I’m heading out to Regina today, so a reader tips post is all you get until tomorrow.
Terror From The North – a Frontpage symposium interviews Rachel Marsden, Stewart Bell, Patrick Grady, Michael Marzolini, and Robert Spencer.
Iran, North Korea, Syria – The Axis Of Nutcase.
Victor Davis Hanson;
Finally, the world is accepting that the Middle East problem was never about so-called occupied land — but only about the existence of Israel itself. Hezbollah and Hamas, and those in their midst who tolerate them (or vote for them), didn’t so much want Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza as pushed into the Mediterranean altogether. And since there will be no second Holocaust, the Israelis may well soon transform a perennial terrorist war they can’t easily win into a conventional aerial one against a terrorist-sponsoring Syria that they can.”
No Joe, No!
In a written statement released late Friday, Volpe said Jim Karygiannis, a controversial Toronto MP, “has left the campaign as a result of the position taken by the candidate on the current crisis in the Middle East.”
Supporting the troops – James is giving away yellow ribbon car magnets. He writes;
I started this site after my ribbon was stolen from my car as a way to get back
at those “tolerant” liberals that didn’t like my politics.
Share yours in the comments. Keep the chatter civilized and on topic, please.
It’s hot here – 36C (Lower Mainland). If only we gave 2 billion $ to China and Russia I’m sure it would be a much more comfortable 25C. Kyoto rules!!!
Ural:
If we gave $2 Billion to Iran it would be a balmy 10 million degrees. Gives Kyoto Global warming a whole new meaning.
Oh and don’t forget the 10 million SPF skin lotion.
Confrontation is old fashioned. There are other ways to defang an Iranian tiger. Electric Vehicles for Instance.
Iran will lose bravado when demand for oil drops to 10% of today*s demands. No money for weapons or Hezbollah or Muqtada support.
That will hurt B.C. and Alberta too, but what the hell..
Did you see the Toyota EV yet?
The GM EV1 ?
http://TonyGuitar.blogspot.com
Many electric cars coming.. No gas to buy, no oil, no monoxide, no muffler, no noise, no transmission, no catalytic converter, no power train, no injectors, ignition timing, gas, water and oil pumps and filters. No radiators, no anti-freeze, and less to worry about.
EV charge up for 250 mile range.. $2.50, or a penny a mile.
And, oh yes, What are you going to do with the $300 you will not be spending on gas each month? = TG
Squally — very interesting and forgotten, or at least never mentioned these days. Also forgotten the fact that Jewish “freedom fighters” were the ones that killed and hung British soldiers during that time in history. I can still remember my father stamping around the house mad as hell over that. I can also remember seeing the pictures on the news at the Garneau theater in Edmonton, at least I think it was there, too long ago to be sure. History and terrorism do have a way of repeating themselves in the ME. Someone that has a little time should do some research on that subject. Include Menachem Begin in that research.
TG: The 300 dollars you save on gas, put it away and save up to replace the batteries.
You’ll be adding the $300 to what you’re going to need to pay for your hydro bill by the time electric cars ever become practical. (Hint, they won’t – the cost of disposal and recycling of battery components and the power generation needed to charge them will forever keep electric vehicles on the sidelines.) Alcohol is your only doable alternative fuel for cars in your lifetime. But then, at our global population rate, there’ll be no place to go in it and and no place to park it when you get there, and it’ll be too damn hot to sit in it in traffic.
Western Canadian: One also needs to remember that members of the British military were, prior to, and at the time of Israel’s independence, either surreptitiously or overtly supporting or providing arms to the Arabs:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:evbHlQS9XScJ:www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.cgi%3Fpath%3D193021042818557+british+pro+arab+sentiment+1948&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
Quote: “Another imperial feature common to Palestine was the practice of British colonial officials to informally divide indigenous populations into “good” and “bad” groups. In Palestine the Arabs (romanticized as courageous Bedouin tribesmen) were the “good” locals, while the Jewish Zionists (whom the British characterized as pushy and grasping) made up the”bad” element”.
Quote: “Even during the Arab Revolt, British opinion in the Mandate still tended to favor the Arabs who were often portrayed as valiant foes”.
Washington Report, May/June 2006, pages 14-15
Special Report
http://www.wrmea.org/archives/May-June_2006/0605014.html
Hamas: A Pale Image of the Jewish Irgun And Lehi Gangs
Captain’s Quarters has a very astute examination of the current ME crisis, and the shift in power that is going on there. I quote from him:
“They [Saudi Arabia] do not want a pan-Islamism run by a non-Arab nation, and Iran obviously has pushed this confrontation to put itself at the head of the Muslim community. None of the predominantly Sunni governments in the region want a Shi’ite government assuming control of the region, either, as they consider Shi’a to be unstable and messianic, among other less-than-admirable qualities. This conflict predates Israel by more than a millenium; the Zionists take a back seat to this long-running internecine feud.”
