Amitjo Kajla has a right to look pretty and even adorable!

Yes! We can!

A former prison officer who said she was forced out of her job after being bullied because she was pretty has won her case for unfair dismissal. Amitjo Kajla, 22, said she suffered the abuse at Brinsford Young Offenders' Institution near Wolverhampton.

Here she is (there is a truckload of her pictures out there):

Now the only remaining question is: how does a senior citizen get to do time in Brinsford Young Offenders' Institution?

It's up to you now

Filched from Theo. With thanks.

Shana Tova ve metuka!

Or happy and sweet new year, you all!

If you like the above, just download this file, its' choke-full of great stuff. I didn't entrust it to Blogger, since Blogger has some issues with PowerPoint still.

Enjoy.

And many thanks to LI for the PP.

Jimmy Carter and racism - second strike

It's happened second time in as many days. Unbelievable as it may sound, Jimmuh has probably decided to play the racism card for as long as the headlines are going good. This time he has decided to elaborate, watch it. Step one:

When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds.

Difficult to disagree, isn't it? But now comes the next step - quite a leap of logic:

I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American.

Do you see the assumption made into almost a fact here? No? I do. Do you see a statesman putting words and thoughts in someone's (millions of someones, actually) mouths and brains? No? I do. And now the fact is incontrovertible, you shall directly see it used for the next step:

It's a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States.

And here comes the finale, the final stone in that, now completed to perfection, edifice of the new faith:

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American.

So, you can see how, thanks to a few acts by vicious redneck morons, who indeed are beyond the pale and, no doubt, harbor a few racists between them, all Obama's political opponents become branded by the "racist" mark. Easy to remember, easy to use, and now Obama's supporters can answer any criticism by calling the critic you know what. Do you?

Aside of the impact of this unbelievable exercise in demagoguery, I am curious about Jimmuh's motives. How does this benevolent fatherly (preacherly?) figure of a wise elderly statesman descend to the gutters of abusing and stirring ethnic grievances, mutual suspicion and hate for political purposes?

Well, I suspect that if you look closer at the bio of this character: his failure as president, his ass-kissing of the world's worst dictators, his clumsy "peacemaking" that frequently exacerbates the strife instead of having the opposite (intended?) effect, you may start to suspect what I already do: the man is eaten up from inside by his envy of really successful statesmen. In reality he became the exact opposite of that benevolent wise white-haired father-figure image: a vicious malevolent troll who will stop at nothing, no matter how low and damaging to his (or any other) nation, to reach this distant goal of real greatness. No matter that the goal is moving farther and farther away.

I only hope that, for his own sake and for the sake of the nation he leads, President Obama will rise above the cheap, dirty and malignant demagoguery of his "supporter" who is far from being a supporter indeed.

Jews harvesting Algerian kids' organs

I shall leave the gory details to JP. Having said enough on the subject in a earlier post. About Palestinian kids, that is. So a short quote only:

The anti-Semitic blogosphere and many Arab and Muslim media outlets are aflutter in recent days over accusations of an international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap Algerian children and harvest their organs.

Sure thing. The only point left is to explain why it's Algeria this time. It's easy: you see, it appears that Algerian kids, especially free range ones, contain lots of that Omega-3 stuff that is supposed to be good for your heart. Or your brain, or your digestion, I simply can't get my head around all this egghead stuff. Plus them kids contain some vitamins you have to pay through the nose in the pharmacy.

Well, this is the way it is. Hope it's clear now. Yeah...

Goldstone report: verdict first and all else as expected

This post about some responses to the Goldstone report is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the responses, just a general impression with some personal touch. As expected, we are not doing too good and not looking too good, continuing to ignore some of the less pleasant aspects of reality.

Obviously, part of this post headline is stolen from the post by Soccer Dad: Verdict first - investigation afterwards, that I had already quoted and am quoting again:

It's safe to assume that, like Kofi Annan's report, the conclusion of Justice Richard Goldstone's report is predetermined. When one considers things like a commission member who has already decided that Israel has no right of self-defense, that the commission is accepting phony numbers as testimony and that a (former) UN appointee assumes that serving in the IDF is tantamount to committing a war crime it's reasonable to conclude that regarding Israel, the UN is dedicated to obtaining a conviction not the truth.

