From Kommetjie to Hout Bay
In a desperate effort to portray humiliating defeat as something more palatable, The Jerusalem Post — and just about any media outlet processing the effluvial outflow of Global Ministries of Truth, tells us: "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet on Sunday that Israel was 'closing in' on its goals."
Let's recall the 'goals' of Operation Cast Lead — and lead has certainly been cast with gay abandon. Keeping to the Dagan template, the Israelis, breaking a six-month ceasefire, sent into Gaza the much-vaunted military force broken by Hezbollah in 2006. Its stated objective — to irrevocably change the security situation in the south and to ensure Hamas never again sends a fertilizer-fuelled rocket zigzagging towards a fear-crazed Zionist stronghold.
To this end, the IDF has slaughtered close on a thousand civilians — a disproportionately large percentage of which were children, and given an immense boost to Hamas's popularity in the West Bank.
Confined to 80 square miles, Hamas and the Gaza population have held out for 18 days against the war crimes of the world's fourth-largest and most sophisticated military force. And, at great and brave cost, the white trails of rockets still streak across the sky towards Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sederot, Beer Sheva, and other Israeli towns and cities.
What are these 'goals' of which Olmert speaks? They certainly cannot be those of Operation Cast Lead, for it has failed miserably and handed, almost by default (Hamas has kept its operatives out of harm's way or smuggled many out of Gaza), a stunning victory to Gaza's people.
Despite enormous loss of life, global indifference and lack of support, as well as pitifully little in the way of weaponry, they have seen off — and profited from — the illegitimate, U.S.-sponsored rogue state that seeks their obliteration.
Israel, increasingly reviled worldwide as a criminal state, cannot get much right. In two years, it has lost two one-sided wars against neighborhood resistance movements. Most Israelis should by now realise the end is nigh. The neo-Nazi thugs masquerading as their leaders have brought forward, by years rather than months, their inevitable demise.
Without detracting from the enormity of Hamas's victory, Israel can take a great deal of credit for its own downfall. In a fast-evolving and changing global economy, the Dagan Plan is an anachronism that, like the American adventure in Iraq, will fail.
In the balance ...
It should not surprise anybody — outside of a news-starved U.S., if an Obama administration, in pursuit of China and Japan's willingness to fund enormous budget deficits for the foreseeable future, takes advantage of Iran's longstanding overtures for diplomatic and economic relations. Courting Iran would require a change in policy towards Israel, but that should not prove too difficult — despite the flowery rhetoric of the Senate Chamber.
The Zionists have outlived their usefulness to the U.S. and stand to hinder its relations with its current and future creditors. In short, the dollar's strength lies not in the West, but in the East and, when push comes to shove — as it has done, Americans are more likely to favor their currency than a group of rabid Zionists stuck without oil in the Middle Eastern deserts.
Obama's Democrats know this and I suspect the first four years of this administration will see the dollar's rescue, not through confrontation, but through a quiet, increasingly close engagement with Islamic and Eastern market leaders. During its second term, the administration will swiftly force a settlement very much like South Africa's on Israel.
Though it acquires billions of Euros worth of weaponry from Europe, Israel is almost completely dependent on the U.S. for its survival. Yet, over sixty years, it has neglected to pay the price of American largesse and has abused its subsidised freedom to a degree that beggars belief.
President Barack Obama is set to present the bill for such egregious conduct.
For the most part, the United States owes its pariah status to the excesses of Tel Aviv. Arrogant beyond international acceptability, the Zionist criminals who've led Israelis up the garden path for sixty years now make American leaders grovel before allowing their election. Nor, we might add, have America's intelligence agencies forgiven Israel its propensity to abuse its sponsor's goodwill.
Yet Obama slipped through the AIPAC net and he's built a hard-nosed team of pragmatists capable of making and implementing hard decisions.
By dropping Israel and normalising trade relations with the Muslim and Eastern blocs, the United States — at little cost, will secure for itself a reinvigorated dollar, economic stimulation, and the continuation of what is — be it a good or bad thing, an American century. The alternative, as B.J. Vorster so frequently and eloquently used to assert, is too ghastly to contemplate. Also, weapons' technology transfers to China would no longer need an Israeli middleman.
While Israel's leaders relocate to the United States, the average Zionist will remain in Palestine and learn some humility. A century after the Balfour Declaration, Israel — as we have known it, will cease to exist.
