If there were no Japanese people trying to talk hip English, why, someone would have to make them up.
Archive for the ‘Orient’ Category
Listen For Feel (It Emotions!)
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 31, 2007
Posted in Jocularity, Orient | 1 Comment »
Doctors without scruples
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 20, 2007
Duncan Mclean, head of ‘Doctors Without Borders’ in the region, told Israel Radio, “I don’t think embarrassed would be the right word. We are very sad for Bashir who has been working for us for almost six years. But we would like to make it very clear that we make a distinction between his professional work and what he does on his personal time in the sense that all our staff is hired for professional reasons and I don’t think our organization can be held liable for every aspect of their life.”
It sounds like the guy got caught in a brothel, or maybe a bar brawl. Who would know from this clueless quote that the poor young doctor in question is accused of (and has confessed to) using his DWB credentials to facilitate assassination attempts against the Prime Minister and other Israeli officials?
It’s interesting that the DWB (a/k/a “Medicins Sans Frontieres”) spokescreep is “very sad for Bashir.” Not so sad for his intended victims or the victims of others like him. Certainly not embarrassed for his own organization, which helps to perpetuate a culture in which the murder of Israelis is an understandable act of “resistance.”
So, why is it seemingly impossible for the “neutral” to be neutral?
Posted in O Mores!, Orient | 4 Comments »
Mickey Madrasa
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 9, 2007
M-I-C?
“Crush your wicked Zionist skulls!”
K-E-Y!
“Why? Because we hate Jews!”
UPDATE: He’s baaack!
Complete with Islamic songs and calls for cities in Israel to return to Palestine, Friday’s episode apparently sought to prepare children for their end-of-year examinations — with Farfur being told that cheating is forbidden.
Asked why by an Al-Aqsa television reporter, he looked left and right to see what his friends were writing and answered: “Because the Jews destroyed my home and I left my books and notes under the rubble.”
“I’m calling on all children to read more and more to prepare for exams because the Jews don’t want us to learn,” Farfur then said after being told he had failed the test.
In other words, the apes and pigs “ate” your homework!
Posted in Americana, Ars Longa, Orient | Leave a Comment »
Seal of approval
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 8, 2007
“There is nothing more enjoyable than a good seal.” Or something. Soccer Dad breaks down some eminently blockable metaphors from the modern-day Goebbels of Iran.
Posted in Orient | Leave a Comment »
Sticking out your neck
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 2, 2007
Big day for being wrong. Ara Rubyan says he was wrong, too — wrong in predicting that
the President would not go through with his veto threat. He then more than makes up for it with this very reasonable, moderate and yet politically astute post: What The Dems Should Do Next.
But you know, Ara, being wrong is no crime. Sometimes you stick your neck out and you get to be historically right. Sometimes, true, the price of doing that is a broken neck; and understandably not everyone is up for that. Hitchens (via Hydralisk):
So one day we’ll all see just how right you all were about Iraq?
No, I don’t think the argument will stop, perhaps forever. But when it does become the property of historians rather than propagandists and journalists, it’ll become plainer than it is to most people now that it was just. Most of what went wrong with it was that it was put off too long. What a lot of people wish is that the thing could have been skipped.
And we can understand how the nihilist left would rather that the Saddam problem all just went away — and can convince itself, as it always has with its powerful appetite for myth (no matter how inconsistent with other myths in the treasury), that it just would have gone away, anyway, if only we would have sent more unicorns. And too the fascist-friendly right; it’s not that Pat Buchanan is anything but a realist about the containability of Saddam Hussein; he just didn’t consider the bad outcome from letting Saddam fester all that bad.
But how do we understand people of evident good faith who say they believe the Saddam problem, and the WMD’s that everyone knew he had, was despite that not really “our problem” — “our” meaning America the hegemon — at all? Could they actually be stupid? Possibly, but I don’t think so. Is there a fine point of strategic vision, some twist of James Baker / Cyrus Vance type “realism” that explains it? It claims to constantly; yet I have never heard an actual rational explanation, but merely self-delusion and self-congratulation from that camp. They merely go home with their Nobels and leave the problems for the next guy.
