Janet Reno's reputation isn't entirely her own fault. The Right-wing spin machine, hard at work during the Clinton administration, made her one of its high priority projects.
VIP tickets include a formal pre-show reception in the Roxy Suite with each evening's speakers. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres will be served and each guest will have a photo opportunity with the speakers. Receptions begin at 6:30 each night. Instructions for entry will be sent to purchasers before each individual performance.
Appearing with war-criminal Gonzales and village idiot Ashcroft is just a bad idea, unless she hopes to creat a compare-contrast scenario. But that isn't likely to happen. No one who thinks even the tiniest good aobut Reno would pay $0.01 for a ticket to this event, so she'll likely be booed by the dead-enders who actually still support Gonzales.
I clearly remember the 6 Day War of 1967, it was quite scary. And I remember hearing about the Suez Canal crisis in 1956; I was only 6, but it was on the news every night.
History in the Middle East is complicated, especially by empire-building western nations. England, France, and the US have all made changes in the region which have reverberated for years, and causing consequences many years later. If you don't believe that, ask the Iranians about Mohammed Mossadegh.
I was hitch-hiking through Europe in the summer of '72, and spent a few weeks in a campground in Amsterdam. We (ex-wife & I) had been planning to go to Israel and work on a Kibbutz. That never happened. But I remember talking with a Canadian fellow who had just come back from Israel. His words stick with me today:
Imagine a country where every one of its neighbors hates them.
Clearly that's not a great political imperative or analysis; the same might be said for many countries on earth. But in light of the recent attack on Gaza, it resonates a bit.
Liberals have a natural inclination to defend the underdog in most fights. Israel at one time was clearly an underdog. The foundation of the country was questionable, but it happened, so we move on. And Egypt and other Arab countries have struck out at Israel many times. The animosity is evident, and sad.
Numerous world leaders have called for a cessation of the violence, but so far there has been little indication that peace might be at hand. France has called for a meeting of the foreign ministers of EU member states in Paris on Tuesday evening to discuss the situation. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the phone Monday evening and pushed for an immediate cessation of hostilities. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the blame for the violence lies squarely with Hamas.
Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.
The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.
The fable of David & Goliath seems to have been perverted. Instead of being the modern incarnation of David, Israel seems to be acting like Goliath. Hopefully another David won't use his sling against them.
Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows my computer love is reserved for all things Mac. I've been using Macs since 1985, owned my first in 1990, and am typing one one now. I do use PCs when I have to, but using a Mac is like wearing my own comfortable clothes.
Walmart has started to sell the iPhone 3G at nearly 2,500 Walmart stores beginning Sunday, December 28, 2008. The retailer is offering the black 8 GB iPhone 3G model with the price of $197 and the 16 GB black or white model for $297, with a new two-year service agreement from AT&T or qualified upgrade.
Damn. Hardly surprising, I guess. Profit transcends ideology for most companies. And for some other allegedly progressive folks too, who felt a need 2 years ago to get in bed with awful Walmart:
Don Henley is famous for his green causes and bad temper. Wal-Mart is famous for hyper capitalism and exploitation of its workers. What do these two parties have in common? Well they are now in business together, probably for the rest of Henley’s life.
An announcement on October 18 claimed that The Eagles are giving Wal-Mart an exclusive on their upcoming recordings that will be made and released sans major label.
Mark Steyn unleashes a big can of Teh Stoopid™, while trying to make Obama look foolish. He starts with this Obama quote:
"We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say, 'You just go ahead, we'll be fine.'"
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.
"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.
Hard to disagree with, IMO. Yet after his distortion of the quote, Steyn feel compelled to translate for the rubes:
If I understand then Sen. Obama's logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume 4 percent of the world's resources. And in these past few months we've made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents.
And yet, strangely, President-elect Barack Obama doesn't seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the U.S. economy. He's proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar "stimulus" package or whatever it is now to "stimulate" it back into its bad old ways.
