Saturday, July 29, 2006
TURKEY CODA
Dear old Phillip Adams, an early adopter of the plastic turkey myth, returns to turkey territory:
The paltry President attracts poultry analogies. If he’s not a lame duck, he’s a turkey – a rubber turkey.
Not bad; it’s only taken Adams nearly three years to upgrade his imaginary turkey from plastic to rubber, which at least is an organic substance. At this rate he’ll be talking genuine turkey sometime around 2054. The rest of the column is merely the latest repetition of Phil’s oft-stated belief that Bush, Blair and Howard are doomed.
PRESIDENT AL
Louisville’s Mary Ellen Peacock wonders:
Watching the most recent of George Bush’s presidential press conferences was especially jarring after viewing Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The stark contrast made me wonder how different things might have been with the thoughtful and capable Gore in the White House these last five years ...
Everything turns out just peachy In Mary Ellen’s Gore-Prez scenario. Feel free to suggest alternative theories.
ASSUMPTIONS FLIPPED
Lefties are colourblind; conservatives are racist. As Neil Brown notes, “this argument is advanced by the Left as if it were some sort of unchallengeable truth.”
The argument then goes that left-wingers everywhere, the ALP in Australia, Democrats in the US and social democrats in Europe, are all so tolerant and never let race enter their heads when they are making decisions. In contrast, right-wingers, the Coalition parties here, Republicans in the US and conservatives in Europe, are a lot of red-necked bigots, and on social welfare, immigration, refugee or security issues are anti-black and anti-Muslim. This line is hammered so much it is becoming part of the folklore.
But some recent research shows a different picture.
Click for the rest. Via Adrian the cabbie, lately rounding up a bunch of recent blogger interviews.
MAD PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC
Andrew Bolt visits the US:
America has unparalleled wealth and power. But I haven’t seen so many mad people and beggars on the streets since I was last in Cambodia. And I saw them today in San Francisco.
Similar local governments produce similar outcomes.
VIOLENT MOB WANTS PEACE
The PM meets the peaceful:
Violent scuffles have broken out between police and Lebanese protesters who mobbed Prime Minister John Howard’s car as he left a Liberal Party conference in Perth.
Mr Howard was leaving the WA Liberal Party state conference when about 200 protesters, many of whom were waving Lebanese flags and shouting “we want peace”, mobbed his vehicle.
Protesters punched, kicked and threw projectiles at Mr Howard’s car as police struggled to keep them at bay.
The Ozbollah are displeased by an imagined global consensus:
One of the protesters accused Mr Howard of supporting Israel at Lebanon’s expense.
“The whole world is supporting Israel, the whole world is watching innocent people dying today as we speak,” he said.
Via J.F. Beck and Week by Week.
ANALYSIS WRONG
Charles Moore on moral imbeciles:
You could criticise Israel’s recent attack for many things. Some argue that it is disproportionate, or too indiscriminate. Others think that it is ill-planned militarily. Others hold that it will give more power to extremists in the Arab world, and will hamper a wider peace settlement. These are all reasonable, though not necessarily correct positions to hold. But European discourse on the subject seems to have been overwhelmed by something else - a narrative, told most powerfully by the way television pictures are selected, that makes Israel out as a senseless, imperialist, mass-murdering, racist bully.
Not only is this analysis wrong - if the Israelis are such imperialists, why did they withdraw from Lebanon for six years, only returning when threatened once again? How many genocidal regimes do you know that have a free press and free elections? - it is also morally imbecilic. It makes no distinction between the tough, sometimes nasty things all countries do when hard-pressed and the profoundly evil intent of some ideologies and regimes. It says nothing about the fanaticism and the immediacy of the threat to Israel.
LOVE SOWN
Leb-style rapists Bilal and Mohammed Skaf, whose original sentences were overturned, have been locked away:
A simpering coward to the end, evil predator Mohammed Skaf, his head bowed, is led away in handcuffs as the gang rape trials that shocked Sydney were finally laid to rest yesterday.
With Mohammed and his brother Bilal sentenced for the last in a string of brutal attacks, The Daily Telegraph can reveal for the first time how 12 dedicated police officers put the vile attackers behind bars.
According to this jolly fellow, the Skafs deserve honour and respect:
While the rest of the nation celebrated the jailing of the Skaf brothers yesterday friend and spokesman, former terror suspect Zeky Mallah, claimed the evil sex predators “should be honoured”.
