spinbadz own

In Israel and the Middle East there are amazing social phenomena that presently, thankfully, distinguish the environment there to that to which we who are lucky enough to live in wealthy and settled countries are accustomed.

From today's edition of Ha'aretz:

"Palestinian militants had fired at least four Qassam rockets at (a civilian neighbourhood in Israel proper). Eight people were treated for shock.

"One of the rockets hit a house, causing some damage, and another landed near a school.

"On Monday five people were treated for shock after three Qassam rockets hit (the same neighbourhood)."

Regular rocket attacks!

Can you fathom it? This doesn't even make the international news headlines. Or draw the condemnation, let alone the attention, of the United Nations. No fist-pumping indignation or "illegal" comments from Kofi Annan, or Amnesty International, or the BBC.

Yet children are endangered and targeted, and neither they nor their parents are the demonised Jewish settlers that live in the West Bank and Gaza.

Peace, you say? Peace process?

At another level - but within the "how lucky we are" context - a recent report from an Israeli human rights group claims that in the vicinity of 45% of Israeli Arabs (those living within Israel, not Palestinians in the territories) live below the poverty line, as opposed to 15% of Israeli Jews.

45%! I know not how accurate or credible the report is, but it is a huge number, and no doubt a huge contributer to dissatisfaction and susceptibility to fanaticism. And in any case, an unacceptable social division. Not though a justification for hateful rocket attacks from have-nots against haves.


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One day after the above report about missile attacks comes the news (if you look real hard, perhaps mainly in Israeli papers) that:

"Two young children were killed and 31 others were wounded when two Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck the Negev town of Sderot around 5 P.M. on Wednesday evening."

Both children were under ten years of age. Hamas was evidently proud to claim responsibility. Ethiopian and Soviet immigrants are apparently the main residents of the town.

Sderot is within the 9km range of the Qassam rockets, which is why it is continually targeted. Something like the infamous Nazi logic to experimentation seems to apply here: so long as Jews are being killed, who cares; or is it: so long as Jews are being killed, we're achieving our aim.


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One wonders if or how these rocket attacks will factor into the actions of the Presbyterian Church, which has reportedly decided to begin selective divestiture in companies operating in Israel.

Says the Washington Post:

"Jewish-Presbyterian relations have been in turmoil since the 2.4 million-member Presbyterian Church's General Assembly voted 431 to 62 in July to "initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel" and also decided to continue funding messianic congregations that target Jews for proselytizing.

"The Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, issued a report this week saying that mainline Protestant denominations devoted 37 percent of their human rights declarations over the past four years to criticism of Israel, far more than any other foreign country."

Sounds a lot like the UN, or perhaps like any group of normal people forming opinions in the shadow of endless and endlessly biased television and media reports about the Middle East conflict.

"Of all our (US) allies in the world, which is the only one to have joined the United States in the foxhole in every war in the past 100 years? Not Britain, not Canada, certainly not France. The answer is Australia

"... (T)his month's car bombing in Jakarta, Indonesia, was ...set off at the Australian Embassy. ...Just weeks before the Australian election.

Of the incident says Diana Kerry, sister to John, head of Americans Overseas for Kerry -- ."[W]e are endangering the Australians now by this wanton disregard for international law and multilateral channels."

"...The only thing that distinguishes Kerry's Iraq proposals from Bush's is his promise to deploy his unique, near-mystical ability to bring in new allies to fight and pay for the war in Iraq

"Kerry abuses America's closest friends while courting those, like Germany and France, that have deliberately undermined America before, during and after the war."



Charles Krauthammer, "The Art Of Losing Friends", Washington Post

"On Tuesday, four days after a U.N. agency told Iran not to do it, Iran announced that it has begun processing 37 tons of yellowcake (milled uranium) into a gas as part of a process to produce a compound that can be used in nuclear power plants but that also can be a precursor of highly enriched uranium for weapons."

- George F. Will , September 22




Right-wing (and these days that includes anyone and anything pro-US) interests appear to have hit back effectively and hard at UN Secretary-General Annan following his recent Iraq-invasion-as-"illegal" tango with the BBC. They have raised some valid, and consequently sad, points. See in particular the recent items from Claudia Rosset and Victor Davis Hanson in the WSJ, which I am about to paraphrase shamelessly.

