Just trying to see if comments work now. Your previous ISP must have failed in some very ungraceful way when the bandwidth limit was exceeded to make comments disappear/get scrambled/start appearing at the top instead of the bottom of the threads.

Note: This is my second comment. I don't know if my first comment will post or not. I posted it and now see only your original blog post with no comments at all. There is no feedback as to whether my first comment posted or failed to post.

The other ISP failed in huge ways Nadine. And now on my computer I can't see the comments at the end of the articles -- though I can see them on the front page. So, still working this stuff out.
All best -- thanks for patience, steve

In an age where most corporations act decidedly unenlightened
with regard to their intellectual property, Hormel has been very
reasonable when it comes to the modern use of the word "spam".
They ask only that it not be spelled "SPAM", to differentiate it from
their product.

Out of respect for their policy, I refrain from using images of their
product in relation to internet spam. I respectfully suggest that
you might consider doing the same.

This is my third comment. The blog post currently shows 3 comments but I cannot read the list of comments. When I click on "read more" I get a screen with only your original blog post and no comments.

This is my fourth comment. I can read the list of comments now.

"This is my third comment".

Oh, thank God "nadine"/Wigwag can finally comment again.

Comments seem to be working now, except that new comments are still being added to the top of the list rather than to the bottom. This is my fifth comment.

Thanks for dogging through this Nadine. I've let me web manager/colleague know what is happening. I'm having same problems.

Ben, your point was a very good one. Did as you suggested and removed that photo.

best, steve clemons

No I spoke too soon. After I posted my fifth comment, the screen that I saw did NOT include my fifth comment, though the front page of TWN did include it. The page that shows after posting needs to be refreshed. This is my sixth comment.

DonS, keep your britches on. I'm just trying to give Steve some feedback to help him sort out his technical difficulties.

Hey Ben, my very good high school buddy was CEO of Hormel for a long time. I'm not surprised they have been reasonable. Along with loving golf, he's a very reasonable guy.

This was a marvelous break for me -not to profit too indecently from the misery of others. I've read a huge amount of Nasar's bio of John Nash. Really interesting book.

One question in my techno ignorance.... Was this spamming or hacking? In my head the difference is significant. (I suppose I'm asking if any kind of paranoid interpretation is actually rational or not!)

Thanks for all the work you do, Steve.

Well, my last post (to Ben) did) not go through either. I mentioned that a good high school buddy had been CEO of Hormel for a long time, and I'm not surprised they have been reasonable. Besides loving golf, he's a very reasonable guy.

2 followup comments from me (to Ben). Neither showed up.

comments showed up only after I backed out and refreshed the whole site, and refreshed again.

Currently the front page of TWN shows 14 comments on this thread, but when I attempt to read the comments I see only 10. When either reading or posting comments, the viewer is being shown what may be an obsolete version of the comments page when s/he always needs to see the latest version of the page. The comments page does seem to get refreshed at some interval, but it is not consistently keeping up with the latest version. Because the comments page is being refreshed, just not consistently, Andrew should be aware that the bug will occur intermittently. This is my seventh comment.

I'm noticing a significant lag time in being able to read posted comments; 5 minutes at least right now.

the current comment shows up in the "feature strip" at the bottom of the post, but not in the actual comments.

questions, it sounds to me like it was neither spamming nor hacking, just buggy software, low bandwidth limits, and corrupted files at Steve's (now former) ISP.

Few threads on this blog have reached even 100 comments. In today's blogosphere, that's not even heavy usage, much less a denial of service attack.

Unless of course, there's something Steve has not told us.

Are some comments never appearing on the thread? To me it looks like there is simply a
delay (5-15 minutes?) between comments showing up on the front page, and showing up on
the thread - besides that they appear at the top instead of at the bottom of the
thread.

You`re correct, Nadine and DonS, there is a time
lag.

Paul, so far the bug is explicable as viewing bug, not a posting bug, since nobody has complained of a comment that goes missing and stays missing.

