Kinda fits though somehow.

And Sally, I’d punch the crap out of that guy again. Every time. There is no ‘unconditional support’ for anyone from me.

In your world, the bullies would have been right on the basis of their nationality. Bogotry indeed.

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

Sally, I’ve explained my position a number of times on this. I do not blame all the world’s ills on the US or Israel.

1) I point out that the hypocrisy of your/our (as the west) stance makes the stated goals look suspect. We can’t claim moral supremecy or expect to be viewed credibly ia a) we’ve been just as barbaric as the nastys we are trying to eradicate an db) we won’t own up to the obvious documented trangression in the recent past.

2) US inability to treat the Israeli/Palestinian crisis with any sense of balance or fairness, and turning a blind eye to flagrant breaches of law and common human decency in the pursuit of a ‘final solution’ is a weeping sore that serves as an overwhelming example of western hypocrisy and a clear reference point to US disdain for islam and arabs at the behest of Judeochristian militancy.

3) You have referred many times to islamic flaws and crazy beliefs yet your own president thinks that god told him to invade Iraq, and Israeli settlers have a belief system that says it is OK to steal arab land, kill muslims and christians and act as a master race under god’s will.

Hypocrisy, credibility and law.

You are under scrutiny because you are the aggressors and your false statements are discussed because you keep putting them out there to be shot down.

No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not

Prior to your invasion of Iraq, the number was quite small and probably containable with intelligent leadership and prosecution. Instead you/we attacked a traditionally secular arab state and strengthened ties to other militarists, butchers and gangsters.

Brilliant.

Chavez is a democratically elected head of state. You can disagree with him all you like, but when you use hyperbole e.g “siezing power by whatever means” it only weakens your argument if you have one.

He does have a point regarding world food , water and mineral resources though. There is no world food shortage, just a distribution problem that could be solved for less money than you spend on your military.

I don’t know what “when not responding to smear” is supposed to mean — is that supposed to excuse his obscene description of an “Israeli tourist” above, for example, or his gratuitous and irrelevant mention of a “Jewish intellectual” as a supposed founder of his hated “neocons”? Or are those instances, in your view, of his use of “quite specific examples to argue his case”?

The reference to Leo Strauss, Sally, isn’t about his Jewishness at all. You are being paranoid and hyperbolic again. Strauss was Wolfowitz’s greatest influence and has had an impact on the Chicago school of politico/economic thought.

It is about amoralism, power and manipulation. OK?
It was a teaser which was clearly too subtle for you.

What is obscene about my description of this particularly obnoxious racist Israeli Sally? And how would that indicate antisemitism on my part? If you want, I’ll tell you the whole story but I doubt that you’d want to know, because 9 of the 11 in the group were disgusting racist bullies, picking on a 14 or 15 year old Bolivian kid who’s crime was to be a bit simple and not an Israeli ‘master’. 1 Aussie and 1 Kiwi soon showed them how brave they were, and we were racially abused too.

I’d have knocked his teeth out whatever nationality he was, but in my experience young Israelis are some of the worst of the worst when it comes to being obnoxious and disrespectful to other cultures and peoples. I’ve seen them in Egypt, Kenya, Bolivia and Peru and they ain’t pleasant in the main.

I could tell you what IDF soldiers have done when an Irish woman I work with sometimes, takes personal mail to aid workers in the West Bank. They’ve kept her waiting for hours while they take the mail away and urinate and defecate in the bag. Just for fun. Heroic eh?

Or, how about the settlers who shoot at the refugees and UN workers on the Syrian side of the green line from the land they stole from those very refugees. I’ve been shot at there. Just for sport.

Or how about the arab christians and muslims within Israel who are treated as 3rd class citizens? I’ve posted links to credible reports on this. I doubt that you would allow yourself to read them though. You’d rather read Alexandra and her wingnut conspiracy rantings.

This is no liberal democracy Sally. They make war, they steal land, they kill and they ethnically cleanse and they’re doing it right now.

And they are doing it with YOUR MONEY and YOUR BLESSING.

Hundreds of Palestinians will lose their homes in the West Bank TODAY. Some of these people are 3 and 4 times refugees. Where is that in your great left wing conspiracy MSM?

And you want them (the Palestinians) to submit to eternal serfdom.

