Obama's Nobel: a point of law

And you thought that the hype is over? Not yet, it seems.

From Dick Stanley.

So who is wise? And who is astonished?

"Who is wise?" asks the Talmud. "He who can see what is about to happen."

This reminder by Daniel Gordis in an article that laments the poor political situation Israel had found itself in, particularly in the aftermath of the Goldstone report approval, is very apt. Gordis' article is a good review of the pitiful state of the Israeli diplomatic establishment. On the other hand, "there is no longer any prophet" will be another apt way to describe it.

While it seems that the Goldstone report and the voting by the Human Wrongs Council didn't require any prophet, the only "astonishing" part of the whole story (aside of the amazing Goldstone's interview to Forward - I wonder whether Goldstone caught the Arafat's bug of speaking in tongues) was the overflow of fury produced by our political establishment. The grown-ups' equivalent of falling on the floor screaming and kicking the said floor, displayed for everyone to see.

The surprise and the fury

It is better to be pissed off than pissed on, they say. It seems that our government has chosen to combine the two options.

How childish could one get, crossing into being ridiculous, is shown clearly by that quote:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem Thursday night that he hoped all the "responsible countries" would vote against endorsing the Goldstone Commission Report "that encourages terrorism and harms peace."

Sure, see that (partial) list of the "responsible countries" out of 25 who voted yes: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. The luminaries of human rights indeed, but saying this is rather obscuring the point: how could Bibi expect a different outcome? Enough said re "seeing what is about to happen".

Doing something about it then

Didn't Bibi know what will be the outcome of the vote? Surely he knew. And here we come to another question - what was done in advance - not to prevent the inevitable outcome of that report and the vote, but to counter-attack the show, to make sure that the report is met by a solid body of evidence and legal work that could be presented, if not to the UNHRC, at least to the whole political world, to the UN that is going to discuss the Goldstone report, to the media etc.? Well, almost nothing. Starting with the refusal to cooperate with the Goldstone's team to absence of any activity (save the above mentioned fury and some weak indignation upon the report going public), our politicians and diplomats have done precisely what they do best: stuck their collective heads in the sand.

Doing something about it now

The displays of impotent fury, aside of making many of those who care to watch them very happy, will not change the votes or the opinions, most probably they will make the situation even worse, insulting some of our supporters. In general, most of what could be done now, when the battle is over, is akin to an attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has been stolen

However, losing the battle is not yet losing the war, and the next step - discussion of the Goldstone report in the UN - should be met with something more productive than fury. To start with, Israel must do what it neglected to do in the first place: conducting its own thorough and as public as it is humanly possible (even with IDF screaming and kicking) investigation of everything mentioned in the report. And if there appear to be IDF faults or misconduct, let the heads roll when deserved and applicable. Only public and detailed investigation will do, not some half-hearted attempts at military justice, confined to the walls of military offices, mostly closed to the outside world. No matter how laudatory, warm and fuzzy was the testimony by Colonel Richard Kemp, it is not something that will serve as proof - only as a supporting statement by a professional soldier. And of course, the commission should be able to hear and cross-examine the testimony by Goldstone and his colleagues.

Goldstone report is eminently faulty, even if we turn to Goldstone himself as a witness:

If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.

Of course, we can also try to decipher Goldstone's more mysterious statements, like:

Ours wasn’t an investigation, it was a fact-finding mission...

but it will take some doing and a lot of time, which we all don't have in the current situation.

As an example of an ongoing work on the Goldstone's report's many fallacies I would like to refer to The Goldstone Report site - an endeavor undertaken by several good people who are doing their considerable best to undermine the foundations of the report. Quite successfully, I would say.

Still, as it was exceedingly well articulated by Ami Isseroff in his article Goldstone and investigating the Gaza war, there is one main point that should become focal in any well-organized attack of Goldstone report:

Beyond all its irregularities, the Goldstone report made one claim that cannot be refuted: That Israeli policy and war tactics were deliberately designed to kill civilians. It can't be refuted because it is not logical or based on any facts.
...
Goldstone's report claimed:

1211. Statements by political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza leave little doubt that disproportionate destruction and violence against civilians were part of a deliberate policy.

How could a prominent legal beagle make (or allow to be made) a statement that opens the whole report to annihilation in a court of law is impossible to guess. But you better read the above linked article by Ami as a whole.

