The killing of Saddam

The killing of Saddam eliminates a very important source of information. The trial over his crimes was merely a theater piece, enough theater to get the average individual an impression that he had a fair trial.

There is no doubt that Saddam was guilty, but he was not killed for these crimes. He was killed simply because he knew too much. Like in a good gangster movie, they killed the man before he spoke.

It is not a coincidence that there are so few interviews with Saddam after he was imprisoned, that his monologues during the trials were cut short, not televised or had him thrown out of the court.

Saddam knew too much about the special US/Iraq relationship. He could have told the world what kind of assistance and under which terms he received that assistance for starting the Iraq/Iran war in the 80's, who provided the biological weapons, which scientists, which companies, which countries provided the funding.

The man had the answers to too many questions, and would have been very valuable to humanity and for prosecuting everyone involved in the illegal trade of banned weapons and bringing to justice the whole network of corruption, the war makers and the war profiteers.

To his victims, to those that survived his brutality this might be a temporary relief, a limited payback. It would have been much better to utilize his knowledge and find and bring to court everyone involved, and have everyone of them judged.

There was no need to kill Saddam today, over killing Saddam after further trials had taken place. He was killed today over the crime of killing 148 people in 1982 over an assassination attempt. We never got a chance to hold a trial over the assassination of the Kurds, about his regime treatment of detainees, the Iran/Iraq war, and the invasion of Kuwait, nor did we get any answers to the Oil for Food program.

It all fits in place: they picked the one crime that could be relatively self-contained and one that would only drag "iraqi criminals". Any other trial would have dragged the good reputation of too many people to the streets.

The court did not ensure that all the open questions were answered.

He was swiftly killed because the man knew too much.

Journalistic Sausage Factory

BillMon: The Rovians now assume they can say anything, any freaking thing at all, and it will still come out the other end of the journalistic sausage factory as a "balanced" assessment that "both parties are doing it."

Collected expressions for Bush.

Am a big fan of the writings of Billmon, of the top of my head, he uses "Commander Codpiece", "Bible Boy" and "The Dauphin" to refer to Bush.

Judt's article

This is the first article I read from Judt, and it is excellent, from Haaretz:

The country that wouldn't grow up By Tony Judt

By the age of 58 a country - like a man - should have achieved a certain maturity. After nearly six decades of existence we know, for good and for bad, who we are, what we have done and how we appear to others, warts and all. We acknowledge, however reluctantly and privately, our mistakes and our shortcomings. And though we still harbor the occasional illusion about ourselves and our prospects, we are wise enough to recognize that these are indeed for the most part just that: illusions. In short, we are adults.

But the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature. The social transformations of the country - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from the outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one "understands" it and everyone is "against" it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take offense and quick to give it. Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal. Appropriately enough, this country that has somehow failed to grow up was until very recently still in the hands of a generation of men who were prominent in its public affairs 40 years ago: an Israeli Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep in, say, 1967 would be surprised indeed to awake in 2006 and find Shimon Peres and General Ariel Sharon still hovering over the affairs of the country - the latter albeit only in spirit.

But that, Israeli readers will tell me, is the prejudiced view of the outsider. What looks from abroad like a self-indulgent, wayward country - delinquent in its international obligations and resentfully indifferent to world opinion - is simply an independent little state doing what it has always done: looking after its own interests in an inhospitable part of the globe. Why should embattled Israel even acknowledge such foreign criticism, much less act upon it? They - gentiles, Muslims, leftists - have reasons of their own for disliking Israel. They - Europeans, Arabs, fascists - have always singled out Israel for special criticism. Their motives are timeless. They haven't changed. Why should Israel change?

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But they have changed. And it is this change, which has passed largely unrecognized within Israel, to which I want to draw attention here. Before 1967 the State of Israel may have been tiny and embattled, but it was not typically hated: certainly not in the West. Official Soviet-bloc communism was anti-Zionist of course, but for just that reason Israel was rather well regarded by everyone else, including the non-communist left. The romantic image of the kibbutz and the kibbutznik had a broad foreign appeal in the first two decades of Israel's existence. Most admirers of Israel (Jews and non-Jews) knew little about the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. They preferred to see in the Jewish state the last surviving incarnation of the 19th century idyll of agrarian socialism - or else a paragon of modernizing energy "making the desert bloom."

I remember well, in the spring of 1967, how the balance of student opinion at Cambridge University was overwhelmingly pro-Israel in the weeks leading up to the Six-Day War - and how little attention anyone paid either to the condition of the Palestinians or to Israel's earlier collusion with France and Britain in the disastrous Suez adventure of 1956. In politics and in policy-making circles only old-fashioned conservative Arabists expressed any criticism of the Jewish state; even neo-Fascists rather favored Zionism, on traditional anti-Semitic grounds.

For a while after the 1967 war these sentiments continued unaltered. The pro-Palestinian enthusiasms of post-1960s radical groups and nationalist movements, reflected in joint training camps and shared projects for terrorist attacks, were offset by the growing international acknowledgment of the Holocaust in education and the media: What Israel lost by its continuing occupation of Arab lands it gained through its close identification with the recovered memory of Europe's dead Jews. Even the inauguration of the illegal settlements and the disastrous invasion of Lebanon, while they strengthened the arguments of Israel's critics, did not yet shift the international balance of opinion. As recently as the early 1990s, most people in the world were only vaguely aware of the "West Bank" and what was happening there. Even those who pressed the Palestinians' case in international forums conceded that almost no one was listening. Israel could still do as it wished.

The Israeli nakba

But today everything is different. We can see, in retrospect, that the victory of Israel in June 1967 and its continuing occupation of the territories it conquered then have been the Jewish state's very own nakba: a moral and political catastrophe. Israel's actions in the West Bank and Gaza have magnified and publicized the country's shortcomings and displayed them to a watching world. Curfews, checkpoints, bulldozers, public humiliations, home destructions, land seizures, shootings, "targeted assassinations," the separation fence: All of these routines of occupation and repression were once familiar only to an informed minority of specialists and activists. Today they can be watched, in real time, by anyone with a computer or a satellite dish - which means that Israel's behavior is under daily scrutiny by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The result has been a complete transformation in the international view of Israel. Until very recently the carefully burnished image of an ultra-modern society - built by survivors and pioneers and peopled by peace-loving democrats - still held sway over international opinion. But today? What is the universal shorthand symbol for Israel, reproduced worldwide in thousands of newspaper editorials and political cartoons? The Star of David emblazoned upon a tank.

Today only a tiny minority of outsiders see Israelis as victims. The true victims, it is now widely accepted, are the Palestinians. Indeed, Palestinians have now displaced Jews as the emblematic persecuted minority: vulnerable, humiliated and stateless. This unsought distinction does little to advance the Palestinian case any more than it ever helped Jews, but it has redefined Israel forever. It has become commonplace to compare Israel at best to an occupying colonizer, at worst to the South Africa of race laws and Bantustans. In this capacity Israel elicits scant sympathy even when its own citizens suffer: Dead Israelis - like the occasional assassinated white South African in the apartheid era, or British colonists hacked to death by native insurgents - are typically perceived abroad not as the victims of terrorism but as the collateral damage of their own government's mistaken policies.