It is nought to do with antisemitism, it is about taking them off this bizarre pedestal you’ve placed beneath them and making them and you accountable in the same way everyone should be. If you are wedded to freedom, democracy and the rule of law, some time soon you are going to have to prove it by living it.

Steve: So yes - I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts - i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc - it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.

No, it doesn’t — bigotry exists prior to observable facts and merely exploits what facts it can to provide a false cover for its hatred, and is quite happy inventing “facts” when it can’t find them. What is good to remember is that bigotry can appear in a variety of forms, one of which is a kind of patronizing, self-satisfied moral condescension, in which, for example, the bigot declares something like: “well, the jews have gotten hold of most of the money, it’s true, but we should forgive them for it rather than hate them”, etc. I would hope you’re not saying something like that.

Incidently - I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either - but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..

I have no idea what that means, but perhaps that’s just as well.

Having said that - I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.

Here are a couple of comments in their entirety that confud posted and that might have come straight out of the pages of Der Sturmer:

” You filthy fucking little Indian shit”

Same Israeli tourist blubbing whilst getting up off the footpath before running away.
March 17th, 2006

Did you just miss those, Steve? Or do you think there’s nothing antisemitic about them?

… but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did.

Here’s what Chavez actually said:
The world has these things [”sufficient riches”] for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed[crucified] Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands

Did you miss that too, Steve? Or is that not quite “in the same way” as Hitler and co. did? How does it differ?

Well, don’t worry about it too much. As I remember now, you tend to write from behind a certain faux-naive, diffident mask that you think protects you from having to make or defend much in the way of an argument of your own. But instead it just makes you lazy and sloppy — so, for example, your banal observation that “terrorism is found in many cultures” is simply irrelevant to my suggestion that a root of islamist terrorism might be found in Islamic culture.

No, if you really think that the problem is just a “comparitive handful of terrorist” (sic), then your really are wonderfully simpleminded. But I think, sadly, you’re not. I think, “if I may be so bold”, and as I said last time, that you’ve picked your side, whether you know it or not — and a fake ingenuousness won’t hide the fact. I can’t say good luck with it.

Sorry, me.

Yep.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

I don’t recall confud refering to any Nazi literature or known anti-semites(e.g Grundel etc) for his evidence - you’d have to be a little more specific for me to get your point.

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

Fine - but Confud and Chavez have not attributed all the troubles of the world to a particular group in the same way Hitler and co did. It makes for sensational rhetorical affect - but very little substance. I don’t think I’m overstepping to say that you are a firm supporter of U.S/Israeli defined “Global War on Terror” - so I equally confident in claiming that you are attributing the troubles of the world on Islamic terrorismm as it appears you’ve so broadly defined it. Clearly if you believe that exterminating a comparitive handful of terrorist requires and justifies the invasion and destruction of two nations; the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the revoking of civil liberties and human rights etc - than you are not being very specific Sally.

If I may be so bold.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

This doesn’t make any sense. “If” the root cause of terrorist activity is found in cultural deficiencies than we would quite logically have to look in other areas for the cause - you are well aware that it is an objective fact that terrorism is found in many cultures and the reasons are complex and cannot be narrowly defined explicitly to one culture. Unless we use bias.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

Fair enough. Keeping an open mind never hurts.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are

Well I can’t really comment on this because you’ve only offered explict anti-semitic expressions and thought and offered only ‘current’ manifestations of anti-semitism as exhibited by conspiracy theorists - without any examples.

So yes - I’d agree that ” reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.” It’s probably good to remember too that bigotry exists because a good portion of the theories and positions are formed on obervable facts - i.e jews and money, black and unemployment etc - it it the conclusions that we draw from observable fact that constitute racial, cultural or religous hatred.

Incidently - I don’t draw much of a distinction between them either - but I wouldn’t think it should be a a matter of major contention..

Having said that - I’m still left wondering how you arrive at the conclusion that confud is an anti-semite based on what he has written.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are –Steve: … only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistently logical analysis.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are — reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.

And what would be some examples of “those systems”, Steve? The US? Maybe not, hm? Canada? Australia? New Zealand? None of those either? “Liberal democracy” appears to have shrunk considerably, hasn’t it?