That’s an important point; as I’ve been saying, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is completely different from the emergence of Islamic fascism. The fact that the I-P conflict has been sabotaged and taken over by Islamic fascism, which is now being run by Iran, is a fact, but, don’t merge the two problems, for neither will be dealt with properly if you do.
Islamic fascism did not originate in Iran but is a symptom of the ‘gap’ in reality between a tribal political and economic life..and the requirement for a civic democratic industrial political and eocnomic mode. This gap, maintained by force of dictatorship and religious dogma, has produced a schizophrenic population, who live in an entirely self-written fictional, and quite insane, utopian world.
If Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt turn against the extremist Islam, then, they might, particularly in the case of SA, start the move away from tribalism and towards a civic governance. There’s also Iraq; it’s well on the way to that, despite the desperate murderous attempts of Iran and Syria to destabilize that agenda.
In a tribal nation, it’s easy to destablize the nation, because it’s not an organic ‘whole’, not a population who, no matter their differences, are held together as that collective by one rule of law, one constitution, one government.
A tribal nation is not mature; it’s a hodge podge of tribes – akin to the early days of coalescence of the various ethnic groups in Europe. It’s ‘governed’ only by ‘agreements’ between the bosses of the tribes,..these agreements can be territorial isolation; economic benefits (we get the taxes from X; you get the taxes from Y); governance (you get 30 seats, you get 35)..etc (shades of Quebec’s 75 seats in our parliament?)…
The way to unsettle this unnatural ‘whole’ is to do something bad to one tribe – who will then do something bad to that first tribe…and on and on and on.
But what is important is for that hodge podge to develop a universal rule of law, a constitution, ie a civic mode of governance. The tribal isolationism and ‘we hate you and you hate us’ will gradually die down.
If SA, Jordan, Egypt turn against Iran, which has sabotaged Islamic fascism and made it ‘its own’, that might, just might, achieve several things:
1) It will assist the emergence of a civic mode and the end of tribalism in the ME.
2) It will assist the disappearance of Islamic fascism, and the ME tribes empower their majority and disempower the minority.
3)It might enable a solution to the Israel-Palestinian situation. As I’ve said, this is a different problem than Islamic fascism, and was maintained by Israel’s naive hope that the Palestinians would, in 1948, disappear; and then, by their generation long occupation and settlement of the Palestinian lands. Just as Israel was granted, by the international community, a rights to a land, the same ought to be done for the Palestinians.
But then, a great deal of work has to be done. It is important to move the Palestinians out of a mode of life of illiterate peasantry; they have been kept this way by both Arafat and Israel – where they supplied a handy low wage labour force (now no longer used). The other Arab states ought to finally, do something to educate and move them out of this lifestyle.
4)But this shift in the ME infrastructure might be, possibly, a seismic shift.
This also means that the current Israel-Lebanon war should not be ended too soon. Egypt, SA, Jordan, Iraq, have to focus on Iran as a major problem and have to decide to prevent this. That means they have to break up the Syria-Iran duo. That would assist Iraq, for Iran/Syria are behind the insurgents.
Just speculation..
Mark Steyn has some interesting comments on tribal societies in his latest at MacLeans – tinyurl.com/zdnmp – “Before the white man came? War.” Here’s an excerpt:
“In his shrewd book Civilization And Its Enemies, Lee Harris writes: “Forgetfulness occurs when those who have been long inured to civilized order can no longer remember a time in which they had to wonder whether their crops would grow to maturity without being stolen or their children sold into slavery by a victorious foe. . . . That, before 9/11, was what had happened to us. The very concept of the enemy had been banished from our moral and political vocabulary.”
“It’s worse than Harris thinks. We’re not merely “forgetful.” We’ve constructed a fantasy past in which primitive societies lived in peace and security with nary a fear that their crops would be stolen or their children enslaved. War has been the natural condition of mankind for thousands of years, and our civilization is a very fragile exception to that. What does it say about us that so many of our elites believe exactly the opposite — that we are a monstrous violent rupture with our primitive pacifist ancestors? It’s never a good idea to put reality up for grabs.”
I like your analysis ET. It builds on some of Bernard Lewis’s writings. The challenge “moving forward” is to try to build true western-model modern, economically viable nation states in the middle east. The fact that the boundaries of the existing states are largely remnants of european colonialism is both a blessing and a curse — a curse because of the resulting demographic, socio-religious hodge podges that now exist in most ME countries with the resulting tribal in-fighting; but perhaps a hidden blessing because economic modernity will require that the various populations realize sooner or later the obsolescence of those very tribal structures. Perhaps these nation states are “history accelerators”.