So, yes, the report nailing Israel to the proverbial wall wasn't a big surprise. The following could be a surprise, though: Goldstone's daughter: My father is a Zionist and loves Israel. Somewhat funny, somewhat sad...

There are (and will be more) different responses and echoes following the report. Some of them pretty strange, like this comment by our own legal beagle:

The Goldstone Commission Report on the Gaza conflict will cause Israel serious political damage, but is unlikely to lead to any tangible consequences, Avi Bell, an expert in international law and laws of war at Bar-Ilan University, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Serious political damage, but no tangible consequences... go figure. Does the learned professor mean by tangible consequences something like Richard Goldstone flying his B-52 to bomb Tel-Aviv? Otherwise I am at loss trying to get any sense of that prophesy. Anyway, I like it more when Avi Bell deals with the issue professionally, in the framework of what he really digs. Like in his article INTERNATIONAL LAW AND GAZA: THE ASSAULT ON ISRAEL'S RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE.

The official, indignant and rather forceful responses, are as expected - typically a knee-jerk reaction, intended for unquestioning consumption by the believers and immediate rejection by the other side.

Foreign Ministry, though, opened a site dedicated to the Gaza war, which is a good move. However, in some instances the terse style of the site is self-defeating, like in this case:

Why hasn't Israel cooperated with international investigations into the Gaza Operation?

There have been dozens of International inquiries into events in the Gaza Operation, and Israel has cooperated fully with almost all of them.

Only in those instances where it seemed clear beyond any doubt that the initiative was motivated by a political agenda and not concern for human rights, did Israel decide not to cooperate.

Unfortunately the Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission (the "Goldstone Mission") was one of these.

Does somebody in the Foreign Ministry really think that military-style statements like this one are going to play havoc within the anti-Israeli camp? Somebody must think again then...

The really troubling part of the official response is this one:

Israel said Wednesday it would not appoint an independent inquiry into its conduct in the Gaza Strip war, rejecting a key recommendation from an explosive U.N. report that accused the Jewish state of war crimes.

As usual, our officialdom does what it does best: disregard anything negative to Israel in public opinion we consider too bothersome to address. Too bad.

And the issue is not hopeless, here is a good example: I rather liked Prof. Gerald M. Steinberg short analysis of Goldstone report, although the headline of the article (Goldstone's kangaroo court report) is a bad start for a legal opinion brief, but it's probably on the conscience of the on-line editor and not the esteemed professor. In any case, professor Steinberg shows multiple deficiencies in the report, and there should be no doubt that a team of seriously-minded lawyers, with some support from IDF and the government, could have turned the tide the other way, at least where the legalese is concerned. Surely we have enough lawyers in this country to spare for such a task? Some, perhaps, will agree to do some pro bono work...

And no, I am under no illusion that the Human Wrongs Council will suddenly change its perennial anti-Israeli tune and roll over, I am not that naive. However, saying this, it was a mistake to leave the field wide open for the anti-Israeli crowd to frolic in and to produce tons of one-sided and hearsay-based paperwork . And we'll pay for it, the strange opinion of professor Bell notwithstanding.

Now a point or two about the other side. It is really educational to read the key recommendations of the report. After nine points of dos and don'ts addressing Israel, only two humble requests to the Palestinian side:

a.Palestinian armed groups should respect international law.

b.The groups holding Gilad Schalit should release him or at least recognize his status as a POW.

How about asking whether the whole report (and, incidentally, the Cast Lead operation) could have been avoided if the "Palestinian side" respected international law and didn't kidnap Gilad to start with?

And how about giving a few minutes of undivided attention to Col. Richard Kemp, when he talks about the efforts IDF takes to minimize the unavoidable collateral damage? And when he says that IDF did more to safeguard civilians than any other army.