On the other hand, if any of those countries qualify as liberal democracies, then it would seem as though such entities do indeed impose their will on “indigenous people of the land” such entities occupy. You can certainly make the claim that those indigenous people have rights, and Israel recognizes such rights — indeed, it’s ironic that, as a liberal democracy, Israel provides more such rights than the indigenous people had ever had, and more than the indigenous people of its neighboring states enjoy.

Nevertheless, Israel is a specifically Jewish state, unquestionably — and this does set it apart from the secular versions of liberal democracy that otherwise predominate. This central fact of Israel has arisen for a number of reasons — historical, moral, practical, existential — and is the real source of the hostility toward it. Leaving aside the ravings of the nazi-like bigots, there are legitimate arguments over this. But those ongoing debates — as opposed to threat, slaughter and terror — are the only way the fact will ever change.

They have NOT said that they would expel or kill the Jews but would have a Palestinian state for all. That is the actual position, not the luny ravings of the rightwing US blogosphere.

I think that a 2 state solution is only possible if Israel returns to its pre 1967 borders and stops killing people, stops collective punishment and stops the outrageous oppression which the US lets them get away with.

My apologies for budding into the conversation.

Jayson - Israel does exist. Why would you seek an affirmative on a fact?

A better question would be - does Israel as a liberal democracy(your claim)have a right to impose by whatever means neccessary it’s will on the indigenous people of the land it occupies?

You know the answer is no. If you are going to fall back on the argument of liberal democracy than Israel is in gross violation of those principles that characterize these systems.

“Sometimes the responses have been appropriate, other times they have been questionable. But if someone believes that we must choose policies that result in the extermination of every Jew living in Israel, the “discussion” will go nowhere.”

No, you don’t have to choose policies that would result in the “extermination of every Jew living in Israel” - but you’ve not offered any sound argument as to why such policies would do that. And until you can offer non-rhetorical substance to the claim when responding to facts and sound analysis, than I would agree - the discussion will go nowhere.

Which I would theorize is the way most of you ’supporting’ Israel wish it to be.

Am I correct?

I haven’t read all of confud’s posts but for the most part it seems to me he uses quite specific examples to argue his case - when not responding to smear

I don’t know what “when not responding to smear” is supposed to mean — is that supposed to excuse his obscene description of an “Israeli tourist” above, for example, or his gratuitous and irrelevant mention of a “Jewish intellectual” as a supposed founder of his hated “neocons”? Or are those instances, in your view, of his use of “quite specific examples to argue his case”?

Whatever, it’s not that hard to distinguish between rational criticisms of Israel (which, like any other state, often enough deserves criticism), and the sort of irrational, hate-filled rants that issue from confud and his ilk. The former are targeted on particular issues without using them as mere springboards for verbal abuse; they make clear efforts to find the truth of the issue without assuming it; they provide a sense of context, proportion, and moral comparison, without imposing or assuming a manifestly unfair or unjust moral equivalency. To take the last point alone, for example, you don’t see legitimate critics of Israel painting the accidental deaths of Palestinian civilians at Israeli hands as the moral equivalent of the deliberate murder of Israeli civilians at Palestinian hands — but that’s exactly what you do see from Jew-haters who try to hide their bigotry behind anti-zionism.

Unlike, I suppose, nazi antisemites who DO provide “credible sources of evidence”, etc.?

No, Steve, there are a number of differences, and these differences are significant. Let’s look at a few:

1) Unlike Chavez (not to mention Hitler, Goebbels, and confud), I don’t attribute “all the troubles of the world”, and all your troubles in particular to a group — I attribute all the troubles regarding global islamist terrorists to, um, global islamist terrorists. Those troubles are quite serious, but also quite specific.

2) Unlike Chavez, Hitler & co., and a couple of our local trolls here, I don’t regard a culture as equivalent to a race, and hence I don’t see criticizing cultural aspects or features as having the same sort of consequences as criticizing racial features or aspects. Thus, even if the underlying or “root” cause of the upsurge in islamist terrorist activity is to be found in flawed aspects of Islamic culture, the logic would point to cultural change not to racial extermination.

3) To my mind, however, the question about root causes in this sense is still open, as I indicated in this comment and this. I differ with neo on this, I think, who seems much more sanguine than I am about the viability of Islam in a modern world — but I’m quite willing to say my concerns on this may be wrong or exaggerated, and I hope that proves to be the case.

