The Lasso of Truth

de-Arabised: Like delousing, but far more expensive

In my books, if you're ticking off both the missile-lobbing, Semtex crowd and the sympathetic Marxist squish taking their side, it's a fine day's work...

A defiant Mr Netanyahu appeared to be digging in despite clear indications that the Obama administration is now demanding the scrapping of plans for 1,600 new Jewish homes, whose announcement overshadowed last week's visit to Israel by the US Vice-President Joe Biden. Mr Netanyahu's stance appeared to guarantee, after a highly charged week, the protraction of a stand-off in which a full-scale diplomatic row blew up at the start of Mr Biden's visit and appeared to abate at the end of it. But it was then reignited by demands from Hillary Clinton and an angry White House that Israel make amends for the "insulting" announcement just as indirect negotiations with the Palestinians had finally been arranged.

Still awaiting word on when Obama will "run out of patience" with the kidnappings, suicide bombings and constant threats being waged from the other side of that border.

Speaking softly, without the big stick

Every Wednesday morning, John Oakley has John Bolton on his morning show to discuss world events.  My son and I try to never miss it, and it is a highlight of our morning drive to school.

When a 15-year-old emo kid can understand and appreciate your knowledge and eloquence on foreign policy, you’ve achieved a minor miracle.  I can tell you.

Due to this regular contact, I was marginally oblivious to the fact that he was no longer the US ambassador to the UN, or who his replacement was.  I don’t feel so bad though, realizing now that the latest ambassador leaves an impression slightly more memorable than a stump of wood.

Do you get the impression that her colleagues regularly refer to her as wazzername?

While Rice, like all Democrat-appointed US Ambassadors to the UN, also serves in the President’s cabinet, she has nevertheless been absent at many crucial Security Council meetings in New York during some of the world body’s most turbulent times.  Rice was even missing from this week’s Security Council debate and vote to add new Peacekeepers to a beleaguered UN operation in Haiti.  According to several UN veteran reporters and some US Mission staff, Rice has been missing from crucial negotiations on Iran too.  They say that when Rice does attend UN negotiations, she is all too willing to avoid confrontation.  The Permanent Members of the Security Council – the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia and China – rely on American leadership to drive issues to a close and force votes.  While the Permanent Members historically complain publicly about being forced to vote or meet on certain issues, without one country driving issues to completion the UN Members will keep talking or find ways to continue fruitless discussions.  After spending 8 years inside the UN and watching the Security Council debate a plethora of issues, I can personally attest to the fact that an effective American Ambassador cannot worry about being the most popular person in the room.  Forcing an end to a UN debate and calling for the Security Council to vote on an issue is never popular.

Over the last year, Rice has avoided tough negotiations and public feuds at the UN and has subsequently produced very few UN resolutions on America’s priority issues.  While other foreign Ambassadors speak fondly of Rice and her ability to make nice at the UN, she has been a weak negotiator for the American people.  Many UN veterans have indicated that Rice’s lack of leadership on the Iranian issue in particular has forced the French Ambassador to pick up the slack in trying to forge a new Security Council resolution to increase sanctions.  The irony that the French are tougher than the Americans on the Iran issue has not been lost on career State Department officials.

I have a suggestion

Since they don't like us using the word "Allah", we can make up a few nicknames to use instead.  For example, we could call him a "goat-humping pedophile", or maybe "violent retard"...

That way they can have Allah all to themselves.

We're all about peaceful compromises here, at The Lasso.

And in the spirit of plentiful diversity, please feel free to offer more suggestions in the comments...

Swallowing Sharia

Like asking the doctor to accept the delusions, before treating the psycho...

Israel and the United States should understand the Islamic laws Hamas obeys to begin finding solutions for a peaceful coexistence.

[..]

We argue that engagement with Hamas is essential, and possible. To understand how, it is necessary to take into account that many of Hamas's statements and actions are governed and limited by its understanding of Islamic religious law (sharia), a comprehensive code relevant to all aspects of life for believing Muslims, very much including politics. We maintain that Hamas cannot be understood without understanding the sharia background of many of its policies.

The authors claim that all Hamas needs is a little understanding and that if Israel were to just accept the homicidal delusions of an avowed terrorist organization that declares in it's charter a desire to eliminate Israel, well then, everyone just might get along.

I have to ask though, if Hamas has signaled a willingness to enter a truce and honor previous agreements, how would they be expected to do so when they refuse to recognize the other party to the deal?  Semantic?  Or an astute observation on the shrewd carrot and stick game being played out, ad infinitum, on the middle east peace front?

