"And with any leftover time, I'll focus my concern on the millions of Jews whose very lives are daily threatened by people eager to accept in all its full literal horror the careless speculations of the Kushners and the Judts about the benefits of the erasure of the Jewish homeland."
Well, we Jews apparently control everything anyway, so why not folk music? (in my last edition, I posted about the New Jersey housewife behind the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick - item 16 - Queen of Pop)
"If OBL has been killed in that operation as (the) president of United States has claimed then we are just in questioning as per media reports that why an unarmed man was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world."
"We maintain that arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems and crime's adjudication as justice must be seen to be done," the statement said."
I guess that the concept of "chutzpah" is not exclusive to the Jewish culture.
Other OBL (I actually prefer "DOA") links, some new, some old:
3. So Does This - Just in case there is any doubt about what the thugocracy in Gaza stands for and supports - remember this the next time there's another peace flotilla for Gaza
“The City College flies all of the flags that are flown at the United Nations,” the Vice President for Communications Mary Lou Edmondson told me. “It has nothing to do with foreign policy.”
But there’s one problem—the United Nations doesn’t fly the Palestinian flag. It only flies the flags of its 192 member states."
11. Passionate Journalism - I'll say! 12. Fake Journalism - from commentator Dana Loesch:
"Lawrence O’Donnell attempted to debate interview Condoleezza Rice and Rice promptly are his lunch. Ate his lunch and slapped him around. Ate his lunch, slapped him around, and completely owned him. I can’t with either a straight face or accuracy call this display of fake journalism a “debate,” because calling it such would suggest that Lawrence O’Donnell brought wit and intelligence equal to that of his opponent, Rice. He did not."
18. Baseball - well, my Celtics were eliminated from the NBA playoffs this evening, so it's over to baseball I guess - here are two funny scenes from Bull Durham - a great baseball movie:
A great victory in the war on terror. Kudos to the American military and intelligence community for pulling off what must have been a hell of a combined operation.
As readers of this blog know, I am not the biggest fan of the President. But he deserves kudos for having the stones to order the operation to go ahead. And I think his speech last night struck the right tone. Here is what the President said:
Here is what I would have said:
But we have to remember that while this is an important victory, it is not the final victory. There are many more vicious types like him to be tracked down and brought to justice. We must remain vigilant to protect against the kind of evil represented by bin Laden and his acolytes. Such as , for example, Hamas - which had this to say - Hamas Condemns the Killing of Bin Laden - NYTimes.com. But the crazy useful idiots in the West will still love them, don't worry.
Reaction is, of course, all over the Internet today. Here are just a few examples - no doubt that there will be a lot more as details emerge over the next while - especially about Pakistan's role in allowing bin Laden to take refuge there, as well as any role it played in assisting the military operation that killed him.
And let us never forget the victims of al-Qaeda - from the embassy bombings in Africa, to the USS Cole, to 9/11 - as well as countless Muslims murdered throughout the Middle East. Hopefully, there has been some small measure of justice done in their names.
1. Hamas and Fatah, Up In A Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G - to quote the old schoolyard rhyme. Not like the newly minted Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. More like Hannibal Lechter dating Sirhan Sirhan. Jason (Friday the 13th) hanging with Freddy (Nightmare on Elm Street). Lex Luthor teaming up with Darth Vader. With Charlie Manson in the background absolutely beaming....
The genocidal group of murderous terrorists that is Hamas is making nice with the allegedly "moderate" (oh, please!!) group of former genocidal group of murderous terrorists that is Fatah. This does not augur well for whatever shambles the "peace process" has been reduced to, for Israel's relations with the useless EU and corrupt UN, the continued tense but non-violent stand-off over Gaza, and for peace in the entire Middle East region.
I can almost hear the top guns of each gang of thugs agreeing - "well, we may have our differences, but isn't the goal to kill the Jews and destroy Israel? - we can always kill each other later....."
I don't believe that this is any long-lasting relationship - both groups are such bitter rivals, too self-interested, too corrupt and so on that even the goal of killing Jews/destroying Israel won't be enough to keep them on the same page.
Here are a variety of items on this marriage (or whatever) made in hell:
3. Getting Away with Murder in Syria - and while the world does the square root of nothing - I actually have a slightly saltier expression, but you get the point.
4. Back To The Peace Process and the One-State/Two-State Solution - Let's be clear - there is no peace process when the Palestinian representatives won't come to the table, make ridiculous demands from afar, and simply wait for their buddies in the EU and the UN to shove something down Israel's throat.
8. Useful Idiots #3 - Vittorio Arrigoni edition - let's be clear about this before he is turned into some sort of deity or martyr, like Saint Pancake. And let's not forget who brutally murdered him - and it wasn't the Israelis.
10. Useful Idiots #5 - don't they deserve their own little film?
11. Iran - this group of theocratic nuts (the leadership, not the people) are likely just sitting back, having a good time with all the unrest in the Middle East and waiting for the 12th Imam to come for a visit - and to kill some time, they are hanging some homosexuals, persecuting some religious minorities, doing some fission (clever, huh?), watching oil prices rise - oh, and banning dogs......now they've gone too far!
But maybe everything isn't as good as it seems in the Islamic Republic
13. Yom HaShoah - Sunday, May 1, corresponding to the 27th day of the Jewish month of Nissan, is Yom HaShoah. The date, which falls a week after the 7th day of Passover and a week before Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Remembrance Day was proclaimed by the Israeli Knesset in 1951, making this its 60th anniversary. Here is a primer - Yom Hashoah: Holocaust Memorial Day - My Jewish Learning.
16. Learning About The Shoah - as I have said many times, the Shoah was not a monolithic event - it did not happen the same way in France as it did in Lithuania, for example. Similarly, educational material, books, movies, plays and other works about the Shoah are not monolithic. Here is what I hope is a useful guide to all the various material - The Thinking Person’s Guide to the Holocaust – Forward.com
17. Canadian Election - There is a Canadian federal election on Monday, May 2. When the election was called, the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper was the governing party in a minority government. For non-Canadian readers, the Conservative Party is pretty much the equivalent of the Republican Party in the US. To be quite frank, my vote goes to whichever party supports Israel the best.
The Conservative Party is a staunch supporter of Israel, even though, unlike in the US where there are electoral districts with heavy Jewish concentrations that can impact the outcome of an election, there is no political benefit to such strong support - if anything, there is political cost.
The other major parties, in terms of standings at the end of the last Parliament, were the Liberals, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois. I would classify their respective support of Israel as being equivocal, schizophrenic and indifferent at best.
Meanwhile, I am hoping that the Conservative Party wins a majority government position on Monday, though it is doubtful whether this will be the case. All reports are that (for reasons that have noting to do with the above spat) the Liberals are in free fall, and that the NDP (which has basically always been the third place party and therefore has often avoided the kind of scrutiny reserved for the Conservatives and the Liberals) is surging. The BQ only runs candidates in Quebec and are dedicated to Quebec sovereignty, so the best they can do is play spoiler, draw off support in Quebec for the other parties, and then become a separatist pain in the backside after the election.
Without getting into things in more detail, the deceptive thing is that while as noted the NDP is said to be surging - their supposedly growing support is expressed in ways that are incompatible with the way the election is decided. It is possible, for example, for a party to win 40% of the total popular vote across Canada and still not have any representation in Parliament. Of course, the media never says that - or this - the way they report the pre-election polls can influence voters to vote for a party portrayed as surging, even though that surge might only be in one part of the country. To further elaborate, if the NDP are surging in Quebec, all that surge might accomplish is to reduce the size of the margin by which the Bloc candidates win their seats in Parliament - but that is never elaborated upon or explained.