The threat of Islamofascism within the ME is the threat of a “super tribalism” which is econimically and socio-politically very backward, condemning the people of the ME to perpetual ignorance, oppression and poverty (not to mention eternal war with “us” in the west). I doubt that groups like the Palestinians would fare any better vis a vis their fellow Arabs in a fundamentalist caliphate that would, if anything, tacitly or actively reinforce old tribal prejudices.
The question now is, can the Palestinians come to realize that the Islamofascist Hezbollah and Hamas are, in the long run, their worst enemies — political/religious drug pushers if you will — that are using the worn out old line: “think of me as a friend”.
National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World
Jewish Political Studies Review / matthiaskuentzel.de ^ | Spring 2005 | Matthias Kuentzel
Anti-Semitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. Important to this process were the Arabic-language service broadcast by the German shortwave transmitter in Zeesen between 1939 and 1945, and the role of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context. Although Islamism is an independent, anti-Semitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters – the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine – were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National-Socialist government.
“Listen!” says a rabbi to a young Jew. “We have received an order from above. We need the blood of a Christian child for the unleavened bread for the Passover feast.” In the following shot, a terrified youngster is seized from the neighborhood. Then the camera zooms in on the child for a close-up of his throat being cut. The blood spurts from the wound and pours into a metal basin.
The Al-Manar satellite channel that broadcast this episode is run by the Islamist Hizbollah (“Party of God”). The scene is part of a twenty-nine-part series entitled Al-Shatat (“Diaspora”), produced by Al-Manar with Syrian government backing and broadcast for the first time during Ramadan in 2003. Episode by episode, the series peddles the fantasy of the Jewish world conspiracy: Jews have brought death and destruction upon humanity, Jews unleashed both world wars, Jews discovered chemical weapons and destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs.
With a permanent staff of three hundred, this channel has the greatest reach in the Arab-Islamic world after al-Jazeera. …- more
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1670820/posts
Seizing the High Ground
This started off as a post over at Wretchard’s excellent blog, The Belmont Club.
If you have Google earth, take a look at these coordinates:
Yaroun: 33° 4’54.60″N 35°25’11.00″E
Maroun al-Ras: 33° 6’11.34″N 35°26’43.78″E
Hill 891: 33° 5’46.07″N 35°29’30.44″E
These three coordinates may demarcate the line of the Israeli advance into Lebanon over the last 24 hours (see links here and here (ht: Pajamas Media)). The reasons for them to do so, at least on a tactical/operational level are pretty clear. First, seize the high ground. I dug up a topographic map (via Google here) that gives the peak heights of the surrounding terrain in meters. Assuming that the map is accurate, a brief survey shows that the town of Maroun al-Ras sits on the highest terrain for kilometers around at a peak altitude of 943 meters. Hill 891 which is probably the Israeli right flank has the next highest altitude at 891 meters. Yaroun anchors the Israeli left flank, creating an arc of positions along the ridgeline. For at least several kilometers north and west of there the terrain is either valley, or with a peak altitude no greater then 825 meters. Second, according to this report (ht: Pajamas Media) the town of Bint Jabel is considered by the Israelis to be the “Hizbullah capital.” The town is sheltered in the valley north-west about 1 1/4 miles from Maroun al-Ras and now ripe for an Israeli incursion.
Quick note: I’m new to blogging, still trying to figure out this whole trackback thing. If I mess it up I apologize. …-
http://transitumbra.blogspot.com/
……..
rufus said…
Exactly Allen,
Xwraith was The Only One, anywhere, on the web, on tv, in the newspapers, who got out a topo map, and reported on the “Tactical” importance of that village. …-
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=12136206&postID=115360977476405391
Skip, Skip, Cheer up. When you read up on it at some of the links, your opinion will do a 180 and you*ll see that the lead acid battery recycling we do now is loose, messy and hit & miss.
It will get better, not worse. = TG
Yes, Vitruvius – Steyn always ‘nails it’. I like his comment that ‘it’s never a good idea to put reality up for grabs’.
That’s what I keep saying about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You have to focus on the reality, the current facts, not the fictional tales we tell ourselves. The reality is, the Palestinians didn’t disappear into the thin Jordanian/Egyptian air; and, they aren’t going to. They’ve remained and have grown into an enormous population.
The reality also is that they’ve been kept at a minimalist peasant superstitious village economy, by both Arafat AND Israel. Arafat kept them at this low level because it enabled him to maintain power. Israel kept them for low wage labour. Israel’s settlements were industrial, with irrigated farms; the Palestinians weren’t allowed access to the water for an irrigated economy. An uneducated, illiterate, low wage population exists within tribal fictions – and maz2 provides an example.