Such comparisons are lethal to Israel's moral credibility. They strike at what was once its strongest suit: the claim of being a vulnerable island of democracy and decency in a sea of authoritarianism and cruelty; an oasis of rights and freedoms surrounded by a desert of repression. But democrats don't fence into Bantustans helpless people whose land they have conquered, and free men don't ignore international law and steal other men's homes. The contradictions of Israeli self-presentation - "we are very strong/we are very vulnerable"; "we are in control of our fate/we are the victims"; "we are a normal state/we demand special treatment" - are not new: they have been part of the country's peculiar identity almost from the outset. And Israel's insistent emphasis upon its isolation and uniqueness, its claim to be both victim and hero, were once part of its David versus Goliath appeal.

Collective cognitive dysfunction

But today the country's national narrative of macho victimhood appears to the rest of the world as simply bizarre: evidence of a sort of collective cognitive dysfunction that has gripped Israel's political culture. And the long cultivated persecution mania - "everyone's out to get us" - no longer elicits sympathy. Instead it attracts some very unappetizing comparisons: At a recent international meeting I heard one speaker, by analogy with Helmut Schmidt's famous dismissal of the Soviet Union as "Upper Volta with Missiles," describe Israel as "Serbia with nukes."

Israel has stayed the same, but the world - as I noted above - has changed. Whatever purchase Israel's self-description still has upon the imagination of Israelis themselves, it no longer operates beyond the country's frontiers. Even the Holocaust can no longer be instrumentalized to excuse Israel's behavior. Thanks to the passage of time, most Western European states have now come to terms with their part in the Holocaust, something that was not true a quarter century ago. From Israel's point of view, this has had paradoxical consequences: Until the end of the Cold War Israeli governments could still play upon the guilt of Germans and other Europeans, exploiting their failure to acknowledge fully what was done to Jews on their territory. Today, now that the history of World War II is retreating from the public square into the classroom and from the classroom into the history books, a growing majority of voters in Europe and elsewhere (young voters above all) simply cannot understand how the horrors of the last European war can be invoked to license or condone unacceptable behavior in another time and place. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint. "Remember Auschwitz" is not an acceptable response.

In short: Israel, in the world's eyes, is a normal state, but one behaving in abnormal ways. It is in control of its fate, but the victims are someone else. It is strong, very strong, but its behavior is making everyone else vulnerable. And so, shorn of all other justifications for its behavior, Israel and its supporters today fall back with increasing shrillness upon the oldest claim of all: Israel is a Jewish state and that is why people criticize it. This - the charge that criticism of Israel is implicitly anti-Semitic - is regarded in Israel and the United States as Israel's trump card. If it has been played more insistently and aggressively in recent years, that is because it is now the only card left.

The habit of tarring any foreign criticism with the brush of anti-Semitism is deeply engrained in Israeli political instincts: Ariel Sharon used it with characteristic excess but he was only the latest in a long line of Israeli leaders to exploit the claim. David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir did no different. But Jews outside of Israel pay a high price for this tactic. Not only does it inhibit their own criticisms of Israel for fear of appearing to associate with bad company, but it encourages others to look upon Jews everywhere as de facto collaborators in Israel's misbehavior. When Israel breaks international law in the occupied territories, when Israel publicly humiliates the subject populations whose land it has seized - but then responds to its critics with loud cries of "anti-Semitism" - it is in effect saying that these acts are not Israeli acts, they are Jewish acts: The occupation is not an Israeli occupation, it is a Jewish occupation, and if you don't like these things it is because you don't like Jews.

In many parts of the world this is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling assertion: Israel's reckless behavior and insistent identification of all criticism with anti-Semitism is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia. But the traditional corollary - if anti-Jewish feeling is linked to dislike of Israel then right-thinking people should rush to Israel's defense - no longer applies. Instead, the ironies of the Zionist dream have come full circle: For tens of millions of people in the world today, Israel is indeed the state of all the Jews. And thus, reasonably enough, many observers believe that one way to take the sting out of rising anti-Semitism in the suburbs of Paris or the streets of Jakarta would be for Israel to give the Palestinians back their land.

Israel's undoing

If Israel's leaders have been able to ignore such developments it is in large measure because they have hitherto counted upon the unquestioning support of the United States - the one country in the world where the claim that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism is still echoed not only in the opinions of many Jews but also in the public pronouncements of mainstream politicians and the mass media. But this lazy, ingrained confidence in unconditional American approval - and the moral, military and financial support that accompanies it - may prove to be Israel's undoing.

Something is changing in the United States. To be sure, it was only a few short years ago that prime minister Sharon's advisers could gleefully celebrate their success in dictating to U.S. President George W. Bush the terms of a public statement approving Israel's illegal settlements. No U.S. Congressman has yet proposed reducing or rescinding the $3 billion in aid Israel receives annually - 20 percent of the total U.S. foreign aid budget - which has helped sustain the Israeli defense budget and the cost of settlement construction in the West Bank. And Israel and the United States appear increasingly bound together in a symbiotic embrace whereby the actions of each party exacerbate their common unpopularity abroad - and thus their ever-closer association in the eyes of critics.

But whereas Israel has no choice but to look to America - it has no other friends, at best only the conditional affection of the enemies of its enemies, such as India - the United States is a great power; and great powers have interests that sooner or later transcend the local obsessions of even the closest of their client states and satellites. It seems to me of no small significance that the recent essay on "The Israel Lobby" by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has aroused so much public interest and debate. Mearsheimer and Walt are prominent senior academics of impeccable conservative credentials. It is true that - by their own account - they could still not have published their damning indictment of the influence of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy in a major U.S.-based journal (it appeared in the London Review of Books), but the point is that 10 years ago they would not - and probably could not - have published it at all. And while the debate that has ensued may generate more heat than light, it is of great significance: As Dr. Johnson said of female preachers, it is not well done but one is amazed to see it done at all.

The fact is that the disastrous Iraq invasion and its aftermath are beginning to engineer a sea-change in foreign policy debate here in the U.S. It is becoming clear to prominent thinkers across the political spectrum - from erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists like Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists like Mearsheimer - that in recent years the United States has suffered a catastrophic loss of international political influence and an unprecedented degradation of its moral image. The country's foreign undertakings have been self-defeating and even irrational. There is going to be a long job of repair ahead, above all in Washington's dealings with economically and strategically vital communities and regions from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. And this reconstruction of the country's foreign image and influence cannot hope to succeed while U.S. foreign policy is tied by an umbilical cord to the needs and interests (if that is what they are) of one small Middle Eastern country of very little relevance to America's long-term concerns - a country that is, in the words of the Mearsheimer/Walt essay, a strategic burden: "A liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states."

That essay is thus a straw in the wind - an indication of the likely direction of future domestic debate here in the U.S. about the country's peculiar ties to Israel. Of course it has been met by a firestorm of criticism from the usual suspects - and, just as they anticipated, the authors have been charged with anti-Semitism (or with advancing the interests of anti-Semitism: "objective anti-Semitism," as it might be). But it is striking to me how few people with whom I have spoken take that accusation seriously, so predictable has it become. This is bad for Jews - since it means that genuine anti-Semitism may also in time cease to be taken seriously, thanks to the Israel lobby's abuse of the term. But it is worse for Israel.