Kleinplaas Dam from Grootkop
Do Israelis understand or foresee this? No. George W. Bush recently had to put a hold on Israel using nuclear weapons against Iran. Operation Cast Lead, as much as it is an election stunt, also seeks to finalise with a British company Israel's seizure of Gaza's substantial untapped offshore gas reserves. Israel is, in anticipation of a far wider conflict encompassing perhaps Lebanon, importing large amounts of materiel.
It is following decidedly short-term rather than medium-to-long-term policies and, for doing so, will pay the ultimate price.
If the Obama administration does not, or is unable to, effect a dramatic turnaround in foreign policy and rid itself of the millstone Israel has been for so long (how successfully the British offloaded the 'problem' on to Washington), history will record the incoming administration's failure as the collapse of yet another pillar of Western civilization.
But I have great faith in The Kenyan. He has yet to let me down.
Note: I believe the Russian battle cruiser Pyotr Velikiy is docking in Cape Town. I must go down and get a couple of shots of it tomorrow. It's returning home from a state visit to Venezuela.
God Kills William Zanzinger
"The shame of Zantzinger is that he never mended his ways."
William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years | Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres | With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him | And high office relations in the politics of Maryland, | Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders | And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling, | In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking. | But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, | Take the rag away from your face. | Now ain't the time for your tears.
Zantzinger, 69, died Saturday and was buried yesterday, according to the Brinsfield-Echols Funeral Home in Charlotte Hall. No cause of death was reported.
The Southern Maryland aristocrat was convicted of manslaughter in the death of 51-year-old Hattie Carroll. His crime never escaped memory after Dylan recorded "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," released in a 1964 album. Dylan changed the name to "Zanzinger" by dropping the T.
Dylan described "Zanzinger" hitting the woman while twirling his cane "around his diamond ring finger."
Zantzinger, dressed in tails and wearing a carnation in his lapel, had complained that Carroll, a barmaid at Baltimore's old Emerson Hotel, was slow in bringing a drink he had ordered at the Spinsters Ball, an invitation-only social event.
"Give me a bourbon," the 24-year-old was quoted as saying in court testimony as he approached the bar. He later upbraided Carroll and struck her with a 26-cent, lightweight carnival-style cane.
After she was struck, Carroll, the mother of 11 children, leaned against the bar and told her fellow workers: "This man has upset me so, I feel deathly ill." She died hours later at Mercy Medical Center.
Zantzinger was also charged with striking another waitress, Ethel Hill, who suffered arm injuries, and a bellman, George N. Gesell.
"Isn't it amazing that Zantzinger is going out as the nation's first African-American president is about to take office," David Bruce Poole, a Hagerstown lawyer whose father was the Washington County state's attorney who assisted Baltimore prosecutors, said yesterday.
"What happened then was a seminal moment in Maryland's civil rights history," said Poole, who has the white cane Zantzinger used in the attack. Poole said he is planning to donate the cane to a museum.
Baltimore Sun | Southern farmer who attacked barmaid in '63 dies
In 1991, The Maryland Independent disclosed that Mr. Zantzinger had been collecting rent from black families living in shanties that he no longer owned; Charles County, Md., had foreclosed on them for unpaid taxes. The shanties lacked running water, toilets or outhouses. Not only had Mr. Zantzinger collected rent for properties he did not own, he also went to court to demand past-due rent, and won.
He pleaded guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts of deceptive trade practices, paid $62,000 in penalties and, under an 18-month sentence, spent only nights in jail.
New York Times | W. D. Zantzinger, Subject of Dylan Song, Dies at 69
In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel | To show that all's equal and that the courts are on the level | And that the strings in the books ain't pulled and persuaded | And that even the nobles get properly handled | Once that the cops have chased after and caught 'em | And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom, | Stared at the person who killed for no reason | Who just happened to be feelin' that way without warnin'. | And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished, | And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance, | William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence. | Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, | Bury the rag deep in your face | For now's the time for your tears.
Bob Dylan | The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
Many thanks, Frank and Jeff. And Jeff, yes, it seems change is coming. It just sometimes seems like it takes a long time, is all.
"Me, I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I've been living in a world of darkness ever since. But it looks like things are going to change now."
Bob Dylan, University of Minnesota, election night November 4, 2008