Another question: when dealing, as UN HRC loves to, with real or perceived Israeli war crimes, how about addressing the proportionality issue in cases like the latest mishap in Afghanistan, where coalition troops succeeded to kill about 40 bystanders in one bombing?

And if all else fails and you still are unsure about the issue of objectivity, compare the above figures of a single bombing result with one of the sources Mr. Goldstone and his committee so frequently use and rely upon in their conclusions: one Marc Garlasco:

Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at the emergencies program of HRW, estimates that at least 87 civilians were killed in 42 drone attacks. “Israel’s targeting choices are unacceptable and unlawful,” he declared at a press conference in East Jerusalem, “especially [considering] that UCLAV provide the most precise platform in the military arsenal, and that Israel is the world leader in drone technology.”

Compare the numbers, folks, compare the numbers. And if even this is not enough, have a look at the way Garlasco defends the US Army:

Garlasco explained the calculus of civilian deaths in high value targeting to the television news program 60 Minutes this way, "Our number was 30. So, for example, Saddam Hussein. If you're gonna kill up to 29 people in a strike against Saddam Hussein, that's not a problem. But once you hit that number 30, we actually had to go to either President Bush, or Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld." Garlasco told the interviewer that prior to the invasion of Iraq, he personally recommended 50 high-value targets -Iraqi officials for air strikes, but, according to Garlasco, none of the targets on his list was actually killed. Rather, "a couple of hundred civilians at least" were killed in strikes he recommended. Garlasco defended the efforts made by the American military to minimize civilian casualties, "I don't think people really appreciate the gymnastics that the U.S. military goes through in order to make sure that they're not killing civilians."

If you are still not impressed by mental gymnastics Garlasco is displaying to blame one target of his exercises and to protect another, nothing will impress you. And nothing will shutter your belief in impartiality of the Goldstone burlesque. And his UN HRC overlords, whose touching attention to Israel is beyond belief.

Well, for those that want to see some of the half-full glass: "The UN is of the dictators, by the dictators and for the dictators". By Dick Stanley. How true.

Jimmy Carter and the specter of racism

That WaPo report caused me (an unaligned non-American, to make sure you know where I stand) a bit of a heartburn:

Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that he believes race is at the core of much of the opposition to President Obama.

Not that I am absolutely surprised by that soundbite, after all it was already tried by several supporters of President Obama. This time it's more sweeping and, taking into account the source, even more damaging - first of all to President Obama.

My heartburn is over by now. Cannot say the same about Carter's loud and unashamed act of senility.

But, after all, when all else fails...

P.S. The fact that the linked page contains a picture of Sen. Specter doesn't have anything to do with the headline of this post. Well, almost...

Brian Whitaker - game warden or poacher?

Brian Whitaker, whose unbounded sympathy to the Arab world (nothing wrong with that, although in Brian's case it goes hand in hand with strong anti-Israeli sentiment) was caught again. With his trousers down and his foot in his mouth, so to say.

If my MEMRI serves me well…

Another good job on CiF Watch.

From Jesse James to Jesse Dimmick

Authorities say the man who held a couple hostage in their Kansas home fell asleep and they escaped unharmed. Topeka Police Capt. Jerry Stanley said Saturday that authorities then stormed the house, where they confronted the man.

Dimmick - says it all. They just don't make them like Jesse James anymore...

Charlie Sheen: grooving with Obama on 911

I am not ashamed to confess that CS is one of my faves where slapstick comedy is concerned. Even knowing that he has joined "a growing army of other highly credible public figures in questioning the official story of 9/11". It has never worried me how credible a public figure CS is (well, a bit less than a wooden nickel), since I was chiefly interested in the comic side of his appearances on the screen. Nothing more, nothing less. And when he came out of the 911 closet in the company of his now bosom buddy Alex Jones, who is usually only marginally less crazy than a rattlesnake on amphetamines, I wasn't unduly worried. So they are buddies, and what the heck is wrong with it? Birds of a feather and all that...

I could even find more comic effect in CS's screen appearances knowing about this friendship and the new hobby of his.

