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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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May 31, 2010 - 05:13pm PT
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Obama at least manned up on the NPT - something no previous president would have done. But if he can't or won't really go full-guns on the republicans I suspect he'll never do more then attempt to talk the Israelis into complying with UN resolutions and that's the very definition of pissing into the wind.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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May 31, 2010 - 09:10pm PT
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If this had been a case of Somali pirates boarding this (or any) ship, and the crew and passengers fought back, you all would have been cheering them on! And rightly so. As it is a few of you are going to endlessly regurgitate the Zionist mantra myth, "we have a right to defend ourselves".
As it is I think it is too bad that a lot more cowardly IDF terrorists weren't offed. This was an act of piracy in international waters. Gather the terrorists up and hang them in accordance with Maritime law! Start with NuttyYahoo.
Oh and Israel, regardless of all your arrogance I would highly suggest yoou don't tangle with Turkey. They are not Egypt. They have a very effective military. They are not America. They are not beholden to the deep pocket corruption of AIPAC. They will fight back with out so much as a second thought. And they are not the hapless and all but defenceless Palestinians. They can and would kick the living sh#t out of Israel.
The State of Israel has squandered the World's sympathy and have been revelled as the threat to peace they are. Good work for cowardly terrorists!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 31, 2010 - 10:17pm PT
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They (Turkey) can and would kick the living sh#t out of Israel. Except that Turkey is a member of NATO, and wants to join the EU. And that Israel has between 50 and 200 nuclear weapons, and the means to reliably deliver them, and Turkey doesn't.
That said, it does seem even clumsier than usual for Israel to attack boats with apparent ties to the Turkish government. One of the few reasonably democratic, reasonably sane, countries in the region, and something of a friend.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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One of the peace activists/humanitareans that were subjected to this Israeli act of piracy was a Jewish Holocaust survivor. The one person there who actually experienced and survived the holocaust has opted to support the plight of the Palestinians. How ironic. At risk to their own life from their own people they still decided on the greater right. Including associating with groups Israel has deemed terrorist organizations. While Israel continues to engage in terrorism and piracy in international waters. Keep up the good work you limp larnos your grand efforts will insure that the State of Israel is relegated to the ash heap of history.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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"The one person there who actually experienced and survived the holocaust has opted to support the plight of the Palestinians."
so, philo, should we "opt to support" slavery just because some slave owners in america were black?
http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm
and those racist, hating, murdering israeli soldiers were armed...
with paintball guns?
i trust next time the idf won't be so reluctant to use force to secure their blockade...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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It takes two to tango. This is exactly what Hamas wanted and
I can't believe the Israelis were so stupid as to fall for it.
Both sides seem driven to waltz each other over the edge.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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June 1, 2010 12:00 P.M.
An Islam of Their Very Own
Obama’s counterterrorism chief trivializes jihad.
Well, at least he had it half right. For John Brennan, President Obama’s al-Quds lovin’ counterterrorism guru, that’s a significant improvement.
Last week, Brennan interrupted his search for the “moderate elements” of Hezbollah, and from his finger-wagging at Americans for their “ignorant feelings” about Muslim-man-caused disasters, to offer some signature insights about Islam at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In a pleasantly surprising start, he conceded that the United States has an “enemy,” which he further admitted was neither “terrorism”—a “tactic”—nor “terror” —“a state of mind.”
So far so good. For a guy who figures “20 percent isn’t that bad” a recidivism rate for released mass murderers, this was pretty good stuff.
Then he got to jihad.
Brennan admonished that we must not “describe our enemy as ‘jihadists.’” Why not? “Because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam.” Right again. There is no gainsaying that jihad is deemed to be a divine injunction in Islam. If one regards all forms of Islam as “legitimate,” then jihad, too, must be legitimate. Yet “legitimate” is a slippery concept. It could mean that something is good. Or it could just mean that something is authentic — something that it really exists, for good or ill.
Islam falls into the latter category. It exists. In many of its iterations — not just al-Qaeda’s ideology but Islamist ideology, which is quite mainstream — Islam means the West existential harm. This is why we are supportive of reformist Muslims, however pessimistic some of us may be about their prospects. The point, though, is that Islam is not going away. It is part of the hand we are dealt, like it or not. We don’t need to trash-talk it gratuitously, but neither should we pretend that it is an asset on our security ledger. It’s not.
Alas, the Hope administration doesn’t see it that way. For Brennan, as for Obama, Islam is immovably in the first category: “legitimate” as in “good” — end of discussion. To sculpt this alternative reality, two things are required. First, we must ignore Islam’s many troublesome elements — e.g., its supremacism, inequality, intolerance, denial of freedom of conscience, endorsement of violence, etc. Second, to the extent that the resulting atrocities can’t be ignored, we must pretend that what ails the Islamic world is our fault, not Islam’s.
Thus we get the priceless Brennan on jihad. According our counterterrorism czar (or is it now counter-tactic czar?), the “holy struggle” is wholly anodyne. Jihad, he insists, merely “mean[s] to purify oneself or one’s community.” Therefore, there can be “nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.” If innocent men, women, and children are being killed, don’t blame jihad. There must be some other explanation: Israel, cartoons, Gitmo, South Park, teddy bears named Mohammed, dismay over the health-care bill — anything but jihad.