4) Last for now at least, but probably more important than anything else is the simple test of reasonableness. Compare the antisemite’s notion of a centuries-old conspiracy to steal the “riches of the world” (not to mention to drink the blood of gentile children, to target arab children, etc.), with a critique of a manifest current conspiracy and focused on particular cultural traits that may help explain it. Quite obviously, not all conspiracies are imaginary, but just as obviously some are — reason and evidence are the tools that we use to distinguish them.

With respect to Muslims, I agree with you completely. It is human nature for human beings to choose liberty when given the choice. Those here who have stated otherwise on this blog are not only bigoted against the few million Muslims living here in the United States, but undermine their position of keeping American forces in Iraq until its democracy can defend itself. If Islam is not compatible with democracy (Turkey? Indonesia? Bangladesh?), there is no reason for us to be in Iraq. I have faith that it is.

Speaking of democracy, Israel, a liberal democracy, has a right to exist. If we agree on this, then discussion about the appropriateness of the means Israel has chosen over the last few decades becomes academic. Sometimes the responses have been appropriate, other times they have been questionable. But if someone believes that we must choose policies that result in the extermination of every Jew living in Israel, the “discussion” will go nowhere. Liberalism requires argument and persuasion, while members of anti-liberal movements that worship force will “discuss” things in an analogous manner. I’ve already dignified the charade more than I ought have.

I await your expression of outrage and your damning of JudeaoChristianity as a barbaric belief system. I’ll be dissecting all the “mays” and “is”s coming out of your little cowboy’s mouth for hypocrisy and bias. Habeas corpus you say?

I don’t think you’ll be able to blame this on ‘Palliwood’.

And there are more to come if my sources are correct. The (hush)money can’t be shovelled out fast enough I hear.

I haven’t read all of confud’s posts but for the most part it seems to me he uses quite specific examples to argue his case - when not responding to smear - but you write quite well, you seem very intelligent - surely you can do better than having this pathetic dribble for debate…

” On both wings there’s a very simple but very vicious strategy at work: to find a focus for the troubles of the world, and in particular for your troubles, in the machinations of an evil group — which then, logically and terribly, must be exterminated in order to “solve” those problems.”

Fair enough(at least for the sake of argument)- but Sally, do you not
employ a ‘vicious strategy’ yourself in your focus on the machinations of an ‘evil group’? - in your case, Muslims - which “logically and terribly must be exterminated in order to “solve” those problems.”

You would probably say no - but I think it would be appropriate to consider that your own rants use the same methodology - only, I would offer, without any credible sources of evidence or a consistantly logical analysis.

Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.

7:14 PM, June 30, 2006

Ariel (I’m beginning to see the symbolism of the handle)…..

Go home.

No one’s running from you. You aren’t worth engaging.

We are laughing at you. You’re comic relief. You’re an anti-semitic joke.

Your insults have no impact, no meaning, nothing. They are schoolyard taunts. They don’t work.

So……the blog isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap? Just so as I know your thoughts.

I know you hate the word ‘racism’ and all. And ‘profanity’ is a deadly sin (when lying cheating and state sponsored murder-for-profit aren’t).

But I just can’t see how that crap can not be racist. Fill us in, mate.

Behind confud’s reference to “chilling” views

No, not my reference at all. From the Sydney Morning Herald. A right of centre respectable broadsheet quoting right of centre respected international figures.
Their views coincide with mine and are opposite to yours. Go figure.

Go home.

No one’s running from you. You aren’t worth engaging.

We are laughing at you. You’re comic relief. You’re an anti-semitic joke.

Your insults have no impact, no meaning, nothing. They are schoolyard taunts. They don’t work.

Can’t you get it?

Go home. Quit making a fool of yourself.

And that statement is proof positive of your utter inanity and inability to discern fact from rightwingnut fiction. He was democratically elected. You haven’t a clue about the world.

Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.

And that statement is proof positive of your utter inanity and inability to discern fact from rightwingnut fiction. You haven’t a clue about the world.

Now tell me that neos friend’s blog “All things are beautiful” isn’t overt racist jewish supremecist claptrap.