Move them out of tribalism, into education, into science, into empowerment within their own political and economic growth – and those fictions will move to a peripheral rather than dominant mode.
They’ll never disappear; our species requires fictions (how can I fly; I’ll build an airplane)…but..the non-scientific ones will be marginal.
But the key to the ME is the mov’t to a civic democratic mode, out of tribalism. That will empower the majority, and that will cut the lifeline to Islamic fascism. Fascism, after all, as a fiction, based on a utopian future, fades when confronted by facts. Fascism exists and can only exist within a bubbling state of high excitation, emotions maintained at a fever.
This requires a lot of energy and work. If your population is empower, economically and politically, their energy and work will go into those two areas. Factual areas, not fictional utopian fantasies.
The next key, is the Palestinian state, AND, a heavy investment in Palestine by the Arab States, to actually recognize Palestine (watch for that; they will hesitate, I bet you!)..and assist them to move out of a peasant mentality. That’s important.
Then, the West has to continue to refuse to accept extremist Islam; it has to insist that Islam modernize itself to fit into the modern world.
And, the West has to reject multiculturalism. After all – multiculturalism is pure tribalism.
As I read the papers and watch the news stories about all the protests regarding the Israeli attack on Lebanon, I am getting more and more dismayed that these so called protestors of peace are all wearing the colours of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that is committed and publically announced that nothing short of the total destruction of Israel and death of all the jews will satisfy them. Am I alone in being repulsed by the hypocracy of this whole situation?
No odie your not alone, I seen the reports last night as well.
Just as the Lebanese can’t seem to see and deal with the consequences of ignoring the evil within, we seem to be setting ourselves up for similar circumstances, the only question what will the consequences be?
I think its apparent delivering anyone other than full time Canadian citizens to safety a waste.Its time we drew some lines and have people wanting to live in this country make a choice.
I don’t know how old you are odie441, but I can’t remember a so-called “peace” movement that wasn’t a thinly veiled leftist soap box. The “peace” movements have shown an extraordinary tolerance for the behaviours of totalitarian regimes and terrorist organizations while working very aggressively to emasculate the defence or, heaven forbid, the spread of democracy.
Lebanese Blog: Hizballah’s Filthy Methods
Here’s an amazing post at a blog that bills itself as “personal views and opinions of Lebanese Forces members:” Hizbullah’s Filthy Methods. (Hat tip: Israellycool.)
For the past 11 days, we have seen Israel bomb all sorts of targets and i am sure most of us were wondering why would Israel bomb a certain factory or a truck or a construction yard or a truck ..
If we can for a moment turn off all those local and international channels who have nothing to do but show little children killed and bodies and touch the viewer to a certain degree that ll blind him, and think about the reasons behind those hits.
From a military point of view, you have a full equiped army, ranked in the top 5 armies in the world against a guerrilla with absolutly no info on its fighters, weapons , locations.
Even though the Israeli army is way superior in terms of weapons and technology and numbers than Hizbullah, its war must be a very cautious and tactical one since its fighting a guerilla.
We ve seen Israel for example hitting a factory for tissues in a small village in the South. It appeared that Hizbullah guys operate using trucks, meaning they move around with a missile in a truck, park nearby a factory for ex and shoot the rocket and flee. The origin of the rocket being the factory, Israelies respond by hitting it.
A witness for a similar action urged on TV the Hizbullah fighters to stop coming into his village to shoot rockets and then run away since the village is being destroyed. …
Innocent people r dying, this is true but i believe the way Hizbullah is operating and its filthy methods in infilitrating villages and using them as launch positions is causing all those casualties. …
Even the BBC notices it: BBC Admits Many Lebanese Casualties are Terrorists. via LGF …-
The Ouwet Front:
Personal Views And Opinions Of Lebanese Forces Members
Hizbullah’s Filthy Methods
http://www.ouwet.com/n10452/personal-opinions/hizbullah-s-filthy-methods/
MUGS said:
“I think its apparent delivering anyone other than full time Canadian citizens to safety a waste.”
Perhaps we as a nation need to re-visit this whole idea of dual citizenship. What has hyphenated Canadianism really gotten us? I too think it is time to take a stand….either you are Canadian or you are not…..no wishy washy grey areas.
I am 8th generation Canadian and I introduce myself as Canadian. I am not English-Canadian, nor Scottish-Canadian, nor French Canadian. My heritage includes all thoses as well as some native blood. I am Canadian and my view is that if you wish to be or become Canadian….you are just that>>>>Canadian!
For your reading pleasure (or displeasure)
Nazism and Islam: tinyurl.com/njaxy
Mark Steyn hits another out of the park: tinyurl.com/fgm58
George — thank you. will look it up this evening.