Leading off though is Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom, who yesterday urged the General Assembly to end it's (truly amazing) obsession with Israel.

Is it an "obsession", you ask (duly implementing scare quotes where any "official", "Israeli" statement is made)?

Well, consider the staggering fact that (per Hanson) "nearly half of (UN) resolutions in the past half-century have been aimed at punishing (democratic) Israel!"

As Shalom* reminds us, just in the last 2 years the UN has passed something like 26 anti-Israel resolutions. This while paying scant attention to, oh, nuclear scares from North Korea and Iran, beheadings and slaughters of innocents in Iraq, starvation and genocide in Sudan.

Not to mention the offer of reward payment by erstwhile Iraqi dictator Hussein to families of Jew-mauling murder bombers (something like a US-equivalent $25,000 a ... pop, if memory serves me correctly). Nor to mention the daily headlines in Israeli newspapers about - think about this, perhaps - missile attacks on civilian suburbs in Israel launched from Palestinian areas, and the many, many suicide attacks that are foiled or otherwise do not succeed.

Not much UN tut-tutting about any of this, not compared to the endless horn-honking about Israel.

But the UN is a body where Libya has chaired the Commission on Human Rights (of which Zimbabwe is a member), where France sits on the Security Council while Germany, India and Japan do not, and where many of the same dictators who might be removed from power or jailed in the name of democratic liberty are voting members and control large voting blocs.

Is it an anachronism? If not, how competent is it at a decision-making body?

Adding considerable and perhaps devastating weight to such questions are the recent revelations about rampant UN corruption, prevalent and suspected over many years and raising it's head this time in the form of the so-called "oil-for-food" graftocracy. Even as Nobel Peace hero and self-styled international legal expert Kofi "I can do business with Saddam" Annan is accused of stonewalling various investigations, accusations are pouring out about the possible involvement of his own son in corruption.

There appears to be damning evidence that top UN administrators received enormous bribes.

Worse, despite the huge - billion-dollar - fees earned by Annan's secretariat in running the program, it seems a safe bet that Saddam reaped spanking personal profits, didn't miss a beat in building his weapons arsenal, continued to deprive people of basic necessities, and funnelled loads and loads of cash to terrorists.


* Salaam

Claims about President Bush's purported youthful flirtations with cocaine received a large amount of publicity in comparison to that devoted - at any time - to the profound suspicions of drug involvement aroused regarding former President Clinton.

The lack of Big Media balance on this issue comes, of course, as no surprise.

Pro-Democrat reporting has been a hallmark over many years and persists in the current electoral campaign. For as Newsweek's Evan Thomas remarked about US electoral politics generally: "The media, I think, wants Kerry to win . . . that's going to be worth maybe 15 points."

Thomas's "15 points" might or might not be a valid estimate of the affect of media bias vis-a-vis the US electorate, and it seems that blanket negative coverage of the Bush White House may have had an even greater effect in distant countries.

Recent polls in The Scotsman and The Financial Times show that a ridiculously high percentage of people in 30 of 35 overseas countries - amongst whom Germany, France and Britain are amongst the biggest Bush haters - prefer Kerry to Bush.

Why so? Perhaps part of the answer can be found in another poll, that taken by the Marshall Fund in June, which found that 58% of Europeans consider "strong U.S. leadership to be undesirable." As WSJ points out, "these polls show that the same Europeans who overwhelmingly favor the election of John Kerry also favor a weaker America."

This possible explanation aside, Kerry must of course have been revelling in both the timing and the air time given (by his friends?) to the first-mentioned polls.

Knowing what we do about the Big Media picture helps put into perspective the myopic issue of presidential experimentation with or use of cocaine.

The claims about Bush in Kitty Kelly's book were highlighted on the heels of the Republican National Convention, and shared the spotlight even with the revolting slaughter of a large school full of Russian children by terrorists - and also with the quadruple bypass operation endured by former President Clinton.

The fact that Ms Kelly has also - without citing any supporting evidence - in a previous book:

- falsely maligned the late President Reagan as a date rapist who paid for a girlfriend's abortion;

- wrongly castigated Nancy Reagan as an adulterer who had an affair with Frank Sinatra; and

- claimed that Governor and Nancy Reagan smoked marijuana with Jack Benny and George and Gracie Burns

has not proved to be an impediment to her recent, electorally timed, anti-Bush allegations gaining a lot of air time in many places. Some media outlets have repelled the author's credibility.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman suggested that Kelley's sourcing for the new book's (central) Bush-cocaine allegation was "un-checkable and ... otherwise un-witnessable".