Viewers see an obsolete version of the comments page without the latest comments. At some interval (5 minutes perhaps?) the page gets refreshed and more comments show up. The TWN front page seems to get refreshed more often than the comments page but I'm not sure if it stays up-to-date either.

This is my ninth comemnt.

On the other hand, I don`t need to try several times to get them through
captcha (like before); I always succeed on my first attempt. If the rest of
the problems are sorted out, this may be good news...

Gee, Nadine seems to know quite a bit about this techie stuff, eh?

I see Clinton just slavored a bunch of praise on Netanyahu for his "concessions" that don't really exist, just as I predicted. That makes Hillary a complicit propagandist, rather than a diplomat, negotiator, or mediator. Meanwhile, Pelosi presses for the Goldstone report to be buried and ignored. These people are bought and paid for slime.

also one time capcha try, I think , , ,

I commented on the Wilkerson thread below. I had to refresh to get the comment to come up, but it did so on the first try.

steve i have a theory your site is attracting attention and it is from some folks who don't like some of what you are addressing... ultimately this is a good sign, but it means you need to be strongly positioned to not let it interfere with your continuation or those who comment here...

that said, here's a good article on j st. some might like to read..

J Street: Do we really need another Jewish-only road?

by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb on October 30, 2009 · 36 comments

If you’re Palestinian, you know about checkpoints. There are over 600 checkpoints in the West Bank alone. They block, obstruct, frustrate and kill. Women die in childbirth at checkpoints, students are kept from attending school, parents from visiting their children, laborers from going to work. No one can swim in the sea. Israeli Jews are waved through checkpoints. They can swim in the sea. No problem. Jews travel freely on a complex system of Jewish-only roads and live on the Jewish side of the Separation Barriers along hundreds of miles of walls and fortified fences that keep Palestinians out. Palestinians live in an open air prison. Sometimes there is a moment of spring and the guards open the gates. But spring never lasts long. Blockades, nightly incursions, full-scale invasions, imprisonment, collective punishment, land theft, water theft, denial of education, health care, an economic future, frequent beatings and no freedom of movement is the daily bread of Palestinians. You can’t travel more than three miles without encountering a check point. Talk about stress.

J Street was a place where Jews talked to Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Few Palestinians were present. Apparently they didn’t make it through the checkpoint. The narrative of J Street, like most Jewish narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, reflects the nature of the conflict as seen through a Jewish lens: Palestinians are physically absent. A Jew who seeks to express her activism in solidarity with Palestinians is in danger of loosing her ‘I love Israel’ card at a mainstream Jewish checkpoint. There were checkpoints at J Street. Some people were allowed in but not officially asked to participate, some were dis-invited, and some were not considered to be part of the conversation in the first place.

http://mondoweiss.net/2009/10/j-street-do-we-really-need-another-jewish-only-road.html

One of the posts that has dissappeared as a subsequence of this "attack" was an opinion piece I posted on the Barghouti thread. It was a piece by Philip Giraldi, questioning the true relevence of J Street, as really, it is just another organization pushing the pro-Israel narrative. I certainly agree with his take on J Street. It will be interesting to see how J Street reacts to Hillary's latest bit of shameless prostitution with Netanyahu. And in turn, it will be interesting to see how the "Palestine Note" presents Israel's so called "concessions", as well.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/10/28/my-problem-with-j-street/

An excerpt...

"It is one more voice pushing the same old agenda with slightly different window dressing. This is not to suggest that AIPAC and J Street are actually acting in collusion but the two pro-Israel lobbies clearly have the same overriding objective: to preserve unlimited American support for the state of Israel, not advancing the interests of the United States except insofar as one assumes erroneously that Tel Aviv’s and Washington’s interests are identical. J Street calls continued massive US military aid to Israel "an absolutely essential aspect of Israel’s security." If it is difficult to perceive any pro-American element to the J Street program it is because it is not about the United States at all – it is about Israel. J Street believes Washington should continue indefinitely in its role as Israel’s patron, security guarantor, and financial supporter"

"This Swine flu thing is a big hoax. Rumsfeld's involved, nuff said." (O.A.)