Ranting outside the Supreme Court, Mallah said: “Bilal Skaf and Mohammed Skaf should be more honoured and respected for the crimes they committed, if they did, because at least these two have not killed any of the victims like the American soldiers have (in Iraq).”
Sheik Taj Al Hilali once said of Mallah, who spent two years in jail for threatening to kill Commonwealth officers: “What happened to Zak I believe will happen to many more people in Australian society. When you sow love, you’ll reap love, but when you sow hatred ... what you’ll reap is violence.” Way to sow the love, Zak.
PEOPLE WOKEN
Poverty doesn’t merely lead to terrorism. It also causes kidnapping and truck theft:
Samuel Scott Jones, 32, of Dallas, is charged with aggravated kidnapping and assault after, police said, he led them through a three-hour chase through three counties that ended in an hour-long standoff.
Scott said he committed the crime because he was frustrated by poverty plaguing the black community.
“I felt like maybe this will wake up people,” he said.
The free Mumians have a new hero.
MEDIA DECODED
Some useful definitions from Victor Davis Hanson:
“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Cycle of Violence” is used to denigrate those who are attacked, but are not supposed to win.
“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”
Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.
It’s been a fun week for definitions; here’s another batch.
MURDER IN SEATTLE
LGF has the Seattle shooting—in which several women at the Jewish Federation were attacked, one fatally—covered.
Friday, July 28, 2006
CURIOUS BOB
Robert Fisk asks:
Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?
Place this in the same file as earlier Fisk questions:
2003: How, I kept asking myself, could the Americans batter their way through these defenses?
2005: Would the Syrians dream of doing anything so crude and vicious as this?
DEBUNKED
There are debunkings, and then there are DEBUNKINGS.
POST FURGLED
Under cover of widespread indifference, respected tacher and litigation enthusiast Nick Dyrenfürgle has modestly deleted his finest post.
UPDATE. Antony Loewenstein, another spelling-challenged university type, is currently hosting a sensitive debate on matters recent and historical:
Addamo: I think the sudden affection the right has discovered for Israel (formerly a left cuase) is fueled by the fact that Israel is in a positino to kill Arabs, whcih makes them a valuable resource.
In teh absence of the animosity the right has for arabs and Muslims, I suspect that Israel and jews woud find themslevss at the poity end of the stick again.
Thanks for poiting that out, Addamo. Good luck with the 12-step program.
Adam: Once I heard my University lecturer who said “The biggest world disaster ever is Israel, and there will nothing and what we see today is just the beginning of Israel’s ending”. I have to admit before I was not sure about his comments but now I can see what he really meant.
You can? Even the bit about “and there will nothing”? More from Adam, he of the solitary lecturer:
Adam: people who disagree with the holocaust get put in jail
So how does freedom of speech fit in with this?
To me it seems as if they are hiding something!
Sneaky Jews!
Addamo: I believe Zundel (or what is Irving) who challenged not whether the Holocaust happened, but the official count of the victims, was even prevented from mentioning in court that the original commemorative plaque at Auschwitz stated that 4 million had been killed there. The plaque has since been changed to reflect that only 1.5 million had actually been killed there.
The argument was that in spite of the revised number, the historical total number of victims remained unchanged at 6 million. Yet in spite of this fact (i.e. the plaque being revised) he was not allowed to enter this into court as evidence. Pretty Orwellian stuff.
Pretty Holocaust revisionist stuff, too. At which point this fellow weighs in:
M.Mayes: I can see the officials contemplating the plaque revision now, “hmm well we know that 4 million werent killed there now, so we have to lower it, but we couldnt possibly say that it was any less than 1 million otherwise it might not get seen as severe anymore”
Nice crowd Ant’s attracting. What kind of idiot would ever have compared him to Frederick Töben?
NED’S NEW CO-STARS
Ned Lamont’s latest TV ad concentrates on the vital issue of skinheads in the military, presumably because wild-eyed white supremacists are more voter-friendly than the Kos kids.
UNDERGROUND UNDER TREATMENT
Bush Derangement Syndrome continues its cholera-like spread through the lower orders:
An unscientific poll of posters at a Democratic Underground discussion board yields a result that maybe isn’t so surprising: 72% of those responding say they are “dealing with severe mental illness in their home.”
So move, already.