By
Mike Packer
David Bedein and Sam Harari published on August 15 in Philadelphia’s The Bulletin quotes from an interview given by Major General Claudio Graziano, commander of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on the situation in Lebanon.
In true UN tradition the General blames Israel with regards to the implementation of UN resolution 1701. He is quoted as saying “Hezbollah is one of the parties that agree with 1701 and support 1701”. He, also denied allegations that Hezbollah has rearmed. The situation on the ground says the exact opposite. Israel intelligence has photographic proof that “The Party of God” has dug tunnels and underground storage facilities for the tons of arms and ammunition that they have smuggled through Syria into the area in flagrant violation of 1701.
.
Israel’s Foreign Minister, Tzippi Livni, supported the UN resolution with the hope and trust that the UN would implement 1701. Guess what, no such luck! The UN has again proved itself to be as useless as teats on a boar hog and far more malodorous.
Another question posed to the General was what could UNIFIL do if it discovered evidence of rearming in S.Lebanon, Graziano replied, “UNIFIL has no commitment to the disarmament of Hezbollah. We are a peacekeeping force, not peace enforcement.”
Therein lies the crux of the matter.
It is time the UN disbanded itself as did the League of Nations after WWII because it could not “keep the peace”. The UN is not only not keeping the peace but is playing double standards vis-à-vis the Middle East conflict. This is, of course, not surprising as the Arab members of the UN have everybody by the short and curlies because of their oil glut.
And then there is the problem of the Italian contingent and at its head Major General Claudio Graziano. Since the fall of the Roman Empire the Italians have not been the best soldiers on the planet and were the butt of innumerable jokes.
To shed a little more light on the subject Nissan Ratzlav-Katz writing for IsraelNN.com quotes from Corriere della Sera that former Italian President Francesco Cossiga revealed that the government of Italy agreed to allow Arab terrorist groups freedom of movement in the country in exchange for immunity from attacks in Italy.
"The terms of the agreement were that the Palestinian organizations could even maintain armed bases of operation in the country, and they had freedom of entry and exit without being subject to normal police controls, because they were 'handled' by the secret services," Cossiga explained.
So, since WWII, the Italians have been the whores of Islam and they continue that tradition in Lebanon.
.
Read more!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The Bill of [Blog] Rights
by
Mike Packer
The pre-preamble to the Bill of [Blog] Rights:
This Bill is written in Americanese. Apologies to my family and friends in the United Kingdom and Europe. I have come to the conclusion that the UK and Europe is a lost cause, they no longer have the motivation to fight their own demise. I know that they fought a world war not so long ago and are tired of turmoil, so I forgive them. To my family and friends; you are all sweet people, I love you dearly but I question your choice of countries to live in.
The preamble:
I created this blog because I am mad. I am mad at the members of my generation that are sending this world to hell in a hand basket. We, of the baby boom, were left a world devastated by two world wars within a span of 30 years and improved it technologically.
All well and good, but not enough. We ignored the third world and improved only our own global neighborhoods although we did improve in the latter half of the last century, but, apparently, not enough. Payback time is here!
Here I wish to insert the first amendment:
1. Freedom of Speech.
The freedom to be able to say or write what I want on my blog site and to invite whoever I wish to post here without restraint.
I invite all my friends who have something to get off their chests about the Middle East crisis and the spread of Islamofacism to submit their posts by email for consideration and if they are clean enough I will post them on the blog site.
2. Freedom of Expression
The freedom to say what you feel without feeling guilty about whether you are treading on someones feelings. Political correctness is out!
Political correctness was invented by left wing liberals and was the worst invention of the 20th Century. I want to be able to say what is on my mind in the same plain language that I use with my friends without having to answer to any "Human Rights Commission".
So lets all wake up and start getting the word out. We do not want to be Muslims, dhimmis, or any other ferkakter (sic) Islamic label. This is our world, we improved our part of it let them with our hard earned petro-dollars improve their part. I don't want some sheet-head arriving in my country and telling me what to do, I say to them the same as the Australians (bless 'em) "if you don't like the way I live get the hell out!"
. Read more!
