Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category

Tonight I will take my grandchildren to the public library

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

A note from the film maker:

Three days after we filmed 11-year-old Yussef Mohamed treating an injured soldier he was killed by a government shell. Another young victim of Syria’s descent into civil war.

The only Middle East nation I fear is…

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Israel:

Here’s a prediction. Netanyahu, in league and concert with Romney, Santorum and Gingrich, will make his move to get rid of Obama soon. And he will be more lethal to this president than any of his domestic foes.

“I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches”

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

Thinking about Israel’s starting a war with Iran kept me up for an hour stewing about the stupidity of our pit bull in the Middle East.

Israel, “tiny and defenseless” stole the technology to build thermo-nuclear bombs from us decades ago and have been the only Middle Eastern nation with them ever since. We looked the other way as we still do when they “borrow” our military technology. I think its foolish or even suicidal to look at tiny, land hungry Israel as a victim of its geography.

Today Republican neocons are salivating at the Israeli threats to bomb Iranian nuclear sites that might allow Iran to join the growing nuclear bomb club. I’m with Ron Paul on this. Iran’s having the bomb is not terribly worrisome. Its far less troubling than the spread of nuclear materials with the fall of the Soviet Union. I think Iran has every right as a sovereign nation to build a bomb although I’m with NATO and President Obama on putting an economic tourniquet on Iran should it proceed with such development.

Israel’s threats to Iran are really a threat to drag America into a war they want to start. The Israeli political party Likud is like our Republican Party squared when it comes to deranged international politics. Israeli neocons are terrified of the democracy movements spreading across the Middle East. They loved the autocratic and dictatorial world that used to surround them. They know that bombing Iran will unite the democracy movements of the Arab world with Iran and they would be happy as clams to suck the US into an international nightmare that makes Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic.

Why would they do it? To make sure President Obama is not reelected. At least that’s my guess although it is surely more complicated than that. Dr. Strangelove must have been cloned recently to advise them.

From the movie’s dialogue:

Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin’. Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human bein’s if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelin’s about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin’ on you and by golly, we ain’t about to let ‘em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing’s over with. That goes for ever’ last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let’s get this thing on the hump – we got some flyin’ to do.

I’d like one of the namby-pambies who are challenging Cravaack to comment on foreign policy before Major Kong rides his mount out of the bomb bay door.

Prezicide

Saturday, January 21st, 2012

And my Buddy gets upset with me when he thinks I’m getting hyperbolic:

“Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles? Another way of putting “three” in perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives … Jews, Christians and Arabs alike? You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table,”

Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. He has now apologized.

When this ass talks about murdering Obama it doesn’t sound to me like he thinks its so “unfathomable.” Maybe I shouldn’t take his apology too seriously either.

When my Grandfather was nine years old…

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

…Jerusalem was 85% Muslim.

Somehow in 1896 it looks more like I would imagine a holy city to look. And more peaceful. As I recall Twain wasn’t very complementary.

One case where Ron Paul makes more sense than Obama

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Its Iran. And both of them are righter than the rest of the GOP:

Fifty years ago, [China] was the Iran of its day, a rising regional power that was radical, ideological, boldly antagonistic. It fought the U.S. in Korea, attacked India and Taiwan, supported violent insurgencies and more. Its leader, Mao Zedong, mused that killing half of mankind might be a price worth paying to make the world socialist. Understandably alarmed, some of President Eisenhower’s advisers urged a pre-emptive nuclear attack. (Ike wisely forbore.) President Kennedy said a nuclear China would dominate Southeast Asia and “so upset the world political scene” as to be “intolerable.”

Notice the classic Kennedy recklessness in foreign policy (he was George W Bush avant la lettre), and the characteristic Eisenhower sanity. Now look at the history. Since China’s adoption of nuclear status, it has actually behaved more responsibly abroad, not less. Jon makes a very persuasive case that nuclear weapons really don’t give countries much of an edge, and, if anything, tend to calm them down, especially if they are in a region where they have foes who do have such weapons.

My Buddy is after me again

Saturday, December 31st, 2011

After months of ignoring my Buddy so that I can spend my time on something useful I’ve started emailing back and fourth with him again. That has led to new emails twitting “liberalism” of one sort or another. No. Its not my Buddy twitting liberals. Its the posts of Righty pundits and bloggers. I suppose I deserve it because I love beating up the Grand Old Party that threw me over for flat Earth types but really. I need something better than Powerline’s snit over John Maynard Kenyes

Here’s what my Buddy sent me:

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Victor D. Ulmer wrote:
Beware the authorities that you cite for your arguments?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/12/keynes-was-right-about-the-jews.php

If I’m going to use up half an hour writing my Buddy a riposte then I’ll go back to offering it to my blog readers as well. This was my reply to my Buddy:

[Buddy], Can you give me any evidence that this statement of Powerline’s is correct?

“…anti-Semitism has become almost wholly the province of the Left today.”