ET said: “The reality also is that they’ve been kept at a minimalist peasant superstitious village economy, by both Arafat AND Israel.”
This, in my view, is a woefully incomplete index of villainy, and Israel is the least culpable. The Arab countries, the UN, AND Europe have done the cruelest thing you can do to a “people”: keep them stuck in a impossible dream, viz., “the right of return”. Whatever you think of Zionism in that particular location, it was a perfectly rational solution to millennia of Jewish persecution and slaughter, so compromising a Jewish-majority state was never negotiatble. When all the Arab countries ganged up in a war of anihilation the Palestinians, as Rumsfeld put, “lost real estate”. And they ain’t getting it back. Period. Move on, like hundreds of millions of refugees (including a like number of Jewish exiles from Arab countries in 1848) have done all over the world all though history.
I gather that the median age of Palestinians is about 16. Refugees? Or grandchildren of refugees?
Have you considered giving “infrastructure” a rest. Makes you sound like — shudder — a social engineer.
Joe Volpe…..Has ” Beliefs and Values “??
Since when?
OMMAG
Leftist blogger caught posting doctored photo of mutilated baby under the caption “This is what Stephen Harper Supports”: http://rempeliaprime.blogspot.com/2006/07/stephen-harper-wants-to-behead.html
me no dhimmi
First, I agree with you that the Arab States, the UN and Europe have assisted in a fiction, of ‘the right of return’. A better way out of this would have been financial compensation. That, to my knowledge, wasn’t offered by anyone, much less Israel.
I’m against Zionism; I don’t accept ‘god gave us the land’ (I’m an atheist) and don’t see that having an Israeli state prevents anti-semitism. The chief prevention of anti-semitism in our modern era is the memory of the Holocaust. Not Israel’s existence.
Israel IS culpable, in my view, because of its occupation, its settlement of those lands, and its use of the Palestinians as unskilled low wage employees.
As for ‘infrastructure’ – sorry if you don’t like the word, but – tough. It has nothing to do with social engineering. Can you suggest a better word?
odie – I fully agree with you. I think that Canada has to take a hard, firm, no-nonsense look at dual citizenship. I don’t see why the Canadian taxpayer should foot the bill for assisting someone who, quite possibly lived here, if at all, for only 2 to 3 years and spent the rest of their 50 odd years as a permanent resident elsewhere. And, how does one deal with citizenship requirements of loyalty to one’s country if your various passports, and their countries, are at war with each other?
To become an citizen, you MUST take an oath of allegiance. If that oath is pure flummery and has the life-existence of a soap bubble, then, why bother with the oath, with citizenship? Why not simply hand out passports, a buck a dozen?
Quebec is in charge of its own immigration and many Lebanese are ‘located’ there, due, of course, to Lebanon being part of the French colonial conglomerate. Did Quebec simply slurp up these people in the 1980s, to boost its francophone population?
Canada has to end dual citizenship.
I think that if we’re looking for a morphological change, then we’re looking more for a change in undergirding than we are in infrastructure. Although the definitions of infrastructure do include one that covers undergriding, infrastructure also has other definitions which are not appropriate here, while undergirding does not.
Here’s – tinyurl.com/gwmrk – a good article by Fouad Ajami in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. Exerpt:
“In due course, the Saudis were joined by the Jordanians and the Egyptians. The Arab order of power would not give Nasrallah control over the great issues of regional war and peace. Nor would it give sustenance to Syria’s desire to find its way back into Lebanon’s politics. The axes of the region were laid bare: The trail runs from the southern slums of Beirut through Damascus to Tehran–with Hezbollah and its Palestinian allies in the Hamas on one side, and the conservative order of power on the other. This isn’t exactly the split between the Sunni Arab order and its Shiite challengers. (Hamas, it should be noted, is zealously Sunni.) The wellsprings of this impasse are to be found in the more prosaic impasse between order and its radical enemies.
“In time, we are sure to hear from Nasrallah’s own Shiite community: There had been unease among growing numbers of educated Shiites about the political monopoly over their affairs of Hezbollah and its local allies, an unease with the zealotry and the military parades–and with the subservience to Iran. The defection will be easier now as the downtrodden of southern Lebanon take stock of the misery triggered by Nasrallah’s venture. He will need enormous Iranian treasure to repair the damage of this ill-starred endeavor.”
Commenter said: Sounds like someone is sh*t scared to me..