So are politics, and political ambition, and the lust for power, and cynicism, really that corrosive — so much so that, as Hitchens says, people with power and responsibility would rather just stick those necks and what’s on them deep into holes along the beach despite the solemn seriousness of their obligations, and vote as the Senate and the House did for a policy as utterly bad for long run foreign policy as the vote to capitulate in Iraq?
They are, they are.
Posted in O Mores!, Orient, Stragety | 8 Comments »
I was so wrong
Posted by Ron Coleman on May 2, 2007
I argued vociferously last year that the spin on how dumb, stupid, idiotic the Israeli prosecution of its foray into Lebanon was wrong. One could second-guess the policy, and inevitably many would; but could the Israelis really be actual idiots? As I wrote:
I’d like to think that the military, political and intelligence leadership is roughly as smart as people who write newspaper columns and blogs. But they don’t have to be. They can also be twice as smart — and fail miserably.
That certainly left me enough wiggle room. But evidently, I didn’t take enough. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. As the Winograd Commission has made clear, the Israeli government did just about everything wrong during Lebanon War II. As Jonathan Rosenblum sums it up:
The report, written in clear, detailed, and biting language, faults Prime Minister Olmert for opting for a large-scale war and declaring ambitious goals without first having received from the IDF a battle plan or evaluating whether those goals could be achieved. The prime minister is portrayed as having rushed ahead without adequate thought, and thereby thrusting Israel into a situation from which it was impossible to extricate itself, without making things even worse. He did not consider adequately the likely Hizbullah missile response and its impact on Israel.
The report’s evaluation of then chief-of-staff Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz is equally damning. He is accused of having failed to present the prime minister and cabinet with alternate plans of action, and of not informing the cabinet of the serious inadequacies in the preparation of the IDF for major combat in southern Lebanon. The only plan presented by Halutz – the first chief-of-staff to have come to the position via the air force – relied almost exclusively on Israel’s superior air power. Halutz was intoxicated with air power, with its capability to deliver great destructive power with little risk of incurring casualties, as the solution to most of the military threats to Israel. Thus he never sought an early mobilization of reserves so that they could be equipped and trained if a major ground operation were required.
The report further charges Halutz with not taking seriously enough warnings of a possible Hizbullah attempt to kidnap Israeli soldiers, and not ensuring that adequate precautions were taken against such an attempt.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz is treated by the report as a complete cipher, who knew or should have
known that he was totally unqualified for the job when he took it, and having made little effort to make himself better informed in the months leading up to the war. “His lack of experience and knowledge,” the report states, “prevented him from challenging in a competent way both the IDF, over which he was in charge,” and from demanding from the IDF the “presentation of serious strategic options for discussion.
And so on.
Every democracy gets the government it deserves, and we have so very little to be proud of on that score these days; but Israel with its wretched and corrupt political system has truly failed its people this time.
The only reasons to hope: There was a Winograd Commission, and its report was not suppressed. We all know how valuable it is to admit when you’re wrong, after all.
UPDATE: Meryl Yourish confirms: It is indeed a moron issue.
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker | 12 Comments »
Cold Turkey
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 29, 2007
Cold as in secular, rational — which, when it comes to modern governments, we’re all in favor of. I quoted Mark Steyn last week, who says the question of the moment is “who lost Turkey?” to the Islamists. Ali Eteraz dismissed Steyn’s take. Maybe Ali is right.
Posted in Orient | 2 Comments »
They’re your friends, Joe
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 26, 2007
Senator Lieberman swims upstream in the Senate:
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t withdraw combat troops from iraq and still say you’re going to fight Al Qaeda there. If you believe that there is no hope of winning in iraq or that the costs of victory there are not worth it, then you should be for complete withdrawal as soon as possible.
But politicians have it both ways all the time, Senator Joe. You have done it yourself, and these are the fellows who share your bed.
Thanks, though, for remembering why you’re still in the Senate.
UPDATE: Al says don’t get too excited — Joe wants to stay there.
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 1 Comment »
What’s all this about Zionism?
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 24, 2007
Today is Israeli Independence Day — Yom Ha’atzmaut.