Many will be of the same mind of this blogger: Who gives a fig about whether Bush (or Clinton) has used cocaine? Or about Clinton's capers with Lewinsky. Or about James Carville recently saying on live radio that the GOP "probably shot (Zell Miller) up with something", or - especially or - about the lurid spectacle of Al Gore wearing his embedded bitterness, yet again, upon an angry sleeve.

But such things are deemed worthy by some of an international spotlight.

So the issue of Clinton's cocaine usage might just one time be clarified once and for all (but preferably not by anybody at CBS 60 Minutes). This especially now, in the light of the former President's recent heart attack, which may reasonably provoke the question of whether or not this event might have some nexus with cocaine usage.

Questions about the Clinton-cocaine issue have indeed been raised in the past, but seemed to largely pass under the radar of the mainstream media. These questions include (to name just a few):

- How close was Bill Clinton's relationship with his brother (described for years by the media as a distant "half-brother") who was convicted for cocaine trafficking in Arkansas and then pardoned from prison by his governor-(half-) brother. An undercoverpolice video of Roger Clinton is said to record him saying, to a cocaine vendor, that Bill would love the "stuff" (at hand, or nose as it were), he having "a nose like a vacuum cleaner". According to many reports, Bill and Roger had a close relationship from childhood through the elder brother's accession to the White House;

- Is it true that the question asked by a reporter to Bill "Depends what the meaning of is is" Clinton when he famously answered "I tried marijuana once, but I never inhaled" was: "Have you ever tried cocaine or marijuana?"

- What were the parameters of Bill's evidently close relationship with one Dan Lassiter, millionaire, financial administrator of various Clinton fundraising campaigns, convicted cocaine trafficker, former employer of Roger Clinton and fellow recipient of the Arkansas governor's pardon enabling release from prison. Lassiter later scoffed at the charge of trafficking, saying that the cocaine was being used in a social context when he was arrested, so he had done nothing wrong. At least one former employee of Lassiter was a high-ranking official working for Clinton at the White House.

- What on earth was the Arkansas boys-on-the-railway-tracks-killings all about? Ostensibly it involved a series of murders, convictions of corrupt officials and horrendous judicial "errors" (including the ruling by the Arkansas coroner - later promoted by his boss Bill Clinton - that the missing head of one of the (murder) victims had not been chopped off but had been "eaten by a dog". The head was later found. And as I said, the erring coroner was promoted.) Many say that Arkansas became a major cocaine trafficking location while Clinton was governor, and that politicians who turned a blind eye or even facilitated the enterprise reaped fund-raising benefit.

Regarding the last point, that of drug money being channeled to support political candidates, it certainly seems to be a relevant point that ambitious politicians with negligable personal financial resources and with limited traditional corporate backing - unlike Bush 41 or 43 - might be susceptible.

For information supporting or colouring these allegations, there should still be plenty around on the Internet and in various books.

There certainly was a few years ago, though virtually all has been largely ignored in the mainstream media. Meanwhile the "War on Drugs" remains moribund or in tatters, and the slightest whiff of a drugs controversy about Bush has the media scurrying, even while the same people are quick to dismiss Clinton's heart problems as hereditary and possibly aggravated by a "legendary" attraction to fast food.

There are other "legends", however. How about dealing with or putting paid to them.


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Per Nicholas Kristoff in the Bush is Bad News:

"I remember rumors about Mr. Bush in the 2000 campaign that were well known among journalists, but they never saw the light of print because we could not substantiate them. Every major candidate draws scurrilous charges, but responsible journalists - quite rightly - refuse to report unsubstantiated accusations of things like love children, drug dealing or mistresses."

Well. That may be, in a sense, a way of implying a lot while saying nothing about Bush.

Regarding the Democrat's great white father, it's possible there simply were no rumours whiffed or snorted by reporters at the NYT.

None worth saying nothing about, in any case.

The Democrats and their nominal leader John Kerry seem to be suffering image problems. As per today's Bush is Bad News item:


Several Democrats said they were not happy to see news photographs of Mr. Kerry windsurfing in the Atlantic waters off Nantucket during the convention, suggesting that it underlined the very image of Mr. Kerry - as a wealthy, culturally out-of-touch liberal - that the Republicans were trying to convey.