This new willingness to take one's distance from Israel is not confined to foreign policy specialists. As a teacher I have also been struck in recent years by a sea-change in the attitude of students. One example among many: Here at New York University I was teaching this past month a class on post-war Europe. I was trying to explain to young Americans the importance of the Spanish Civil War in the political memory of Europeans and why Franco's Spain has such a special place in our moral imagination: as a reminder of lost struggles, a symbol of oppression in an age of liberalism and freedom, and a land of shame that people boycotted for its crimes and repression. I cannot think, I told the students, of any country that occupies such a pejorative space in democratic public consciousness today. You are wrong, one young woman replied: What about Israel? To my great surprise most of the class - including many of the sizable Jewish contingent - nodded approval. The times they are indeed a-changing.

That Israel can now stand in comparison with the Spain of General Franco in the eyes of young Americans ought to come as a shock and an eleventh-hour wake-up call to Israelis. Nothing lasts forever, and it seems likely to me that we shall look back upon the years 1973-2003 as an era of tragic illusion for Israel: years that the locust ate, consumed by the bizarre notion that, whatever it chose to do or demand, Israel could count indefinitely upon the unquestioning support of the United States and would never risk encountering a backlash. This blinkered arrogance is tragically summed up in an assertion by Shimon Peres on the very eve of the calamitous war that will in retrospect be seen, I believe, to have precipitated the onset of America's alienation from its Israeli ally: "The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must."

The future of Israel

From one perspective Israel's future is bleak. Not for the first time, a Jewish state has found itself on the vulnerable periphery of someone else's empire: overconfident in its own righteousness, willfully blind to the danger that its indulgent excesses might ultimately provoke its imperial mentor to the point of irritation and beyond, and heedless of its own failure to make any other friends. To be sure, the modern Israeli state has big weapons - very big weapons. But can it do with them except make more enemies? However, modern Israel also has options. Precisely because the country is an object of such universal mistrust and resentment - because people expect so little from Israel today - a truly statesmanlike shift in its policies (dismantling of major settlements, opening unconditional negotiations with Palestinians, calling Hamas' bluff by offering the movement's leaders something serious in return for recognition of Israel and a cease-fire) could have disproportionately beneficial effects.

But such a radical realignment of Israeli strategy would entail a difficult reappraisal of every cliche and illusion under which the country and its political elite have nestled for most of their life. It would entail acknowledging that Israel no longer has any special claim upon international sympathy or indulgence; that the United States won't always be there; that weapons and walls can no more preserve Israel forever than they preserved the German Democratic Republic or white South Africa; that colonies are always doomed unless you are willing to expel or exterminate the indigenous population. Other countries and their leaders have understood this and managed comparable realignments: Charles De Gaulle realized that France's settlement in Algeria, which was far older and better established than Israel's West Bank colonies, was a military and moral disaster for his country. In an exercise of outstanding political courage, he acted upon that insight and withdrew. But when De Gaulle came to that realization he was a mature statesman, nearly 70 years old. Israel cannot afford to wait that long. At the age of 58 the time has come for it to grow up.

Tony Judt is a professor and the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University, and his book "Postwar: The History of Europe Since 1945" was published in 2005.

Billmon

Billmon: "So 45% of all Americans would send their children to work for free in a whorehouse. And the rich are even more into the idea.

Yep, it's a conservative country all right."

ZNet |Israel/Palestine | Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine

ZNet |Israel/Palestine | Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine: "But why should we think Israel is acting in good faith, even if in bad temper, in destroying Gaza’s power station? Why should we assume it was a hot-headed over-reaction rather than a coldly calculated deed?

In other words, why believe Israel is simply lashing out when it commits a war crime rather than committing it after careful advance planning? Is it not possible that such war crimes, rather than being spontaneous and random, are actually all pushing in the same direction?

More especially, why should we give Israel the benefit of the doubt when its war crimes contribute, as the bombing of the power station in Gaza surely does, to easily deciphered objectives? Why not think of the bombing instead as one instalment in a long-running and slowly unfolding plan?

The occupation of Gaza did not begin this year, after Hamas was elected, nor did it end with the disengagement a year ago. The occupation is four decades old and still going strong in both the West Bank and Gaza. In that time Israel has followed a consistent policy of subjugating the Palestinian population, imprisoning it inside ever-shrinking ghettos, sealing it off from contact with the outside world, and destroying its chances of ever developing an independent economy."

MercuryNews.com | 09/21/2006 | State sues U.S. carmakers for warming up the globe

MercuryNews.com | 09/21/2006 | State sues U.S. carmakers for warming up the globe: "California filed a lawsuit against the six largest automakers operating in the United States, contending that car and truck emissions are causing global warming, injuring the state's environment, economy and endangering public health.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, is the latest escalation in an ongoing clash between states and the U.S. auto industry over global warming. The California complaint contends that under federal and state common law the automakers have created a public nuisance by producing millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide."

Billmon

Billmon: "Which may be the answer to why Iraq (and, increasingly Afghanistan) have turned into such fiascos, and why this really was inevitable all along.

These weren't wars of liberation, they were old-fashioned colonial interventions -- even if the purposes were not colonial conquest and exploitation. (Note the use of the conditional tense.) And, like many old-fashioned colonial interventions, they required the colonial power to take sides in a pre-existing civil war or rivalry between ethnic groups. In the old days, this was usually by conscious design -- such conflicts being seen as ripe opportunities for imperial expansion."

Billmon

Billmon: "Courtesy of the Washington Post (the Orwellian well that never runs dry):

Democracy activists who had long sought [Thai Prime Minister] Thaksin's ouster embraced the military's action.

How, exactly, can those who support a military coup be described as 'democracy activists'?

Orwell said the word fascism had become nothing more than a generic term for 'something not desirable.' Likewise, it appears that democracy has degenerated into a synonym for 'a government we support.'"

US May Ban Sale of Cluster Bombs to Israel

US May Ban Sale of Cluster Bombs to Israel: "The unexploded bomblets become anti-personel mines. Mr Guest says MAG has teams working in the banana groves on the coastal plain around Tyre and says that even for experts the mines are difficult to find because they may have 'fallen into heart of the banana tree where their presence is concealed'. In hill villages people are about to start harvesting their olive trees though they know branches and leaves may contain bomblets invisible to anybody from the ground. Another problem is that the Israelis may have fired cluster bombs into a village and then used conventional artillery to blow up houses. Families searching the ruins may accidentally detonate a bomblet.

The early date of the US bomb container in Nabatiyeh reveals another problem. The expiry of the warranty more than 30 years ago suggests that the manufacturer expected some deterioration in the product. Mr Guest points out that more recent cluster bombs have a self-destruct mechanism that operates after a period of time. But those dating from 1974 do not and therefore become sensitive anti-personnel mines."

Israel Cluster Bomb Use in Lebanon "Outrageous": UN

Israel Cluster Bomb Use in Lebanon "Outrageous": UN: "'The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,' David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, told a news conference in Beirut.

'Outrageous because by that stage the conflict had been largely resolved in the form of (U.N. Security Council) Resolution 1701,' he said."

