"So many roads, so much at stake | So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake | Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take | To find dignity." Bob Dylan
The Gaza government, i.e. Hamas? Forget about it. The Guardian tells us "Mitchell has no plans to meet Hamas, which the US, Israel and the EU classify as a terrorist group."
As for Afghanistan ... does Mitchell know something we don't?
Ashes in the water, | Ashes in the sea, | We all jump up | With a one-two-three.
Zand's central argument is that the Romans didn't expel whole nations from their territories. Zand estimates that perhaps 10,000 ancient Judeans were vanquished during the Roman wars, and the remaining inhabitants of ancient Judea remained, converting to Islam and assimilating with their conquerors when Arabs subjugated the area. They became the progenitors of today's Palestinian Arabs, many of whom now live as refugees who were exiled from their homeland during the 20th century.
"There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened — hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua."
Pres. Obama het vroeg verlede jaar toevallig ’n voorliefde vir die Graham Beck Brut NV ontwikkel toe hy en sy vrou een aand, kort ná sy besluit om hom as presidentskandidaat verkiesbaar te stel, by hul gunsteling-restaurant in Chicago gaan eet het. Die sommelier het twee glase Graham Beck Brut NV aanbeveel en hulle was geweldig beïndruk.
Toevallig was Graham Beck se keldermeester, mnr. Pieter Ferreira, in dié tyd in Chicago om sy wyn te bemark, ofskoon hy Obama nie self raakgeloop het nie.
Agterna het Obama ses bottels bestel vir die geleentheid op 4 November, waar die proppe geklap het voordat hy die skare in Grant Park, Chicago, toegespreek het net nadat hy as president aangewys is.
Well, why not? He is a coloured, for Heaven's sake.
There was the phone call yesterday to Mahmoud Abbas. Maybe Obama thinks he's the leader of the Palestinians, but as every Arab knows, except perhaps Mr Abbas, he is the leader of a ghost government, a near-corpse only kept alive with the blood transfusion of international support and the "full partnership" Obama has apparently offered him, whatever "full" means. And it was no surprise to anyone that Obama also made the obligatory call to the Israelis.
But for the people of the Middle East, the absence of the word "Gaza" – indeed, the word "Israel" as well – was the dark shadow over Obama's inaugural address. Didn't he care? Was he frightened? Did Obama's young speech-writer not realise that talking about black rights – why a black man's father might not have been served in a restaurant 60 years ago – would concentrate Arab minds on the fate of a people who gained the vote only three years ago but were then punished because they voted for the wrong people?
[...]
The friendly message to Muslims, "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect", simply did not address the pictures of the Gaza bloodbath at which the world has been staring in outrage. Yes, the Arabs and many other Muslim nations, and, of course, most of the world, can rejoice that the awful Bush has gone. So, too, Guantanamo. But will Bush's torturers and Rumsfeld's torturers be punished? Or quietly promoted to a job where they don't have to use water and cloths, and listen to men screaming?
Sure, give the man a chance. Maybe George Mitchell will talk to Hamas – he's just the man to try – but what will the old failures such as Denis Ross have to say, and Rahm Emanuel and, indeed, Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton? More a sermon than an Obama inaugural, even the Palestinians in Damascus spotted the absence of those two words: Palestine and Israel. So hot to touch they were, and on a freezing Washington day, Obama wasn't even wearing gloves.
Hamas said Thursday that it would begin handing out compensation and reconstruction aid to residents of Gaza, in a sign of the challenges Israel faces as it tries to weaken the militant group’s hold after the army’s operation there.
Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, said at a news conference that it would start to distribute the first installment of $35 million to $40 million in payments to Gazans on Sunday. Israel ended its three-week offensive against Hamas last Sunday, and withdrew its last troops from the area early Wednesday.
Or will a non-event become the tone of his presidency?