Conclusion

Confronting Goldstone is a marathon, not a sprint, as Herb Keinon correctly states. If, as he predicts, the Goldstone report is passed by the UN General Assembly to International Court of Justice in The Hague, we better come prepared, with more than indignation in our hands.

After that, if all ends well, we could deliberate at will on other subjects. Like Israel's dire int'l standing, who lost Turkey, whether it's the 'Obama effect' turning the world against Israel, which countries are "responsible" in Bibi's book and so on, and ad absurdum.

But meanwhile - we should get prepared.

Falcon Heene, the balloon boy: "We did this for a show"

If the story is half true, the hide tanning I expected the boy to get should by rights go to his dad, Richard Heene.

The 6-year-old Colorado boy thought to have floated off in a homemade balloon has raised questions whether it might have been an elaborate attention-getting family stunt.

Much more on that strange family where the above comes from.

Duh...

Update: From CNN:

Three days after the world watched a giant balloon fly through the air as a tearful family expressed fears that their 6-year-old boy could be inside, authorities announced what millions already suspected: The whole thing was staged.

Yep.

Testosterone drives men to buy fast cars

This is a result of a quite expensive research at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business. The chief conclusion is:

Testosterone is what drives men's desire to own fast cars, according to a study published in the journal Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

Why was it expensive?

Researchers at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal took 39 willing young men and let them take a cruise in a $150,000 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet. The men were then asked to drive a 16-year-old Toyota Camry.

And to the quantitative side of the results:

The researchers found that in the sedan, the men's hormone levels remained low, but in the sports car, testosterone levels stayed high — with or without an audience.

Amazing, innit? Now Porsche can truthfully state that their four-wheeled penises have outstanding therapeutic powers as well as unmatched mechanics.

So, what else is new, you may want to ask? Only the subject of the next research: marriage as a result of high testosterone levels...

P.S. Could a person with low testosterone level lodge a claim for a Porsche now with Canadian health services ?

Gruban, you animal, you!

A sidesplitting story of a fictional Serbian war criminal indicted during Goldstone’s tenure at the ICTY. By one and only.

Superpower meme

Jacob Da Jew hit me between the eyes with a meme more than a month ago, and what with the usual Elder's duties and natural forgetfulness, I have recalled it only now. Here are the rules:

1. Write one superpower you would like to have and what you would do with it.
2. Write why you chose that super power over everything else.
3. Tag and link lots of people, and write why you think they will have an interesting meme.
4. Fix your broken links.

I shall leave the last one on Jacob's conscience, since there is simply no way I would start wading through the lists and, besides, I suspect that he invented it himself. Otherwise:

Firestarter abilities. Why is very simple: I see it as a great helper with starting the grill going and lighting my cigarettes whenever that darn lighter gets lost.

I am aware, by the way, that I wouldn't be able to replicate the Gorgona-like hair effects, for some technical reasons we'll not go into for the moment.

As for the folks I am hitting with the meme:

Lesley - she must already possess a few powers, I am more than sure. Let's see which one she wants in addition.

Andrew Ian Dodge - he is an expert in that realm.

No Good Boyo. Being of Welsh extraction, he must be good in all kinds of magic skulduggery.

Paul. Hope he will find a minute for this. It could be expressed in the haiku format too, I guess.

Katie. I don't know why I include females, by the way, like they need any additional powers. Still, one must give equal opportunity.

Syria bans smoking in public places

Shocker. Reminder to self - cancel the trip next week.

It is your health, after all

Haveil Havalim #238 - The We Love The Dodgers/Angels Edition!

It is here and it's immensely readable, so what are you waiting for?

Hotmail - has it eventually croaked?

Just asking. Can't get to login screen since this morning.

Or is it only I?

Northern Ireland as a model for Israeli-Palestinian peace?

Whatever people think (and say) about Guardians' CiF (Comment is Free), it remains a good source of entertainment. Today, for example, I have stumbled on an article Middle East: a Belgian solution? by a Belgian contributor Khaled Diab.

The article offers two models for solution of our crisis: Northern Ireland, which is discussed rather briefly and Belgium, the subject in which the author feels rather better informed (and justifiably so). Unfortunately, I got stuck at the beginning of the article, upon reading this statement:

While I have expressed scepticism vis-à-vis Mitchell's chances of success – because the shift in US foreign policy has been mainly rhetorical, the Israeli position has hardened and the Palestinians are in disarray – there are certainly lessons to be learnt from Northern Ireland.

Even if I were searching for something to gast my flabber on purpose, I couldn't have come up with anything better.

