We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I am a subject in a kingdom of lies. At 57, I have grown up with decades of untruth — advanced for the purposes of purported social unity, the noble aim of egalitarianism, and the advancement of a cognitive elite in government, journalism, the arts, and the universities.
At college campuses across the US, student organizations that attack Israel have become more and more active, and obnoxious, over the past decade. The members are drawn from some of the Moslem students and their far leftist companions. Most students are there to get an education, or at least get their degree ticket punched. While there's little evidence these anti-Israel groups have much support, through their activism they load student governments and with their loud voices they usually dominate campus debates.
Over the past year or so, at many campuses Jewish groups have formed to counter this vileness. Others of sound minds have joined in.
The University of California, San Diego is one of the top-ranked academic campuses in the country. This week a group of professors joined together to call BS on the anti-Israel groups.
Dr. David Feifel, a professor at UCSD and Vice President of the UCSD SPME (Scholars for Peace in the Middle East) chapter, wrote a powerful editorial about the hypocrisy on campus relating to the Arab and Muslim students' focus on Israel Apartheid Week and their failure to acknowledge the suffering of the Arabs being murdered for demonstrating for democracy in Arab countries. Shockingly, the UCSD Guardian newspaper after an initial acceptance, at the final hour refused to run the editorial. So, the professors had to take out a full page ad which today featured the editorial with 28 signatures of UCSD Professors.
The editorial is below the fold. It is quite educational, and directly confronts the hypocrisy of the on campus anti-Israel groups for actually not giving much of a darn for oppressed Arabs but, instead being preoccupied with vilifying Israel.
These strong counters need to be spread to every other college campus. Please distribute this post to students and professors at other campuses.
Our crack(ed?) technical team at Maggie’s Farm (actually another secret CIA “farm”) has intercepted a secret personal letter just sent by former President George Bush to President Barack Obama.
Dear President Obama:
I’ve kept a respectful public silence about your administration, as you’ve kept silent in contacting me for my experience or any advise. But, I can no longer restrain my urge to thank you for vindicating many of my policies which you criticized during and since your campaign for the presidency.
Yes, I made some mistakes, and corrected some of them. You too have made some mistakes. I wish you the best of luck to correct them.
I must admit that I envy the better position that you are in to do so. I had to manage against a Democrat Congress and hostile press. You now have fewer Democrats to deal with in Congress, many more Republicans now there who are eager to support you with needed policies, and a press which has proven its loyalty to whatever you say.
May I suggest several areas in which you might take advantage of this favorable situation:
For the left, it provided long-term goals, criteria for distinguishing progress from retreat in making short-term compromises, and a kind of definition of the just society. For the right, it was a foil to be combated and averted — an archetype of soulless, stifling bureaucratic hubris — and it helped put objections to seemingly modest individual leftward steps into a broader, more coherent context. But both ends of our politics seemed implicitly to agree that, left to its own momentum, this is where our country was headed — where history would take us if no one stood athwart it yelling stop.
The newfound fervor for human rights among liberal supporters of President Obama’s “kinetic” enterprise in Libya might be better turned to Vietnam. Instead, ignoring the persecution of minorities there and ongoing – indeed, increasing – repression of dissent, they fall into line with US businesses profiting from cheap Vietnamese labor to look away. We ally with Middle East foes of freedom and abandon real seekers of freedom in Vietnam.
During the Vietnam War, the Montagnards -- Vietnam’s Central Highlands hill people, a distinct ethnic and cultural group different than the majority lowland Vietnamese – became strong allies in fighting against the communists. They had long wanted autonomy within Vietnam, and seeking their support Saigon granted them many of their requests.
Since 1975, the communist government of Vietnam has ruthlessly persecuted the Montagnards, imprisoning, torturing, murdering many and taking their lands for roads, plantations and mines, denuding the forests for valuable woods, moving the Montagnards from poverty to rootless impoverishment and loss of culture. Together with many within the government, those with connections and Chinese state businesses profit.
Many Montagnards are devout Protestants, Degar, whose churches are not recognized by the state and whose members come in for particularly harsh punishments. The Montagnard Foundation is their voice in the West, documenting and exposing their persecution. Few listen and fewer care, least of all the US government. Under both presidents Bush and Obama, the US government has looked away, with the myth that somehow Vietnam would be a counterweight to China but actually favoring US businesses that also profit from trade with Vietnam.