Ted Turner Says Iraq War among History's "Dumbest"

Ted Turner Says Iraq War among History's "Dumbest": "

NEW YORK - The U.S. invasion of Iraq was among the 'dumbest moves of all time' that ranks with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia, billionaire philanthropist Ted Turner said on Tuesday.

The founder of CNN and unabashed internationalist also defended the right of Iran to have nuclear weapons and the effectiveness of the United Nations and, in a jocular mood, advocated banning men from elective office worldwide in a Reuters Newsmaker appearance.

Alternately combative and humorous, Turner spoke nine years after his pledge to donate $1 billion to the United Nations over 10 years and on the same day President Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly a mile away.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq has caused 'incalculable damage' that will take 20 years to overcome 'if we just act reasonably intelligently.'

'It will go down in history, it is already being seen in history, as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody. A couple of others that come to mind were the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia,' Turner told the forum."

Royal Society Tells Exxon: Stop Funding Climate Change Denial

Royal Society Tells Exxon: Stop Funding Climate Change Denial: "Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have 'misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence'.

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as 'inaccurate and misleading'."

Church Targetted by IRS for Anti-War Sermon May Fight Summons

Church Targetted by IRS for Anti-War Sermon May Fight Summons: "'This is a problem for the U.S., much of it of its own making,' says Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue.

'If Venezuela wins this seat, it is clearly a defeat for the U.S. and a confirmation of the distaste for U.S. policy worldwide.

'If Venezuela is blocked, Chavez has been given a podium to say whatever he wants about the U.S.

'Washington is in a Catch-22 and can't really win, anyway.'"

ZNet |Iran | U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel

ZNet |Iran | U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel: "Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was
reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office 'reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06.' He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

'This is like prewar Iraq all over again,' said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. 'You have an Iranian nuclear
threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.'"

ZNet |Israel/Palestine | Dissecting Israel's freeze on visas

ZNet |Israel/Palestine | Dissecting Israel's freeze on visas: "Israel is implementing an undeclared policy of denying foreign nationals entry/re-entry into the oPt in order to achieve the following political objectives: to isolate Palestinians, to continue its control over demographics in favor of the Jewish population, and to punish Palestinians personally and developmentally because of the January
election results. Israel's security claims regarding this policy are false."

Neo-Con Favourite Declares World War III

Neo-Con Favourite Declares World War III: "WASHINGTON - Two years before the 2008 presidential election, Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, is trying desperately to grab the national spotlight by declaring he'd be a lot tougher than the George W. Bush in prosecuting what he calls 'World War III'.

In the latest in a series of recent presentations and writings, Gingrich called this week in a speech at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for, among other things:
"

Armchair Sleuths Uncover Strange Military Sites in China

Armchair Sleuths Uncover Strange Military Sites in China: "YINCHUAN, China - Tech-savvy armchair sleuths around the world are having a field day discovering military secrets in China.

Three times in the past few months, they've stumbled across unusual military installations using Internet programs that allow those online to view satellite and aerial images of the world.

In the most recent find, users spotted an underwater submarine tunnel off China's Hainan Island. They've also found a mock-up of a Taiwanese air base in China's remote western desert. In a bizarre discovery, a computer technician in Germany noticed a huge and startlingly accurate terrain model in northwest China that replicates a sensitive border area with India.

The discoveries have stirred up the Internet global-imagery community."

Stanley Heller: When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is Anti-Semitic

Stanley Heller: When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is Anti-Semitic: "The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reports that the head of Germany's Jewish community accused a minister in Angela Merkel's German government of 'anti-Semitism' because of the minister's statement on Israel's use of cluster bombs. Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul had asked for a United Nations probe into Israel's use of cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon."

Whiskey Bar: Forever Blowing Bubbles

Whiskey Bar: Forever Blowing Bubbles: "There is no doubt in my mind that the existence -- and seeming indestructibility -- of 'analysts' like Jim Glassman is one of the key reasons why we have asset bubbles. Since the collapse of the Nasdaq bubble in early 2000, I've watched, first with amazement, then with a kind of morbid fascination, as Glassman has continued his flourishing and no doubt lucrative career as a financial pundit and supply-side snake-oil salesman, instead of being banished to the get-rich-quick infomercials on late night cable, which is where he belongs.
"

Billmon

Billmon: "Instead of doing something fun yesterday -- like cleaning out my garage or mowing the lawn -- I spent the better part of it reading the two reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of the now traditional Friday bad news document dump."

Love the quotes

blogenlust.net : A List of Captured or Killed al Qaeda in Iraq #2’s

blogenlust.net : A List of Captured or Killed al Qaeda in Iraq #2’s: "A List of Captured or Killed al Qaeda in Iraq #2’s"

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger"

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger": "More Vice-Presidents than you'll find at Bank of America's home office

al Qaeda: All Chiefs, No Indians"

Billmon

Billmon: "As for Marshall Wittman, Holy Joe's very best blog buddy, I doubt there's enough Prozac in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area to get him through the next five days. If I were Marshall, I'd put the number for the crisis clinic on my speed dial list now, instead of waiting for election night.

"

Billmon

More continued great coverage from Billmon, and more great quotes:

Billmon: "In other words, the Israelis are doing their level best to make it appear as if nothing has changed and they've put nothing on the table, except a fig leaf for Madame Supertanker to use to cover her diplomatic nakedness."

Another cute expression from Billmon

Billmon: "And more and more garden-variety conservatives are beginning to see it that way too."

Billmon

Billmon: "It would take an almost superhuman sense of compassion not to relish the sight of the tormenters being tormented by the likes of Hugh Hewitt, Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds. And thank God, I'm only human. The sense of grim satisfaction I feel every time I hear Andrew Sullivan or Greg Djerejian whine about the viciousness of the 'Malkin right' faintly echoes the emotions that must have been felt by the original socialist and anarchist prisoners of the Soviet state every time they saw an old Bolshevik getting the business from one of Stalin's NKVD thugs. Now you know what's it like to be an enemy of the people, you swine."

Billmon

Billmon: "But it's not helping him now. What Sully has discovered -- via many nasty bites to his ankles -- is that past service to the cause of rabid extremism doesn't buy any protection from the attack squirrels of the rabid right. "

Six Questions on Lebanon for Augustus Richard Norton (Harpers.org)

A fantastic interview at Harpers, here is a tid-bit:Six Questions on Lebanon for Augustus Richard Norton (Harpers.org):

"This was a well-planned operation that took months of preparation. A similar operation failed earlier this year. Hezbollah was tactically very smart, but strategically they were taking a real gamble. The goal was to win the release of [three] Lebanese prisoners being held in Israeli prisons, and probably to bolster Hezbollah’s image and take . advantage of Israel’s preoccupation with Gaza."