Confud himself is useful just as a present example of this very old temptation and evil, and of its workings. He knows enough, for example, (and just enough) to know that he must deny his motivations in polite company, hiding, as I say, behind the tissue-thin pretense of being merely anti-zionist. But put him under a little stress and out pops the underlying Jew-hating, like diseased pustules. And even that much pretence is dispensed with by a thug like Chavez, who’s quite happy to use and sacrifice anyone or any group as a means of seizing and clinging to power.

Small and larg(er), these are the contemporary faces of an ancient malevolence — allied now to a resurgent totalitarionism. Behind confud’s reference to “chilling” views re: the “war on terror”, I think we can see a lurking grin.

All for a cause that
never was.
Call for a voice but all
it does is sigh.
Inside.
Sigh.

More or less,
there abouts,
a young man with so
many doubts.
I try to learn
impersonating,
the clever moves but I
am facing,
the always power-crazed,
middle aged generation.

All for a cause that
never was.
Call for a voice but
all it does is sigh.
Inside.
Sigh.
Inside.

Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.

Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.

Blood and blame passed
on to a neighbour.
Continuing the chain.
Deadly game of whispers.
How am I to grow.
The life I love I
don’t know.

The Means. Mattafix

Yeah right. You ran away at every turn because you can’t own up to the idea that your country has no credibility or moral capital. You’re as pathetic as neo.

And now you’re palsy with the chief guttersnipe Sally. But hey, you can always claim that you manipulated the whole thing. Heehee. And you say I’m transparent.

No one was giggling at massacres. They aren’t something to giggle at, or laugh at in anyway. Ever.

Frankly, we were laughing at the deranged fellow. I didn’t read past the Fisk by-line, as my only desire was to see how deranged he, I call him Elmer now, would become.

He can’t see that everything he has called others is so much more applicable to him, with slight adjustment in the terms of course. Nor could he see that Sally and I found his insults, his ploys, his prejudices, etc., as simply laughable. His words have no impact because he has made such a fool of himself. It was never his ideas, only his methods.

He has to win the argument so much that if his facts fail to convince he goes on by bullying, slamming, and intimidating. And we are all laughing at him because he is so transparent. He would have been better off to be gentlemanly and “agree-to-disagree”. But like the scorpion, it isn’t really in his nature. This isn’t psychoanalytic but experential.

And yes he can’t see his own anti-semitism, seemingly burying it in the Palestinian-Israeli mess so he doesn’t have to face it. There is a lot of hate in him and it has spewed out on all of us.

Go to the 06/27/06 “How to spot a Troll” post at http://latticesofbogosity.blogspot.com/. You’ll see him in every description.

They questioned luminaries across the political spectrum, the likes of Lawrence Eagleburger, a secretary of state to the first George Bush; the historian Francis Fukuyama; James Woolsey, a former CIA director; retired US marine general Anthony Zinni, a former commander in the Middle East; Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism chief to Bill Clinton and Bush II, and so on at that high-powered level. Even our own Gareth Evans got a guernsey.

The conclusions were chilling. To quote from the survey summary: “Fewer than two in 10 believe the United States is winning the war on terror. More than eight in 10 believe we are likely to face a terrorist attack on the scale of September 11 within the next 10 years.
“Over half list Islamic animosity and the Iraq war as the main reasons why the world is becoming more dangerous. The experts put nuclear weapons and materials as the top threat, followed closely by weapons of mass destruction as a whole, and then terrorism.”

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, neatly summed up the situation for the US. On America’s current course, he said, “we are going to either commit suicide as a democracy or spend ourselves to death”.

To read the horrible details, go to www.americanprogress.org. Have a great weekend.

From the Sydney Morning Herald. (Hardly a left wing rag)

No Jason. It is to do with Israel and the hypocrisy of US ‘unconditional’ support for what is a rogue state of the very worst kind.

Look at your two friends above giggling about massacres of innocents. Do you find this amusing?

The calls for assassination of democratically elected people like Chavez by your rightwingnut friends and your support for crony capitalist despots, murderers and war criminals elsewhere only serves to prove their point. You are actually strengthening them and the resolve of their elecctorates to fight against your phony foreign policies.

Chavez actually has a fair point about food and water you know. Do you have any idea how much misery US/Euro farm subsidies cause in the third world? Or the havoc that GM and the perversion of intellectual property rights (as sought by the US at the behest of companies like Monsanto) will cause to subsistence farmers and already struggling states?