As for Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner:
As Timothy F. Geithner moved closer yesterday to confirmation as Treasury secretary, he signaled a more confrontational approach toward China, bluntly stating that the new administration thinks Beijing is "manipulating" its currency and it will act "aggressively" using "all the diplomatic avenues" to change China's currency practices.
China's control of the value of its currency, the yuan, has been a friction point for years, with some economists saying Beijing has kept its currency artificially low to keep the prices of its goods cheap and generate trade surpluses. That has led to a global capital imbalance, as American consumers borrowed and spent and China became the United States' largest foreign creditor.
One nine-year-old boy said his father had been shot dead in front of him despite surrendering to Israeli soldiers with his hands in the air. Another youngster described witnessing the deaths of his mother, three brothers and uncle after the house they were in was shelled. He said his mother and one of his siblings had been killed instantly, while the others bled to death over a period of days.
A psychiatrist treating children in the village of Zeitoun on the outskirts of Gaza City, where the alleged incidents took place, described the deaths as a "massacre". Rawya Borno, a Jordanian doctor, said civilians, including children, were rounded up and killed by Israeli troops.
[...]
In interviews with ITV News, Palestinians claimed that Israeli forces knowingly killed civilians in Zeitoun on the morning of Jan 14. Abdullah Samouni, nine, described the moment his father was allegedly "executed" by Israeli soldiers. Holding his arms in the air, he said: "He was surrendering like this. My father came out and they shot him right away."
A boy named Ahmed said he was trapped for days in the wreckage of the shelled Samouni family's house. He said: "My mother was dead beside me, she was clutching my brother Nasser and they were dead. My brother Itzaq was bleeding for two days and then he died. My brother Izmael bled to death in one day. My uncle Talal was bleeding for two hours and he died. God bless them."
"The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda...What we want is not a withdrawal to the '67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them ... "
John Ross recounts his experience when he went to Palestine to observe the olive harvest and seven, young men in yarmulkes "charged down the bare brown hillside swinging thick clubs and hurling large lethal stones, war-whooping in Hebrew their harsh curses upon the people of this lacerated land. I was standing with a Palestinian farmer and his family under a freshly-picked olive tree when they came for us and thus, I suppose, guilty of being a race traitor in their perverted vision."
As Ross began to run, "the savages [members of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's fascist cult] broke out of the trees and before I had time to turn towards them, they were upon me The first blow glanced off the small of my back and I tumbled to the red-brown earth, trying to cover my head with my forearm. The second smashed into my wrist and the blood began to spurt One Nazi youth picked up a large, jagged rock and advanced upon me with malice glowing in his evil, rabid eyes, hurling it from five feet away. I felt the painful crack against my knee and then they were pulling me to my feet, tearing my clothes and booting me down the hill like a punctured soccer ball." (Anderson Valley Advertiser December 3, 2003)
“Do you realize, that a man who calls himself a Jew,” he continued, “gave orders to Israeli young men and women in the army or police to kill Palestinian civilians, to break their bones [referring to Labor Party Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who in 1989 urged Israeli soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian demonstrators]. Is such behavior compatible with our ethics? With morality on any level? As long as Israel exists as a state, Jewish men and women will commit unpardonable sins and pollute the religion for future generations. Israel has fomented a pernicious lobby in the United States and its equivalent in Europe to tell the non-Jewish public that it is a democratic David fighting a fanatical Goliath. This is a lie. No Messiah will ever return to such a terrible place. A state of Israel can exist only after the Messiah Returns.”
Compare the thugs who put Ross in the hospital to the words of Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and key spiritual guide for Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory. In early June, he wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He offered his decree: having compassion with the civilian population of Gaza is incompatible with protecting Israeli soldiers' lives. Those holding supposedly humane feelings imperil Israeli lives. The rabbi's son, Shmuel, interpreted this decree: "if killing 100 Arabs is not sufficient to stop the launching of Qassam rockets at Israel, then 1,000 must be killed. And if that is not sufficient, then 10,000, and 100,000 and even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."