Taba and Camp David: Peeling the Orange

From the Norman Finkelstein & Shlomo Ben-Ami debate on Democracy Now, comes a very lucid explanation of why the talks failed, Norman Finkelstein explains:

"My concern is let's look at the diplomatic record, the factual record. What were the offers being made on each side of the Camp David and in the Taba talks? And the standard interpretation, which comes — which is — you can call it the Dennis Ross interpretation, which, I think, unfortunately Dr. Ben-Ami echoes, is that Israel made huge concessions at Camp David and Taba; Palestinians refused to make any concessions, because of what Dr. Ben-Ami repeatedly calls Arafat's unyielding positions; and that Arafat missed a huge opportunity. Now, it is correct to say that if you frame everything in terms of what Israel wanted, it made huge concessions. However, if you frame things in terms of what Israel was legally entitled to under international law, then Israel made precisely and exactly zero concessions. All the concessions were made by the Palestinians."

Israeli Kids painting bombs

The Angry Arab News Service:

"Humanity of Israeli society. I have had those pictures (and tens of people have sent them to me) for several days now. I hesitated before posting them. I wanted to verify the source--AP. I could not believe--call me naive--that they would let Israeli children write messages on bombs. Well, yes. Israeli children are made to write messages on bombs that kill Lebanese children. And they dare to speak in the name of 'peace'?"

Israeli Kids painting bombs

The Angry Arab News Service: "Humanity of Israeli society. I have had those pictures (and tens of people have sent them to me) for several days now. I hesitated before posting them. I wanted to verify the source--AP. I could not believe--call me naive--that they would let Israeli children write messages on bombs. Well, yes. Israeli children are made to write messages on bombs that kill Lebanese children. And they dare to speak in the name of 'peace'?"

Haaretz - Israel News - Search Results

Haaretz - Israel News - Search Results: "One rainy day Yitzhak Rabin explained to me, as a prime minister and as a friend, why he had to look for every possible crack that would allow a settlement with Israel's neighbors. 'It is impossible to stretch the muscles and the nerves of a nation for so many years. Sooner or later they become lax,' he said, and added: 'The Israel Defense Forces is a good army, all in all, but even the best army's strength is limited and its staying power is liable to decline, and it must not be subjected to too many tests, certainly not unnecessary ones.'

One can always make excuses and say that it is our enemies who are testing us, but experience shows that we have sacrificed our sons on too many occasions. "

Nader advise to Bush.

Please, President Bush: Don't Continue to Be Weak on Lebanon Crisis:

"History, George, does not start two weeks or two months ago. You must read about past U.S. Presidents who, at least, sent high-level emissaries to quell similar border fighting. It worked and prisoners were often exchanged.

You are doing and saying nothing about what the rest of the world believes is a hugely disproportionate attack against innocent adults and children in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and other treaties and federal statutes. You've sworn to uphold these laws. Do so. Because of the Israeli government's overwhelming military power, the imbalance of terror against civilians and their property has always been to its advantage. As has its occupation of Palestine and confiscation of land and water sources."

Operation Peace for the IDF - Haaretz - Israel News

Operation Peace for the IDF - Haaretz - Israel News:

"
The war we declared on Lebanon has already exacted from us, and of course from Lebanon, too, a heavy price. Did anyone give any thought to the question whether it should be paid?

Everyone knows how this war begins, but does anyone know how it ends? Heavy casualties in the Israeli rear? A war with Syria? A general war? Is it all worth it? Look what a new rookie government can do in such a short time.

Behind the operations in Lebanon and Gaza is the same foolish idea about pressure on the population leading to political changes that Israel wants. In the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, that concept has only led us from one disaster to the next. We 'cleansed' southern Lebanon of Palestinians in 1982, and what did we get? Hezbollahstan instead of Fatahland. Hamas won't fall because Gaza is in the dark, and not even because we bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building at the weekend - another nonsensical move; Hezbollah won't be smashed because the international airport in Beirut has been put out of commission.

Israel once again is not distinguishing between a justified war against Hezbollah and an unjust and unwise war against the Lebanese nation. The camouflage concealing the war's real goals was ripped off by this defense minister, who says what he means: 'Nasrallah is going to get it so bad that he will never forget the name Amir Peretz,' he bragged, like a typical bully. Now at least we know that Israel went to war so that the name Amir Peretz is never forgotten. It's the war for the perpetuation of the name Peretz and the blurring of Dan Halutz's failures. And to hell with the cost."

We Fight Why? (Harpers.org)

We Fight Why? (Harpers.org):

"“Bush has basically mortgaged your house,” Baer said regarding the administration's general Middle East policy, “and now he's gone to the roulette table.”

Another jewel from FafBlog

6/10 Changed Everything: "And that's just the tip of the iceberg! Even as we speak the forces of Islamanazism are infiltrating our network of classified CIA prison camps, rendering themselves to third world dictatorships, and launching unprovoked assaults on innocent American bullets! "

Noam Chomsky in Beirut

Noam Chomsky in Beirut:

"Noam and Carol Chomsky arrived in Beirut on May 8, 2006, for an eight-day visit, their first ever to Lebanon. Many of Noam's friends had wanted this visit to happen for a long time. The Palestinians, the south of Lebanon, and the wider Middle East and its peoples have all been central among Noam's many concerns. He has written about them and defended them, publicly and tirelessly, for nearly four decades, and will continue 'as long as I'm ambulatory.'[1] Beirut would give Noam Chomsky a hero's welcome, and it did with relish."

Exploring Venezuela

Go to Venezuela, You Idiot!:

"I don't usually take the advice of rightwingers. But I did this time. After receiving inflamed email messages from dozens of angry rightists that I should get the hell out of the USA and go to Venezuela, I accepted their challenge and flew to Caracas."

More Immigrant-Bashing On the Way

Molly Ivins:

"Fixing Mexico certainly does not involve interfering in Mexican elections. I had to laugh at the number of American pundits who solemnly lectured the Mexicans on how their tied election was such a delicate situation for their democracy. Like it never happened to us?

Helping to fix Mexico involves, in my opinion, redoing NAFTA, so that labor and environmental standards can be included. I’ve always liked Lou Dobbs, who at least cares about middle- and working-class Americans. But to some extent, he’s got the immigrant issue by the wrong end. If you don’t want Mexicans walking into this country, make sure no one is offering them jobs. You could even pass a law about it. You could even enforce the law. Don’t blame them."

checkers, intelectually demanding

Billmon:

"This is all Game Theory 101, and my guess is that the neocons understand the dynamic perfectly well -- and in fact are now counting on it. But I'm not entirely sure even the saner members of the regime, like Secretary Supertanker, recognize the bind they are now in. I'm reasonably sure the vast majority of the American people don't. And the corporate media? Well, given that most of them find the game of checkers intellectually overdemanding, it's a bit much to expect them to grasp the finer points of the real life version of Risk."

Funny comment

Found on a comment site: "The conservative oil indepencence plan? I think it has something to do with hoping Jesus will show up and turn water into oil. There's a lot more water these days now that they've got the polar ice caps cooking good and hot."

VIDEO: Springsteen Hits Coulter, Defends Right To Take A Stand On Political Issues

Think Progress: Springsteen Hits Coulter, Defends Right To Take A Stand On Political Issues:

"In a recent interview, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asked Bruce Springsteen (aka “The Boss”) about criticism he has received for taking a stand on political issues. Springsteen responded sarcastically, “Yeah, they should let Ann Coulter do it instead.” He added that there are “idiots rambling on on cable television on any given night of the week,” and called the idea that musicians shouldn’t speak up, “insane” and “funny.”"