Recognizing Israel -- and it's right to exist -- is an essential factor to any acceptance of a deal with them.  Refusing to do so, renders moot any claim that borders or sovereignty would be respected.

The sad fact that Hamas "won one of the freest and fairest elections ever conducted in the Middle East. In doing so, Hamas became the legally and duly chosen representative of the Palestinian people" does less to legitimize them as a democratic entity, than it does to de-legitimize the pathologically destructive populace who overwhelmingly chose them as representatives.  Some people just never tire of being victims.

It's all about perspective

But if your motivation is to suck up to an oppressive religious dictatorship, rather than show common cause with a struggle for democracy, I'm sure it was very good...

Unlike most of my comrades in the Zionist-neocon plot to take over the world, I did not think the Obamic statement on Iran was good. I didn’t even think it was good enough. Not good enough for our “international community” president to invoke the international community, again, speaking of “tired strategies”--or is that a tactic?--and wave its outrage like a white handkerchief at the Iranian regime; not good enough to deplore the “threats, the beatings and imprisonments,” as though they’ve been taking place in the vacuum “of the last few days” rather than playing out over the last few decades; not good enough to look at scenes of mayhem and murder and say, “The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future.”

Mousavi is the Obama of Iran

Oh really..?

We [Iranians] are a bit unfortunate. When we had our Obama [meaning President Khatami], that was the time of President Bush in the United States. Now that [the United States] has Obama, we have our Bush here [in Iran]. In order to resolve the problems between the two countries, we should have two Obamas on the two sides. It doesn't mean that everything depends on these two people, but this is one of the main factors.

Well, how do you like your Obama now..?

Dialogue with a regime that is breaking heads, shooting demonstrators, expelling journalists, arresting activists. Engagement with -- which inevitably confers legitimacy upon -- leaders elected in a process that begins as a sham (only four handpicked candidates permitted out of 476) and ends in overt rigging.

Then, after treating this popular revolution as an inconvenience to the real business of Obama-Khamenei negotiations, the president speaks favorably of "some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election."

Where to begin? "Supreme Leader"? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator who, even as his minions attack demonstrators, offers to examine some returns in some electoral districts -- a farcical fix that will do nothing to alter the fraudulence of the election.

The right man for the job

The world is just chock full of little ironies.

For example:  The lunatic currently squatting over North Korea is proliferating weapons and threatening to launch a missile attack on Hawaii, and who does the Great Obamanator send in to rough him up a bit..?

The USS John McCain, a navy destroyer, will intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China

City of Grievances (rinse & repeat)

With the rumblings of another, more disruptive protest in the hopper for tomorrow, Freddie P weighs in on the Liberal leader's pandering to the Tamil thuggery...

Unfortunately, when people like Michael Ignatieff want to play politics and give-in to selfish bastards it makes the situation that much worse.

He should have stayed out of it, like the Prime Minister has. It's a Toronto issue until the Mayor asks for help.

But therein lies the problem. If Toronto had a Mayor with balls, the protestors would have been given a short deadline and then if they didn't move, the snowplows should have been brought out of storage.

That would have moved them.

But the Mayor doesn't even bring out the snowplows for, you know, snow...

Skippy is also on board with the hectoring, though if there is derisive mockery to be done he's what we'd call a high quality "first responder", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

I fully support the right to non-violent protest, even if it involves scaring the shit out of me when I'm just trying to get to work. If you get gorgeous women involved, I understand even more. On the other hand, flags with guns on them sort of contradicts the idea of calling for a cease-fire, doesn't it? Or is it just me? Could I be the one missing something?

Having said all of that, that shit you pulled on the Gardiner Expressway yesterday was a little much. Did you know that 2,000 people running out in the middle of a highway is 2,000% dumber than one person doing it? Google it.

Just tryin' to mind our own business

While traffic remains blocked in the heart of Canada's largest city for the third day, some of us taxpayers (who are expected to foot the bill for this show of civil disobedience) are wondering why so many members of the largest ex-pat Tamil constituency don't have jobs they need to be at, for three days running.

Of course, I'm sure it's racist of me to ask...

How can violent oppression be "moderate"?

As Mikey and I have observed in various personal squabbles, as well as with events worldwide, for those who flout the rules and defy decency, an appeasing tone or gesture is interpreted as nothing more than permission to do worse...

