Hah! Remember the Zionist squirrels and sharks? Now Saudi Arabia has found Zionist vulture spies:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/internat...d-spy-1.335171
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ha'aretz
Printable View
Hah! Remember the Zionist squirrels and sharks? Now Saudi Arabia has found Zionist vulture spies:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/internat...d-spy-1.335171
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ha'aretz
Of course they are so great at using animals for espionage that they tag them like that :p
What the fuck is wrong with these dingbats? Spying fracking vultures? Really?
I sososososo wish that we could just shut off all demand from oil, and then let the mideast and Persia work their way out of the stone age by themselves.
To be fair, it doesn't look like an official Saudi government position, just some stupid locals. There have been much more prominent groups who have made similar claims; a few years back IRNA ran a story about spying squirrels. Also, it's not like the military has never thought of using animals for their work - the US has trained dolphins as minesweepers and the like. But obviously this particular application is rather ridiculous.
You gotta admire the intellectual vigor of a guy who takes the time to confirm something like that. Most people would be all, "oh, it's another Zionist plot" but no, this guy doesn't just make assumptions. He's going to patiently wait to confirm that Mossad threw a shark in the sea (how else could it have got there!?) before he accuses Israel.Quote:
"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark in the sea to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question. But it needs time to confirm," Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha said, according to the British Sun newspaper.
Dolphins: basketball-sized brainsQuote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
Vultures: acorn-sized brains (well OK, perhaps walnut)
And the shark bit is frackin hilarious. Um, didn't y'all know that proportionately sharks almost never attack humans? Shipping a bunch of sharks to the Red Sea (SEA, mind you) would be spectacularly inefficient.
Which leads me to the main point. Such propaganda is particularly dependent on the ignorance of your audience, which is a specialty of Arab/Persian autocracies: have very ignorant populations who then respond favorably to idiotic scapegoating.
keep in mind those are zionist trained sharks.Quote:
Originally Posted by ']['ear
Well yeah, IF they would use vultures to spie they sure as hell would not tag them with an Israeli tag :pQuote:
Which leads me to the main point. Such propaganda is particularly dependent on the ignorance of your audience, which is a specialty of Arab/Persian autocracies: have very ignorant populations who then respond favorably to idiotic scapegoating.
JEWS DID SHARK WEEK.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/wo...o.html?_r=1&hpQuote:
...The United States, she said, failed to get a lot of countries to do what it wanted, despite speaking out, as it has in the case of Israel. It also bears a disproportionate burden for settling the world’s conflicts, she said.
Mrs. Clinton noted that the United States was the largest financial donor to the Palestinian Authority — an implicit rebuke of Arab states, which champion the Palestinian cause, but in the view of critics, do too little to support its efforts to build institutions on the West Bank.
Not quite Zionuts, but I like the honesty of the last two paragraphs.
To be fair, the US and Israel have generally branded anyone who refuses to play ball with them a terrorist group (often with good reason), which means that Arab states are leery of providing support for Palestinian institutions outside of US-approved channels (due to sanctions and the like). They're also unhappy about using a US framework, though, since that gives them little say in what happens and looks bad on the Arab street. Support for Hamas-affiliated social service organizations is generally off-limits, which means that real help for Gaza (which needs it far more than the West Bank) is tough to manage outside of UNRWA. Meanwhile, help for the West Bank institutions is tightly controlled by Israel, especially when it comes to security arrangements. Growing portions of PA security forces have been trained under US auspices in Jordan, and they are by far the most professional of the PA forces (and most willing to coordinate with the IDF); can you imagine Israel allowing Saudi or UAE or Egypt (or Syria) to do something similar? Hell, given the chronic corruption and poor training in most of their own security forces, I can't imagine that they would turn out recruits worth half as much as the US-trained forces.
Honestly I don't think money is the problem; the real issue is the corruption endemic to the PA's political system, which siphons much of the aid and stifles real reform. I doubt the Arab states can do much about this.
Not quite Zionuts, but amusing nonetheless. The IDF just appointed a new spokesperson, who was somewhat of a controversial choice given that he has no media experience (he's a decorated special forces veteran and a lawyer, among other things). Ha'aretz had this to say about it:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition...esman-1.335471Quote:
Lotan has no media experience whatsoever. Nevertheless, the prevailing assessment among both journalists and the staff of the IDF Spokesman's Office was that his long experience in both negotiations and psychological warfare operations would stand him in good stead.
Negotiations and psychological warfare to meet with a bunch of reporters, eh?
Ironically, he may be the one to crack under pressure.
Barak defected from Labour. :o
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...9?hpid=topnews
Not quite Zionuts, but Walid Jumblatt is now backing Hezbollah. :bored:
They must really be pressuring him down south. :bored:
How big is that "Jew York" thing in the US these days? Can I expect Sarah or other Pubbie incumbents to address this issue in hilariously redneck-pandering terms?