Keynes was arrogant. From what I’ve read of him he was an elitest. During his time there were lots of British upper crust types who disdained the Jews. It seems to be much more a condition of their milieu than partisanship. Some like Keynes were lefties. Many of them gravitated toward Lord Haw Haw. If, as I suspect, Powerline wants to discredit something persuasive like Keynes’ economic theories by pointing out that his racism was crude Powerline might also consider panning Democracy because Thomas Jefferson was a slave owning hypocrite. Do you think Jefferson’s lefty fans of Democracy have tried to sweep Sally Hemmings under the rug of history? Maybe I should be grateful that Powerline didn’t try discrediting Kenysian economic policies because John Maynard was a homosexual.

I think that economic truths lie midway between Hayak and Kenyes. How about you? Do you think that everyone should give up the Keynes part because of John Maynard’s 100 year old racial views? I’m not sure he even meant that as anything other than the kind of snide put down you hear from dishy high school girls.

Powerline is treating this historical tidbit like a great gotcha proving that liberals are all dipshits. Other than his economic theories what does Keynes mean today? I’d suggest that anything other than his economic theories are only footnotes, interesting though they may be.

As for Right wingers being champions of the Jews isn’t there a distinction between being unhappy with Israel and Jew baiting? I know the Right would like to conflate the two. But its worth remembering that the backbone of the GOP today are the Christian right which believes Jews must control all of King David’s Biblical lands to make the prophesy of the rapture come about. Unrepentant Jews would all die and go to hell when that happens. With friends like that …

Harry

This is the nation that most of the GOP presidential candidates…

Sunday, November 13th, 2011

…want to bomb Iran: Modern Israel.

In economic terms, the haredi revival in Israel has been disastrous. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community is ever more dependent on the state and, through it, on other people’s labor. Exploiting political patronage, ultra-Orthodox clerics have largely taken over the state’s religious bureaucracy, imposing extreme interpretations of Jewish law on other Jews. By exempting the ultra-Orthodox from basic general educational requirements, the democratic state fosters a burgeoning sector of society that neither understands nor values democracy. And to protect their own growing settlements, haredi parties are now essential partners in the pro-settlement coalitions of the right.

They spit on Greek Orthodox priests who try to worship at the Wailing wall. They are out reproducing every one else yet they do not add to the economy because they do not work while they live off the Israeli welfare system. When war comes their sons will not fight it. They are egging on the Islamic nations that outnumber and surround them by displacing the rightful onwers of Palestine from their land and expect America to pay the bill for any coming war.

Sounds a little like Christian Michelle Bachmann spitting on the Obama policy of ending torture through water boarding.

Israel as America’s Serbia

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

One of the things I remember liking about the George Herbert Walker Bush administration is that he kept Israel on a tight leash. He had a coterie of smart Jewish advisors, if I recall correctly, who helped craft our foreign policy.

Those days are long gone. Today both political parties try to outbid each other to placate the most unreasonable Israeli settlers like those who burned down a Palestinian Mosque a couple days ago. This, of course, has the effect of angering the vast majority of people living in the Middle East who are Muslims.

It reminds me of the beginnings of World War I which seemed to come as a major surprise to those nations caught fighting it. There were all sorts of secret agreements that led each to declare war on the others when an ally was attacked. Many of the major players had governments that did not survive the war including Tsarist Russia. Russia had a secret agreement to protect tiny Serbia should it be attacked. It was an alliance largely based upon religious loyalties. When Serbia was attacked by Habsburg Austria all the other secret agreements kicked into effect.

On the eve of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis John Kennedy was reading Barbara Tuchman’s masterpiece the Guns of August about the unwitting march to war. It was very much on his mind as he prepared to deal with the still secretive and paranoid USSR.

Israel is America’s Serbia and the GOP in particular gives almost unanimous carte blanche to the hardest of Jewish hardliners who think nothing of displacing Arabs from their homes so that Jews can move in. I don’t think this will lead to World War III but its unsettling that an unbending core of Republicans believe the end of days is imminent and are rooting for Republicans to bring it about more hastily. If an when it happens it won’t just be Russia that comes to an end. It will be the end of the world. These are my kind of patriots.

Folks like Karl Rove have called these folks “crazies” then worked their butts off to get them to the polls. Now the crazies are running one house of Congress and the Republican Party.

Obama wants to put Americans to work and while he’s at it…

Friday, September 9th, 2011

…he’s a foreign policy magician compared to his predecessors:

Ahmadinejad’s abandonment of Assad is really quite something, isn’t it? Combined with the obviously biting sanctions and the viral disruption of nuclear research, the Obama administration has almost done as much to weaken Tehran as Bush and Cheney did to empower it. Andrew Sullivan

Three cups of greed

Monday, April 18th, 2011

CBS exposes a fraud.

This year’s snow sculpture

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

It could use a little more work but just in case someone who listens to Fox Television decides to play John Wilkes Booth with it I thought I’d post a picture of it as it was at the end of today.

I blame the GOP

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

I’ve stolen this from the Daily Dish which brings us this news from another blogger. The gist is this. Ambitious Israelies who are not fundamentalists are leaving Israel in droves to the fundamentalists whose own children are excused from the Israeli military that is expected to harass Palestinians and keep them in their place (which isn’t in Israel). To this increasingly religiously bigoted government the US annually sends billions of dollars which use our money indirectly to susidize more Jewish settlement of the West Bank. I guess America’s Christian millennialists who are helping fund the breeding of a pure red heifer calf to guarantee the Apocalypse should be happy they are helping fund the end of the World through the good offices of Republican dogma.