Clearly Mark, you don't understand Pres.-elect Obama's logic, or you wouldn't misstate it so blatantly. Jeebus, where to begin.
First, nobility is always overthrown. It's called revolution. And America has acted like global nobility for several years, and we can't afford to any longer. We've told the world, and our own citizens to 'eat cake' one too many times. Or hadn't you noticed? Because the entitlement of the Right-wing economists, pundits, de-regulators, and money lenders has worked out so well for us.
We've lost our manufacturing base, shipped millions of jobs to former third-world, now second-world countries thereby building their middle classes, and ruined the housing market. All under the watch of the Right. Since the start of the ruinious Reagan years, America's fiscal soundness has continually devalued until the dollar and its image are nearly worthless.
But the stimulus package you bitch about, done correctly, will save jobs. Ulike the fantastically larger bail-out given to Wall St., which will only save the jobs of hedge fund managers. I'm guessing you thought that one was OK.
Imagine you had an Ant Farm, lots of kids had them. Now, imagine that you, as the only source of food, stopped feeding them.
And now imagine that the ants are actually people, trapped behind walls you control, with little or no food or resources. And finally, imagine that you are one of the people trapped in the Ant Farm. I'm pretty sure you'd be really pissed. Mad enough to fire some rockets at your captors? Probably:
Israel, backed by the United States, Europe, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority, has sought to isolate Hamas by squeezing Gaza economically, a policy that human rights groups condemn as collective punishment. Israel and Egypt, which control routes into and out of Gaza, have blocked nearly all but humanitarian aid from going in.
The result has been the near death of the Gazan economy. While enough food has gone in to avoid starvation, the level of suffering by ordinary people is very high and getting worse each week, especially in recent weeks as Israel closed the routes entirely for around 10 days in reaction to daily rocket fire.
Opening the routes to commerce was Hamas’s main goal in its cease-fire with Israel, just as ending the rocket fire was Israel’s central aim. But while rocket fire did go down drastically in the fall to around 15 to 20 per month from hundreds per month, Israel said it would not permit trade to go back up until the rockets actually stopped, and because Hamas continued to smuggle weapons through desert tunnels from Egypt. Hamas said this was a violation of the agreement, a sign of Israel’s real intention and cause for further rocket fire.
Hamas is some bad guys, and the whole "destruction of Israel" thingie isn't really a good idea, as if it would ever happen. But Israel has been no less truculent, nearly starving the Palestinians, and destroying the economy with their foolish and provocative blockade, crippling West Bank commerce.
GWBush promised a peace agreement, and as expected, that promis has as much validity as his promise of "humble foreign policy. For more analysis, read Jon Perr's post at Crooks & Liars today:
In January, George W. Bush famously predicted he would broker a Middle East peace by the end of his presidency. Now with Israel's launch this morning of airstrikes in Gaza -- which so far have left 155 dead -- Bush's pledge of a two-state solution is just the latest failure of his disastrous tenure in the White House.
Tensions between Israeli and Hamas forces have been escalating since the expiration last week of a six-month truce negotiated by Egypt. The retaliatory tit-for-tat has included Israeli strikes against militants in Gaza, and Hamas firing rockets and mortars into Israel. And while Israel reopened border crossings Friday for deliveries of food, supplies and humanitarian aid, the AP reported that the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "wrapped up preparations for a broad offensive."
On Thursday, the scandal-plagued outgoing Prime Minister issued a warning to Palestinians in Gaza. As Reuters recounted:
"I didn't come here to declare war," Mr. Olmert told Al Arabiya, an Arab broadcaster widely watched in Gaza. "But Hamas must be stopped - that is the way it is going to be."
He issued what amounted to a public call to Gazans to overthrow Hamas, the Islamic group that controls the territory. "I'm telling them now," he said. "It may be the last minute. There will be more blood there. Who wants it? We don't want it."
At least Hamas is doing humanitarian work for its people, as both a real and political counter to Israel's aggression and domination. Still, some real diplomacy by the outgoing Bush Admonistration would have been a good thing.