Mike Packer
The pre-preamble to the Bill of [Blog] Rights:
This Bill is written in Americanese. Apologies to my family and friends in the United Kingdom and Europe. I have come to the conclusion that the UK and Europe is a lost cause, they no longer have the motivation to fight their own demise. I know that they fought a world war not so long ago and are tired of turmoil, so I forgive them. To my family and friends; you are all sweet people, I love you dearly but I question your choice of countries to live in.
The preamble:
I created this blog because I am mad. I am mad at the members of my generation that are sending this world to hell in a hand basket. We, of the baby boom, were left a world devastated by two world wars within a span of 30 years and improved it technologically.
All well and good, but not enough. We ignored the third world and improved only our own global neighborhoods although we did improve in the latter half of the last century, but, apparently, not enough. Payback time is here!
Here I wish to insert the first amendment:
1. Freedom of Speech.
The freedom to be able to say or write what I want on my blog site and to invite whoever I wish to post here without restraint.
I invite all my friends who have something to get off their chests about the Middle East crisis and the spread of Islamofacism to submit their posts by email for consideration and if they are clean enough I will post them on the blog site.
2. Freedom of Expression
The freedom to say what you feel without feeling guilty about whether you are treading on someones feelings. Political correctness is out!
Political correctness was invented by left wing liberals and was the worst invention of the 20th Century. I want to be able to say what is on my mind in the same plain language that I use with my friends without having to answer to any "Human Rights Commission".
So lets all wake up and start getting the word out. We do not want to be Muslims, dhimmis, or any other ferkakter (sic) Islamic label. This is our world, we improved our part of it let them with our hard earned petro-dollars improve their part. I don't want some sheet-head arriving in my country and telling me what to do, I say to them the same as the Australians (bless 'em) "if you don't like the way I live get the hell out!"
. Read more!
Monday, August 18, 2008
From The Times
August 12, 2008
A festival of grovelling to terrorists
If works of art are withdrawn because of fear of reprisal, we lose the chance for open debate
Mick Hume
[bold script in square parenthesis are my comments - MP]
Have you heard about the first novel by a young American woman that has become the “new Satanic Verses”, sparking terrorist attacks on the publishers and riots by Islamic militants that make the protests against Salman Rushdie's book look like an English tea party?
No, you probably won't have, since there is no book for anybody to riot about. The US publishers Random House pulled The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, due out today, on the ground that it “might be offensive to some in the Muslim community” and “could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”. An executive told the author that they had stopped her racy historical novel about Aisha, young wife of the Prophet Muhammad, out of “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims” and concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees”.
[I'm sorry but I am starting to get pissed off! The true enemy out there is not only Islam but our own liberal thinking. This constant apologizing for imagined wrongs is just too wimpy for me. I will write what I want, when I want to, about whoever riles me and I will use any and all epithets in my arsenal, human rights commissions be damned!]
There had been no acts of violence or terrorism, nor even threats or protests. All that happened was that one non-Muslim associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, who was sent a proof copy, apparently cautioned that the book would be seen as “a declaration of war... explosive stuff... a national security issue” and more offensive than The Satanic Verses. There swiftly followed a riot of retreating publishers, and the book was blown out before anybody had the chance to set light to it for the cameras.
It looks like another example of a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles. Two years ago, when the Deutsche opera in Berlin scrapped a production of Mozart's Idomeneo for fear that it might offend some Muslims, I described it as “pre-emptive grovelling”. This now appears to be the modus operandi of the transatlantic arts elites.
It has just been reported that the BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers. A team of journalists had spent months researching it in Beeston, Leeds, home of some of the 7/7 terrorists, and a top writer was preparing the final draft, when it was scrapped. The journalists were reportedly told by BBC executives that it was Islamophobic and offensive.
Last year, the New Culture Forum published a survey of similar cases, from the BBC hospital soap Casualty changing Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists, to the Barbican cutting out scenes from Tamburlaine the Great and the “cutting-edge” Royal Court Theatre cancelling an adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, both for fear that they might offend some Muslims.
The threat to freedom here does not come from a few Islamic radicals, but from the invertebrate liberals of the cultural establishment who have so lost faith in themselves that they will surrender their freedoms before anybody starts a fight. The mere suggestion of causing offence to some mob of imagined stereotypes is enough to have them scurrying for a bomb shelter, their creative imaginations blowing up small protests into the threat of a big culture war. Of course, such pre-emptive grovelling only encourages any zealot with a blog to demand even more censorship.