Eliyahu claimed that "all civilians living in Gaza" are "collectively guilty for Qassam attacks on Sderot" and that "there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings."
Journalist Avnery found the letter in Olam Katan [Small World], "a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide. Eliyahu wrote that "This is a message to all leaders of the Jewish people not to be compassionate with those who shoot [rockets] at civilians in their houses." Eliyahu's son, Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, said his father "advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Qassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life." (Avnery, Gush Shalom, June 9, 2007)
In his letter, Eliyahu justified his edict by quoting from Psalms. "I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them."
Avnery reported on Eliyahu's disproportionate equation. Over the last six years, nine Israelis in Sderot died from "crudely built Qassam missiles." 650 Palestinians died last year (more than half unarmed civilians, according to Amnesty International) from attacks by Israel, one of the most potent and sophisticated military powers in the world."
"Even when we seek revenge, it is important to make one thing clear – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.
"The Talmud states that if gentiles rob Israel of silver they will pay it back in gold, and all that is taken will be paid back in folds, but in cases like these there is nothing to pay back, since as I said – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs," added Rabbi Eliyahu.
In a piece penned for this upcoming weekend's edition of the newsletter "Eretz Yisrael Shelanu," Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wrote: "It's time to call the child by its name: Revenge, revenge, revenge. We mustn't forget. We have to take horrible revenge for the terrorist attack at Mercaz Harav yeshiva," referring to the incident in which eight students were killed earlier this month.
"I'm not talking about individual people in particular, I'm talking about the state," Eliyahu wrote. "[The state] has to pain them to the point where they scream 'Enough,' to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream 'help.' Not for the sake of satisfying the need for revenge but for the purposes of deterrence."
In the newsletter, which was distributed to synagogues around the country, Eliyahu proposes "hanging the children of the terrorist who carried out the attack in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva from a tree."
Note: Paul Krugman, with Mike Whitney dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s, gives the incoming U.S. president sage advice. Read What Obama Must Do. Why the hell he wasn't made a policy advisor, I don't know. Mind you, in many ways, he is one.
Israel suspends Gaza genocide for Obama inauguration
The racket of explosions and gunfire of the past 22 days went silent in Hamas-ruled Gaza after the Israeli ceasefire went into effect at 2 a.m. (7 p.m. ET). ...
Rice and President George W. Bush are stepping down and many analysts believe Israel, eager for smooth relations from the outset with the new president, has been keen to end the fighting before Barack Obama takes over the White House on Tuesday.
One of my colleagues, Zubayr, mailed me this story. It's doing the rounds.
Jewish editor sacked for publishing article
This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, a (sic) American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next day.
Quest for justice
By Judith Stone
I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.
I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking.
Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.
"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again to us alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there "is no Palestinian problem".
We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims.
In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.
Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.
Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what's left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: "Public Parking".
I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these 'temporary' camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.
Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), "The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."
We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?
The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country...".
Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel's existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.
In Hertzl's 'The Jewish State' the father of Zionism said: "We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said: "If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join a terror group." I'd go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I'd hurtle (sic) a boulder.
Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d's restitution of the holy land to it's (sic) rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.
We cannot continue to say: "But what were we to do?" Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people here.
I seldom trust e-mailed stories and, as normal as it sounds, checked this one out. It's legitimate but, initially, a search on Debbie Ducro showed, that while it may be one of the most circulated stories on the Web, the editor in question might have owed her existence only to the story's circulation. She's certainly not to be found in the archives of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.
I did not pursue a search on "Judith Stone", a relatively common name shared by the author of the acclaimed When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race. There is no way of telling whether this article was written by the same person.
I found a Web copy here and here; both being replicas of the e-mail. In the second instance, the Yale e-mail dates it January 10, 2001. i.e. eight years ago.
It's age was confirmed on January 15 last year by the Independent Catholic News, which stated it was running the story again, having run it seven years before, in January 2001.
This story had a history.