And there can be no doubt that the Washington Note was hacked by those very same
bastards that were behind the swine flu hoax, Michael Jackson`s and Elvis` death
(Rummy was operating in the White House at the time of Elvis` death, wasn`t he?) -
not to mention the fucking weird weather we`re experiencing here in Bergen right now.

Sorry folks, but I couldn`t resist the temptation...

Until a few weeks ago, I was optimistic with regard to J Street. After reading more
about their actual position, I have to admit that my optimism was unfounded.

J Street disagrees with AIPAC on certain important aspects of US policy, and agree on
others (a "Jewish democracy" - an oxymoron); but since they are not willing to back
their better positions by for example suggesting certain conditions on US money going to
Tel Aviv, their criticism is just words - it`s basically a feel-good club for a new
generation of American Jews.

"Sorry folks, but I couldn`t resist the temptation..."

Except it wasn't funny, Paul. Have you corresponded with Steve about what HIS suspicions are in regards to this attack? Well, some of us have. I won't presume to speak for Steve, but this has been a tremendous pain in the ass for him, and the act of sabotoging someone's blog is despicable. I personally entertain no delusions about the triming of this attack as being "coincidental", but you are certainly free to feed us the same kind of shit questions is fond of feeding us.

And meanwhile, heres an announcement from the whore Clinton, who just gave Netanyahu a major blow job...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-us-mideast1-2009nov01,0,6461818.story

"The important thing, as the prime minister just said, is to get into the negotiations," she said. "I gave the same message today when I met with President Abbas."

In an interview earlier Saturday with the BBC, Clinton said that although the Obama administration has "very serious questions about the settlements," she understands why Israel builds them.

"It has to do with their security needs and fears, about trying to have a defensible perimeter around Israel," she said.

"It has to do with their security needs and having a defensible perimeter around Israel", she said (Clinton). And Netanyahu's concessions: "unprecedented".

Well that is indeed a pile of crap from the crapmistress. I means someone put the serious screws to Barack and Hillary. Who is surprised? Can't we just say that the so-called US policy on Is/Pal is a f*cking joke and stop all this mincing around diplomacy?

But, hey, as long as the US and Israel stand strong against the incredible menace Cuba all is well . . . or at least predictable . . . in this best of all possible worlds.

"Have you corresponded with Steve about what HIS suspicions are in regards to this
attack?"

Nope. And if you have, you seem to say that Steve has his suspicions. Fine. But I didn`t
know that. Most people here generally only read what Steve says in public, and from
that, this thing could be spam, technical issues, a hack, or a combination - who knows?

But when a commenter who is absolutely convinced that the swine flu is a hoax initiated
by a former Bush official (Rumsfeld) claims that the blog is hacked - or any other
claim, for that sake - I see no reason to believe him or her. I am open to a lot of
possibilities until I get sufficient info from a credible source pointing in a certain
direction.

Being sure that the "swine flu thing" is a hoax, and even pointing out the culprit with
absolutely no evidence, is just another example of someone undermining their credibility
on any issue.

Another recent example:
Who is behind the AfPac strategy, according to a poster here?
Answer: Israel.
Evidence?
Avigdor Lieberman said in an interview a couple of weeks ago that Afpak was an
"existential threat".

What kind of evidence is that?

If this kind of stuff counts for evidence, if this mixture of random facts and
anecdotes, this level of precision is regarded as sufficient to create theories, then I
have absolutely no trust in these theories or anything else said by people who came up
with these theories.

If you or others, due to my sceptic nature and approach, want to push me into the same
camp as Questions, and by implication WigWag and Nadine (the obfuscating-Zionist-liars-
camp, or something like that - then please go ahead! But that`s not exactly credible
either, is it?

I`m just asking for reliable information. And if you, POA, say that you`ve corresponded
with Steve about this, and can confirm that he has his suspicions, I trust you.

paul, i thought it was funny... i'm sure it isn't funny for steve, but he could use some humour too...
i agree with your general conclusion and description of j st...

dons - exactly...