I’ve frequently written about this. (See, for example, these at a previous website.) My friend Scott Johnson is a lawyer, writer and human rights activist focusing on tribal peoples from South East Asia. His latest article, awaiting publication, focuses on cables from our ambassador to Vietnam that came to light in the WikiLeaks. The cables in question are from US Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak titled, Vietnam Religious Freedom Update. “Essentially the leaked confidential cables are a testament of betrayal as they blatantly fail to mention the hundreds of tribal Christian Montagnards or Degar people imprisoned in Vietnam….It’s as if the hundreds of Montagnard prisoners never existed….”
Richard Goldstone's report For the UN on Israel's Cast Lead incursion into Gaza in December and January 2008-2009 has been used by those antagonistic to Israel to charge that Israel acted wantonly against civilians. In Goldstone's Emily Litella moment, his op-ed in the Washington Post says "never mind." As summarized at CNN: "On Gaza, Goldstone essentially says that if he'd known then what he knows now, the report would not have been nearly so hard on Israel." William Jacobson sums that up: "Richard Goldstone Confirms He Was A Useful Idiot."
At the time, Israel and fair-minded governments and individuals carefully exposed the Goldstone Report's bias, distortions and reliance on pro-Hamas sources. This website presents the facts, ignored by the Goldstone Report. The New Republic, a liberal magazine, in a lengthy evaluation of "The Goldstone Illusion", concludes with:
The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair. It offers no help in sorting out the real issues. What methods can Israel--and other countries in similar situations--legitimately apply in the defense of their citizens? To create standards of morality in war that leave a state without the means of legitimate self-protection is politically foolish and morally problematic; but real answers to these real problems cannot be found in the Goldstone Report. What should Israel do when Hezbollah’s more lethal and accurate missiles strike the center of Tel Aviv, causing hundreds of civilian deaths? It is a well-known fact that these missiles are in Hezbollah’s possession, and, when they are fired, it will be from populated villages in Lebanon.
We'll not be holding our breath for apologies from the UN or leftist commentators who praised the Goldstone Report. Indeed, they'll hurl the same spurious charges next time, as every time.
P.S.: Tell us what you really think, John Podhoretz:
That Richard Goldstone did not know in 2009 that Hamas is a terrorist monstrosity which functions parasitically off civilian populaces while Israel is a beacon of war-fighting restraint in a manner practically unknown in the course of human history suggests even more plainly than the report itself that he is a dupe, a fool, a clown, and a worldwide embarrassment. Not to mention a special kind of reprehensible and appalling figure of inglorious, hideous shame to his own people through the delivery and promulgation of a false document that helped anti-Semites everywhere feel themselves justified.
He was then, and is now, an entirely despicable public figure—and so is his op-ed, by the way, which continues to act as though it is appropriate to draw parallel inferences about Hamas and the state of Israel. It would be right for world Jewry that his name be hereafter summoned as we summon Benedict Arnold’s, or Tokyo Rose’s.
On the other hand, or in addition, see this. But, if Goldstone was ignorant or dumb enough to be "rolled" he didn't belong there in the first place, and his mea culpa while nice to have doesn't undo the damage he wrought and furthered. -- Following Goldstone's recent speaking tour at Berkeley, this observation:
Attempting to justify his decision to proceed with the report, Goldstone has claimed to have been given a revised mandate by the rotating UNHRC president. This is clearly false. Of the "36 incidents" investigated by Goldstone, not one relates to the thousands of Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza, each a war crime targeting Israeli citizens....In his Berkeley presentation, Goldstone reportedly stated that "the powerful don't like to be looked at and judged." Goldstone is a powerful individual, and in failing to address the overwhelming and substantive criticism -- and moving far too slowly, if at all, to correct the enormous damage that he has caused -- Judge Goldstone continues to abuse his power.
"For Koran-buring"? Give me a break. It's the fault of some jerk in Florida? No. Just an excuse to go berserko and behead some filthy infidels. Muslims or anybody can burn all the Bibles they want. I don't care, and I won't want to harm anybody - I would just feel sorry for them. These are killers looking for excuses, and any excuse will do. That's just the way killers are: they kill because they are killers.
Naturally, they will do it politically, not rationally. What would anybody expect? How many experienced venture capitalists do they have on board?
Fact is, there is a ton of loose venture capital out there, looking for things to invest in and to support, from hi-tech to low-tech. Scouring the entire planet for interesting opportunities and good ideas. The difference is that they know what to look for, and the government is just looking to buy votes and to throw our hard-earned money at crap. It's not a joke, but it is.
Why don't colleges simply sell their diplomas at the time of admission, and then offer a few years of coursework afterwards, just in case some kids want to contend with some college courses?
The US already has boots on the ground in Libya; CIA intel guys and "advisors." Money and weapons too, no doubt, for the rag-tag rebels, whoever they are - certainly some or many are Jihadists - and regardless of what amount of support the current government has in the country - which seems to be unknown.