Let me recount the story of Six Counties briefly: forcible eviction of local landowners, settlement by "imported" population of a different religious persuasion, 400 or so years of slow mutual bloodletting and, eventually, an enforced uneasy peace.

Granting that some people on both sides of Middle Eastern divide will willingly sign up for another three or four hundred years of conflict, seeing how it empowers them, I am not sure that Mr Diab has employed sufficient analytical abilities when he recommended the NI model.

The point is that this model ended in the occupying power (UK) remaining the occupying power, the settlers remaining the settlers and the Irish nation still split between the two countries.

I seriously doubt that this is what the author had in mind...

October 9, 2009 - The Day of Confusion

How do you say WTF in Swedish?

Update: and/or Norwegian, sorry for my ignorance.

Gaddafi Jewish too now? Oh boy...

The ink on the latest "revelations" about Mahmoud the Mad's Jewish roots has barely dried and evaporated (after all it was a canard, created, most probably, by his political rivals). And here we are on the brink of another scandal: the Maariv article (in Hebrew) tells a story about the Jewish mom who produced Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, that unique, albeit a bit deranged, offspring.

Maariv received a corroboration by one of the female relatives that Qadaffi's mother's name was Rosella (Rosalla?) Tamas. When Rosella was 18, she acquainted and married a Muslim man. One of the offsprings of the marriage was Muammar.

The article goes into further details of the genealogy of Tamas family. Suffice to say that, according to it, Muammar has quite a few close relatives in Ramat Gan, where he will be warmly received, no doubt.

Well, I am not sure the King of Kings is considering repatriation at the moment, but the story clears up at least one of the question marks: the uncertainty about his name: Gaddafi, Qadaffi, Gadhaffi, etc. etc.

And, of course, Elders have lost a valuable agent, once his true identity was revealed, but his usefulness was in doubt lately anyway...

Jet lag my foot...

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

On superiority of Iranian science and glowing Mahmoud

I don't know whether you recall the old story where Mahmoud the Mad was bragging about his ability to glow - and no less than in green, the color being both Islamically and politically correct nowadays.

"A DVD is making a splash in Iran. No, it's not the new, pirated King Kong. It shows Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad telling an ayatollah how he was miraculously enveloped by a green aura when he delivered his fiery speech at the recent United Nations General Assembly in New York. He added that for half an hour the array of world leaders, in awe, didn't even blink."

After some research, the green glow was traced to a few Taiwanese scientists who first experimented on pigs, making them glow in green as well. Of course, the suspicion fell on these practical jokers immediately.


The truth, however, could be different. Check this out:

7 Glow-in-the-Dark Mushroom Species Discovered

Since the story about glowing Mahmoud hit the media sometime in 2005, and the discovery of the glowing mushrooms was published only recently, there is only one conclusion to make: Iranian eggheads were years ahead of their colleagues, concealing the discovery for several years. All this to make Mahmoud the Mad a green halo during his UN stand-up appearance.

Of course, consumption of the mushrooms explains many other oddities in his behavior. And it goes easy on one's memory: MMM - Mushrooms - Mahmoud - Mad...

Hat tip: Lesley.

Chinese virginity-faking devices are a Zionist plot

Once again the subject is broached by the media:

Egyptian politicians have demanded that an ‘Artificial Virginity Hymen’ kit be banned in the country, calling it a “mark of shame”.

Shame or fame, who will be the judge? Anyway, this time the article contains a link to the offending device seller. Which is rather more free publicity, I suspect.

After searching for some references to the manufacturer (a Japanese one, if you read the small letters on that site) in the Elders' archive, we have come up with a discovery of another ancient plot by the Elders' eugenics department.

It appears that the liquid contents of the kit are choke full of identical spermatozoons produced in our secret laboratory by cloning. The boys are especially strong and equipped by spermicidal abilities to enable them to win the race to the egg by eliminating competition.

Most important, they all look like this one:

It is also guaranteed that the babies will all be male and will all look like that. For this reason the Elders' requested and were granted a special dispensation from the Chief Rabbi: the babies will be considered Jewish notwithstanding the fact that the moms are not. "With such a punem there is no doubt the kid is a Yid", Chief Rabbi decreed flatly.

Oh, and by the way, the statement "This item will be shipped from China" on the linked site is misleading. For Egyptian customers it will travel in a jiffy from a much closer address... And there is a special discount for repeat customers.