"I`m just asking for reliable information. And if you, POA, say that you`ve corresponded
with Steve about this, and can confirm that he has his suspicions, I trust you"

Well, like I said, I won't presume to speak for Steve, nor disclose personal correspondence. So suffice to say that I, PERSONALLY and SOLELY AS AN INDIVIDUAL, do not believe this cyber attack was random, nor do I believe the timing was "coincidental".

BTW, Paul. Have you seen the latest on Nozette? Despite questions mewling denials, it seems he really WAS spying for the Israelis.

And as I predicted, EXACTLY, Hillary and Netanyahu HAVE cooked up some bullshit "concessions" that exist in name only.

And people REALLY are beginning to see that J Street is exactly what I said it was, months ago, while it was being touted as an actual alternative to the AIPAC horseshit. Its the saqme old horseshit, its just been slightly de-odorized.

And yes, I believe Steve's site was attacked because of his recent posts, most notably his Mashal interview, and his posting on the Israeli settlers, to say nothing of his Barghouti post.

And I also think it strange that this lyin' wretch, Nadine, seems to know far more about techie stuff than a lay person should.

nice headline in the haaretz and something you'd never read in the west....

it's very refreshing to read this from a world leader with a degree of honesty missing from politicians almost always...

Turkey PM: If you don't want Iran to have nukes, give yours up

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124839.html

Well POA, when all this is said, I guess I have to confess that personally, I had some
rather paranoid moments during this episode.

None of my comments here has ever been deliberately removed from a thread until now.
But when I woke up yesterday (somewhat weakened by the influence of a swine flu shot)
and realized that certain back and forth exchanges of arguments and insults between me
and Nadine and you, POA (about Iran, the Hamas interview, and the Israeli attack on
Gaza) had been removed from TWN, I immediately thought:

"What the hell is this? Did I cross a line in these comments that others don`t cross on
a daily basis? A sudden change of policy as to the content and tone of posts at TWN? Is
Steve perhaps fed up with my comments? Does he think that I`m to ad hominem and extreme
and/or irrelevant or something? Doesn`t he like my comments anymore? etc, etc..."

After a while, I said to myself in a resigned mood: -Perhaps I`ll have to find another
blog to write on... But hey! Which blog? I DON`T WANT TO WRITE COMMENTS ANYWHERE ELSE
THAN AT TWN!!!

Shit!

Then I had a closer look, and realized that also a comment by Steve himself had been
removed, as well as a more anecdotal comment where I told that I had just had the swine
flu vaccine - and even a very informative and moderate comment on the swine flu
vaccines issue by Linda.

Ok, so I realized that this probably had nothing to do with what I had written, but
something else.

------------

Yes, I saw some absurd comments by Hillary Clinton today at CNN, at a dinner with two
of my brothers.

We discussed some of this mess afterwards, and agreed that whatever Obama does in Iraq
and Afghanistan/Pakistan, even in Iran, he is definitely in a Catch-22 situation. With
regards to Iran, neither a mild sanction, nor a "crippling" one, nor a military attack,
will prevent Iran from developing a weapons program if they want to do so, but in the
best of cases delay it. Neither sanctions nor military actions are credible means of
achieving this goal.

Apparently Obama has no "good" choices in the Middle East or Central Asia right now.

Except IN ONE CASE where his administration could have made a difference: the
Israel/Palestine conflict - where they obviously could put more pressure on both sides,
and especially Israel. But it`s just as obvious that they are unwilling and unable to
do so.

--------------------------------------

And then you have the 1000-dollar "Afghanistan question" right now: Should America do
as General McCrystal recommended - add some 40 000 troops with the goal of training
Afghan police and military forces to protect the civilians and the Afghan state against
the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other extremist factions?

One may ask: WHICH AFGHAN STATE? WHICH AFGHAN NATION? The extremely weak and corrupt
state of Karzai? A future state and nation ruled by precisely who? By a lot of
competing and fighting factions? Turning into an unpredictable chaos, like in the
1990`s? Or not... The fact is that nobody knows; but there is certainly no evidence -
after 8 years - of a strong political centrum in the country; all evidence points in
the opposite direction.