Recently, however, my serene and reasonable attitude toward this state of affairs was badly shaken by an unexpected turn for the worse in CS's mental state. It appears that, not being content by just being a regular 911 Troofer, CS has acquired an imaginary friend. Who is no more and no less than President Obama. And that CS conducts very long and tedious imaginary dialogs with this new friend, trying to persuade him to look into 911 in a new, hitherto untried, way (meaning the Troofer's way, of course, if you didn't get the drift yet).

That imaginary friend thing happens quite frequently, and if you read enough you should know that it's a trait peculiar to the younger age. And that the imaginary friend usually passes away when the youngster in question grows up and becomes interested in acquiring some real flesh and blood friends, usually of the other gender.

Being an Elders' foot soldier, I do some headology, of course, but it is mainly of suborn and control or suborn and kill type, using mind control rays and other, even more crude stuff. So I don't know enough about that imaginary friend BS and, naturally, am loath to part with such a funny natural resource as CS. What if his mental state becomes bad to a degree that will require a shrink or two with a few husky orderlies to sit on his head for some years to come?

Who will replace him in all the funny movies that he might be still able to star? Do we really want CS in one of those:

Frankly, I am worried. And I blame Alex Jones. He seems to be not much of a buddy, if he let CS to get into that imaginary friend state.

Bleh...

Indonesia's Aceh passes stoning law

This is coming from the horse's mouth:

Legislators in Indonesia's Aceh province have unanimously approved a law allowing adulterers to be stoned to death.

The regional parliament for the devoutly Muslim province on Monday passed the "qanun jinayat", or sharia law for crimes, also allowing for homosexuality to be punishable by long prison terms and people caught having pre-marital sex to receive 100 strokes with a cane.

It may be not that bad, actually, since:

Aceh's parliament is the only legislature in Indonesia - the most populous Muslim nation in the world - to employ sharia (Islamic law).

Thankfully, it's only a part of the country that will use this law - in thirty days (so you folks have some time for the last tryst or two). What can I say? Only a word of advice to that third category of offenders (the fans of pre-marital sex): just say that you never intended to marry in the first place, so it couldn't be counted as pre-marital sex. Otherwise, don't get caught in Aceh.

And one other thing: there is some hope still:

Out of 52 Muslim-majority countries worldwide, stoning is legally sanctioned in varying forms in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and parts of Nigeria.

Which means, you can still indulge in these "offenses" in 44 Muslim countries. After that - there always will be Paris...

U.S Government Jumps Voluntarily into Iran's Trap, Pulls in Europeans, Too

The great French diplomatist Talleyrand put it best: "That's worse than a crime, it's a mistake."

By accepting the Iranian proposal for negotiations, the Obama Administration has just made the most important foreign policy decision of its term so far. And it is a very bad mistake, a very bad one indeed.

Read this great post by professor Barry Rubin of GLORIA Center in its entirety.

Polyamorous - go define it

It's hot on Google, so there must be some public interest in the issue. So far, the funniest explanation I found is:

To be polyamorous means that my heart is big enough and strong enough to care for more than one person at a time, even when it means balancing conflicting needs and ways of being.

A big and strong heart. Uhu...

Patrick Swayze RIP: he was a real cowboy with a tender heart.

This was a quote from Jennifer Grey. He was a good man and fought his disease to the end.

HRW - the Fact Factory

I have stumbled yesterday on an indignant message to The Guardian from one Carroll Bogert, Associate director, Human Rights Watch, New York. In this letter, Ms Bogert demonstrated a spirited defense of her colleague Marc Garlasco, who, apparently, is overly fond of Nazi memorabilia.

Our military expert, Marc Garlasco, collects German and American military memorabilia from the second world war, but that does not make him a Nazi sympathiser, as your headline implied. He has never expressed any pro-Nazi or antisemitic sentiments.

The letter in question was sent to The Guardian in response to an article Human Rights Watch investigator accused of collecting Nazi memorabilia, in which its author, Ed Pilkington, is recounting the story. I am not sure what part of that headline caused Ms Bogert such ire, this headline really doesn't "imply" anything aside of the "accusation" that Marc Garlasco is enamored of Nazi memorabilia. Which doesn't yet a Nazi make. In my book, it makes him a seriously disturbed character (I don't want to use the word "wanker", of course), but there are quite a few out there who share the same hobby. Of course, the choice of Flak88 nickname and other idiosyncrasies Mr Garlasco displays indicate a bit more than a harmless wank collector, but let's leave the whole story for later, since it's not the main point of this post.