Following my blogger's nose, I uncovered a copy of the story at Bint Jbeil dated Friday, November 10, 2000. Importantly, the footer stated: "Upon publishing this article, Ms. Deborah Ducrocq, Managing Editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, was fired by Sun Publications President,Terri Dearth."
It seems I had found Deborah Ducrocq, the former principled editor of the formerly principled Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. Indeed, Deborah Ducrocq — or Debbie Ducro as the world knows her, was out of a job around that time. However, she had no difficulty finding one, being offered positions at Expo (editor in chief) and Nicholson Kovac (media liaison, coordinating agency promotions on a regional and national basis).
Finding Ms. Ducrocq still speaking on behalf of Nicholson Kovac in 2005, I surmised she'd survived being bounced out of the rabidly Zionist Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. Not that I had any proof that it is, was, or ever has been rabidly Zionist. It was back to the drawing board.
The long and short of it is that this article (registration required) by Julius A. Karash on November 11, 2000 in The Kansas City Star shows it was:
Amid talk of a possible boycott, Deborah Ducrocq has been fired as managing editor of the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle.
Rabbi Amy Wallk Katz, president of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City, said she was informed of Ducrocq's dismissal Friday by Terri Dearth, president and publisher of Sun Publications, owner of the Chronicle.
"I'm thrilled," Katz said. "The paper has not been a particularly good paper for the last several months. It has not covered issues in the Jewish world in a manner that was responsible journalistically, and it has been extremely disrespectful of the Jewish community's sensibilities."
Dearth declined to comment Friday. Ducrocq, the Chronicle's fourth managing editor since the late 1998 acquisition of Sun Publications by Texas-based Lionheart Holdings, could not be reached for comment.
The Chronicle in recent months has generated controversy in the Jewish community over various articles, columns and editorials that have appeared in the weekly.
In October, some members of the Jewish community expressed shock over an advertising insert by the ultra-conservative John Birch Society that appeared in some issues of the Chronicle. Dearth later apologized for the insert.
Katz said she and other members of the rabbinical association were angered by a letter to the editor in Friday's edition of the Chronicle that likened the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi extermination of European Jews.
Katz, her voice shaking, said the letter was "reprehensible. I have a master's degree in journalism. I believe in freedom of speech. But it disgusts me that it was published."
Katz said she and other members of the rabbinical association exchanged e-mails after seeing the letter on the Chronicle's Web site Thursday. She said some members of the association have discussed a possible boycott of the Chronicle.
"We all felt that it needed a strong, vigilant response from the Jewish community," Katz said.
Meantime, Katz said members of the rabbinical association are scheduled to meet Tuesday with officials of Sun Publications to discuss ways to improve the paper and its relationship with the Jewish community.
"As absolutely furious as each member of the association was (about the letter to the editor), each one of us wants there to be a Jewish paper here," Katz said. "I feel very badly for what's happened, because the Chronicle has the potential to play a pivotal role in the community. My hope is that the owners of Sun Publications will figure out how to repair the damages."
I'm sure that, when firing Deborah Ducrocq for publishing Judith Stone's reasonable and well-observed article, the proprietors of the obviously troubled but still-ardently Zionist publication had no idea their rash — albeit predictable decision would see the story that so raised their readers' ire circulating the Web and being read nine years later.
By people who liken "... the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi extermination of European Jews."
Like spam, and just as Hamas has profited hugely from the same overly zealous Zionist stupidity and cruelty, truth has a habit of outlasting and unseating injustice. Hence this succinct article's longevity and the decision of the Independent Catholic News to publish it in 2001 and, noting the fact, again in 2008.
Heh ...
It seems the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which records the story, also does its homework, noting the date of original publication.
Surely most could drop a gliding commercial airliner's speed, having turned through 90 degrees from 3,200 feet, to less than 100 knots, touch down sufficiently 'nose high' and level to slow the craft further by dragging the tail and rear through the water, and 'land' it wheels up only when speed slowed to a point where the main engines would not rip off the wings and pull the plane under?