This is an American war, and it is not about freedom and self-determination and it's not simply about humanitarianism unless the US is to become the world's Chief of Police again. I can't even see that it's about geopolitics, as Iraq was, because nobody cares much about Libya except the Italians who get their oil from them. I do not know what it's about, but I would not be surprised if the Russians aand Chinese are amused by how we stepped in this pile of dog crap.
The New York Times reports that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights “took the unusual step this week of condemning the building and storage of anti-Israel rockets in densely populated areas, a practice that has led to injuries and deaths of civilians.”
“Unusual” isn’t quite the word for it. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights also supports Hamas and its affiliated terrorists “resistance” to Israel, and regularly condemns Israel for militarily reacting. In 2008, this NGO, financed by Western NGOs, also criticized the stockpiling and firing into Israel from populated locations in Gaza. Less populated areas in Gaza should, instead, be the depots and firing positions.
What’s missing from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights criticism, and from the New York Times report?
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights doesn’t condemn the rocket and mortar firing into Israel, and the New York Times doesn’t mention that.
The increased import of longer-range rockets into Gaza now land in the large city of Beersheba, and, as seen in the latest firings last week, now puts the southern area of Tel Aviv and Israel’s major port at Ashdod into range. They may soon reach to Jerusalem. See this map.
Even Human Rights Watch, a consistent severe critic of Israel, condemns the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel: “Deliberate or indiscriminate attacks against civilians are serious violations of the laws of war. Such attacks committed willfully - that is, intentionally or recklessly - are war crimes.” (more here) The New York Times report, also, doesn’t mention that.
For now, Israel doesn't want to serve as an excuse for anti-Israel propagandists to distract from the revolts against Arab satraps. Eventually, however, Israel will have to take more serious measures against the Gaza sanctuary for indiscriminate rocket and mortar attacks. You can be sure that pro-Palestinian NGOs, their funders and supporters in the UN, and the Western media will condemn Israel for “over-reaction” or “disproportionate use of force” or “civilians killed in Gaza” and such, as they did when Israel last went into Gaza to suppress Hamas and the firing sites. Seldom if at all mentioned will be that Hamas brought it upon itself and Gazans or that Israel had no other realistic alternative, at least if it wants to protect its own civilians and survive.
Oh, BTW, don't forget the almost 1000 weapons depots, bunkers and OP sites in 250 villages in southern Lebanon set up by Hezbollah -- answering to the same Iranian armers as Hamas, and likely to act in concert with Hamas when Israel enters Gaza again.
The traditional, thin plastic bag, though increasingly demonized and taxed, has better environmental performance and is likely to be considerably safer for human health than alternatives.
An Apple-connected friend sent me the gifts of an iPad and a groovy big Macbook Pro today. Very nice indeed. Slick machines. They work with my wireless, and have come with abundant Apple assitance from my local Apple Store. Plus he had them set up with my own new email etc. Am I ready for this?
But exactly how do all these Apple things work? My fingers are not trained for this, much less my brain. He says "Now, mind you, I am not an Apple evangelist, but..." Right.
I'll give it the old college try before dinner out on the town, while I listen to Dylan Radio. Me think me needs an Apple mouse in my house.
What if it turns out, like in Egypt (and in Afghanistan in the past), that the US and Euroland are naively laying out a red carpet for the Jihadists? Then what?
Granted that the region's squalid polities haven't had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired General Sir John Glubb half-a-century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots? But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.
The NY Times' reporters on the ground in Egypt apparently did not see Islamism coming, unlike the right-bloggers in pajamas sitting in dimly lit basements with candy wrappers strewn on the floor.
Everyone needs to take a step back and calm down. I'm not excusing the actions of national unions like SEIU (I detest them) but not every public employee is a hard-left ideologue. Mostly, we're regular folks doing a job and supporting our families. I hope this bit of insider's perspective is useful to AT readers, and thank you for letting me vent.
A Delta pilot’s story written by a Delta pilot on approach to Tokyo during the earthquake, forwarded thru CTV Television:
I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.
By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).
From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.
It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation.
Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.
One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was "ordered" by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.
With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer - Yokoda closed! no more space.
Reminds me of this Neal Stephenson quote: “The twentieth century was one in which limits on state power were removed in order to let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. . . . We Americans are the only ones who didn’t get creamed at some point during all of this. We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and value systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals.”
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."
We don't know what we are doing. We only know that we have moral support for it on paper, from an international organization that is utterly corrupt, wherein members who do not wish us well are pleased to grant us permission to blunder.
VDH's piece
Professor 
Gateway: 
I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.
Anchoress: