Motley Moose – Archive

Crossposted at MyDD

Since the Oslo accords, the majority of American statespersons have adhered to a belief in a Two State Solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that may not be, and may never have been achievable.  Platforms of major Israeli political parties such as Labor and Kadima might indeed embrace the concept in name, but the current impasse may have less to do with disagreements regarding the final configuration of borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the questions of refugees and reparations than it does with a potentially irresolvable conflict over the institutional parameters of the future Palestinian state.  Israel is highly unlikely to accept a Palestinian state that is fully sovereign with regard to its military, water rights, and border control.  And setting aside competing narratives of how we arrived at this point, doing so would likely entail very real and enormous security risks to Israel’s population.  On the other hand, Palestinians will not accept anything less than a full state with regard to these functions, and it’s awfully hard to argue that they should.  Add to this the economic implications, and it becomes difficult to avoid seeing the outlines of the Two State Solution as deeply compromised, and a difference between what each side can and should accept as beyond compromise.  

The Prince Jackass last evening gave his valedictory in a speech that I note the press barely mentions in its morning coverage of the news of the day.  Monkey Boy last night defended what he did during the last eight insufferable years, eight years which nearly wrecked the United States.  (In fact, on reflection, it is not clear yet that he didn’t wreck the country; only time will tell if we ever recover from this unmitigated disaster of a presidency.)

DATELINE WAZIRISTAN:

In a rare public appearance, Al Qaeda CEO Osama bin Laden challenged President-Elect of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama to a basketball game between only the two of them.  In a hastily called press conference near the ibn-Fazal Notouri public square, Mr. bin Laden addressed a pool of war correspondents and two beat reporters from the Green Bay Packers’ Radio Network.  Although bin Laden and the rest of the al Qaeda management team are known for unorthodox tactics, this move has turned more than a few heads.

In prepared remarks, Mr. bin Laden had little good to say about Mr. Obama.

Today, an exasperated Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas begged Attorney General nominee Eric Holder, Jr. to agree that torturing children is kool and fun.

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HOLDER: I think your hypothetical assumes a premise that I’m not willing to concede.

CORNYN: I know you don’t like my hypothetical.

HOLDER: No, the hypothetical’s fine; the premise that underlies it I’m not willing to accept, and that is that waterboarding is the only way that I could get that information from those people.

CORNYN: Assume that it was.

HOLDER: [Laughs] Given the knowledge that I have about other techniques and what I’ve heard from retired admirals and generals and FBI agents, there are other ways in a timely fashion that you can get information out of people that is accurate and will produce useable intelligence. And so it’s hard for me to accept or to answer your hypothetical without accepting your premise. And in fact, I don’t think I can do that.

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Most frustrating for Sen. Cornyn is that he got his kryptonite-proof supermagickal logic from a fictional, comic-book teevee show with a name so short and bereft of letters that even former members of the Texas Supreme Court can remember it: “24.”

And who can argue with the total, undeniable truth of fiction? After all, in that Republican Classique of a bodice-ripper, The Fountainhead, forcible rape is a rilly kool first date !!!

In this daylight exchange without boiling oil pots being poured from Gargoyles’ mouths, Sen. “Jock” Cornyn demands that Uppity Mulatto Eric Holder, Jr. accept a premise no different from the Inquisition and the Klan (let us assume as fact that brutal torture is the only way to obtain the truth, even though it is fun to watch them beg and squirm in pain until they die).

And Cornyn is astounded that Comrade Holder will not accept the “Let’s Assume Burning Joan of Arc at The Stake Will Save The Children” as a valid argument in a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for United States Attorney General.

Tres gauche !!! Mon dieu !!! Ou est mon pomme frites de freedom??

Cornyn so desperately wants Holder to concede there are some situations where it is okey dokey and kool for children* or their parents to be brutally tortured and for the torturers and accomplices to be considered noble and caring in doing so.

This is Deathconservatism in its essence. They want Tough Love legislated down to the length and stiffness of the cane. They want someone normal to assure them their bizarre, secret sadistic desire to see pain inflicted on helpless, imprisoned, shackled people is somehow gritty, brave and noble. They want to tell us that we are too weak to do what “needs” to be done. It’s the worship of the abusive dad rapping the buckled belt around his fist and saying, “I’m doing this for your own good. This will hurt me more than it hurts you.”

Talk about going to the Abuse Confessional Backwards. These folks are fetishizing a War Crimes Trial where the martyrs are the ones lighting the torches and administering the eye-gouging spikes.

Why do Republicans so badly want to torture human beings?

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*Cornyn’s argument necessarily implies that children of any age can and should be brutally tortured to obtain information. U.S. torture proponents in Congress and the Bush Administration have never excluded children of any age from their claims for justifiable torture and indefinite imprisonment. A 14 year old boy from Chad has been imprisoned incommunicado in the Guantanamo Gulag since 2002. He is now 21 and still incommunicado.

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As many of you know, I live in northern Minnesota. I absolutely adore this area and usually cannot imagine living anywhere else. However, that does not mean I always like it up here in the northland. I must say I was rather amused listening to reporters complain about not feeling their feet during the Inageration. Dude, come to Minnesota, and you will no longer have feet.