Nessie, I haven't a clue what you're asking. Seriously.
On another note, I find it incredibly depressing that the so-called 'Palestine papers' that al-Jazeera just released with the Guardian are being denied as lies by the Palestinian leadership precisely because it shows them making reasonable concessions to the Israelis during negotiations. Presumably, that's because the Arab world would be shocked to find Palestinian negotiators willing to discuss core issues in a reasonable manner. The papers make the Israelis look much worse, but it's the Palestinians who are panicking. This world is fucked up.
(Now I have my doubts about the authenticity of the papers, but that's neither here nor there. The reaction is what's depressing.)
Okay, straight face, no sarcasm in the following, and I would love a responseQuote:
Originally Posted by wiggin
I have several accounts saying that the "conservative movement" has a voter base mostly in the South where the phrase "Jew York" is a common term, indicating that Jews are overly represented in governance and finance and so on, the Weimar Germany stuff pretty much unaltered. These are the types of people who hate Catholics and the wrong breeds of protestants, unless they're Catholics. I'm sure they're very nice people, but they're not exactly the picture of tolerance.
Now, we also know that the Pubbie election cycle will be a circus. You have Sarah, that Mormon guy, Donald fucking Trump, these are people who are all trying for the presidency of the Free world! So my question is, in what likelyhood are any of these conservative, dim-dum jackasses going to say something retarded about Jews?
I find it unlikely that any of the front-runners will get caught saying anything disparaging about Jews (e.g. 'Jews control the media', 'Jews control finance', 'Jews control the Democratic/Republican party', etc.) though I have no doubt that a number of prominent politicians may privately hold such opinions. No one is stupid, and whether the offensive comment comes from the left (e.g. Rev. Wright) or the right (Pat Buchanan) they pretty much lose any chance of legitimacy in politics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nessus
I have no doubt that there are plenty of antisemites and racists and the like left in America (though I wouldn't restrict them to the South), but publicly pandering to such sensibilities is a recipe for political suicide. There is a fairly large 'moderate' chunk of Americans who are repelled by such rhetoric, and who punish candidates who use it. This, incidentally, is why I find it unlikely Palin has much of a chance at national office (not specifically having to do with Jews, of course, but more generally her incendiary rhetoric). Certainly demagogues do use various proxies for the 'Jew' - bankers, 'mainstream media', neoconservatives, etc. - but they'd never link it to a specific group without serious political fallout.
That being said, I'd like to emphasize that it's not specifically the hard core 'conservative base' that may harbor such sentiments towards Jews - it's a pretty common complaint in lefty circles as well - whether it's haranguing about insider connections of Jews from finance or the media that are latently anti-liberal, or Jewish neocons who distort US foreign policy towards the right. It's easy to blame the Jews for pretty much anything, despite the fact that (a) Jews aren't so powerful, and (b) those Jews who do exercise influence pull in all policy directions, so there's hardly a unified 'Jewish' position on much of anything.
I'm sure we'll have a US election thread and we can suss out about Sarah in there, but I appreciate your time to explain the Jewish angle to us others.
I'm especially interested in the idea of left-wingers against Jews, can you point me toward some sources (if you can't be bothered to explain yourself)? I have no clue why people are so obsessed with Jews.
Jeremiah Wright is one example - passionately leftist, but believes that Jewish control of American foreign policy (particularly in Israel/Palestine and Iraq, driven by neoconservative/Jewish ideology) has led America astray. He's just the latest of a long list of similar-sounding people. A lot of the anti-'fat cat banker' sentiment veers into anti-Jewish tropes at times, too. The comment pages of the Guardian's articles on the Middle East are full of this kind of rhetoric - so is Indymedia, both of which are ardently leftist publications. This is generally where the loony left and the loony right start to look more and more alike - oh, they advocate entirely different policies, but they both like to blame the Jews, albeit from opposite ends of the spectrum.
edit: Oh! I forgot all about the New World Order conspiracy bullshit and the anti-globalization thing. Liberal (and libertarian) chic, but full of portentous conspiracy theories about some secret cabal trying to take over the world... kinda an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Fair enough. Stalin's as left as they go, and he hated the Jews too. I suppose I just forgot the left had other loonies than the Greens and communists.
Oh, some of the communists also blame the Jews (which is funny because the far right blames the Jews for communism, but whatever). Something about orchestrating the capitalist system and all. I wish I had a piece of that.
You're just saying that because you have it!
Shhh, don't tell, my Jewish neighbors and I are saving up to buy Canada.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011...pics-logo-zion
Sneaky bastards.
Although...what is up with that logo? :p
Holy fucking shit, Reuters.
This might be the most politically correct thing I've seen.