Peter Beinart measures the fallout from various nations recognizing Palestinian statehood:

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the number of Israelis applying annually for permanent residence in the United States doubled between 2000 and 2009. Former Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak both have adult children living here. And it’s not just the U.S. An Israeli friend recently told me that there are so many young Israelis in Berlin (Berlin!) that when he goes there and runs into acquaintances from Tel Aviv, they don’t even act surprised.

These young, cosmopolitan, educated Israelis are exactly the ones you can’t afford to lose. They’re leaving for graduate school, and jobs in finance and high-tech and a thousand other things, but they’re also leaving because they want to be connected to the world, not only economically, but politically and culturally as well. And they’re not thrilled about spending a month a year as army reservists manning checkpoints in the West Bank. Offer them a future of mounting international isolation and no prospect for peace, and watch them flood into Williamsburg and West L.A.

Maybe you can console yourselves that their ultra-Orthodox counterparts—who don’t work, don’t serve in the army, have an average of seven children per family, and drain the government coffers dry—aren’t going anywhere. Luckily for you, one of their parties, Shas, controls the ministry charged with fighting the fires that last week ravaged Israel. Shas’ spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, helpfully volunteered that the fires were God’s punishment for Israelis who didn’t keep the Sabbath.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Nazi Germany burned books they didn’t like.

Israeli book stores just won’t sell them.

Nazi Germany confiscated Jewish possessions to help fund the war.

Israel will simply make Palestinians in the occupied territories pay to be deported.

How firm a foundation

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Vic,

Sent me a link to the latest MoDo column. Vic has a bit of a love-hate relationship with Dowd. I suspect he sent me this one because he agrees with it as do I.

Not being catholic I’m not a good person to take swings at the new Pope although a couple days ago I wrote a longish post that needed editing and which I’m still sitting on.

This one begins with an observation about women that nicely ties into the observation I made in the previous post about my wife’s role in our family and the larger economy. It starts with women’s loyalty to the sexually stunted Saudi Arabian regime which will never make a first rate nation until such time as women are integrated into the economy instead of being treated as chattel. It then proceeds into the Catholic churches misogynistic paternalism that has pitted sexual predators against children with the latter losing out.

And all this ties into my recent local crusade because in each case supporters of Saudia Arabia’s royal politics, the Catholic Church’s Papcy and the Duluth School District’s School Superintendency are being asked to avert their eyes from dirty little secrets and lies for some greater good.

The Nazarene would have noted that such support is founded on sand.

Mission Accomplished

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

This Andrew Sullivan post is cynical and the cynicism is well deserved. Who cares about our invasion of Iraq when we can get cheap oil?

What do the troops want?

Friday, November 10th, 2006

The view from The Captain’s Quarter.

Iraq’s slide

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006

From Maureen Dowd

 

Iraqi Deaths

Thursday, October 19th, 2006
While President Bush dismisses the survey which suggested that as many as 600,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion one credible source who thinks the numbers are write is a long time Iraqi blogger. She says:
For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that’s about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers. So far, the only Iraqis I know pretending this number is outrageous are either out-of-touch Iraqis abroad who supported the war, or Iraqis inside of the country who are directly benefiting from the occupation ($) and likely living in the Green Zone.
The chaos and lack of proper facilities is resulting in people being buried without a trip to the morgue or the hospital. During American military attacks on cities like Samarra and Fallujah, victims were buried in their gardens or in mass graves in football fields. Or has that been forgotten already?
We literally do not know a single Iraqi family that has not seen the violent death of a first or second-degree relative these last three years. Abductions, militias, sectarian violence, revenge killings, assassinations, car-bombs, suicide bombers, American military strikes, Iraqi military raids, death squads, extremists, armed robberies, executions, detentions, secret prisons, torture, mysterious weapons – with so many different ways to die, is the number so far fetched?
There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.
Let’s pretend the 600,000+ number is all wrong and that the minimum is the correct number: nearly 400,000. Is that better? Prior to the war, the Bush administration kept claiming that Saddam killed 300,000 Iraqis over 24 years. After this latest report published in The Lancet, 300,000 is looking quite modest and tame. Congratulations Bush et al.

More on the Iraq poll

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Vic sent me this synopsis of the poll in Iraq. I find it very unsurprising. The headline crows that the murdering thugs of Al Qaeda have lost support. Who said that the terrorist decapitators ever had much support inside Iraq? It sounds as though they were drawn from no more than 5% of the local Sunni population. In fact, I believe most of them came from Saudi Arabia, Syria or elsewhere in the Arab world.

As I read between the lines of this analysis I’m not disuaded from my sense that Iraq should be three separate entities. At best I can only imagine a lose confederation. Its obvious that the three major populations have little use for each. Yes, they are mildly interested in staying united but only if they can either be in charge of the others or independent of them.

Woe to the poor Iraqies who intermarried in the years of secular tolerance.