I mean, Chrissakes, it seems anybody in Manhattan airspace — or within a couple of miles of 'Ground Zero', can fly one of these things. Officially, anyway.
Or was it the "key to the city" thing? Did the Muslim guys, jealous of American freedoms, feel they had to prise open the city with box cutters?
'Do 'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember 'Nothing?' I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Eliot originally considered titling the poem He do the Police in Different Voices. In the version of the poem Eliot brought back from Switzerland, the first two sections of the poem – 'The Burial of the Dead' and 'A Game of Chess' – appeared under this title. This strange phrase is taken from Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend, in which the widow Betty Higden, says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy: "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices." This would help the reader to understand that, while there are many different voices (speakers) in the poem, there is one central consciousness.
Quite why such a fuss is being made of this, I'm not sure, but it seems the media's suddenly regained interest in Israel's criminal aggression and ongoing war crimes.
For my part, I reckon they hit it because — unable to best Hamas, they're desperate to force a ceasefire. Bombing the Strip's main humanitarian aid stores (food, medicines, everything) is akin to shooting oneself in the foot. This is comparable to the final day's cluster bombs in Lebanon back in 2006. The IDF will pull out of Gaza shortly, humiliated.
The first thought that strikes me on coming across customized number plates is "Who the hell are these people?" The answer is seldom flattering and, this afternoon, on finding this meaningless expression of choice down at a shopping center across the tracks from me, I felt no reason to alter my conclusion.
(The WP denotes the province, by the way, and is mandatory.)
Probably some young, over-moneyed twenty-something kid with an imagination deficit driving a high-priced pocket rocket given him by Dad for his twenty-first birthday.
I reconsidered. Look, "UFO" is misleading, tempting one to leap to assumptions of New Age rituals, bookshelves lined with "esoterica", framed and autographed pictures of David Icke, and an unhealthy devotion to role-playing games.
It was the "HUGE" that got me to pondering the type of twisted mind that would stick something like this on his car. I'm aware of Huge Telecom, a sometime top-level IT company now falling off the JSE with our local economy.
Any connection would surely be coincidental. And the car much larger.
Unless of course, we also give the HUGE preceding UFO its obvious meaning. This car, if it belongs to somebody working for the company, means "HUGE UFO" makes several statements.
Given the company's market capitalization, it could have perhaps been a larger car, but isn't. Also, although a small car, it's large for a conventional UFO which, as we know, is an unidentified flying object. More, a UFO is what the car — when driven habitually at speed and without the identifying company name, becomes.
Although, paradoxically, the "HUGE" negates the essential nature of "UFO".
If a meteorite this size smacked into the Earth, we'd hear about it. And, in a sense, through the registration plate, we have. Owned by somebody employed by a listed company, the registration becomes a quirky statement on wealth, status, individuality, society, etc.
It's personal. Or is it? Does it say something of the company, i.e. "Where the hell are we going?", the owner, "This is Major Tom to Ground Control...", the car "I may not be bling but, as a 1.8, I really move", or a mix of the three?
With the economy in the toilet, and if it's a commentary on the company, Huge Telecom is being likened to something akin to a Scud missile — flying, its destination unknown, and its inevitable landing assumed to be like that of an astronomical garden feature landing in a suburban parking lot.
Combined, the three narratives — that of the company, the car, and the employee, reflect a mildly cynical, intellectual detachment. This would have to belong to somebody who really knows where he or she comes from or is going to.
Nah... To come up with that one, he or she would have to be a really clued, insightful thirty-something with a seriously warped sense of humor, an IT background, and a penchant for speed ...
Such people emigrated a while back.
I finished my smoke and gave up. If the owner is male, he might be talking about his dick for all I know.
I guess it's a case of back to "Who the hell are these people?"
Note: Yes, it's sad that I'd rather be reading number plates than watching the Dow skid down to 8,150 and the Citi implode. I know these things. Believe me.
