The Muhammad al-Dura Hoax and Other Myths Revived http://www.meforum.org/3076/muhammad-al-dura-hoax On September 30, 2000, a day after Yasser Arafat launched his war of terror, euphemized as the al-Aqsa intifada, state-owned France 2 Television broadcast a news report, filmed by a Palestinian cameraman, of the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian identified as Muhammad al-Dura. The dramatic […]
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/10/palestinian-black-arts-brand.html Word is out they are going to try brand “Palestine” as this firm, Qorvis, has signed a contract and registered as a Foreign Agent for piurposes of working with the Palestinian Authority (or is it Fatah, or the PLO?):- “One of Washington’s best-known lobbying and public relations firms has been upended in the wake of the […]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_kramer/galleries/72157627717322623/
Sandbox | Martin Kramer on the Middle East
In Cairo and Damascus, the October 1973 war with Israel is celebrated by museums of similar design and purpose. At the center of both attractions is a panorama (or cyclorama): a 360-degree depiction of the key battles of the war. The concept is to immerse the visitor in a “surround” view of a battle—in Egypt’s case, the crossing of the Suez Canal, in Syria’s, the battle for the Golan Heights—with visual and sound effects, stirring narration, and martial music. Both sites have adjacent grounds for the display of captured and destroyed Israeli hardware, alongside examples of the Soviet-made Egyptian and Syrian armament of the day. The construction of panoramas has become a North Korean specialty, and the Egyptian and Syrian panoramas are of North Korean design and execution.
School groups, soldiers, and local and foreign tourists who visit these sites are told similar stories of triumphant victory, leaving no room for ambiguity as to the war’s outcome. A recent visitor described her experience at the Cairo attraction: “A vast panorama of lights and noise depicted the epic struggle to cross the canal. I saw no mention of the Israeli counterattack. It has been subsumed by myth and propaganda.” Another recent visitor to the Damascus panorama made this observation: “If you relied only on a visit to the Panorama for information about the war, you would not know a) that Egypt was also involved in the fighting, b) how long the war lasted, c) how many people died, or d) that Israel won.”
http://newafricaanalysis.co.uk/index.php/2011/03/gaddafi-a-penchant-for-war-crimes/ Gaddafi: A penchant for war crimes This is the monster that George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice legitimized. Shame on them….rsk Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh, Blaise Compaoré, Ibrahim Bah, Idriss Deby,Mugabe The world is well aware of the atrocities committed by Colonel Gaddafi on his own people both in recent weeks and over his […]
FRIENDS OF QADDAFI: CONDOLEEZA RICE, MAHMOUD ABBAS, GORDON BROWN, UK, LUIS ZAPATERO SPAIN, BERLUSCONI, ITALY, HUGO CHAVEZ, EU COMMISSION PRESIDENT BARROSO, MINISTER FRATTINI, ITALY, SARKOZY, TONY BLAIR, OBAMA AND NELSON MANDELA… Gaddafi and Gordon Brown Gaddafi with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
The most common justification for the Shalit deal is to wear it as a perverse badge of moral nobility. “What other country would exchange a thousand terrorists for one man.” This is a close cousin of the argument that says the United States treating terrorists with kid gloves proves that it is nobler than them. Both of these insufferable arguments are symptoms of the moral decline of civilization.
If the life of a single soldier is more important than the battle, then why have battles or soldiers at all? We don’t send soldiers out to fight because we think that their lives are worthless, but because the objective of war is to save even more lives than those that will be lost in fighting it. Or to preserve that liberty and independence from enemy oppression which are the qualities that make life worthwhile.
Clinton’s Cackling at Cain Takes the Cake Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/clintons_cackling_at_cain_takes_the_cake.htm Upon watching footage of Hillary Clinton mocking Herman Cain in Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s presence, one could wonder: would she really want to stack her accomplishments up against Cain’s? I mean real accomplishment — not being the poster girl for nepotism and cultural affirmative […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/10/sharia_uber_alles_versus_western_justice.html How is it that intelligent people cannot see the lesson of history when sharia enters a non-Islamic society, step by step? Yale Assistant Professor of religious studies Eliyahu Stern’s 9/2/11 NY Times op-ed (“Don’t Fear Islamic Law in America”) vilifies those who seek fair, rational legislative remedies to the encroachment of Islamic law (Sharia) […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204485304576642963032597504.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop By JOHN YOO This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In his first two decades on the bench, Justice Thomas has established himself as the original Constitution’s greatest defender against elite efforts at social engineering. His stances for limited government and individual freedom make him the left’s […]
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7332873/the-end-of-a-delusion.thtml
The sight of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi blood-stained and bewildered, pulled around by a crowd in the final moments of his life is not a sight that will cause much pity. For more than four decades he had none for those Libyans whom he repressed and killed — anymore than he had for the victims on Pan Am Flight 103, his other multiple acts of terrorism, or his pointless and bloody interventions across Africa.
Yet there is something pitiful about it: perhaps most obviously because watching his end is to watch the end of a delusion. Even more than Saddam Hussein crawling out of a hole in the ground and saying that he wanted to negotiate, the sight of Gaddafi coming out of a soil-pipe armed with a golden gun seems the perfect example of reality catching up with the autocrat. And though it is undeniable that first and foremost Gaddafi was bad quite simply because he was bad, this is a good moment to consider whether there was anything which the international community, and countries like this one, could have done better.
Anyone who was curious about Gaddafi could learn most of what they needed to know by trying to read his near-unreadable Green Book. It includes an extended digression away from the subject of agriculture in which Gaddafi comes to the conclusion that men do not menstruate, nor do they breastfeed children, and that this is a difference between men and women.
The Green Book is useful for understanding Gaddafi because it contains the characteristic that always sat alongside his brutality: his silliness. Even up to the end, that silliness was forever in danger of dominating international attitudes towards him. Who could forget the impromptu press conference earlier this year in which he denied that he had fled the country: leaning out of a golf-buggy, umbrella in hand? Or the rambling speeches at the UN which on one recent occasion led to a translator breaking-down, complaining particularly that it was unclear which parts of the speech Gaddafi meant to address to the hall and which were him talking to himself?
The silliness was legendary. But behind it, and far more important than it, was a deadly delusion. And here was the problem for the international community. At any time, throughout his four decades of dictatorship, Gaddafi always managed to find some leader somewhere, and on occasion several, willing to hail him as the great leader of his time, a continent-wide King or a Caliph, destined alternately to unite Africa or revive the Caliphate. Across Africa, and as far away as Pakistan, there were those who would acclaim him and regard him in the manner he clearly felt to be his due. What they wanted of course was the cash.
For the same reason Gaddafi also found some receptive audiences in the West — and never more-so than in recent years. The bloodshed of the last year has at least reminded people that Gaddafi was not merely a clown. But the pandering to Gaddafi’s whims cannot but have helped prolong his view of himself and so prolong the misery through which he put his people.
When the Blair government decided to restore relations with Libya they did it for decent reasons. But the manner and extent of the un-freezing of relations — the sending of dignitaries to meet him and so on — went far too far. When the international community sat through his rambling multi-hour-long speeches at the UN, and world leaders allowed him to pitch his tent on their lawns, the misconception that there were different rules for him — that he was a case apart — can only have hardened.
Perhaps one occasion should particularly epitomise this. Only last December, Gaddafi made a live video appearance in London at the London School of Economics (LSE). Students and academics at that institution (incidentally a bastion of academic attempts to boycott Israel) had a chance to ask some questions of Gaddafi. They behaved miserably.