In a wishful attempt to bring peace with the Taliban in Pakistan itself, the government has recently ceded a fertile and prosperous and modernized valley province - the former princedom of Swat - to the ultra-violent votaries of the one party and the one god. This is not some desolate tribal area where government and frontier have been poorly delineated for decades, as in Waziristan. It is a short commute from the capital city of Islamabad.

The Taliban have never won an election in the area; indeed, the last vote went exactly the other way. And refugees are pouring out of Swat as the fundamentalists take hold and begin their campaign of cultural and economic obliteration: no music, no schooling for females, no recognition of the writ of the central government.

According to this and other reports, the surrender of authority by the already crumbling Pakistani authorities has had an emboldening effect on the extremists rather than an appeasing one. The nominal interlocutor with whom the deal was signed, Maulana Sufi Muhammad, is related by clan and ideology to much fiercer and younger figures, including those suspected in the murder of Benazir Bhutto, in the burning of hundreds of girls' schools, in the killing of Pakistani soldiers and in the slaughter of local tribal leaders who have resisted Taliban rule.

Numberless witnesses attest that the militants show not the smallest intention of abiding by the terms of the so-called "truce." Instead of purchasing peace, the Pakistani government has surrendered part of its heartland without a fight to those who can and will convert it into a base for further and more exorbitant demands. This is not even a postponement of the coming nightmare, which is the utter disintegration of Pakistan as a state. It is a stage in that disintegration.

Apartheid: YUR DUIN IT RONG!

Aside from my usual pom-pom sporting support for the Israeli campaign to end the random rocket attacks coming from Gaza, something about this article struck me as a little odd..

Israel's Channel 10 cable news reports that 'Palestinians' in Rafah and Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip have received cell phone text messages from the IDF urging them to leave their homes.

The assumption is that the IDF plans to attack Hamas installations tonight in response to today's rocket and mortar fire.

The propaganda (media) makes great hay of the narrative that the Gazans live in an apartheid state without properly functioning utilities.  No food.  No electricity.  No fresh water, etc.

But they have cellphones.  At least enough of them to justify a text messaging campaign.

Where do the impoverished residents of Gaza find the money to pay for text messaging plans?  And where is the infrastructure for this network, that it hasn't been reduced to smoldering rubble by now?

These are the things a mindless shill for the Zionist conspiracy is left to wonder about.

Asymmetrical Warfare

When one side uses elementary schools and ambulances for cover...

Mohammed Shriteh, 30, is an ambulance driver registered with and trained by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

His first day of work in the al-Quds neighbourhood was January 1, the sixth day of the war. "Mostly the war was not as fast or as chaotic as I expected," Mr Shriteh told the Herald. "We would co-ordinate with the Israelis before we pick up patients, because they have all our names, and our IDs, so they would not shoot at us."

Mr Shriteh said the more immediate threat was from Hamas, who would lure the ambulances into the heart of a battle to transport fighters to safety.

And the other side, the one that shows restraint, takes the brunt of the global outrage.

To the victors go the bills..?!

How do you say "pathetic" in Arabic..?

The task of rebuilding Gaza became clearer Tuesday as the Israeli military withdrew most of its troops from the impoverished strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinian and U.N. surveyors estimated that more than 4,000 buildings were demolished during the fighting and that it would cost upward of $2 billion to repair the damage.

[..]

Meanwhile, Hamas organized rallies to celebrate what it portrayed as a triumph over Israel, merely by surviving 22 days of pounding by its enemy's vastly superior military force. In Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, several hundred people marched behind Hamas flags and bullhorns.

"For us, this was a victory," Mohammed Abu Awad, 24, a university student, told the Associated Press.

No.  Not them.  Us..!

European countries, oil-rich Arab kingdoms and the United Nations have all pledged money or aid since Israel declared a cease-fire Sunday in the military offensive it launched Dec. 27.

No wonder they view it as a victory.

In the language of hostage-takers

...who apparently never get tired of fighting...

Hamas will fight on in Gaza against an Israeli offensive unless its demands are met, the Islamist group said on Saturday, indicating it would ignore a unilateral ceasefire if declared by the Jewish state.

...and never get tired of being hammered back to the stone age.

The Tyranny of the Majority

Remember this..?

So when Israel is urged to respect world opinion and put its faith in the international community the point is rather being missed. The very idea of Israel is a rejection of this option. Israel only exists because Jews do not feel safe as the wards of world opinion. Zionism, that word that is so abused, so reviled, is founded on a determination that, at the end of the day, somehow the Jews will defend themselves and their fellow Jews from destruction. If world opinion was enough, there would be no Israel.