[Europa, what ails thee? Where are the macho europeans that destroyed Nazi Germany? why are you kowtowing to a bunch of towel-headed, sheep shagging, camel jockeys? Where are your cojones? why isn't the average European Joe out in the streets waving some banners with a few good insults on them and claim back his country? Come on, people, Israel can't do it all by itself for you, we have our own problems]
Who needs book burners if “offensive” books are not allowed to be published in the first place? Why bother to protest against provocative plays if the theatres will turn the lights off for you beforehand? There is no need even for a polite exchange on Points of View if the controversial programmes never get made.
The quality or lack of it in the self-censored works is not the issue here. That associate professor from Texas condemned the novel about Muhammad's wife as “soft porn”. But so what if it was? Free expression should mean freedom for what others see as filth, too. If there are artists childishly causing offence for its own sake, feel free to ignore them, but not to gag them.
Pre-emptive grovelling, encouraged from the top down by our illiberal authorities, is bad for the arts and for society. The arts can only flourish in a climate of cultural anarchy rather than compulsion and conformity. The attempt to limit what can be said must have a chilling effect, encouraging other writers and artists to pull in their horns.
Such self-censorship is also dangerous for those who don't much care about high culture. There is indeed a lesson from the Satanic Verses controversy, but not the one often cited. The dominant response to that clash of cultures was to try to bury it beneath worthy multicultural claptrap about celebrating difference. After more than 15 years of such attempts to suppress honest debate, the tensions festering beneath the surface exploded on the London transport system. As one female Muslim writer critical of the decision not to publish The Jewel of Medina says: “The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.”
As an old libertarian of the Left, who has long upheld the Right to Be Offensive, what makes me most angry today is to see fearful self-censorship and pre-emptive grovelling in the name of liberal values. That really is something worth intellectually rioting about.
. Read more!
August 12, 2008
A festival of grovelling to terrorists
If works of art are withdrawn because of fear of reprisal, we lose the chance for open debate
Mick Hume
[bold script in square parenthesis are my comments - MP]
Have you heard about the first novel by a young American woman that has become the “new Satanic Verses”, sparking terrorist attacks on the publishers and riots by Islamic militants that make the protests against Salman Rushdie's book look like an English tea party?
No, you probably won't have, since there is no book for anybody to riot about. The US publishers Random House pulled The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones, due out today, on the ground that it “might be offensive to some in the Muslim community” and “could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”. An executive told the author that they had stopped her racy historical novel about Aisha, young wife of the Prophet Muhammad, out of “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims” and concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees”.
[I'm sorry but I am starting to get pissed off! The true enemy out there is not only Islam but our own liberal thinking. This constant apologizing for imagined wrongs is just too wimpy for me. I will write what I want, when I want to, about whoever riles me and I will use any and all epithets in my arsenal, human rights commissions be damned!]
There had been no acts of violence or terrorism, nor even threats or protests. All that happened was that one non-Muslim associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, who was sent a proof copy, apparently cautioned that the book would be seen as “a declaration of war... explosive stuff... a national security issue” and more offensive than The Satanic Verses. There swiftly followed a riot of retreating publishers, and the book was blown out before anybody had the chance to set light to it for the cameras.
It looks like another example of a quiet wave of self-censorship and cultural cowardice sweeping Western art circles. Two years ago, when the Deutsche opera in Berlin scrapped a production of Mozart's Idomeneo for fear that it might offend some Muslims, I described it as “pre-emptive grovelling”. This now appears to be the modus operandi of the transatlantic arts elites.
It has just been reported that the BBC has dropped a big-budget docu-drama, The London Bombers. A team of journalists had spent months researching it in Beeston, Leeds, home of some of the 7/7 terrorists, and a top writer was preparing the final draft, when it was scrapped. The journalists were reportedly told by BBC executives that it was Islamophobic and offensive.
Last year, the New Culture Forum published a survey of similar cases, from the BBC hospital soap Casualty changing Muslim terrorists into animal rights activists, to the Barbican cutting out scenes from Tamburlaine the Great and the “cutting-edge” Royal Court Theatre cancelling an adaptation of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, both for fear that they might offend some Muslims.