Wasn`t that exactly what America did during the 1980`s? Training Afghan and foreign
Mujahedeen resistance forces to defend Afghanistan against the Soviet forces? Resulting
in - what? The unintended creation of al Quaeda and Taliban in a chaotic political
landscape after the Soviet retreat.

Foreign meddling in the Middle East and Central Asia has for decades been characterized
by these kinds of unintended consequences.

So, given the extremely fragile, unreliable, and corrupt government in Afghanistan;
given the uncertainties regarding the future direction of the Afghan regime - America
and NATO are still seriously considering training a huge national Afghan police and
military force... A professional Afghan army that may split into any number of
unpredictable factions in the future - some of them likely to be extremists and very
hostile to America and the West - due to the lack of a strong and reliable political
centrum in the country.

In short: The United States (and NATO) risking the lives of tens of thousands of more
young soldiers, huge amounts of money, effort, and time, patiently and systematically
training Afghan forces that may later split or shift side and get mobilized by
organizations with ideologies and goals that are hostile to those who trained them?

I don`t see the point of even considering this option during the current political
circumstances in Afghanistan. It`s a foolish gamble with an unpredictable outcome -
five, ten, or twenty years from now.

...,

this is an example of an apparently local conflict (Israel/Palestine and the attack
on Gaza) backfiring on a geopolitical level. Turkey was once regarded as a valuable
Israeli alley.

This apart from the obvious general truth of the PM`s statement re. double standards.

paul - yes... gaza has backfired in an enormous way, as it is also the catalyst for much hand-wringing in the jewish american community as well and as witnessed in a ''slight'' breakdown in the types of conversations questions and even wigwag have shown over the past 2 months..apparently white phosphorous just doesn't cut it with even a hardened jewish american devoutly committed to zionism over all else...

as for the turkish pm's remarks, it is like a breathe of fresh air in a world where everyone is supposed to ignore the elephant in the room and we that watch are supposed to consider this '''normal''.... in the real world, the turkish pm's words are friggin normal and it is not normal to constantly avoid this which is all we ever witness from american politicians and canadian politicians too i may as well add... these folks need to stop trying to take us for fools... they are the fools for avoiding the obvious..

thanks for your comments..

"gaza has backfired in an enormous way, as it is also the catalyst for much hand-wringing
in the jewish american community..."

Yes, apparently this is correct. And although I`m very disappointed with some of the
fundamental positions of J Street, my hope is that the increasing popularity of that
organization is more a SYMPTOM of certain ongoing changes in that community (and,
hopefully, and more importantly, in the more informed segments of the broader US population
in general, i.e. non-Jews), than that it will function as a POLITICAL CHANNEL of those
frustrations.

In other words, I hope that the frustrations with US policies in the ME slowly will result
in changes that go beyond the stated positions of J Street, and that J Street is just an
early sign of a significant change in US public opinion.

Breaking news from the BBC just now:

"President Hamid Karzai's rival in the second round of the Afghan presidential election
has announced that he is withdrawing from the poll. Abdullah Abdullah had set out
conditions he wanted to be met for the contest to be considered fair. But Mr Karzai
rejected his demand that election officials who presided over the first round should be
dismissed."

As far as I can see, this strengthens my basic points in an earlier post on this thread
that if the US send in more troops to train and equip a huge Afghan police force and
army, this may result in those trained people being requited by ANY future faction in
chaotic and unpredictable circumstances (since there is no strong political centre in
the country) - trained forces that may later be hired by groups hostile to those who
trained them.

Just like those brave men America trained and equiped against Soviet forces in the
1980`s...

"Ok, so I realized that this probably had nothing to do with what I had written, but something else."