Is there still any room for doubt of it's accuracy?

Canada stood alone before a United Nations human rights council yesterday, the only one among 47 nations to oppose a motion condemning the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.

The votes to support the motion were the predictable Human Rights Giants...

Along with Arab states, countries backing the resolution included Russia, China and Brazil.

The so-called civilized nations that chickened out and abstained should be roundly ashamed of their cowardice...

Among those abstaining were Britain, France, Japan and South Korea.

And you thought it was all about Bush

But the Great White Hoper isn't inspiring the hoards and the haters despite his offer to open talks.

 

Or maybe they just hate us not matter what.  Ya, I think I heard that somewhere before.

Just ask yourself this...

If you could choose your neighbours, who would you feel safer with...a Jewish family or a Muslim one?

I work with an Israeli gentleman who told me yesterday this entire conflict wouldn't be settled until the Jews learned how to swim...

Israel was the idea of a journalist. Theodor Herzl was the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse when he witnessed anti-Semitic rioting against the Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus who had been falsely accused of espionage. Herzl was then among the small corps of journalists who in 1895 witnessed the famous ceremony of disgrace in which Dreyfus was stripped of his epaulettes.

The experience led Herzl to abandon his belief in assimilation. He became convinced that Jews would only be safe if they had their own national home. Herzl became the first leader of modern Zionism. For many years many Jews resisted Herzl's conclusion. My grandfather was among them. But the experience of Jews all over the world in the first half of the 20th century - not just in Europe but in the Middle East too - rather bore out Herzl.

So when Israel is urged to respect world opinion and put its faith in the international community the point is rather being missed. The very idea of Israel is a rejection of this option. Israel only exists because Jews do not feel safe as the wards of world opinion. Zionism, that word that is so abused, so reviled, is founded on a determination that, at the end of the day, somehow the Jews will defend themselves and their fellow Jews from destruction. If world opinion was enough, there would be no Israel.

The only good enemy is a dead one

Aside from the obvious question of how an active soldier in a war zone, engaged in a firefight defending against an ambush by enemy fighters, can be charged with murder, the recent details being released have only inspired more questions...

According to the statement, a large group of Afghan soldiers, Canadian mentors and Afghan police were ambushed by Taliban insurgents. After a U.S. Army Apache gunship was called in to clear the area, the Afghanarmy discovered the wounded Taliban and seized his assault rifle. The statement says the wounds appeared too severe for medical treatment in the field.

Semrau's group photographed the injured insurgent and the body of another insurgent nearby. After this, Semrau was observed to be the only person near the wounded Taliban fighter, the statement says. It was during this period the two shots were heard, it says.

I suppose...except...

Prosecutor Maj. Marylene Trudel said the Taliban fighter's body was left behind as the soldiers moved on, and was never recovered.

Seems a tad specious to lay murder charges without a body.  Especially when at last sighting, the purported victim had wounds too severe for medical treatment in the field.

Assuming this particular combatant is in fact dead, how can it be proven he didn't die from his injuries without an autopsy?  And in a time of war, while our own soldiers keep dying in the field on a regular basis, do we really want to smear the reputations of our fighting men and women with some tenuous charges based on an eyewitness report that he was in the general area of the victim at a time when shots rang out?  Is that really all they've got?

Seems like a bit of a diversion from the task at hand, guys.

Moral idiocy, indeed

Because their goals are not the same as ours and until we recognize that and deal with it accordingly, they will continue to win...

The firing of rockets at civilians from densely populated civilian areas is the newest tactic in the war between terrorists who love death and democracies that love life. The terrorists have learned how to exploit the morality of democracies against those who do not want to kill civilians, even enemy civilians.

Applying our own tortured moral logic to their motives is our biggest mistake and their strongest advantage.

Workers of the world UNITE!

And I thought unions were for pay equity and safe working conditions...

Ontario's largest university workers union is proposing a ban on Israeli academics teaching in the province's universities, in a move that echoes previous attempts to boycott goods and services from the Jewish state.

[..]

"In response to an appeal from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general," said Sid Ryan, president of CUPE Ontario.

And without a stitch of irony...

While Ms. Folk-Dawson (chairwoman of the university workers committee) said the resolution will protect the quality of education by preventing Israeli academics from professing biased views

DISGRACEFUL.  Shame. On. Them. All.