Syria ‘to come clean’ on al-Qaeda cells
News.com.au ^ | news.com.au
Sky News said they had spoken to Syrian cabinet minister Amr Salem. “Syria has real hard knowledge,” the channel quoted him as saying. A Sky News correspondent said the Syrians were offering to tell the US where many fundamentalists were. He said the channel was told specifically there were cells of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network in Lebanon, and Syria knew of their whereabouts. Since Syrian troops pulled out of Lebanon last year, the cells have grown, he said. “We know where they are and we can tell you,” the correspondent said Sky News was told Syria was…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1670933/posts
Personally, vitruvius, I think that undergarments conveys a better sense of morphological definition than infrastructural undergirds.
Now, that we have cleared that up, my comment about Steyn’s column is full agreement – except for the title. ‘Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran’. Hmmm. You see, my default position is that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is one problem; and the failure of the ME to mature out of tribalism into a civic infrastructure (sorry, undergarment- or is it undergird/grid/ground) is another problem. The two are related but can’t be merged, for their causes and solutions are different.
I don’t think that solving ‘the Palestinian question’, by, presumably, ‘giving’ them their own state would also move the ME out of tribalism.
Admittedly, Palestine couldn’t succeed as a state unless it moved out of tribalism and above all, unless it moved out of a peasant subsistence agrarian economy.
But the major problem in the ME is its tribalism, which has led directly to its particular brand of fascism – setting up a population living in a schizophrenic delusional world. That includes Iran’s ambitions to, as Syten s ays, set up the Great Persian Empire, with itself as Chief Emperor, and Syria, Lebanon and Palestine as its assistants…to take out Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
That’s why Jordan, Egypt, SA are sitting back and watching Israel preventing this, and are even astonishingly speaking out against Hezbollah – while our lefties latte crowds are marching in the streets in support of Hezbollah.
They have suddenly woken up to realize what’s going on with Iran – something the latte crowd, locked in their own fictional schizoid world of Hate Bush, Hate Capitalism, Hate Israel, Hate Freedom and Democracy….haven’t realized.
It’s quite the seismic shift. Now, will they enable a Palestinian state? They’ll have to do this, to prevent Iran’s current use of it as a terrorist group against, not just Israel, but against the Arab States (eg Iraq).
Remember, that means that they have to recognize a Palestinian state and that means, de jure, that they also recognize an Israeli state. Egypt already does and my guess is that this will be an important ‘next step’. Why? Because they are going to need Israel, in the battle against Iran.
And, the battle against Iran is also going to require the Arab States, to modernize.
Fascinating.
Don’t blame me, ET, you asked for a better word 😉
Anyway, as to the rest of your comment, yup, something like that.
On a minor point, I think that totalitarianism is a better word for describing the threats at hand than is fascism. The latter carries too much baggage for most people. The former is pretty easy to grok.
A comment, if I may, on “hate”. I don’t get it. Maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired: maybe my brain just naturally realizes Sun Tzu’s admonitions against the waste of personal resources that is consumed by hate. One thing I do notice, though, is that those who hate, no matter from which perspective, tend to have some degree of low self-esteem. There is something they don’t like about themselves, the net effect of which manifests itself as a hatred of some others (compared to, say, a healthy opposition of some others).
The Sky News story is intriguing. Could there be a power struggle going on within Syria with this offer representing an attempt by the Syrian leadership to break the power of Iranian proxies operating within Syria itself? Syria is predominantly Sunni; Hezbollah is Shiite and as a result would likely take its marching orders from Iran more than Syria. The Hezbollah controlled area of Lebanon shares a long border with Syria. Is it possible that Hezbollah is causing headaches for the Syrian leadership as well and that Syrian support arises out of pressure from Iran? The possibilities are endless. Something is afoot. Any thoughts?
Anyone listening this aft.to Pravda Cross Country check-up ??All about Canada’s response,Harper etc.Few very interesting comments re:the increase of the “peace-loving” islamists worldwide,and trouble spots all have Islam in common.Fears that this is all part of master plan??
Question for the panel…anyone else disturbed by the prominent flag waving of swastikas by the protestors around Canada on Sat? It is usually investigated as a hate-crime,when this symbol is painted on homes,synagogues,etc.,yet,these newly rescued”canadians” wave it prominently,NOTHING is said,just passed over by the media.
I am frightened,and very concerned about the numbers of these Hesbollah sympathizers,that are now loose in MY Canada,especially when I see mothers with very young children seeming to instill the hesbollah good,Canada bad,brainwashing.We need to really wake up as a country,and pay better attention to who we are letting in.Call in to cbc people,1-888-416-8333,lets be heard!Can also e-mail to checkup@cbc.ca
Don’t need to “read up on it on some of the links” with 35 year experience in the population field (with lots of chemistry thrown in for good measure.) The curse of the (near) future is/will be US, and the energy needed to sustain us. There is NO hope for electric vehicles in your or your childrens’ lifetime. The physics ain’t there.
ET, Your views and insights are for the most part, headed in the right direction. I enjoy following them very much.