I was embarrassed that Sarah Palin was initially so popular in Minnesota and am deeply ashamed that we are returning Michele Backmann to Congress this year. Jesse Ventura was pretty hard to take (for me), but you gotta admit he was interesting. As we are also the home of such political legends as Paul Wellstone, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Walter Mondale; I suppose we are allowed a few nutballs.  

Lately I have been complaining a great deal about the weather. We are actually experiencing a fairly normal Minnesota winter, but because we have had almost a decade of unusually warm winters, the fact that temps around here have not exceeded freezing for almost 10 weeks, is getting very, very old.

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

In recent years, Turkey has been regarded as being a moderate nation in the Middle East with regard to both Israel and the West.  Israel and Turkey’s ‘special’ relationship has gone even further with both countries forging close security ties and Turkey even seeking to develop a role as a mediator between Israel and its enemies.

But now it would appear that an outpouring of grassroots anger over Israel’s Gaza operation has rocked that special relationship and there are some alarming signs in its wake.  

For context, Turkey abolished Islamic Law some 80 years ago, and has been proud of its secular tradition, but now, a large and growing group is calling for its return. Anti-Semitic sentiment was recently fueled when its ‘moderate’ Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared: “Allah’s punishment for Israel’s inhumane actions will lead to its destruction.”

The week-end before, some people wrote, “We will kill you” on the door of one of the biggest synagogues in Izmir resulted in the closing down of synagogues. Near Istanbul University, a group put a huge poster on the door of a shop owned by a Jew: “Do not buy from here, since this shop is owned by a Jew.” A group put posters on his wall saying that: “Jews and Armenians are not allowed but dogs are allowed.” Some young people are even threatening others with violence if they are seen as pro-Israel in social networking websites such as Facebook and Hi5.

As of late, Turkish society has exploded with an influx of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric, this included billboards being posted with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expressions. Private firms are also posting anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish statements on their Websites. Bardak, a Turkish company which manufactures custom coffee mugs for Toshiba, HSBC, Cargill, Acer and Canon, has a phrase across its front page: “JEWS YOU ARE GOING TO PAY EVERYTHING THAT YOU ARE COMMITTING.”

Some Turkish commentators have said Erdogan’s rhetoric smacked of anti-Semitism, but the prime minister rejected the accusation.

“Neither myself, nor my government, nor anyone from my party has ever given any premium to anti-Semitism,” he said. “I am a leader who has said anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity.”

Whatever Erdogan’s intentions are or your opinion is on the conflict in the Middle East – those signs have to give you the chills, chills, chills.

It is now 2009.  We have come so far in the past eight years that – even if you pay really close attention – the speed with which we have grown as a species in knowledge and capability is so ferociously fast as to be virtually invisible.

In 2009 you can buy a 1 Terabyte disk drive for your computer for $95 (this much storage would have cost you $4,000 in 2001).

Between 2001 and 2009 – following the old saw about “Human Knowledge doubling ever year” – we as a species had acquired 256 times as much knowledge about the world around us than we did between the dawn of humanity and 2001 (when we already thought we were pretty bright, and we were).

(cross posted at kickin it with cg)

Today has been an optimistic day with regard to furthering peace in the Middle East.  First, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called for a week-long ceasefire in Gaza to allow humanitarian assistance into the strip.

This did not go over well.  Officials close to the outgoing Olmert blasted Barak.  “The remarks constitute a lack of national responsibility,” the officials said. “Ministers speaking to the media about the conduct of the war touching on cease-fire initiatives are very grave.”

Reports emerged that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was avoiding a meeting with his two key ministers in order to allow the military operation to continue.  Olmert was not planning to convene the war cabinet overnight so as to again avoid confronting the issue with the ministers, both of whom support a ceasefire.

Then later Hamas has agreed in principle to the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire but is still demanding clarifications on a number of issues.

An Israeli envoy will meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo tomorrow after a Hamas delegation concludes talks on an Egyptian truce proposal.

Olmert told Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos that he wanted to bring the operation in the Gaza Strip to an end if Hamas agreed to the Egyptian proposal.

At the crux of the cooperation agreement between Israel and the U.S. is supervision to halt the smuggling of arms from Iran, through the Persian Gulf to Sudan and other countries, and finally to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The director general of the Foreign Ministry, Aharon Abramowitz, will meet with State Department officials Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Hale in Washington today, as well as officials from the White House, Defense Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, in an effort to reach a written guarantee that the United States will act more extensively against the smuggling.

If an agreement is formulated, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will travel to Washington to sign the agreement.

These seem like positive signs to me, although it seems that majority of both the Israeli and US public do support the Israeli military operation in Gaza.  Maybe this will change with an end of the hostilities.

Let’s all hope for a end on the attacks in the coming days and for an Obama administration to bring on an era of peace in the Middle East.

A Chicago Gay and Lesbian newpaper, the Windy City Times, has unearthed a candidate issue survey written by then Illinois State Senate Candidate Barack Obama in 1996.  What is notable about this document is what has changed.  Take a look at number 6:

“6)  I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”