The main point is to display an example of amazing agility of HRW as a fact gathering machine (which image HRW tries to propagate by all means). Here it comes, in Ms Bogert's own words:

The fact that the Israeli foreign ministry is spreading such ad hominem attacks against him should have been a warning sign, not a green light to publish.

I've read the Pilkington's article quite carefully, I believe. It's a bit too pompous to my taste, and the opening sentence "Tension between the Israeli government and Human Rights Watch, the international body that has been critical of the Israeli military's tactics in Gaza, has intensified over revelations that one of the watchdog's investigators is a collector of Nazi memorabilia." is a misleading one, since nowhere does Pilkington prove that "tension" between the two proponents is related to or intensified by Garlasco's personality. In any case, he being a loyal Guardian scribe, Pilkington's sympathies are clearly not on the side of Israeli officialdom.

But to Ms Bogert the article provides sufficient background to declare as a fact that it's Israeli foreign ministry that spreads the "ad hominem" attacks on the poor blighter. How does it follow from Pilkingtons' article (or from any other source) is absolutely unclear. Indeed, Pilkington points to several sources of the Garlasco story: Omry of Mere Rhetoric, colleague Elder of Elder of Ziyon and NGO Monitor. None of the above belong to or are financed by foreign ministry. Although Omri, being a student of rhetoric, may see himself as a future candidate for the post of FM (deity knows, he will do much better than the current walking mishap)...

Anyhow, to Ms Bogert it's a clear and unequivocal fact. To me it's a clear and unequivocal indication of the HRW mindset and the ways all kinds of input are processed by HRW to become facts... no wonder there is bad blood between Israelis of all kind (foreign ministry included) and HRW.

Normally I would pass over the (indubitably deviant) personality of Marc Garlasco, restricting myself to a juicy ad hominem or two, but curiosity and availability of Google prevailed. Well, all that and Garlasco's own ridiculous idea that his fascination by the Nazi paraphernalia "makes me a better investigator and analyst". Cripes... the only thing that makes him is a w... but we have already been there.

So I have been reading some of Garlasco's bio on Wiki, and was quite impressed by his military background and credentials. Among other information, there is an interesting passage, describing the last act of Garlasco the warrior before his conversion to Garlasco the pacifist:

In 2003 Garlasco was responsible for dropping two, laser-guided, 500-kilogram bombs on a house in the Tuwaisi, neighborhood of Basra, Iraq, that he believed to contain Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, the man responsible for launching poison gas attacks on Kurds in Iraq beginning in 1988. Watching the attack via satellite form a room in the Pentagon, Garlasco threw his arms in the air and shouted: "I just blew up Chemical Ali!" However, Chemical Ali was not in the house; 17 other people were killed instead. Garlasco left his Pentagon job in 2003 two weeks after the failed attack to take a position as senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.

Was it a kind of a personal "mea culpa" that caused Garlasco to quit his military career? Doesn't look so, since I didn't hear of Garlasco trying to surrender himself to any international body dealing with war crimes (not that HRW is in any way hesitant when applying that "war crime" label to anything done by IDF, but it's another story). Garlasco explains his conversion differently: it is the death of his grandpa, a Wermacht soldier cum pacifist that caused this miracle:

It wasn't until he died that I really took his lessons to heart, and decided to use my military expertise to try to lessen the horrors of war.

Sounds true to you? I don't know, it could be, however I suspect that the reality was a bit more complex. And there could be a lesson somewhere in it, I feel. Or, maybe, not...

Curious. Anyway, the recent feeble attempt by Garlasco to fight back and the Elder's* reaction to it are worthy, if somewhat disturbing, reading. And more by Daled Amos. Enjoy.

(*) Not to be compared with the former, deity forbid.