Excuses: Looking for the next frontier

Billmon:

"The turning points, in other words, have all been turned, and Iraq is still a killing field. Now that the last few macbre headlines have been squeezed out of Zarqwari's autopsy report, democracy boy and his handlers literally have nothing to look forward to -- except a long, hot summer of IEDs, ethnic cleansing and more of those flag-wrapped caskets being Federal Expressed to cemetaries around the country."

Israel shells a busy beach

The Guardian | Seven killed as Israeli shells hit family picnic on Gaza beach:

"A barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach yesterday, killing seven Palestinians, three of them children. The attack put further strain on the 16-month truce between Israel and the governing Hamas movement.

Witnesses described several explosions that also injured dozens of other people who lay on the beach, screaming and pleading for help. Some ran into the sea for fear of more shells hitting the sands at Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza strip.

Article continues
Among the dead were three children, aged one, three, and 10. Their sister was swimming and survived.

The beach was packed with picnicking families enjoying the Muslim day of rest, and the explosions landed among them, scattering body parts along the dunes. Television footage showed a woman and a child laying dead on the sand, and another child screaming in agony while a lifeless man was carried away by an ambulance crew."

Israel reaction to Fatah's proposal

Israel's Policies Assassinate Jews, Too:

"The irony is that the Israelis inadvertently started this last best hope for peace themselves, by putting Hamas and Fatah members together in an Israeli prison. There the prisoners worked out a document outlining a plan for peace. The Hamas signers said they would accept IsraelÂ’s existence, as long as it ended all occupation and settlements in the West Bank as well as Gaza, withdrew inside its pre-1967 borders, and recognized the rights of the Palestinians who had been ousted from Israel. Public opinion polls show that at least three-quarters, and maybe 90%, of Palestinians support this plan. If the Hamas party signs on to it, Hamas popularity will soar.

Then Israel would no longer have any major force denying its right to exist. The international pressure on Israel to accept the plan would be immense. That raises the prospect of an Israeli government having to dismantle not just a handful of little settlements, but whole Jewish towns that have been erected in the West Bank. The political fallout might well tear the Israeli public apart, posing nearly impossible dilemmas for any Israeli government.

So Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government must prevent Hamas from supporting the prisonersÂ’ document. The Israelis have to make sure that the Palestinians remain politically divided, with one faction denying IsraelÂ’s right to exist, in order to keep Israel politically united. Israeli leaders are willing to pursue that goal at any cost -- even the cost of more Jewish lives.

ItÂ’s an old story. Over the years of its political maneuvering, Israel has followed one principle faithfully: keep the opposition divided. Indeed, years ago Israel was instrumental in establishing Hamas in order to prevent Yassir ArafatÂ’s PLO from gaining a total monopoly on political power in the Occupied Territories. Now somehow, anyhow, the Israelis have to keep Hamas divided, so that it cannot unite behind the prisonersÂ’ document that Fatah has so fully embraced."

This is not news, anyone who has paid attention to Israel actions (as opposed to Israel's statements) in the last twenty years knows that this is just the way Israel conducts itself. What is new is that this shatters the illusion of those who thought that the new government Israel was any different than Sharon's.

Frank Luntz, spin doctor

Lakoff and Fergusson touch on Frank Luntz in Framing Versus Spin:

"Luntz is advising Republicans to be two-faced, to speak one way to the nativists and avoid that very language when speaking to Hispanics."

A few interesting pieces, Frontline has an interview with Frank Luntz, where he talks openly about spin on this interview and to for a little bit of fun LuntZpeak has some cases of politicians following his manual.

Perry Barlow Debates

BBC NEWS | Hollywood and the hackers:

"PB: I've got good news and bad news and good news. And the good news is that you guys have managed to buy every major legislative body on the planet, and the courts are even with you. So you've done a great job there and you should congratulate yourself.

But you know the problem is - the bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one.

But the good news is that you guys are mean sons of bitches and you've been figuring out ways of ripping off audiences and artists for centuries....."

Billmon on Zarqawi

An excellent Billmon take:

"The Pentagon Channel today announced the cancellation of its long-running reality TV series, The Abu Zarqawi Hour, saying tonight's special-effects extravaganza, in which Keifer Sutherland and a team of secret agents trail the terrorist mastermind to his hideout and call in a massive airstrike, would be the show's last."

Feingold Statement on the Proposed Constitutional Amendment on Marriage

Feingold Statement on the Proposed Constitutional Amendment on Marriage:

"The proposed constitutional amendment before the Senate today, S. J. Res. 1, has no better chance of getting a two-thirds majority in the Senate than it did in 2004, another election year. There are no new court decisions that supporters of the amendment can legitimately argue make it any more imperative now than it was then that such an amendment be passed. Yet the Judiciary Committee was ordered to mark up this amendment to fit a schedule announced by the Majority Leader months ago.

This is pure politics, an election year gambit. Mr. President, we should not play politics with the Constitution. Nor should we play politics with the lives of gay and lesbian Americans who correctly see this constitutional amendment as an effort to make them permanent second class citizens.

The amendment we are debating will not pass, but it still risks stoking fear and divisiveness at a time when we should be trying to unite Americans. Gay and lesbian Americans are our friends, our family members, our neighbors, our colleagues. They should not be used as pawns in a cynical political exercise."

Cute quotes.

TBogg:

"As I'm sure you're aware, tomorrow is 06/06/06 which means...well, nothing unless you're one of those booga-booga types who sees Jesus in a Pop-Tart."

Letter to a Vandarl

This is the end of a letter written to the vandal that destroyed the memorial created by Cindy Shehan in Crawford Texas. From Welcome to MichaelMoore.com!:

"Mr. Northern - I know little about Cindy Sheehan except that she is a grieving mother, a gentle soul, and wants to bring harm to no one. I know little about you except that you found your way to Crawford on Monday night in August with chains and a pipe attached to your truck for the sole purpose of dishonoring a memorial erected for my friends and lost Soldiers and hundreds of others that served this nation when they were called. I find it disheartening that good men like these have died so that people like you can threaten a mother who lost a child with your actions. I hope that you are ashamed of yourself."

Jesus' General, Memorial thoughts

Jesus' General, Memorial Day thoughts:

"I've been thinking about what I'd post for Memorial Day this year. I really liked last year's
photo essay (I've republished it below). It expresses many of my feelings about this war: the sadness, anger and frustration I feel as I see fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters sacrificed for little more than to fulfill a spoiled rich kid's oedipal-fueled desire to escape from beneath his father's shadow.

But as much as I like the essay, it falls far short of adequately expressing the true horrors of this war. The young Americans who lost their limbs, their health, and their sanity are not represented. Neither are the carefree boys we grew to love as they camped out in our living room, vying for the attention of our daughters. Now, they’re returning from war, souless, their psyches destroyed forever.

And what about the Iraqi people? Thousands of innocents have paid the price for W's hubris, families--fathers, mothers, children, infants--torn apart by neocon greed and shrapnel. They are absent from the essay as well.

The American people are also missing. I watched the documentary, Control Room, again last night. One of the scenes featured an Al Jazeera reporter, Hassan Ibrahim, discussing the run-up to the war with a number of Iraqi intellectuals. He told them that he did not believe that the American people would allow the war to happen. He said that we were a rational people and a people who revered justice above all else. I once thought that too. With all of our faults, I believed that we were a people who truly believed in reason, justice, and the principles of democracy, and maybe we did, but it is no longer true.

