Beating around the bush

Or, rather, around the whole garden - the carrot patch, the celery tree (or wherever that disgusting stuff grows), the broccoli, the cucumber... you know what I mean.

Just look how inventive the humans are in shifting the blame:

Norway's Moose Population in Trouble for Belching

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.

So it is 120,000 moose who are causing the climate change, what? While 2 billion (or more) absolutely unfettered human vegetarians roam their gardens and all kinds of nature stores, producing uncounted kilos of gases via their incessant belching (well, this is how it is euphemistically called in the article).

No, I am not offering to issue hunting licenses for vegetarians, so pipe down, please. Although, upon second thought, the militant ones could do with... OK, let's leave it alone for the HQ to consider. What I have in mind is enforced re-education and strict meat, eggs and fish diet for the rest of their lives. Call it perennial country breakfast, if you will...


And leave these folks alone, you hear? Or else.

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Buffer's day again

From George via Will:

Either they are unremittingly righteous, absolute and Stalinist or, worse, smug without the least consciousness of being so. It is as if each were thinking, If only the rest of the scum I am obliged to share this earth with were as nice and intelligent as I am all would be all right.

And look what the cat has just dragged in:

How can this bloody failure be regarded as a good war?

The western occupation of Afghanistan has brought neither peace nor development - and it fuels the terror threat

Seumas Milne

How does this bloody throwback to Stalinism get... oh well, the bloody freedom of speech...

Then look in the comments:

Writes Seumus Milne, a former writer for Straight Left, a journal of the CPGB that supported the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Good job, Derek!

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A mystery? Nah...

The ways of class struggle, like the ways of You Know Who, are mysterious. So mysterious that frequently, as it is exceedingly well shown by Terry Glavin here, people who are (class struggle wise, that is) supposed to hate and fight each other the most, suddenly discover that for quite some time they are fighting the same political enemy shoulder to shoulder.

Of course, telling them about it is a suicidal idea: supra-lefties and ultra-righties hate nothing more than a sudden realization that in fact they are not that different. But here is the stark unadorned truth...

Could it be because both wings are batshit-crazy?

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On the story of bouncing Daveed

The story itself is a part of upcoming "God's Warriors" series, hosted by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, it says in the CNN article. It is unclear whether the production as a whole is a comedy to vie the Flying Circus, but at least this part is full of comic content.

That is Daveed - although to me he looks like a plain David. What is not plain is his life story.

Born to Jewish parents who call themselves mystics, he grew up in what he calls the "liberal hippie Mecca" of Ashland, Oregon...

Uhu.

A college friend introduced him to Islam and he was intrigued by its peaceful message. "Islam was a very simple faith and as I learned more and more about it, it seemed more and more fascinating to me," he said.

Sure.

"We felt it was OK," his father Moshe Ross said. "We were glad that he was going to study something and hopefully seriously. And we were happy with Islam."

Betcha.

In 1999 he left his job at Al-Haramain for law school at New York University. Away from his co-workers, he was free to question the radical doctrines he'd learned in Oregon and meet with others about spirituality, including Christians. A year later, he converted to Christianity and was eventually baptized in the Baptist church.

So far so good.

It was a decision he took extremely seriously because he said his colleagues at Al-Haramain had preached that leaving Islam was punishable by death.

Nah... is that so?

Two years later, in 2004, federal agents raided the Ashland offices of Al-Haramain. When he learned of the bust, Gartenstein-Ross says he contacted the FBI.

Wow, man!

...he is now a counter-terrorism consultant who works with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think-tank formed after September 11, 2001, that lists former FBI director Louis Freeh, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Joseph Lieberman among its "distinguished advisers."

Dude - you are heavy now!

So, what is the lesson of the whole story (which is sorely missing in that CNN article* linked above)?

Try not to be born to parents who smoke the cheapest weed!

And a corollary:

There must be an easier way to get to Christiane Amanpour's attention, surely.


(*) The article also doesn't tell whether Daveed remains a Baptists or, perhaps, FBI is his sole religion at the moment.

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ENGAGE - first meeting in Manchester

Unfortunately, I do not live in Manchester or anywhere close, and I have some reservations about these "light refreshments" - but if I were around at the time, I would surely take part in this meeting. What with being a student of Elders' arts an thus eligible for a free ride...