Probably not.

Socialism, with its conspiratorial worldview, almost always leads to Jew-baiting, since the Jews symbolize everything that is capitalist, commercial, greedy, and materialist in their eyes. Take the recent ranting by socialist hero Hugo Chavez, for instance, remarked a few months ago that

“You [the audience] didn’t have money, and where was that money? The money in Venezuela was concentrated with them…like it is in the world, for this is a worldwide phenomena, you know? I just finished reading early this morning the latest report from the United Nations about the world situation, and it’s alarming because it says that today more than ever before, 2005 years after they killed Jesus Christ, because the world, the world, is worsening every day, every day, the riches of the world, because God, nature provides, the world has sufficent water for those who need water, the world has sufficent riches, land sufficient to produce foodstuffs for the entire world population, the world has sufficient stone and minerals for construction, so that there is no shortage for anyone who is living. The world has these things for all, sure, but because of some minorities, the decendents of those same people who killed Christ, the decendents of the same people who fought Bolivar, and also those who crucified them in Santa Marta, over in Colombia. A minority that has seized the riches of the world, a minority that has seized the gold of the planet, the silver, the minerals, the water, the good land, the oil, all these riches, well, and they have concentrated the riches in only a few hands: less than 10 percent of the world population has more than half the riches of the entire world..and more than half the entire population of the planet is poor and each day there are more poor in the entire world.”

If you won’t explain re Fisk, I’ll take it that the joke exists in your little closeted rightwingnutworld only.

You defend Malkin and claim Fisk is a joke. Wingnuts.

I am always charitable. Even when laughing at someone.

I added that he is warped because he can’t actually see how absolutely, pathetically silly he gets. He seemingly never reads anything completely, nor ponders before writing. He goes off halfcocked with his prejudices. I tried to warn him that his words have no impact because they are simply too funny now. And he had no idea that Fisk has become a joke. Talk about a closed world.

Oh, now he’s ranting about Fox News, our “only source of news”. I get all my news from reading various world newspapers. I’ve never watched Fox News. But of course, he knows…

“bigot, certainly — blind and virulent hatred directed at entire nations and groups, an inability to look at himself and his own emotions objectively, an instinct to project his own failings and weaknesses upon the hated object, and an easy slide into malicious stereotyping…a belief that their ideology will somehow immunize them against the charge of bigotry, making them all the more careless in indulging the worst of their racial, physical, and sexual prejudices.”

You hit it on the head, and he can’t help but keep proving it, time after time after time. Hatred twists the mind.

He needs the last word, and he’s waiting, so, Sally, we should let him have it. I hope his petard doesn’t hit him on his way up.

Good night and straight ahead.

Good night, Elmer.

Lebensraum for example. What does Israel call theft of Palestine?

If you actually read Fisk, you wouldn’t laugh in your silly little girly manner. He is critical of all the butchers. He is everything that your Fox news screaming heads aren’t. And don’t give me that shit about not watching Fox. It seeps out of your every pore.

I’ll believe someone who lives and works there everytime over someone who’s never dreamed of leaving North America, thanks.

I know I’ve said goodnight twice, but this is too funny for me to stop. Neo is going to be so mad.

It’s a good idea to save some of his notable quotes because he does have to come to his senses eventually. He is an intelligent, if warped, man.

Oohh, he just ranted about Fisk. I should pull the hook out before I throw him back. “Appeal to authority”, good, bad, or indifferent just never sinks in. And I got hit with “reading racist crap from your own wingnut world”, he jumps to so many conclusions. Actually, I’m back to reading John Dos Passos. Now there’s a right winger. Oh, this is just too funny for words.

Got your goodnight, Sally. So…goodnight and straight ahead.

Oh, and good night, Elmer.

Toodle pip.

I don’t delete posts butcher girl. I leave that for dishonest lying scum like you.

Otherwise, take your meds, mate — you’re overheating.

Oh, and goodnight, Ariel. It’s been fun, but all good things must come to an end, for now at least.

(Yeah, Fisk — the only guy whose name’s become a verb meaning to demonstrate one’s own idiocy!)