We became vengeful and bloodthirsty, striking out against the innocent and the weak to ease our groundless fears. We are now Fox News. We are a nation of Malkins, Hewitts, and Charles Johnsons, frightened of everything that is different or alien to us and reacting violently.

My America is dead. Or perhaps more accurately, The America I believed in, and the people Ibrahim thought he knew, never existed. As saddened as I am at this realization, I now understand that I must fight even harder to ensure that we do not lose our way again.

That's why we must do everything in our power to ensure that America understands not only what happened at Hadditha, but why it happened. For those of you unfamiliar with that name, I urge you to read We found the Real Villain, the Republican Jesus post I did last week or look for an article titled 'Details Surface of US ‘atrocity’ in Iraq' in Saturday's Globe and Mail.' In short, a squad of Marines, distraught over losing a comrade to an IED, murdered at least 20 people, including a 61 year old, one-legged man and at least four children, the youngest two being 3 and 4 years old."

Guy who pushed the Jews-wear-badges-in-Iran story invited to the White House

This Modern World:

"Remember the ancient past of about a week and a half ago, and the completely false tale that Jews in Iran are forced to wear badges?

It was the latest attempt to provoke a war by calling every desired enemy “the new Hitler” — a new one of which seems to crop up these days about as often as American Idol winners, although dictators are often better at choosing songs and wardrobe.

And it was debunked as complete fiction in about nine minutes.

Nonetheless, the guy who first printed this rubbish has just been invited to the White House. To meet with Bush.

As an expert on Iran."

Expressions

Think Progress � FACT CHECK: National Review’s Cover Story Distorts Facts On Global Warming: "Now I know for sure that you are a mental midget.

"

National Review, Formula Disclosed

Think Progress � FACT CHECK: National Review’s Cover Story Distorts Facts On Global Warming: "OK, I dislike the National Review, much like any other human being with a brain. But what do you expect from them? They are an upgraded, print edition version following the Fox News formula:

News Topic Conservative Bent = Truth"

Splitting hairs

TBogg - "...a somewhat popular blogger" : "Froomkin later gives examples of reporters who aren't willing to call a spade a spade and instead split so many hairs that they end up with a bad toupee:"

I read it on a blog.

"I read it on a blog"
"So it must be true"

We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman: We Had a Democracy Once, But You Crushed It:

Here's something you can bet on: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz will not hold a press conference this month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-led coup of the democratically elected leader of Iran -- Mohammed Mossadegh.

In it, he documents step by step, how Roosevelt, the Dulles boys and Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., among a host of others, took down a democratically elected regime in Iran.

They had freedom of the press. We shut it down.

They had democracy. And we crushed it.

Mossadegh was the beacon of hope for the Middle East.

If democracy were allowed to take hold in Iran, it probably would have spread throughout the Middle East.

We asked Kinzer – what does the overthrow of Mossadegh say about the United States respect for democracy abroad?

"Imagine today what it must sound like to Iranians to hear American leaders tell them -- ‘We want you to have a democracy in Iran, we disapprove of your present government, we wish to help you bring democracy to your country.' Naturally, they roll their eyes and say -- "We had a democracy once, but you crushed it,'" he said. "This shows how differently other people perceive us from the way we perceive ourselves. We think of ourselves as paladins of democracy. But actually, in Iran, we destroyed the last democratic regime the country ever had and set them on a road to what has been half a century of dictatorship."

Fundamentalist Cristians

The Blog | Philip Slater: THE GREAT FUNDAMENTALIST HOAX | The Huffington Post:

"Thoughtful Americans have long wondered how it is that fundamentalist Christians--followers of someone who preached pacifism and tolerance--became the poster boy for hate speech, touting 'moral values' indistinguishable from those of the Taliban. They wonder why, for example, fundamentalist Christians so seldom quote from the New Testament--which is supposedly what Christianity is all about--but prefer citing the Torah and Old Testament prophets."

Funny Story dot CC - Top 5 Things to Do When a Telemarketer Calls

Funny Story dot CC - Top 5 Things to Do When a Telemarketer Calls: "5. Say you are hard of hearing and see how loud they will shout into the phone.

4. Keep repeating, 'I knew you were going to say that'.

3. Allow the telemarketer to fully explain his offer. When he is finished explain that his company hired you to randomly spot check telemarketers on their performance. Tell him that he did a good job overall, but that he is a bit monotone and needs to fluctuate his tone of voice more to sound convincing. He also should pause longer between sentences, and more clearly pronounce the letter 's'. Tell him you won’t report him if he repeats his speech to you with the appropriate corrections. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

2. Every few minutes repeat, 'You’re going to have to bear with me, I have a slight short term memory loss problem, who is this again?'

1. Mid pitch, stop him and complement him on his wonderful voice. Explain that you are a voiceover scout and might have a breakthrough commercial job for him. Ask if he wouldn’t mind doing a quick test. Ask him to say in a deep husky voice 'May cause dizziness, diarrhea, vomiting and shortness of breath. A small number of participants in a recent clinical trial experienced weight loss, irregular clotting, abnormally frequent and/or painful urination and hair loss. Results may vary'
"

Blog Dictionary

I like this quote, "jingoblogs" and "miblogs" definitions:

Malkin(s)watch: "I rarely ever read jingoblogs (known to most as “milblogs”)".

Blog Dictionary

Eschaton: "The willingness to send others off to die for a misguided war because you wet your pants after 9/11 is called 'cowardice' not courage."

Malkin's Razor

The Liberal Avenger � Blog Archive � The Malkinverse: "``Hot Air - Blog Archive - Breaking: Gigantic fire at Istanbul airport''

In the universe in which the Malkins and their compadre who calls himself “Allahpundit” live, Occam’s Razor dictates that if there is a fire at an airport, the simplest explanation for the fire is that the airport has been attacked by Islamist terrorists.

I’m so glad that I don’t live in their universe."

Blogservations

Independent Online Edition > Profiles: "The Sun, that dubious barometer of the national mood,"

Priceless Billmon quote

Priceless quote from BillMon:

Billmon: "Update 9:45 AM: Well, after taking a quick swim through the moral sewer of Right Blogistan this morning, I can see how the authoritarian right is going to play this story:"

The article is great on its own.

Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac

Interesting points from
Why I Will Probably Never Buy Another Mac - OSNews.com:

"When you joined Internet forums on which Apple was discussed, you became aware of an even more disturbing but related phenomenon. I only later realised what it was. The symptom was an increasing rudeness and intolerance and hostility towards any other platforms. And it was couched in lifestyle terms. Windows machines were ridiculed for being boring beige boxes. Windows users were the subject of snobbish jibes. Contemptuous references to Walmart appeared. Macs kept being compared to high end designer brands, in particular to cars. If you chose differently, it was because you had no taste, no class.

BMWs appeared to have a particular fascination for the Mac aficionado. You didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The chorus of people who seemed to think that Macs were high class, and that buying them was a route to social mobility, was astounding. Could there really be so many people who were so naive about how social class really works in America? And could so many of them be Mac users? I shivered a bit at the thought. You could understand why Hypercard had withered, if this was now Apple's target market."