Afterthought: Okay, now that the Dow's recovered to 8,200.22 -248.34 (-2.94%) — it's closed lower on five occasions this past year, I guess I can disclose that, when the above car pulled in, I was idling some time away chatting to Samuel, the Rwandese car guard, a refugee and alien of several years standing — literally and metaphorically.
I chat to many refugees and have much respect for the work done for them by people like Sam Pearce and Braam Hanekom. Samuel and I were trying to figure out why South Africa has so many refugees. Tens of thousands have jobs. Surely they qualify for temporary and, later, permanent residence status if they wish to stay and work here?
It seems they don't. Nor do their children born here. I'd like to know why.
And surely, if we gave incoming 'visitors' temporary residence permits — changed to refugee status only should they not find or generate work, we'd drastically reduce our burgeoning 'refugee problem'?
"On Israel, you cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements. That is just for me an absolute," Mrs Clinton told a Senate confirmation hearing.
"That is the United States government's position. That is the president-elect's position," she said after a senator suggested it is "naive and illogical" to pursue diplomacy with governments opposed to Israel.
Ain't she a darlin'? And I'm sure, in promising to put such "... diplomacy back at the heart of a 'smart power' strategy for the Middle East', she articulates the view of most Americans keen to see the fucking sand niggers of Palestine wiped from the face of the Earth.
As for this contrived statement:
"It is heartbreaking ... that young girls are attacked on their way to school by Taleban sympathisers and members who do not want young women to be educated. It’s not complicated. They want to maintain an attitude that keeps women unhealthy, unfed, uneducated. This is not culture. This is not custom. This is criminal."
... tell it to the IDF [Warning! Disturbing Image!]. That particular picture — of what remains of a young girl perhaps attacked by Israelis on her way to school, is taken from a page to which Google no longer links, i.e. has censored, erasing from its cache each and every image.
The story of the January 6, 2009 Gaza City massacre is here. And, foreseeing the aforementioned page's removal from the Web, the images are now here [Warning! Disturbing Images!].
Wake up America. You're being snowed; served propaganda of the worst kind, and drowned in duplicitous drivel by a leadership that, rather than do no evil would have yousee, hear, and speak no evil while they do whatever they bloody well like.
But, back to next week's Secretary of State. Hillary's intent to find "... more partners and fewer adversaries... " by ignoring or obliterating them makes sweet babes of Barbara Bush, Madelaine Albright, and Condi Rice.
Is she for real? Only time will tell. In this instance, I cannot believe she is.
Hillary Clinton, like Barack Obama, is a person of great intellect. They are not — by any standard, dumb and I do not for a moment thing they believe the swill they so easily spew on matters pertaining to foreign policy.
It is not in their political or economic interests to do so. Besides, it's the stuff of war crimes.
Clinton will say whatever needs to be said. In politics, the end always justifies the means and, for this reason, I'm far more interested in what Hillary Clinton, her commander-in-chief, and the rest of the Obama administration do because, by God, they have proved that they are capable of doing that which needs to be done.
I sincerely believe her words to be empty rhetoric delivered to order. More, I hope that that which brought her to these confirmation hearings, i.e. Barack Obama's election, directs her actions from January 20, 2009.
Otherwise, all hell's going to break loose.
"The international community was guilt-ridden by the then recent revelation of the Holocaust and its appreciation of its complicity in the pogroms against Jews over the centuries. The infliction of another historic injustice, this time on the Palestinian Arabs, was the means whereby that guilt was idly assuaged.
"That monstrous injustice lies at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East since then.
"The refusal of the international community to acknowledge the origins of the state of Israel is the obstacle to a resolution of the conflict."
Israeli intelligence reminds me of the con man who thinks that if he says something convincingly enough and often enough his listener will believe him. And surprisingly many people are conned by such people. The reporters, though they dutifully reported the story left themselves an out in recognizing that Israeli officials have a tendency not only to attempt to snow the world media, but apparently to snow themselves (if they believe what they’re saying).