Oil provides Iran with the economic clout that enables support of Hezbollah and the purchase of gobs of modern weapons.
Debasing the value of oil by 90% through mass adoption of Electric Vehicles could lead to a less abnoxious Iran.
Reducing the demand for oil will also hit Alberta and B.C. Something we can accept if it leads to averting a Nuclear confrontation.
It would be interesting to see how you and other thinkers would deflate Iron fisted ridgid control freak mullahsks.
Reducing the demand for oil works, but is it too slow? = TG
Here’s the analysis from Strategy Page – tinyurl.com/fa5l2
“The Israeli attacks on Hizbollah military facilities are having an effect, with rocket Hizbollah launches down by more than half (to about 40 today). Israel has several thousand troops in southern Lebanon, and they are going after the Hizbollah rocket launching teams. The Israelis have found that their tactic of dropping leaflets warning civilians to stay away from residential areas used to store weapons, and especially rockets, has worked. Despite Hizbollah efforts for force civilians to stay in their homes, the the vast majority of civilians fled villages and neighborhoods where it was known Hizbollah was storing rockets. Thus most of the Israeli bombs destroyed rockets and housing, not people. The UN has not accepted this, but has bowed to media spin and pro-Hizbollah propaganda, to get behind the terrorists, and accuse Israel of using “disproportionate force.” The UN is demanding a cease fire (which, to Hizbollah, is interpreted as a pause before the next round of attacks on Israel).
“Israel is now moving into the second week of a three week military operation. The first week was mainly a bombing campaign to cripple Hizbollah’s ability to easily move men and munitions around, and to destroy Hizbollah facilities, particularly rocket storage sites. The air campaign has hit about 1,200 targets so far, including some 200 rocket storage sites.
“The second week has small groups of ground troops going into southern Lebanon to investigate suspected rocket storage sites. This tactic has uncovered those storage sites Hizbollah was able to build and hide from Israeli air and satellite reconnaissance. So far, about half the Hizbollah stocks of rockets have been destroyed, while about a thousands of the rockets have been fired into Israel. It’s currently estimated that Hizbollah had some 14,000 rockets, mostly smaller (122mm) ones.
“Hizbollah had also trained several dozen teams of men to get the rockets out of their storage sites and launch them into northern Israel. In the third week of the Israeli military plan, more troops will go into southern Lebanon, and Hizbollah fighters killed or driven out. At that point, Lebanon or the UN can be invited to come in and take charge of the area, with some guarantees (a big sticking point) that Hizbollah will not move back. If that doesn’t work, Israel has the option of creating a 30-40 kilometer deep neutral zone in southern Lebanon. Several hundred thousand Lebanese civilians have already fled that zone, and may not be allowed back in until something is done about Hizbollah.”
Electric vehicles will be commonplace in 20 to 50 years, for some definition of electric. They will not be a panacea, they’ll just be another piece of the puzzle, but they will eventually help at the margins. As the species slowly moves into the realm provided by the benefits of western civilization, the population will eventually fall to 2 billion, in the next few hundred years, which combined with the technological advantages we can’t even dream of yet, will have them all living in luxury. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, we’re working on it.
Skip,
You said **Don*t need to read up on it**.
You, a success in educated university circles, but having arrrived at a point where no further research is required.
A closed mind in fact?
No exchange of information is possible then? No point in discussion?
I will reserve my opinion because my formal education is virtually non-existant.
Others, with far broader knowledge than mine will no doubt feel confident enough to comment, no doubt. = TG
Western Canadian: One element that you have to factor in, is that many British Army officers were, either overtly or surreptitiously, arming the Arabs in preparation for Israel’s independence.
QUOTE:….Another imperial feature common to Palestine was the practice of British colonial officials to informally divide indigenous populations into “good” and “bad” groups. InPalestine the Arabs (romanticized as courageous Bedouin tribesmen) were the “good” locals, while the Jewish Zionists (whom the British characterized as pushy and grasping) made up the”bad” element………
…..Even during the Arab Revolt, British opinion in the Mandate stilltended to favor the Arabs who were often portrayed as valiant foes. The British residents of Palestine tended to see the revolt as more anti-Jewish than anti-British. There were exceptions to the general pro-Arab sentiment, like Colonel OrdeWingate who led a special counterinsurgency unit of the security forces composed of Jewish recruits,but most British officials were anti-Zionist….
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:evbHlQS9XScJ:www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.cgi%3Fpath%3D193021042818557+british+pro-arab+sentiment+1948&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1
Testing…….I appear to be having my comments intercepted, (innocuous as they are), while others are getting posted…..is there a reason for this? Does anyone know?