Quote:
Bombing near Jerusalem bus stop kills woman, 30 hurt
By Crispian Balmer
JERUSALEM | Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:40pm GMT
(Reuters) - A bomb planted in a bag exploded near a bus stop in a Jewish district of Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing a woman and injuring at least 30 people, in an attack police blamed on Palestinian militants.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which coincided with an upsurge of violence on the Gaza border that has led to fears of a new war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, after months of relative quiet.
Medics said three people were seriously hurt by the explosion, which hit one of the main routes into central Jerusalem in the afternoon, shattering the windows of a nearby bus. A woman in her 60s died in hospital.
Police said it was a "terrorist attack" -- Israel's term for a Palestinian strike. It was the first time Jerusalem had been hit by such a bomb since 2004.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would take action against those groups who he said are testing the Jewish state's will to defend itself.
"Israel will act aggressively, responsibly and wisely to preserve the quiet and security that prevailed here over the past two years," Netanyahu said.
In the Gaza, a Hamas spokesman said the group, which does not recognise Israel's right to exist, was seeking to reverse the recent rise in violence and "to protect stability and to work in order to restore the conditions on ground."
World leaders condemned the bombing, as well as a flurry of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel in recent days.
"The United States calls on the groups responsible to end these attacks at once and we underscore that Israel, like all nations, has a right to self-defence," U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement released in Washington.
Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank, who are opposed to Hamas, also denounced the attack.
"I condemn this terrorist operation in the strongest possible terms, regardless of who was behind it," Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said in a statement.
At the height of a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, but which died out in recent years, militants carried out dozens of often deadly bombings in Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.
Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said the bomb weighed about one or two kilos (2 or 4 pounds). "It exploded in a small suitcase on the sidewalk next to the bus stop," he told Israel's Channel Two television.
Blood stained the pavement and many people had to be treated for shock. Israeli television broke into normal programming to show scores of ambulances converging on the scene, taking the injured to nearby hospitals.
"I saw two women lying on the ground, unconscious and covered in blood," medic Motti Bukchi, who arrived swiftly on the scene, told Channel Two.
PEACE IMPASSE
Peace talks aimed at ending the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians broke down last year after Netanyahu refused to extend a partial freeze on Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli security officials have cautioned that the absence of any peace initiative could spark a new Palestinian revolt. Over 500 Israeli civilians died in 140 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks from 2000 to 2007. More than 4,500 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the same period.
U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, on a visit to Cairo, denounced what he called "a horrific terrorist attack" but said he did not think the situation in Israel was deteriorating.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Elaraby urged Israel to show restraint and said no one should give it an excuse to use violence -- an apparent reference to Palestinian militants.
Netanyahu delayed his departure on a trip to Russia by several hours on Wednesday to consult with security officials, but declined to cancel the trip altogether.
Earlier, the prime minister had warned Hamas over rising violence in Gaza. Hamas says its attacks this past week have been in response to recent Israeli bombings and killings.
On Tuesday, Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed four Palestinian civilians, including three children playing football, and five militants, medical officials said.
Netanyahu has voiced regret for the civilian deaths but said Israel could not ignore attacks on its territory.
"It could be that this matter will entail exchanges of blows, and it may take a certain period of time, but we are very determined to strike at the terrorist elements and deny them the means of attacking our citizens," he told parliament.
Israel launched a three-week war on the impoverished coastal enclave in 2009, killing about 1,400 Palestinians and drawing heavy international censure. Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in a 2007 coup, had mostly held fire since then.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/0...72M3S520110323
CNN and others did the same thing with the attack in Itamar last week on the Fogel family. *yawns*
Really? In this case, Reuters is deliberately trying to downplay the idea that this was a terror attack. Calling something like this an "attack" is one thing, but Reuters taking the time to snort their nose at the label "terrorist attack" seems a bit new.
Really? Any news whatsoever here called it a terror attack.
The language wasn't quite as snarky, but it was still there and occasioned comment from the Israeli government (I know that Israeli papers picked up the Reuters thing you quote, but I don't know if the GPO bothered with it):Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPol...aspx?id=211996Quote:
Originally Posted by JPost
The original CNN article is here, but I think it's been edited; I recall distinctly there being quotes in the headline:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/...led/index.html
I think CNN is much less of a likely offender on this -- for every instance of this (which was changed) I imagine we'll see many instances of CNN calling a civilian bombing like this a terror attack, no matter where it is.
Reuters on the other hand...we'll just have to wait and see. Sorta sad Charles Johnson doesn't focus on this stuff anymore.
I agree with you in that Reuters is generally worse. But CNN does some things that annoy me - for a long time, they make a point of saying only that 'The US, EU, Quartet, and Israel' consider Hamas a terrorist organization. I get that labels are loaded with meaning and a newspaper doesn't want to appear biased. But the truth isn't biased; there's no shades of grey on this one (any more than there are that the murder of the Fogel family or the bombing of a bus stop are both terrorist acts).Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Oh Alan...
