Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
The star witness against the government of Iraq hobbled into the room, her legs braced with clumsy metal callipers. "Anna" had been tortured two years ago. She is now four years old. Her father, Ali, is a thick-set Iraqi who used to work for Saddam's psychopathic son, Uday. Some time after the bungled assassination of Uday, Ali fell under suspicion. Saddam's secret police have been accused of torturing children. He fled north, to the Kurdish safe haven policed by Western fighter planes, but leaving his wife and daughter behind in Baghdad. So the secret police came for his wife. Where is he? They tortured her. And when she didn't break, they tortured his daughter. "When did you last see your father? Has he phoned? Has he been in contact?" They half-crushed the toddler's feet.
And what about those dead babies we hear so much about?
Ali continued, he told me that he had to go to Najaf - a town 160km (100 miles) from Baghdad - in order to bring children's bodies from various freezers there, and that the smell was unbearable. They used to collect children's bodies and put them in freezers for two, three or even six or seven months - God knows - until the smell got unbearable. Then, they arrange the mass funerals. The logic being, the more dead babies, the better for Saddam. That way, he can weaken public support in the West for sanctions. That means that parents who have lost a baby can't bury it until the regime says so.
Oh that wacky Guardian. Fair and balanced? You tell me. Israeli army 'error' kills four.The implication being one man's 'error' is another man's massacre?
And ABC news Australia kicking in, too. US stands by Israel's 'right' to defend itself. Damned unilateral Americans going and admitting Israel's right to exist. If only they could take a more nuanced view of gnocide.
The president of Cuba's parliament equated socialism with democracy Thursday as he received more than 8 million signatures collected for a constitutional change declaring that the island's socialist system is ``untouchable.''
They report this without any hint that it is such a blatant sham that I am sure even Jimmy Carter may be able to spot it. Whether he would admit it is another issue.
``Only socialism offers the possibility of a real democracy; today is a historic day,'' Alarcon said after receiving boxes of signatures representing more than 99 percent of Cuba's legal voters. The boxes arrived in 23 vehicles, each identified with the name of a different province. ``We are sure that this effort will be welcomed and backed by a genuinely popular assembly,'' Alarcon said. Cuba's mass organizations, which are tied to the country's ruling Communist Party, orchestrated the signature drive over three days, ending Tuesday.
By the way, I love how socialism (supposedly in the European model, I would assume) is interchangable with Stalinist Communism, which then becomes the only way to democracy.
Where were CNN and the Beeb on this one? 3,000 Iranian exiles protested in front of the Danish Parliment.
Mohammad Mohadessin, foreign affairs head for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Mujahedeen's umbrella group, called for "the removal of the terrorist label against the Mujahedeen" and the end to European support for "religious fascism" in Iran. "By investing in religious fascism ruling Iran, EU is not just letting down its own moral and political values, but is putting its money on a losing horse," Mohadessin said. "The ruling mullahs have no place in the future of Iran," he added.
Sean over at Hublog has an interesting observation on the front page of Boston.com. It's kind of confusing. Very politically correct, yet so subtly demeaning.
Media slant? I have noticed that all of the headlines involving the latest deaths in the Middle East have followed two trends. There are a number of different wordings but they both go something like this; "Five Israeli Settlers Killed" and the other goes like this "Israeli Troops Kill Three Palestinian Children in Market". Maybe I'm just reading more into it than is there. But maybe not.
Did I mention that four of those five settlers were a mother and three of her children?
The Israeli Ambassador to South Africa's daughter was one of those murdered this week byterrorists. South Africa, you mean the home of Desmond Tutu the man who is spending his days comparing Israel to Aparthied ruled South Africa. Maybe he should sit down and talk about it with this father.
I would be more optimistic about Mbeki's NEPAD if he was more honest when it came to assessing the problems in Africa. His refusal to stand up to what is going on in Zimbabwe is probably just a preview of how effective all that cash would be.
"I'm concerned that America is a country that only thinks about its own well-being," said Ahn, who hopes to attend Friday's match to cheer on the Germans."Korea has been hurt a lot by the United States, financially, in sports events and in other ways."
"...I think it is also natural for Korean people not to support the United States," she said. "There is still some bad feeling between us."