The threat to freedom here does not come from a few Islamic radicals, but from the invertebrate liberals of the cultural establishment who have so lost faith in themselves that they will surrender their freedoms before anybody starts a fight. The mere suggestion of causing offence to some mob of imagined stereotypes is enough to have them scurrying for a bomb shelter, their creative imaginations blowing up small protests into the threat of a big culture war. Of course, such pre-emptive grovelling only encourages any zealot with a blog to demand even more censorship.
[Europa, what ails thee? Where are the macho europeans that destroyed Nazi Germany? why are you kowtowing to a bunch of towel-headed, sheep shagging, camel jockeys? Where are your cojones? why isn't the average European Joe out in the streets waving some banners with a few good insults on them and claim back his country? Come on, people, Israel can't do it all by itself for you, we have our own problems]
Who needs book burners if “offensive” books are not allowed to be published in the first place? Why bother to protest against provocative plays if the theatres will turn the lights off for you beforehand? There is no need even for a polite exchange on Points of View if the controversial programmes never get made.
The quality or lack of it in the self-censored works is not the issue here. That associate professor from Texas condemned the novel about Muhammad's wife as “soft porn”. But so what if it was? Free expression should mean freedom for what others see as filth, too. If there are artists childishly causing offence for its own sake, feel free to ignore them, but not to gag them.
Pre-emptive grovelling, encouraged from the top down by our illiberal authorities, is bad for the arts and for society. The arts can only flourish in a climate of cultural anarchy rather than compulsion and conformity. The attempt to limit what can be said must have a chilling effect, encouraging other writers and artists to pull in their horns.
Such self-censorship is also dangerous for those who don't much care about high culture. There is indeed a lesson from the Satanic Verses controversy, but not the one often cited. The dominant response to that clash of cultures was to try to bury it beneath worthy multicultural claptrap about celebrating difference. After more than 15 years of such attempts to suppress honest debate, the tensions festering beneath the surface exploded on the London transport system. As one female Muslim writer critical of the decision not to publish The Jewel of Medina says: “The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.”
As an old libertarian of the Left, who has long upheld the Right to Be Offensive, what makes me most angry today is to see fearful self-censorship and pre-emptive grovelling in the name of liberal values. That really is something worth intellectually rioting about.
. Read more!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Olmert to PA: We'll quit West Bank when you retake Gaza
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent
[comments in square parenthesis are mine - MP]
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has presented Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a proposal for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank to take place after Abbas' forces have retaken Gaza as part of an agreement in principle on borders, refugees and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state.
Olmert, who met with Abbas this week, feels there is time to reach an agreement during his remaining time in office. He is now awaiting a decision from the Palestinians.
[ surely he is jesting, how can a Prime Minister who is weeks from terminating his office make any lasting agreements when he doesn't have the backing of the Knesset or even everyone in his own party]
The centerpiece of Olmert's detailed proposal is the suggested permanent border, which would be based on an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank. In return for the land retained by Israel in the West Bank, the Palestinians would receive alternative land in the Negev, adjacent to the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians would also enjoy free passage between Gaza and the West Bank without any security checks, the proposal says. A senior Israeli official said the Palestinians were given preliminary maps of the proposed borders.
[Ehud Barak was forced out of office for doing almost the same thing. If there are going to be early elections in Israel Barak has a chance of winning and we would be back where we were at Camp David. We need to find someone who is willing to announce that we are not interested in a two-state solution]
. Under Olmert's offer, Israel would keep 7 percent of the West Bank, while the Palestinians would receive territory equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank. Israel views the passage between Gaza and the West Bank as compensating for this difference: Though it would officially remain in Israeli hands, it would connect the two halves of the Palestinian state - a connection the Palestinians did not enjoy before 1967, when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control and the West Bank was part of Jordan.
The land to be annexed to Israel would include the large settlement blocs, and the border would be similar to the present route of the separation fence. Israel would keep Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, the settlements surrounding Jerusalem and some land in the northern West Bank adjacent to Israel.
Since Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently approved more construction in both Efrat and Ariel, two settlements relatively far from the 1949 armistice lines, it is reasonable to assume that Olmert wants to include these settlements in the territory annexed to Israel as well.