Equally minor point, vitruvius, I disagree with the choice of ‘totalitarianism’ to describe the Islamic whatever that is going on now. The reason is that totalitarianism simply describes the physical manner of the authority. Brutal, unilinear, top down, Do It Or Else I’ll Beat You Up/Murder you..etc.
Fascism is quite different. Fascism is a description of the self-definition of the people. It’s a utopian definition. So is the socialist and communist definition of ‘The People’. The difference is that the fascist definition locates the Causal Force of the nature of the people in the Past, in a genetic or innate Origin. The nature of the population is Pure, based on its emergence/origin at The Beginning of Time.
Socialist and Communism are also utopian; they too believe in a purity of the people. No more asymmetry, no differences, no hatred. Of course, what they don’t realize is that with this pure symmetry, there not only won’t be any hate, differences; there won’t be anything. Nothing. Purity is like that.
However..back to fascism. Its purity is in its origin in time. Not in its End in Time. And I define the current Islamic ideology as fascist because it is defining itself within that notion of utopian purity – that existed in its Origin. The fact that this is pure fiction is another point…
But – fascism, as an ideology of purity of origin, is quite different from totalitarianism, which is simply brute thuggery.
The thing about a fascist ideology is, since it is fiction rather than fact, the authorities have to keep the fiction ‘at the forefront’. They can’t allow fact to overtake fiction. So, the population has to be maintained in an emotionally heightened state and never, ever, be allowed to think and debate and question. That’s the reason for the hate/love. Keep the people in a near-hysteric state – and they are controllable.
TG- yes, I agree; Oil has funded the dictators and enabled them to maintain a tribal regime. Changing the mode from oil to electric/helium/hydrogen..is too slow.
That’s a really excellent analysis from Strategy Page, Vitruvius. Note that the UN simply doesn’t ‘get it’; they don’t understand that Hezbollah is not about Israel/Palestine but is about Iran’s imperial ambitions in the ME. The UN ought to be grateful to Israel for crippling this agenda. No, this war shouldn’t stop; there shouldn’t be a cease fire yet – not until Iran is slowed down.
BUT – the Arab States can’t leave this fight against Iran up to Israel! They are going to have to do something, even if it means standing on their heads and siding with Israel AND recognizing both Palestine as a state AND Israel as a state.
Otherwise, Iran isn’t going to stop its agenda.
AND they MUST modernize, otherwise Iran will expand its exploitation of the majority who are without power and brainwash them in Islamic fascism.
Fascinating. And hopefully, finally, the seismic shift in the ME as it emerges from tribalism. But the West can’t let up; it has to reject Islamic fascism, reject privileging Islamic or any groups..and insist on civic rule and democracy.
And the left should go back to their lattes.
Nemo2…quietly move away from the computer, breathe deeply – your post has triggered anti-Liberal filters and CSIS/CIA is currently on their way over…3,2,1 you should be hearing a knock on your door.
Quick, head for the window, climb down the window cleaning platform and grab the blue, or was it the red pill.
No wait, maybe it was the green one…err white…umm….
The answers to your question are here, Nemo:
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/003966.html
There’s some other stuff, go to the SDA main page and search for “spam filter”. If I’m not mistaken, avoiding the inclusion of the http thing followed by the colon and the slash slash thing helps too.
For those who feel we may never see EVs as common place, there may be a struggle to explaine away the Toyota RAV4 EV, the GM EV-1, the Tesla 240 HP [ 0 – 60 in 4 seconds – 1 penny per mile in fuel charge ], the Cooper 640 HP mini and dozens more.
http://TonyGuitar.blogspot.com
We, the public are kept in the deep shade by the MSM… or have we forgotten that since the election? = TG
Oy, here come the electric car conspiracy theories again. One word: Absquatulate. I mean, it’s not like the topic hasn’t been debunked to death here before, such as at: https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/004223.html
Sleeper Hizbullah cells overseas have ‘reawakened’
Jerusalem Post ^ | 7/23/6 | YAAKOV KATZ
via free republic
My point was, ET, that when the word fascism is used, people get into endless quibbles about the definition of the word, just as you now have, whereas when the word totatitarian is used, people tend to just sort of get it. So though you may be denotationally correct, I’m not sure that means you’re maximizing the effectiveness of your communication channel. Of course, I’m talking about popular discourse here, not learned writing.
It’s like when I elucidate the risks presented by communism. If I use that word, a lot of people look at me kind of funny. But if I say authoritarian collectivist, people, I find, tend to be more likely to say, pardon me, what do you mean? And then I’ve got them.
Some more on Irgun
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329505076-103532,00.html
Could you please try to be at least a little more irrelevant, I mean, given that you’re going to all the effort of commenting anyway, you could at least try to do your position justice.
Vitruvius,
Relax. I think that Imethisguy post may have something to do with electric cars.