In his never-to-be-missed Saturday column, Mark Steyn observes the fictional scenes imprinted on euro currency, a perfect emblem for the pie-in-the-sky vision of a united Europe. It’s as if Hope could make Change if you just pretended hard enough: “If you invent a currency for a united Europe,” Mark writes of the EU fantasists, “a united Europe is sure to follow.” So, too, do Brennan, Obama, and the rest set about dreaming up an Islam of their very own. They are far from alone in this. For years, the project has consumed progressive solons in America and Europe — from Pres. George W. Bush’s “religion of peace” sermon, delivered while thousands of limbs were being removed from the rubble of the World Trade Center, to British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s Brennanesque insistence that terrorism had to be “un-Islamic activity” simply because it was terrorism.
Like Brennan, the Right Honorable Ms. Smith occupied a national-security position calling for clear-eyed realism, for counseling the government to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Instead, we get Judy Garland singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” except Garland at least knew she was dreaming.
While our top officials imagine an Islam that isn’t, jihad is something the rest of us needn’t imagine, because it is all too real. And it is simple. Jihad is, always and everywhere, the mission to implement, spread, or defend sharia, the Islamic legal code. It is not exclusively violent; an army doesn’t need to be violent if its enemies are willing to give ground. But jihad only “means to purify oneself or one’s community” in a very narrow sense. It is not the syrupy quest to become a better person but the command to become a better Muslim; it is not the smiley-face mission to “purify” one’s community of crime but the command to cleanse one’s community of non-Islamic influences.
The inextricable bond between jihad and sharia is also easily explained. In Muslim doctrine, sharia is deemed the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society. Islam’s designs are hegemonic: Even in its less threatening iterations, it is taken as a given that believers must call all of humanity to the faith. What separates the true moderates from the faux moderates and the terrorists are the lengths to which one is willing to go in carrying out that injunction. That it is an injunction, however, is not open to debate.
Our political leaders can continue to trivialize jihad as if it were some benign struggle to brush after every meal. They can continue to ignore the core tenets that make sharia antithetical to a free, self-determining society. But they can’t do that and do the only job we need them to do: protect our lives and our liberties.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Good question?!?!?!?!?
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Reilly - you nailed it!
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Fatty has the naive belief that the world revolves around Israel. Sad. The strategic interests of Israel and the US are increasingly divergent, and no doubt there are some in congress and the administration asking, in light of the recent attack: "With friends like Israel, who needs enemies?"
Turkey, like Israel, undoubtedly has a human rights record that could be improved. The main reasons it has not been admitted to the EU are Greek opposition (notwithstanding that Turkey helped finance the recent bailout of Greece), history, racism and religion.
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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Did they expect to receive a nice welcome with flowers while rapping off the helicopter ?
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Douglas Rhiner
Mountain climber
Good question?!?!?!?!?
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MH,
Israel HAS nuclear weapons.
Be very afraid.
A nuclear free ME will only happen after Israel does the death-wad-blow.
No one wins.
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ahad aham
Trad climber
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classic,
the 4th strongest army on the planet using paintball guns. one has to respect their marksmanship i mean to kill at least 9 with toys that's professionalism. and indeed they had to confiscate all journalistic documentation which of course would prove what? maybe rahm is back from the family trip to israel last week to coach the president on an appropriate response. traitors all.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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It's that Israel is at the center of the conflict between what is becoming a largely secular world and a religion/area/population that lacks modernity. Not sure what you're referring to, in that Israeli politics and government is badly distorted by fundamentalist Jewish groups, whose beliefs and values are as peculiar if not medieval as those of fundamentalist "Christians" and Muslims.
Maybe they haven't read the Torah lately, the bit about David and Goliath. David being armed with a slingshot and all. Just like the people on the boat that was attacked.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Good boy MH
Only way out is for Netanhayu to move to the center.
But again will never happen. I am sure Fatty will agree.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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There is an ongoing public debate in Canada, going back many years, on our health care system, its limitations, and how it might be reformed in light of an aging population and ever more expensive treatments and drugs. The discussion might sometimes be better informed, given that we after all have a system that works very well. Given the numbers of people involved, and the related resources and organization, it ain't perfect - anecdotal evidence has some use for showing that, anyway. Given that demand will always exceed supply, there'll always be a wait for non-priority treatments, and the wealthy will find ways to jump the queue. But at least we're having a reasonably honest debate about our system, focussing on both people and economics, in particular in terms of priorities and rationing mechanisms.
Notwithstanding the wreckers, who are usually motivated by their selfish economic interests, it is extremely unlikely that Canada (or Israel) will move away from a single payer system. We're horrified by the grotesque inequality and waste of the US 'system', which seems largely designed to pad the pockets of special interests.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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So a rumour is going around that a local Fundamentalist and radicalized synagogue is planning on attacking a non violent Palestinian Solidarity Peace March. Scuttlebutt is that they are gathering weapons. Now the Peace March will have lots of children and old folks in attendance. They are all afraid and not just a little intimidated. We just can't allow that threat to exist so close to home. So a gang of us "Christians" are dressing in commando black and storming the place with shot guns and 9 mms tonight. Maybe a few Molotov cocktails for insurance. We have a right to defend ourselves don't you know? Should we expect any resistance from inside? You know sticks and stones and water hoses and other deadly weapons. I hope not because that would justify deadly force and terror tactics and that can make such a mess.
I hope the sentient among you realize I am joking in the extreme to make the ludicrousness of pro zionist responses a little more obvious to the mouth breathers.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Doesn't the Bush/theo-con doctrine say that pre-emptive action against terrorism is justified?
Not that international law necessarily agrees.
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