What?!? Fine, I am sure the 30,000 US soldiers keeping Kim il Jong from ruling 'eternally' over a united peninsula would love to come home and be closer to their families. While we are at it they can pay reparations for all of the dead US soldiers who kept South Korea from being overrun in the Korean War. If anyone should be less ungrateful and more appreciative of the US it is South Koreans.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told a Knesset delegation that as long as he is in power he will never allow the EU to imposesanctions on Israel.
The Saudis are apparently claiming that the Brit killed by a car bomb was involved in alcohol running. Sky News has posted some emails from expats in Riyadh and people who knew him who say the Saudis are lying.
Mary Robinson and Ruud Lubbers have condemned the growing concern of Europeans over refugees and immigration. They say it is all about misconceptions being fed to the European electorate. This is what is so wrong with bureaucracy. Sitting in their offices these two have decided that what the average European sees in their neighborhoods is not really what they see, therefore they are to be condemned for not following the bureacracy's dictates.
"The media portrays the conflict with Israel as the occupier and Palestinians as the underdog," Katz said. "We see it differently, and we have to combat that portrait. Unfortunately, television speaks with images. One picture of a body is worth 10 times a picture of a spokesman."
Pakistan passed a new law to try to regulate themadrassas. An un-registered madrassas would not be permitted to receive grant, donation or aid from any foreign sources or allow admission to foreign students or make appointment of teachers without valid visa and NOC from Interior Ministry.
If they enforce it there could be some change but time will tell.
A very good look at the recruiting and make up of suicide bombers. Ignore the anti-Israel slant and the rest is pretty good. There is talk of the iron fist of Ariel Sharon and hopelessness, which wouldn't explain the first wave of suicide bombers well before Ariel Sharon's election in the first Intifada nor the palnning for the second Intifada which began before Sharon's election.
More than 50 Palestinians took out a full-page newspaper ad today condemning suicide bombings, sparking debate at a time when most Palestinians support the attacks as an effective way to hit Israel."We see no results in such attacks, but a deepening of the hatred between both peoples and a deepening of the gap between us," the ad said.
The signatories included Hanan Ashrawi, a leading Palestinian spokeswoman and a legislator, and the Palestinians' senior Jerusalem official, Sari Nusseibeh, along with other prominent figures regarded as moderates. The ad urged other Palestinians to join them in their opposition to the bombings. "We felt we had to chart a course, not just break the silence," said Ashrawi. "We wanted to create a momentum to get people to think with their minds and to reason, instead of always reacting emotionally and out of revenge and pain and trauma."
Will this statement have any effect or will the fifty signators be gunned down and lynched in the streets as collaberators?
Maybe Ted Turner and Cherie Blair should ask this voice of reson wholives in Nablus about what it is that drives the suicide bombers.
...Zohair Dobei, considered a moderate Muslim sheikh in the West Bank city of Nablus, stressed the Islamic prohibition on killing civilians. He also was critical of Palestinian mothers who have appeared in videos, endorsing bombing attacks subsequently carried out by their sons. "I can't imagine that there is a mother in the world who can dispatch her son, or who would not prevent him from doing so if she knows that he is going to kill himself," Dobei said.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Relations, Mohammad Javad Zarif, expressed his concern with spreading Islamophobia in the West, to the Chris Patten. Can he let us know the last time there was a public speech by an Iranian 'leader' that called for less hate filled rhetoric against the West?
"We will not put American men and women under the reach of the International Criminal Court while serving in a United Nations peacekeeping operation," U.S. representative Richard Williamson said on Wednesday.
I just wish that the next time a PA representative is on TV demanding that Israel withdraw from the 'Occupied Territories' without the concession of a cessation of violence beforhand an interviewer, any interviewer, would ask: "If you are willing to say that the Israelis should do this wouldn't it be reasonable for the PA, as a gesture of its intent for peace, to first remove the passage in their charter calling for the destruction of the Zionist Entity (aka Israel)?" and then not let the representative weasle out of an answer. Make him or her say outright yes or no.