You get what you vote for

Say what you want to about Mark Steyn's logic regarding the crisis in Gaza this week.  You'd be wrong.  Not only because in parsing over the shredded hairs of exactly how much influence the "terribly unhealthy strain" in Palestinian culture has on your average Gazan citizen, you fundamentally miss the point -- that it takes more than a handful of fundamentalist zealots to create a bloody crisis that has lasted the better part of a half century.  To accomplish such sweeping monopolization of global diplomatic resources requires a citizenry and culture that affords the fundamentalist zealots the legitimacy and lenience of a proper civilization without the constraints of actual standards.

Most commentators I've heard over radio and internet have carefully hedged any denunciations of the actions of Hamas with caveats that exempt the non-militant Gazan citizenry from condemnation for the atrocities done in their midst.  But, aside from my own obvious biases, something about this trend was vaguely unsettling and in a delightful irony, I have terrorist apologist Khaled Mouammar from the Canadian Arab Federation to thank for bringing the salient point into focus while participating in a debate panel on John Oakley's show yesterday morning.

In his rush to excuse the constant rocket bombardment of Israel from the Gaza side, and offer a rebuttal to the characterization of Hamas as a terrorist organization, he more than oncedeclared vociferously that Hamas was duly elected in a democratic election, to represent the citizens of Palestine on the world stage.

And he's right.  In fact, they swept to victory in an overwhelming majority with a voter participation of 77%.  I would consider that amply worthy of acknowledgment ofHamas as the legitimate representation of the Palestinian citizenry as a whole.

It does, however, call into question those well-meaning caveats which carefully separate the militants from the citizens ostensibly caught in the middle.  After all, when the Hamas Charter openly declares their primary motivation in these terms... "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."...what democratically minded sane individual would vote for such a party without at least tacitly supporting their actions?

And with their electoral win being so overwhelming and definitive, wouldn't it also be fair to say that apropos the international declarations of solidarity in the wake of 9/11, the Palestinians in effect cast their ballots in a solid declaration to the world that "We are all terrorists now"?

The War of Words

 

An extensive collection Propoganda leaflets from the last 100 years worth of war.

Cheap, fast and ugly wins again...

Much like pulling off the murder of almost 3,000 Americans, with 4 Airplanes and a hand full of boxcutters...

Perhaps it was not so difficult after all to plan and execute this attack: small arms and hand grenades are not hard to find, boats are scarcely specialised equipment, and Mumbai is a vast, open city with more than enough soft targets.

[..]

And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists' cause, because they simply did not feel the need to have one.

The attack in Mumbai was obviously planned - but "military-style planning" (whatever that means) is probably not necessary for the mass murder of unarmed and unsuspecting civilians going about their business in crowded railway stations and restaurants.

This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission, cause or vision statement ought to have been.

But no matter. The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as it happens, that the world's media and the terrorism analysis industry would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.

And in a disturbing combination of Eastern brute force meets Western technology, they were all watching our reaction, via their Blackberrys.

I am reminded of something Mark Steyn once said...the "head is the message..."  As are now the fresh pile of bodies and pools of blood in Mumbai.

Old enemies and new war

More often than not, regional conflicts between old enemies involve so many menial complexities and subjective cultural influences that it makes them difficult to understand and follow.  For this reason, I'd rather defer the analysis to those who have more time and more interest than I, and that usually ends up being Rick Moran...

Russia has Georgia by the short hairs and can thumb its nose at the international community. Putin will prove the impotence of the United Nations once again (as if it matters to the legions of idiot enablers who still think the UN a place where grown ups solve the world’s problems) and, if he really wants to stick it to us, will engineer the overthrow of the pro western, pro-American Saakashvili and replace him with a toady. That would be as big a humiliation for the United States as was ever planned by the American left in Iraq.

Think of it; our closest and most valued ally in a region of the world that not only is strategically vital due to its oil and gas reserves but also serves as the backdoor to the Persian Gulf and Iran being summarily dismissed by Putin as if he were a grocery store clerk caught stealing a candy bar. What enormous satisfaction for Putin who has been chafing at the bit to assert Russian dominance in the region once again. Watching our impotent response to events in Georgia are other states in the Caucasus as well including the Ukraine which has its own issues with Moscow and could very well be next on Putin’s list.

...Who is not optimistic but I believe his assessment to be sound and reasonable by my amateur reasoning.

One thing is certain...Russia picked a good fight and a good time to wage it.  When -not if - they win, the decrepit old communist block and the hubristic KGB'er in charge will be licking their chops for more spoils, and they will have no reason to believe anyone will be willing or able to thwart them in those ambitions.

Toon tip to Townhall