Oh, and another gem from the neo-nut: “Why would any god choose scum like you?”! Can’t you just imagine the little Austrian paper-hanger muttering that to his cronies in the beer-hall?

GWB

“I am the decider”

GWB

Mobile weapons laboratories can be deployed in 45 minutes.

Powell

Iraq tried to acquire nukular(sic) weapons equipment from Niger.

GWB

We will be welcomed as liberators.

Rumsfeld

You’re doing a great job, Brownie!

GWB

Axis of evil

GWB

It is scum like you that doesn’t read anything but the racist crap from your own wingnut world that makes illinfomed ignorant comments about people who you’ve clearly never read, because you’ve been ‘thinked’ by your bitchmasters.

Robert Fisk the fairest of writers of middle eastern affairs.

Why would any god choose scum like you?

By Robert Fisk
The Independent 4/19/96, page 1

Qana, southern Lebanon - It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and
Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese
refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms
or legs missing, beheaded or disembowelled. There were well over a
hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had
scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter,
believing that they were safe under the world’s protection. Like the
Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.

In front of a burning building of the UN’s Fijian battalion
headquarters, a girl held a corpse in her arms, the body of a grey-
haired man whose eyes were staring at her, and she rocked the corpse
back and forth in her arms, keening and weeping and crying the same
words over and over: “My father, my father.” A Fijian UN soldier
stood amid a sea of bodies and, without saying a word, held aloft
the body of a headless child.

“The Israelis have just told us they’ll stop shelling the area,”
a UN soldier said, shaking with anger. “Are we supposed to thank
them?” In the remains of a burning building - the conference room of
the Fijian UN headquarters - a pile of corpses was burning. The roof
had crashed in flames onto their bodies, cremating them in front of
my eyes. When I walked towards them, I slipped on a human hand…

Israel’s slaughter of civilians in this terrible 10-day
offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so ferocious,
that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the
ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day
before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four
days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a
family of 12 - the youngest was a four- day-old baby - when Israeli
helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home.

Shortly afterwards, three Israeli jets dropped bombs only 250
metres from a UN convoy on which I was travelling, blasting a house
30 feet into the air in front of my eyes. Travelling back to Beirut
to file my report on the Qana massacre to the Independent last
night, I found two Israeli gunboats firing at the civilian cars on
the river bridge north of Sidon.

Every foreign army comes to grief in Lebanon. The Sabra and
Chatila massacre of Palestinians by Israel’s militia allies in 1982
doomed Israel’s 1982 invasion. Now the Israelis are stained again by
the bloodbath at Qana, the scruffy little Lebanese hill town where
the Lebanese believe Jesus turned water into wine.

The Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres may now wish to end this
war. But the Hizbollah are not likely to let him. Israel is back in
the Lebanese quagmire. Nor will the Arab world forget yesterday’a
terrible scenes.

The blood of all the refugees ran quite literally in streams
>from the shell-smashed UN compound restaurant in which the Shiite
Muslims from the hill villages of southern Lebanon - who had heeded
Israel’s order to leave their homes - had pathetically sought
shelter. Fijian and French soldiers heaved another group of dead -
they lay with their arms tightly wrapped around each other - into
blankets.

A French UN trooper muttered oaths to himself as he opened a bag
in which he was dropping feet, fingers, pieces of people’s arms.

And as we walked through this obscenity, a swarm of people burst
into the compound. They had driven in wild convoys down from Tyre
and began to pull the blankets off the mutilated corpses of their
mothers and sons and daughters and to shriek “Allahu Akbar” (God is
Great”) and to threaten the UN troops.

We had suddenly become not UN troops and journalists but
Westerners, Israel’s allies, an object of hatred and venom. One
bearded man with fierce eyes stared at us, his face dark with fury.
“You are Americans,” he screamed at us. “Americans are dogs. You did
this. Americans are dogs.”

President Bill Clinton has allied himself with Israel in its war
against “terrorism” and the Lebanese, in their grief, had not
forgotten this. Israel’s official expression of sorrow was rubbing
salt in their wounds. “I would like to be made into a bomb and blow
myself up amid the Israelis,” one old man said.

As for the Hizbollah, which has repeatedly promised that
Israelis will pay for their killing of Lebanese civilians, its
revenge cannot be long in coming. Operation Grapes of Wrath may