isn’t working. I suggest a different strategy.

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