"I might have gone windsurfing - you certainly have a right to clear your head,'' said Mr. Rendell, a former head of the Democratic National Committee. "But I'm not sure I would have taken the press with me."



In the (designer) Democrat trenches outside the RNC at Madison Square Garden, WSJ.com Opinion Journal's Pulitzer Prize winning writer Daniel Henninger explored a similar theme amongst Kerry acolytes, and found a very different atmosphere to that of the anti-Vietnam war protests of 1968:



One man stood like a sentinel at the park's entrance with a sign that read: "The U.S.--Founded, Grown and Sustained by Mass Extermination."

Unlike 1968, many people were in their cell-phone bubbles.

A young guy was showing a shirt he was trying to sell --black, sleeveless, with large, hanging arm openings. "If you get the large and you start moving around a lot, it won't bunch up so much."

Today's protesters ... know how to wear clothes and accessories ... you could see shoes by Nike and Timberland, bike helmets by Bell, backpacks by Kelty, Caribee and Mizuno. They knew how to assemble this stuff.

There was a tall kid in brown pouch slacks. He had the bottoms neatly rolled up and draped over soft black sneakers. He was wearing a blue bandanna, had a silver earring and an orange and gray backpack. Everything matched. An army surplus belt held his water. There was a girl in a beret, green T-shirt and baggy gray slacks rolled just to catch the top of her socks. One of her socks was gray and the other was argyle. They set off her scuffed combat boots.

The fashion industry hires people now to hang around events like this to collect raw data ... By next spring, it will be on sale at malls everywhere.

So it seemed a paradox that at the other end of the demonstration, outside Madison Square Garden, the protesters were wearing pig masks, yelling "oink, oink" and making fun of Dick Cheney, calling Halliburton "Halli-bacon" and denouncing the Republicans as slaves to corporate America, even while they themselves were draped in corporate design logos.

The 1968 convention demonstration was led by Abbie Hoffman, a character. This one was led by Michael Moore, a brand. His look is his logo.

Interesting item in Ha'aretz today, particularly in the light of Ghandi's descendant's recent visit to the Palestinian territories. During the visit he called for non-violent protest and respect for the sanctity of human life.

India today starts to reap some of the broader benefits of the societal model it has forged:


" ... (O)utsourcing has become an issue in the American election campaign: Jobs - and in particular those that require education and technological skills - are fleeing from the United States to India ... There is still vicious poverty rife in India, but overall, the story of modern India is an impressive success story, and its direction of development is positive.

" ... (T)he colonial era in that country was far longer than in Arab countries ... India is a country in which huge ethnic, linguistic and religious variety abounds ... its success in maintaining both its unity (despite separatist movements) and democratic regime is an especially impressive achievement. The conflict with Israel often serves as an excuse for the absence of democracy in the Arab states. However, India also has experienced a prolonged and violent conflict ...

" ... (T)he Indian national movement did not turn its hatred for the West into the main content of its world view. It did not turn the colonial past ... into an alibi ... for every failure."



India, like Japan, Israel and China, has ample reasons to lapse into hatred, but is instead shaping as - and at least trying to be - a model of tolerance and prosperity. In the sphere of lifting itself by the bootlaces, there is probably no greater example to the world than Japan, a country that suffered the wrath of two atomic bombs and which has little other than water and people in the way of plentiful natural resources.

The notable modern "technological" gifts of the Arab world being little beyond the suicide bomber belt, the Al-Jazeera style of "reality" TV execution, and the Qasam missile, the potential for positive development in that region remains enormous.

With frightened French journalists being paraded on television to advertise the demands of their kidnappers, schoolchildren being murdered and held hostage in Chechnya, and busloads of innocents in Israel being yet again mercilessly deleted (this an occurrence so common that the world barely bats its collective eyelid), the usual parade of apologists cite the usual plethora of excuses, which centre chiefly around perpetrators not being responsible for their own actions.

Thank goodness for the alternative views, and for the evidence of a worthwhile and achievable end for those countries and individuals that heed them, and for the fact that those that heed them appear far more worthy of respect and veneration than the young lemming recording his intention on video before attempting the mass murder that someone has convinced him is actually the (perverse) will of the Creator.