So should you, if you are in the vicinity - it will be definitely better for you then being knocked on your noggin by a mad Man U tifosi.


Engage's Manchester public meeting: 7.00 PM, Sunday 9 September, Manchester Maccabi, Bury Old Road, Prestwich. Denis MacShane, Philip Spencer, Jane Ashworth, Richard Gold, David Hirsh

THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL CAMPAIGN AND CONTEMPORARY ANTISEMITISM

• Denis MacShane MP (Chair 2005 All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism)
• David Hirsh (Editor, Engage)
• Jane Ashworth (Campaigns Director, Engage)
• Richard Gold (North West Organiser, Engage)
• Philip Spencer (Advisory Editor, Engage)
• Panel Discussion

Meeting ends 10.00 PM
ADMISSION BY TICKET ONLY £5 (students free) payable on the night, light refreshments will be provided.

To reserve your ticket please email engagemanchester@gmail.com IN ADVANCE.

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The Moebius Man

I was hesitating for a while about the title for this post. How do you call a person who sees only one side of a multi-dimensional problem? One-trick pony? One-sided coin? Obsessed? Then I recalled what was shown to me many years ago in the classroom: the Moebius Ring (look for "Escher's ants" on the page). Like the ants in that animation, some people are revolving endlessly on the same circular road of habitual love/hate, coming to a degree of mental laziness where they are unable to discern anything that exists beyond their single track. Their highly developed selective vision will filter out all that clashes with their simple world view.

Now, of course, Moebius people are not endemic to one specific political wing (and I shall never tire to repeat it). But for this post I have chosen a specimen of the anti-Israeli side.

It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it!

This is the way one of the Jonathan Cook's supporters characterized his latest outburst of hate on CiF (yep, the Guardian again, how did you guess?). And the supporter is absolutely right - this is an exceedingly dirty job Cook is doing, no buts about it.

The gist of the article The propaganda machine is that poor Mr Cook and his colleagues in the good fight against Zionism are being relentlessly and viciously attacked by the Hasbara cohorts. And the one-sided vision is displayed in the article in all its glory. Take this:

Volcanic outbursts of hatred on Cif greet anyone who objects to Israel's policies...

It would have been funny if it were not so pitiful: anyone who have invested half an hour of his/her time in browsing Middle East (or anything else, for that matter) - related articles will immediately know that volcanic outbursts of hatred greet anyone who supports Israel as well - and to a much higher intensity. But remember - we are talking about the Moebius Man here.

I am not sure if any other country or cause encourages this kind of mainly voluntary propaganda work, but I am sure that no other country or cause has the human resources that Israel can rely on to carry it out. There are thousands of people sitting at their computers ready to pounce.

You see how scary the picture is? Thousands - literally thousands of Hasbara grunts, coordinated by octopus-like tentacles of the Elders (right, let's not forget the Elders) and ready to pounce. Indeed, one gets heebie-jeebies imagining this. Of course one should not mind the myriads of happy fellow travelers infesting The Guardian, the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, the Counterpunch, MPAC, Electronic Intifada... the list is endless, and I am not even mentioning the Muslim countries press (get your inkling here) dubbing in pure antisemitism and the neo-Nazi sites and... ad infinitum. But remember - we are talking about the Moebius Man here. And one who is not above profiting from many of the media outfits mentioned explicitly or implicitly above - just take a look at his visiting card. Truly a man whose freedom of speech is being curtailed...

And of course, the poor injured freedom fighter does not forget to push that straw man of "I am being called an anti-Semite". Really, my heart goes out to him. How about "dork", Jonathan? And a pitiful one to boot, not above some hypocrisy? Take this complaint, for instance:

Other posters simply lied, in the great tradition of hasbara. Several suggested I had written that Rafik Hariri was killed by Israel. I hadn't, and you can check my website to be sure.

Indeed, legally speaking, our man is correct. But in an article titled Syria: Convenient but Unlikely Fall Guy for Gemayel's Death that mixes Gemayel's and Hariri's murders, Middle East politics and whatnot (thanks to the peculiar Cook's habit to make a hash of every topic), he says:

Unlike my colleagues, I do not claim to know who killed Gemayel. Maybe Syria was behind the shooting. Maybe, in Lebanon's notoriously intrigue-ridden and fractious political system, someone with a grudge against Gemayel – even from within his own party – pulled the trigger. Or maybe, Israel once again flexed the muscles of its long arm in Lebanon.

No surprise, then, that some people may have mixed one semi-libelous statement with another, quite similar.

Speaking about libels - take a look at this quote from here:

Several Israeli armaments factories and storage depots have been built close by Arab communities in the north of Israel, possibly in the hope that by locating them there Arab regimes will be deterred from attacking Israel's enormous armory. In other words, the inhabitants of several of Israel's Arab towns and villages have been turned into collective human shields – protection for Israel's war machine.

That Israel is one of the most populated corners in the world and that existence of military installations of all kinds everywhere is a sad background of our existence - these facts do not enter the one-dimensional brain of the author. The shteitl where I happen to be living, is quite far from the centers of Arab population in Israel, but is surrounded on all sides by this or that military installation. Should I check my DNA for presence of Arab blood? But remember - we are talking about the Moebius Man here, one who will not be deterred by mere facts.

And since facts are mentioned (really out of tune with the fact-less article in question), one must not overlook the hilarious introduction to that article:

Time For a Champion of Truth to Speak Up

More than a little uncomfortably, I find myself with a bone to pick with one of our finest champions of humanitarian values and opponents of war.

You may not believe this, but it is true - the words above are dedicated to Fisk! One of the most ridiculous bloody liars of partisan journalism serves as a shining beacon to our hero, who in his Moebius state does not even realize where this act of worship puts him...

So intense is Cook's love/hate affair with Palestine/Israel that he is ready to clash with HRW, an outfit that has definitely no love lost for Israel. He is going out all the way to prove that, while the Zionists intentionally and blood-thirstily killed civilians in Lebanon, Hezbollah targeted only military installations. And get told off by HRW for his trouble.

Well, that is enough, although there are more wonderful, albeit laughable, passages in the article.

Just as a funny detail - the last paragraph, where Cook is frothing about the Camera:

Camera has a section dedicated to "naming and shaming" some of the most influential journalists writing about the Middle East.

Of course, being a humble person, Cook forgot to mention his own puny self. But the fact is that he is also named and shamed here, quite deservedly too, having his ignorance displayed for all to see.

Accidentally, that supporter I mentioned in the beginning, titled his post "Jonathon Cook staves off the zionist hordes". What can I say: the Zionist hordes can definitely do with more jkcooks - so pathetic and ridiculous that they do the Zionist's work for them.

So, I have finished my Hasbara pounce for now. Time for a rest...

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

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The blogger's life

I promised to publish this as soon as I am done with the quiz. So here it goes.

58%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
It seems I still have a chance to get some life.

Yeah, but what for?



to Jams.

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Something is rotten in the kingdom

Generalizations are generally an anathema for me, so I apologize in advance for this post. It is simply that a letter published by Indy that came to my attention today got up my nose.

As it goes, Indy and its various contributors are preoccupied by the exciting task of proving (mostly to themselves and to others of their ilk) that the State of Israel (or, for some of them, who are unable to pronounce this hated name, the Zionist Entity) is an illegitimate offspring of a passing mental weakness by the UN. Worthy pastime, and I shall not interfere with it by any means. However...

Writes one William Garrett from Harrow, Middlesex:

Between then and 1947, Zionist "boat people" flooded into the country but the Palestinians were helpless under the mandate to stop this.

Even for somebody who developed quite a thick skin, perusing all kinds of hate sites, messages and whatnot, this special mix of racism, bigotry and falsification was too much.

To start with, the term "Zionist" applied to the survivors of the Holocaust is a fallacy that points to the mental state of Mr Garrett more than anything else. To call the desperate and destitute Jews in search of a safe harbor "Zionists" is not a slip of the tongue - it is the sign of the times, when a Jew-hater hiding behind the mask of a defender of Palestinian rights lets his hate run away. Just like so many others of them do nowadays, but much less carefully.

Then the "boat people". Leaving Jews (sorry, Zionists for Mr Garrett) aside: it will be interesting to know how Mr Garret called the Chinese citizens of Vietnam trying to escape the communist regime that was taking over. Or the Cubans trying to get out from the Fidel's paradise? Or the Greeks trying to flee Smyrna in 1922? Why cannot I get rid of the feeling that I smell some classic British xenophobia, albeit much less refined than that of some members of upper classes?

The most interesting question, however is this: how in a nation with the most stringent (crossing to absurd actually) Political Correctness theology, in a nation that sends a senior police officer to discuss a forthcoming arrest of a terrorist suspect with his imam, in a nation where prison toilets are aligned according to tenets of Islam - in short how does it happen that a "progressive" paper like Indy is allowed to provide a pulpit to a hateful creature like our Mr Garrett?

It looks like the famous freedom of speech goes mostly one way in the Kingdom. And that the rot spreads...

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More on the wingnuts

And here comes (who but Ami Isseroff?) another excellent example of the polarized "pundits" that assist in tearing Joe Public's feeble mind apart:

I cannot imagine Rami Khoury writing in the Beirut Daily Star that the United States or Israel are right about any issue, and that Lebanese and other Arabs, and not Israel or the United States, just might possibly share some responsibility for the misery of their countries. It won't happen. I cannot imagine Caroline Glick writing in Jerusalem Post that an Arab peace offer is reasonable, and that Israel should trade land for peace, unless perhaps Israel is offered Mecca and Medina.

I cannot, contrarily, imagine that Gideon Levy, Amira Hass or Akiva Eldar would ever write, "The situation has changed, and right now is not a good time to end the occupation or make concessions to the Palestinians. It is dangerous to do so." These people will always write the same sort of thing, regardless of whether the White House is occupied by Gandhi or Genghis Khan, regardless of whether our Arab Palestinian neighbors are peaceful and have elected Walid Shoebat (a pro-Israel Palestinian Arab) to lead then, or whether Al Qaeda has taken over the West Bank and Gaza and is building an a-bomb. Every event, no matter what it is, is interpreted as vindicating their pet policy solution.

Go read the article Logic vs Bunk in Middle East Analysis. You could use your time in a worse way, believe me.

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Ahmydinnerjacket in financial trouble?

It must be noticed (as an international news item of medium interest) that the Iranian premier showman and aspiring stand-up comedian Mahmoud the Mad has sharply increased the frequency of his performances. Just the last Saturday he has given three of them:

Ahmadinejad: Israel Is Bearer of Satan

Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Israel was the standard bearer of Satan and the Jewish state would soon fall apart, the official Islamic Republic News...

Israel's collapse is imminent: Ahmadinejad

Ahmadinejad once again predicted the imminent collapse of Israel.

Israel is the flag of Satan, says Ahmadinejad

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday described arch-foe Israel as "the flag of Satan"...

Notice that, while the increased frequency of the appearances points to Mahmoud's certain financial difficulties, he still changes his suit for every show. Remarkable resilience!

It is also important to remind (see the frequent references to the word "flag") that the mystery presented by the Hamas-inspired version of the Israeli flag continues to disturb Mahmoud's sleep (click on the flag for explanation).


After all, the myth about the blue lines signifying Euphrates and Nile was dispelled, and the article made it clear that the said lines stand for Pacific and Atlantic oceans. However, to some people's chagrin, the article left out (on purpose) the remaining key issue.

Which hemisphere it is that the Elders are supposed to control?

Notice the dark circles around Ahmydinnerjacket's eyes...

Look for the answer in one of the future editions...

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Another critter

While certainly not suitable for one of the Batya's KCCs, this one for some reason makes me think about... well, food.

Maybe because my lunch today was on the light side? Anyhow, click on it to enjoy.

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A man, a pistol, a Guardian headline, nitpicking

I have copied this from the on-line edition of The Guardian of August 11:

Of course, anyone familiar with this here blog will know that I do, how to say it gently, criticize The Guardian from time to time for its bias. And some may say that I am myself a biased nitpicker. But what the heck, let's nitpick a bit more. Let's also do it in stages.

Stage one: the headline: Man killed in Jerusalem after grabbing gun. What would a reader in a hurry think? Just that a person got himself killed by the simple act of grabbing a gun. Maybe he grabbed his own gun somewhat awkwardly and it went off - happens all the time.

Stage two: let's assume now that the reader can spare another second or two and reads the lede (a fancy word some of my more literate friends use for the sentence below the headline). So what will the lede tell this reader? That the gun in question did not belong to the killed man, but to an Israeli security guard. Uhu. That's a bit more information - so the man grabbed a gun belonging to someone else. Then either the gun went off and killed him or someone else killed him for his trouble, using another gun (or even the same gun, taking it back from the gunjacker).

Stage three: now the intrigued reader (how many of them out there are interested in what is going on in Jerusalem really?) clicks through and goes to the article (by Rory McCarthy who provides most of the local info to The Guardian these days). What does our courageous and curious reader see in the first paragraph?

A man was killed yesterday after grabbing a pistol from an Israeli security guard in Jerusalem's Old City, prompting a chase through the city's narrow streets. Ten other people were injured.

Now our reader, apparently, gets the whole picture: the bloodthirsty Zionists pursued the gun-snatcher (who could have just wanted the gun for some peaceful activity - like a carnival or something) through the crowded narrow streets of the Old City, shooting indiscriminately and not only killed the man, but wounded ten innocent bystanders - as a bonus. At this point the disgusted reader will obviously click out of the article and go to his usual activities (statistically speaking - perusing some porn sites). And who could blame him or her?

Stage four: now we are dealing with a hardcore reader, the one who is really a) deep into absorbing every printed word and b) just crazy about any whisper from the Middle East. (How many of those do you know about?). Such a reader will get another dose of information from the next paragraph or two:

Israeli police said the man snatched the pistol from a private security guard and shot him in the shoulder. A second security guard chased the attacker past Christian souvenir shops and shot him dead. Several shots were fired during the chase and at least one of the injured was seriously hurt. There were many tourists walking through the streets at the time.

OK, now this is a clearer: so the man not only snatched the gun but used it immediately, shooting the poor shlemiel of a guard. Still, the question of shooting at the gun-snatcher in the crowded streets looms severely over the head of that second security guard, bloodthirsty Zionist that he looks like. Unfortunately, by this stage Rory got bored by the facts and switched to politics:

The security guards appeared to be among the many private, armed men who dress in civilian clothes and operate in the Old City guarding Jewish settlers.

Oh, well, we can start nodding off at this stage. Maybe we should just notice that "settlers" label. And idly remark to ourselves that it may be a good idea to start using it for Brits who got into the habit of buying lots of homes in France lately...

Or, if we are some really information-crazed maniacs, we can go to the

Stage five: compare the quote on the second security man above with some other source:

Another guard ran after the man, and nine bystanders were wounded, four from ricochets, in the ensuing gunfight. Five people were wounded by the assailant's gunfire, according to Israel Radio.

I think that at this stage we can round up this essay as far as the text "analysis" is concerned and come to the conclusions and epilogue. So what is the conclusion of this lengthy treatise?

I don't say that Rory M. is a biased journalist. Neither do I claim that the whole vast body of The Guardian are a bunch of anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic vermin just waiting for every opportunity to pounce on the Zionist entity. No - far from it (although they pay salaries or royalties to a few of those - but who doesn't?).

What I strongly feel, though, is that the whole publishing/writing/editing culture of The Guardian somehow leads its journalists and its editors, no matter how objective they try to be, into this (seemingly innocent) habit of structuring their articles on Israel in a specific way. And that this way will unobtrusively guide the inattentive (and who the heck is really attentive to something going on thousands of miles away?) reader into all the wrong conclusions. Or, at the least, into all the wrong impressions. Nothing to show in a court of justice, nothing to rave about in public, nothing you could put your finger on - in a hurry, that is.

I hope this provides an answer to some people wondering why so many of us are unhappy with The Guardian...

Cross-posted on Yourish.com.

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A rightful complaint

You cannot find mainstream American comics and comedy shows that skewer Israelis and Zionists with the same nasty, at times openly racist, routines that are commonly employed against Arabs and Muslims.

From here.

I do commiserate with the author, one Dennis Perrin - indeed this is the sort of spice that is sorely missing in the otherwise fair food rations of the nation of US of A. And who could have thought that the solution is that simple?





to Judeosphere (more on the issue there)

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Change needed - are you in?

Anyone has some spare change? I don't - since his last economic reforms...

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Mmm...

A police captain in Bashkiriya tried to eat the bribe while being arrested, tells this article. The bribe - 10,000 rubles (about $400) was a payment for stopping a criminal investigation about a theft of some building material.

Since the banknotes were marked, the taste, probably, was even more horrible. Argh...

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