Chaim the Lesser — a yeshiva student in California who writes extraordinary well-researched, somewhat dense and, frequently unreadable (if you’re unitiated) articles on Jewish topics — says, “In recognition of Yom Ha’atzmaut, I decided that today’s Qoton Qlassic post is an old discussion about the varying points of view within traditional Judaism concerning Zionism.” Excerpt:
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) categorized the U.N. proclamation [defining Zionism as racism] as “anti-Semitic;” however, this description is not necessarily accurate because Judaism and Zionism have distinct identities, for some Jews are not Zionists (e.g. anti-Zionists, a-Zionists) and some Zionists are not Jews (e.g. Christian Zionists and the waning American liberal Zionists). It is unclear exactly which flavor of Zionism was referenced in the United Nations’ referendum because of the vagueness of the United Nations’ condemnation of Zionism and the multitude of differing diverse Jewish views on Zionism.
(I have posting privileges at Reb Chaim’s blog, by the way, which I have only used two or three times.)
“Chaim the Lesser” is my translation of Chaim’s blog’s actual name, “R’ Chaim HaQoton” — literally “little Chaim,” an allusion to his model, Chaim the Greater, i.e., the truly great Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, known as Reb Chaim Brisker. “Reb” is an informal, affectionate appellation meaning something short of “Rabbi” and something more than Mister. (Many of the most beloved orthodox rabbis are known as “Reb” even though they are very much rabbis.) “Brisker” means from the town of Brisk, i.e., Brest-Litovsk. Its most famous son, Reb Chaim Brisker was one of the greatest and influential talmudical minds and overall influential figures in orthodox Judaism of the last century or so.
My friend Reb Chaim is no Chaim Brisker — not yet. But he’s klugeh yung (smart kid) in his own right and, as usual, he covers all the bases in this article to which I’ve linked. Just get comfortable.
Posted in Faith and Works, Orient, Past is prologue | 3 Comments »
W-M-Denial?
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 24, 2007
Craig Karpel sends along this article from the The Spectator of London which sort of tops off the alt-media take on the WMD issue: Namely that the residual evidence is strong for a meaningful WMD cache having been located in Iraq, and that it got off to Syria:
You may be tempted to dismiss this as yet another dodgy claim from a warmongering lackey of the world Zionist neocon conspiracy giving credence to yet another crank pushing US propaganda. If so, perhaps you might pause before throwing this article at the cat. Mr Gaubatz is not some marginal figure. He’s pretty well as near to the horse’s mouth as you can get.Having served for 12 years as an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, Mr Gaubatz, a trained Arabic speaker, was hand-picked for postings in 2003, first in Saudi Arabia and then in Nasariyah in Iraq. His mission was to locate suspect WMD sites, discover threats against US forces in the area and find Saddam loyalists, and then send such intelligence to the Iraq Survey Group and other agencies.
Between March and July 2003, he says, he was taken to four sites in southern Iraq — two within Nasariyah, one 20 miles south and one near Basra — which, he was told by numerous Iraqi sources, contained biological and chemical weapons, material for a nuclear programme and UN-proscribed missiles. He was, he says, in no doubt whatever that this was true.
I have always been partial to the Syria theory. For all the cynical talk about that the “runup to war,” the process was in fact absurdly shlepped out, as anyone who was reading the agonized writings of Andrew Sullivan at the time will recall. The main thing that those of us who favored military action at the time were thinking was that given this amount of time, if there’s anywhere Saddam can stash this stuff, he’s certainly been given ample opportunity to do so.
And why was Syria never confronted with the circumstantial evidence that it connived with Iraq on WMD’s? This was before, after all, Nancy Pelosi had named herself ambassador plenipotentiary to Syria. But it is likely that “realist” Colin Powell and the related Bakeroids of State, not irrationally, warned against broadening any aspect of the conflict, including the diplomatic one. The evidence against Syria was not hard; and while many have gone to the gallows on less circumstantial evidence — motive, opportunity, all that stuff — the White House, it seems, did not have the guts, even during that high-water moment of support for its actions (I mean, they had Andrew on their side!), to press the moment.
And now?
The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralise the danger of Iraqi WMD. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment.
Maybe. If the proof were that good, frankly, I believe the Republicans would have jumped on it, embarrassment or not; it would have been far preferable to their current state of humiliation — in the sense of the present political crisis — over the way the war has gone. For this reason, I have to believe something very big is missing from this story, and would certainly be interested in knowing if there has been any objective debunking or not.
UPDATE: Hmm. Actually, what’s the difference? Facts, shmacts!
Posted in Orient, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 18 Comments »