"Because I love my son, I encouraged him to die a martyr's death for the sake of Allah... Muhammad was seven when the martyr 'Imad 'Aql lived with us at home, [and] despite his young age, he was [an] assistant to 'Imad 'Aql... 'Imad lived with us for 14 months, and he had a room in our house from which he would plan the operations. The mujahideen would come to him and plan and sketch everything out, and little Muhammad would be with them, thinking and planning. This was the source of Muhammad's love of martyrdom. This is the atmosphere in which the love of martyrdom developed in Muhammad's soul. I, as a mother, naturally encouraged the love of Jihad in the soul of Muhammad and in the souls of all my sons, all of whom belong to the Al-Qassam Brigades. My eldest son, Nidal (31), is wanted now by the Israelis. My second son set out on a martyrdom operation, but was discovered, arrested, and sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment. I have another son who is the escort of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The atmosphere to which Muhammad was exposed was full of faith and love of martyrdom... He would brandish his weapon and tell me: 'Mom, this is my bride.' He loved his gun so much."
Interesting. STRATFOR is reporting that Saudi Arabia is making arrests and making public announcements about it are being forced by Egypt's cooperation with the US.
"Those guys that knocked down the building there (in New York) are ready with our equipment ... now there is this problem, I am not going to go on calling another country negotiating with those guys and afterwards find that you don't want it," continued Rubinho, according to the tape.
This is the first I saw of these lines from the suicide bomber's note. All of the media apoligists seem to have missed this part of the note.
"How beautiful it is to make my bomb shrapnel kill the enemy. How beautiful it is to kill and to be killed – not to love death, but to struggle for life, to kill and be killed for the lives of the coming generation."
Arab information ministers talk about beginning a media blitz to turn the world against Israel. They want to establish a satellite channel to spread their propaganda...I mean 'truth' to alter American and International opinion.
They are also trying to force "Arab media not to allow Israeli officials to address Arab public opinion in their attempt to justify agression". And to counter "Israeli and US attempts to portray the Palestinian national struggle as unjustified terrorism". Qatar and al-Jazeera have refused to follow this mandate, to their credit.
So, they would like to prove the justification of Palestinian terrorism and stop the justification of Israeli defence.
Ted Turner apparently was using the Hamas talking points memo when he made his comments on Israeli 'terrorism'. Sheikh Zaid Sahran, a Hamas religious figure in Al-Faraa, said of the suicide bombing last night: "How can we fight back against tanks and planes? This operation brings back some equilibrium between them (the Israelis) and us,"
It's nice to know exactly what party line Ted likes to take.
I get so sick of the mantra, "Palestinian youth feel they have no choice'. They don't feel that without a thugocracy running them and admitting Israel's right to exist then going on to work honestly and openly with the Israelis would lead to hope. Suicide bombing urged on them by parents, 'politicians' and religious leaders is the ponly path they see? Well then, why the hell just keep repeating that when someone with your standing, Cherie Blair, can go to the Palestinians and tell them exactly what they can do that will give them hope. Embrace open talks with the Israelis and drop the incessant calls for the extirpation of the 'Zionist Entity' and the death of all Jews therein.
Palestian children catching on to the newest craze. Martyr neclaces.
"I used to have plenty of Pokémons — my school bag was half full of them," Saleh said. "I threw them all away. They're not important now. The pictures of martyrs are important. They're our idols."
What is it again that breeds suicide bombers? Desperation or constant praise and encouragement by parents?
Jabal said the children have lost all fear of Israeli soldiers and already go through dangerous lengths to imitate their militant models. Recently, Jabal's 15 year-old son was shot in the leg by soldiers after setting fire to an unoccupied tank. "I opened my son's closet and found it full of martyrs posters and necklaces. I said to him there's nothing wrong with being nationalistic and defending your rights, but you're just too young," Jabal said. "I said, `Ultimately, you'll be rewarded with your picture hanging from a necklace, and we will have lost a son.'"
'As a priest, I learned that we should leave our fate to God. But in this situation where your personal safety is under constant threat, people need to arm themselves,' said Father Enriquez, who was seized at a church compound in Lamitan in June last year.
Wise words:'We should always trust God. But we should also do our part and do what is necessary to protect ourselves,' said the priest.
I got around to my Friday reading and noticed in Nicholas Christof's column on Friday he quotes ex-Pakistani General Hamid Gul as saying that should conflict between Inda and Pakistan erupt it would be a Jihad. In using Hamid Gul as a source Kristoff forgot to mention that he was one of the first people to say that September 11th was carried out by Mossad.
Are they trying to insinuate something? On page seven of the Boston Herald this morning they are running a story under the title of "Dems Laud Bush Plan to Oust Saddam" and the accompanying picture is of John McCain.
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