Olmert's proposal states that once a border is agreed upon, Israel would be able to build freely in the settlement blocs to be annexed.
The settlements outside the new border would be evacuated in two stages. First, after the agreement in principle is signed, the cabinet would initiate legislation to compensate settlers who voluntarily relocate within Israel or to settlement blocs slated to be annexed. Over the past few months, Olmert has approved construction of thousands of housing units in these settlement blocs, mostly around Jerusalem, and some are intended for the voluntary evacuees.
In the second stage, once the Palestinians complete a series of internal reforms and are capable of carrying out the entire agreement, Israel would remove any settlers remaining east of the new border.
Olmert will to try to sell the deal to the Israeli public based on a staged program of implementation. The present negotiations, which started with the Annapolis Summit in November 2007, are intended to reach a "shelf agreement" that would lay the foundations of a Palestinian state. However, implementation of the shelf agreement would be postponed until the Palestinian Authority is capable of carrying out its part of the deal.
Olmert's proposal for a land swap introduces a new stage in the arrangement: Israel would immediately receive the settlement blocs, but the land to be transferred to the Palestinians and the free passage between Gaza and the West Bank would only be delivered after the PA retakes control of the Gaza Strip. In this way, Olmert could tell the Israeli public that Israel is receiving 7 percent of the West Bank and an agreed-upon border, while the Israeli concessions will be postponed until Hamas rule in Gaza has ended.
Abbas, for his part, could tell his people that he has succeeded in obtaining 98 percent of the West Bank from Israel, along with a promise to remove all settlers over the border.
The Palestinians' proposal had talked about a much smaller land swap, of about 2 percent of the West Bank.
Compared to previous Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Olmert proposal falls between the one then prime minister Barak presented to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000 and the one he offered at Taba in January 2001. The Palestinian proposal is similar to the ones offered during the Arafat years, which would have allowed Israel to annex only a few settlements, along with their access roads - a proposal nicknamed "balloons and strings." All these Palestinian proposals ruled out allowing Israel to retain the settlement blocs.
Since then, however, the separation fence has been built in the West Bank, and a new physical reality has been created in the areas where the fence has been completed.
Israel also presented the Palestinians with a detailed model of new security arrangements under the proposed agreement. The security proposal was drawn up by a team headed by Maj. Gen. Ido Nehoshtan, now commander of the Israel Air Force, but previously head of the army's Plans and Policy Directorate. The proposal has also been passed on to the Americans, in an effort to obtain their support for Israel's position during the negotiations.
The security proposal includes a demand that the Palestinian state be demilitarized and without an army. The Palestinians, in contrast, are demanding that their security forces be capable of defending against "outside threats," an Israeli official said.
On the refugee issue, Olmert's proposal rejects a Palestinian "right of return" and states that the refugees may only return to the Palestinian state, other than exceptional cases in which refugees would be allowed into Israel for family reunification. Nevertheless, the proposal includes a detailed and complex formula for solving the refugee problem.
Olmert has agreed with Abbas that the negotiations over Jerusalem will be postponed. In doing so, he gave in to the Shas Party's threats that it would leave the coalition if Jerusalem were put on the negotiating table.
[Here I agree with Shas....Jerusalem is taboo, no negotiation, period.]
Olmert views reaching an agreement with the Palestinians as extremely important. Such an agreement would entrench the two-state solution in the international community's consciousness, along with a detailed framework for achieving this solution. In Olmert's opinion, this is the only way Israel can rebuff challenges to its legitimacy and avoid calls for a "one-state solution." Such an agreement would show that Israel is not interested in controlling the territories, or the Palestinians, over the long run, but only until conditions arise that enable the establishment of a Palestinian state. This position has received strong support from the present U.S. administration.
Next week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit the region to continue her efforts to advance the negotiations. However, Olmert opposes her proposal to publish a joint U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli announcement detailing progress in the negotiations since Annapolis. Olmert objects to publishing partial positions; he only wants to announce a complete agreement - if one can be reached.
[Here is Olmerts big chance if he wants to redeem himself in Israeli eyes, tell SecState to butt out! We have had enough of American meddling in our internal affairs, the price is just too steep. Let Condi leave with Bush and let Israel open a new page vi-a-vis our relationship with the new American administration, be it what it may.].
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