The only hopeful interpretation of this malarkey is that perhaps Israel makes this claim in order to prepare its own people for a near-term ceasefire. If they can convince the nation that it is Hamas clamoring for a ceasefire and ready to say “Uncle,” then it is easier to climb down from the precarious branch onto which they themselves have crawled.
I have said this any number of times and will say it yet again. There IS no way Israel can defeat Hamas short of occupying every square inch of Gaza and remaining there in force to prevent Hamas from reasserting itself. Hamas knows that no matter how severe the losses it must endure, it can only win. Even losing is a win as long as it survives.
Hamas, as Hezbollah before it in 2006, has emerged as the lions of resistance to Israel. Islamists the world over are lining up to do whatever they can to help Hamas. Israel’s assault throws Hamas ever more firmly into Iran’s embrace.
Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt, the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.
If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a victory of mind over matter.
What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of achieving peace and quiet.
In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the State of Israel.
Richard Silverstein's enjoyed a deserved spot on my blogroll for many years now. However, I was surprised to find him dropping a comment at Tom Feeley's remarkable news resource, InformationClearingHouse. Surprised because, while many of the articles Tom posts are essential reading, many of the comments turn my stomach.
This is especially true when it comes to articles addressing Israel's barbaric sixty-year genocide of the country's Palestinian population. I've learned over time that many commenters, professing to be from the so-called 'progressive left', are intolerant beyond measure. An inordinate number are out-and-out anti-Semites and display an innate but intense dislike of Jewish people.
And, let me be clear about this. Judaism or being Jewish has nothing whatsoever to do with Zionism or being an Israeli citizen. It's a case of "All Zionists are Jews but not all Jews are Zionists." Nor, it needs to be said, are all Zionists intent on wiping out Muslims. The state of psychosis in which Israelis live means many are unduly influenced by the fanatics and zealots holding sway. In short, they know no better.
Generally, scanning comments tends to spoil articles — the content of which is way above and beyond the grasp of many of its bigoted or racist readers. Take, for example, Mike Whitney's expectedly incisive article Two Years of Starvation Followed by Fire-bombing and Paul Craig Roberts's America’s Shame. Both deserve reading. And it was in the latter article that I found Richard's comment. My surprise was ameliorated by his answering a comment spammer, something he is inordinately well-qualified to do.
Do yourself a favour and read a Guardian article, Hasbara spam alert, written by Richard and posted to InformationClearingHouse by Tom. As he points out in the article, "Propaganda 2.0 is here" and, combined with racism, xenophobia and bigotry, boy is it ugly.
Notes:
1) Serving the interests of the Hasbara (Propaganda 2.0), The Wall Street Journal gives voice to the vegetative war beast, Ariel Sharon, through his former spokesman and now president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dore Gold. Gold, the type of person from whom you'd not buy — or even accept, a used car, dishes up The Gaza-Egypt Smuggling Tunnels Must Be Closed, yet another spurious argument for further land grabs and Palestinian asphyxiation. Needless to say, the WSJ does not mention the two ghastly years (2002-2004) Gold spent articulating the dark visions of The Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, nor his stint as foreign policy advisor for fraudster, war criminal, and soon-to-be prime minister Bibi Netanyahu.
2) Seth Freeman yesterday penned So what if Israel uses the internet?, slamming Richard Silverstein's denunciation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's abuse of Israeli citizens to disseminate disinformation and outright lies. So impassioned is Freeman's piece I've little doubt he'd have backed Joseph Geobbels's right to propagandize over the Internet had it been available to him.
Whether on the balmy streets of Jaffa, or in the upper echelons of Israeli officialdom, the message appears to be the same: if you raise so much as a murmur of dissent in a time of war, the strong arm of Israeli law will come crashing down and stifle your protests in a flash. Israel's boast that it is the "only democracy in the Middle East" rings more hollow now than ever before.
One thing about Richard Silverstein. You can be pretty sure his values tomorrow will be consistent with those he espouses today. Freeman? Go figure.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