I have seen this myself. What I find interesting is that its not really the difference between a BMW car and a Toyota.

Its more of a GAP vs Old Navy T-shirt comparison. They use for the most part the same hardware today (give or take) and folks still gladly pay a large premium for equivalent computer configurations.

The differentiating factor is definitely OSX vs Windows; but as its been better articulated elsewhere OSX might have less features, be simpler on the eye and have an integrated suite of "iLife" applications, but it can not run the majority of software without a Windows emulator.

I find it interesting that iLife would be such a big part of Apple's marketing. Considering that the iLife applications are really entry level applications which can barely keep up with the most mundane needs of users and many of these applications are "nice to have" but to the majority of people, they are as "nice to have" as having an oscilloscope built into the computer would be nice to have. Beyond iPhoto and iTunes, the rest are not really horizontal applications, they are fun to play with for a few minutes, but so is checking http://del.icio.us/popular, and del.icio.us/popular gets updated every day.

My XP comes with a media player and a movie editor. It does lack "Garage Band" and lacks "iDVD", but they are fairly vertical applications. In addition to the applications bundled with XP, most PCs come with fairly large bundles of extra software out of the box, which clearly Apple has decided to ignore.

Discussion on the Hitchens-Cole debate

Discussion on the Hitchens-Cole debate:

BTC News � BTC News unearths another Ahmadinejad apologist: "I wrote about the Hitchens column here; I think I failed to make clear two important points — the first being that the email Hitchens quoted was sent by Cole to a colleague on a private discussion list on April 22, while Hitchens filed and Slate published his column on May 2 — and completely misfired on a third.

The timing is significant because the quoted email was an early one in a discussion about the Ahmadinejad speech. In it, Cole mistakenly referenced another phrase, a lapse he corrected the next day, April 23, in a subsequent email to the group. So when Hitchens wrote his column, the error he attributed to poor scholarship and bad intentions had been acknowledged and corrected by Cole more than a week earlier."

The Wanker Kings of Comedy

First part

The Poor Man � The Wanker Kings of Comedy: "Professional pundits for the establishment media first tried to act like nobody farted; but, when the outcry from unwashed circles became too great, had no choice but to proclaim from on high that they will decide what is and isn’t funny, thank you very much, and they and President Bush are very funny and people who say bad things about them are not - and are, in fact, nothing more than meanies and bullies who are being very rude and uncouth."

The Poor Man � The Wanker Kings of Comedy

Maybe I need a way of agregating posts:

The Poor Man � The Wanker Kings of Comedy: "Professional pundits for the establishment media first tried to act like nobody farted; but, when the outcry from unwashed circles became too great, had no choice but to proclaim from on high that they will decide what is and isn’t funny, thank you very much, and they and President Bush are very funny and people who say bad things about them are not - and are, in fact, nothing more than meanies and bullies who are being very rude and uncouth."

Ezra Klein: Richard Cohen Explains It All

Am having so much fun with this "BlogThis" button:

Ezra Klein: Richard Cohen Explains It All: "Maybe if our country's prominent political columnists, like Richard Cohen, were doing a better job, the American people wouldn't need Colbert's apparently poor imitations of courage and wit. As it is, Cohen is occasionally courageous, as when he admitted he didn't know algebra, and often funny, as when he preened over his ignorance of algebra, but he possesses neither quality in such abundance that Colbert's performance was unnecessary."

Must-read ;-)

Ezra Klein: Richard Cohen Explains It All

Am having so much fun with this "BlogThis" button:

Ezra Klein: Richard Cohen Explains It All: "Maybe if our country's prominent political columnists, like Richard Cohen, were doing a better job, the American people wouldn't need Colbert's apparently poor imitations of courage and wit. As it is, Cohen is occasionally courageous, as when he admitted he didn't know algebra, and often funny, as when he preened over his ignorance of algebra, but he possesses neither quality in such abundance that Colbert's performance was unnecessary."

Must-read ;-)

Hullabaloo

I love this quote from Digbys: "How pathetic now to see liberals of my generation get so exercised over a few hostile emails. It's obviously been a while since they felt anything more strongly than irritation at too much foam on their cappucino."

Perfect Complement to the Previous Two Blog Entries

A perfect complement to the previous two blog posts:

Sadly, No!: Mark A. Kleiman Sucks Giant Green Slimy Goat Balls; or, How To Talk To Motherfuckers Who Tolerate Indecency While Mewling About Incivility: "There it all is in one nut's shell. Take note, aspiring pundits. In Kleiman's complaint, you witness all the qualifications on display to gain one entree to the sacred halls of Sensible Liberalism, like Joe Lieberman Weekly or The American Prospect or Washington Monthly. There's the general moral tepidness under the flimsy affected heroism, the demand for 'standards' of tone and style, a faint whiff of delusions of persecution; then, finally, the whining."

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Sensible Liberal

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Sensible Liberal

A must watch cartoon, "The Sensible Liberal".

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Sensible Liberal

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Sensible Liberal

A must watch cartoon, "The Sensible Liberal".

The Reality-Based Community: Atrios and Digby on Cox on Colbert

The Reality-Based Community: Atrios and Digby on Cox on Colbert:

But nothing in Cox's trenchant, sensible, and well-written column is inconsistent with those beliefs. The main points of the column, as I read it, are:

1. Bloggers are insisting that the press's failure to laugh at Colbert's routine was due entirely to the press's complicity with the Bush Administration. An alternative view is that they didn't laugh because it wasn't funny.

2. Running a poll to determine whether something is funny reflects a misunderstanding of the concept 'funny.'

3. Insisting that other people laugh at the jokes you enjoy, or suggesting that their failure to do is morally culpable, reflects either a bullying temperament or a misunderstanding of the concept 'joke.'

4. Political humor is a poor substitute for political action."

The Colbert presentation at the White House Correspondents Dinner has certainly generated a lot of discussion, and it is very likely that some bloggers and commenters would have come to assorted different conclussions. Lumping selective comments and pretending that they represent everyone's position is not giving the whole picture.

Running a poll might have made sense within the context of a fierce debate that wa raging for some time: why was Colbert's presentation discussed in the press? Not only it was not making any headlines, but the coverage all around on news.google.com showed plenty of articles talking about the president's double sketch, but no mention whatsoever about Stephen Colberts presentation.

Colbert's presentation was hard to watch. People in the audience were not laughing, and lacking a feedback loop, the comedy act did not benefit from a nurturing ground. The man stood for what he believed in, and did what he did best at what was a unique opportunity and he took it.

The cold reception that Colbert received could be attributed to the press sense of dismay at having someone actually stand up and point what nobody else had the courage to point out. Am sure it was also very uncomfortable to some people "send men into battle", and the wifes of the correspondents, those who were sitting quietly, the ones with the perplex look on their faces probably were too out of touch to understand why this man would make what to them must have been outrageous claims.

If anything, it could be argued that Colbert's comedy was a bit too complex to follow for that an audience that does not understand what is happening in this country. His audience was probably the typing kind that is just happy transcribing the words of wisdom of The Decider.