Quote:
OPINION MARCH 29, 2011
Norway to Jews: You're Not Welcome Here
Anti-Semitism doesn't even mask itself as anti-Zionism.
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
I recently completed a tour of Norwegian universities, where I spoke about international law as applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the tour nearly never happened.
Its sponsor, a Norwegian pro-Israel group, offered to have me lecture without any charge to the three major universities. Norwegian universities generally jump at any opportunity to invite lecturers from elsewhere. When my Harvard colleague Stephen Walt, co-author of "The Israel Lobby," came to Norway, he was immediately invited to present a lecture at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. Likewise with Ilan Pappe, a demonizer of Israel who teaches at Oxford.
My hosts expected, therefore, that their offer to have me present a different academic perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be eagerly accepted. I have written half a dozen books on the subject presenting a centrist view in support of the two-state solution. But the universities refused.
The dean of the law faculty at Bergen University said he would be "honored" to have me present a lecture "on the O.J. Simpson case," as long as I was willing to promise not to mention Israel. An administrator at the Trondheim school said that Israel was too "controversial."
The University of Oslo simply said "no" without offering an excuse. That led one journalist to wonder whether the Norwegian universities believe that I am "not entirely house-trained."
Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country. The other country was Apartheid South Africa.
Despite the faculties' refusals to invite me, I delivered three lectures to packed auditoriums at the invitation of student groups. I received sustained applause both before and after the talks.
It was then that I realized why all this happened. At all of the Norwegian universities, there have been efforts to enact academic and cultural boycotts of Jewish Israeli academics. This boycott is directed against Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian land—but the occupation that the boycott supporters have in mind is not of the West Bank but rather of Israel itself. Here is the first line of their petition: "Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land . . ."
The administrations of the universities have refused to go along with this form of collective punishment of all Israeli academics, so the formal demand for a boycott failed. But in practice it exists. Jewish pro-Israel speakers are subject to a de facto boycott.
The first boycott signatory was Trond Adresen, a professor at Trondheim. About Jews, he has written: "There is something immensely self-satisfied and self-centered at the tribal mentality that is so prevalent among Jews. . . . [They] as a whole, are characterized by this mentality. . . . It is no less legitimate to say such a thing about Jews in 2008-2009 than it was to make the same point about the Germans around 1938."
This line of talk—directed at Jews, not Israel—is apparently acceptable among many in Norway's elite. Consider former Prime Minister Kare Willock's reaction to President Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his first chief of staff: "It does not look too promising, he has chosen a chief of staff who is Jewish." Mr. Willock didn't know anything about Mr. Emanuel's views—he based his criticism on the sole fact that Mr. Emanuel is a Jew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, fewer than 1,000 Jews live in Norway today.
The country's foreign minister recently wrote an article justifying his contacts with Hamas. He said that the essential philosophy of Norway is "dialogue." That dialogue, it turns out, is one-sided. Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...887244764.html
Y'know, I hate to say it but Dershowitz is getting loonier as time goes on.
Agreed. Though he does have a point that being asked to come to a university and not speak about Israel -- when I'm sure plenty of people come to speak on behalf of Palestinians -- does speak to a kind of soft boycott.
Maybe, but let's be honest. Dershowitz is famous not for his expertise on Israel but for his (admittedly impressive) legal credentials. He's both a scholar and a famous trial lawyer who has worked with a number of celebrity clients. This is why most people want to hear him speak; not to hear his opinions on the Middle East conflict.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
In contrast, the other two people he mentioned - Ilan Pappe and Stephen Walt - have at least peripheral connections between their scholarship and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pappe is a historian who focuses on Israeli-Palestinian history (albeit as a revisionist). Walt is a world renowned political scientist whose work has touched on how internal lobbies can effect foreign policy. I don't agree with much of what they say, but there is a connection between their area of scholarship and Israel.
Dershowitz is essentially a demagogue (much as I hate to admit it) who uses his fame as a legal scholar to preach about Israel. Universities choosing to focus on his scholarship rather than his political positions is not wholly unreasonable.
Of course, I don't doubt there are some serious issues with how Israel is dealt with in Norway (at least from the news reports I've seen), and there also continue to be the occasional anti-semitic incident or remark. But this doesn't really represent such a case.
I mostly agree except that he is a renowned legal scholar who usually approaches his demagoguery from the perspective of the law. That someone of his stature is told, "don't talk about Israel" when we know so many people are probably speaking about the issue at Norge universitot is one of those soft signals that the dialogue just isn't open.
*shrugs* Fair enough. Dershowitz just makes me uncomfortable.