How evidence based of you. I'm still chortling about POA's idea that I "know more about techie stuff than a lay person should." Gee, you have to enter the priesthood to work in Information Technology? Nobody told me that when I started. Or is this Proof Positive that I am a Mossad agent? You seem to be POA's interpreter tonight, Paul, so you'll have to tell me. Though what POA really need is not an interpreter, but a good psychiatrist.

My absurd position on Nozette was to wait and see. I still say wait and see. Was he in money trouble and sold to any and everyone? Was the money trouble faked so that he'd look desperate when really he was merely spying for Israel? Was he spying for India? Those thumb drives, and all..... I'm sure, POA, you know all the answers already and you're ready to convict, imprison and execute or whatever. I really hope you haven't been on a jury. You don't seem to like to wait to render judgment....

As for me, I withhold judgment on the Nozette case.

And Paul, I did read the Zunes piece on Israel's actually being the tool of the US as opposed to the other way around. But since the commenting thing was screwy by the time I was ready to reply, I didn't end up posting. I read an actual book instead!

Anyway, I think the Zunes piece (that's his name??) is a little too pat, but might be headed in the right direction. I think, as always, any fairly simple narrative about why the US pursues any particular action is going to leave out a lot of important motives. So, testing weapons, being rewarded for nastiness, and so on might well play a role, but given the number of people who have to sign on to a policy for it to be enacted, I would guess that that's only part of the story.

Thanks for posting the article, though. It's nice to read something other than the P/OA conspiracy it's all AIPAC thing....

And as for hacking, assuming the site was really hacked (meaning that someone got into the code/archives whatever and deliberately removed things, made it not work or whatever), the list of suspects is long. Rogue irritated AIPACKER, the actual government of Israel, the actual board of directors at AIPAC, the actual "disrupt the meme" people at AIPAC, actual conservatives of the sort who go after crooksandliars.com all the time (note that people here have complained about not getting posts through on c and l, so it's not like they're rabidly anti-zionist and still they get hacked pretty regularly), some kid somewhere, anyone Steve has ever irritated.... And if it was just spam, it could be anything from something as simple as the site's showing up on a list of spammables, to an actual "attack" by any of the above.

So, as usual, I will reserve judgment until the evidence is presented.

Steve has allowed huge amounts of anti-Israeli rhetoric to go flying here, he deletes nothing. The interviews are nothing new, really. So why would there be an attack now, instead of when P/OA or Carroll or DonS or whoever first went on a rant.... the site so clearly supports some version of anti-Zionism that one would think an attack could have come at any time were it motivated by this fact.

Since I actually have no knowledge about this, I'm actually going to reserve judgment. Shocking thing to do around here....

And as for Nadine's knowledge's going beyond that of a layperson, how do you know she's a layperson? Maybe she's a computer geek? Hmmm. And since you're so convinced she's wrong about the hacking, maybe she has just picked up some technobabble and she only seems to know something.

My absurd position on Nozette was to wait and see. I still say wait and see. Was he in money trouble and sold to any and everyone? Was the money trouble faked so that he'd look desperate when really he was merely spying for Israel? Was he spying for India? Those thumb drives, and all..... I'm sure, POA, you know all the answers already and you're ready to convict, imprison and execute or whatever. I really hope you haven't been on a jury. You don't seem to like to wait to render judgment....

As for me, I withhold judgment on the Nozette case.

And Paul, I did read the Zunes piece on Israel's actually being the tool of the US as opposed to the other way around. But since the commenting thing was screwy by the time I was ready to reply, I didn't end up posting. I read an actual book instead!

Anyway, I think the Zunes piece (that's his name??) is a little too pat, but might be headed in the right direction. I think, as always, any fairly simple narrative about why the US pursues any particular action is going to leave out a lot of important motives. So, testing weapons, being rewarded for nastiness, and so on might well play a role, but given the number of people who have to sign on to a policy for it to be enacted, I would guess that that's only part of the story.

Thanks for posting the article, though. It's nice to read something other than the P/OA conspiracy it's all AIPAC thing....

And as for hacking, assuming the site was really hacked (meaning that someone got into the code/archives whatever and deliberately removed things, made it not work or whatever), the list of suspects is long. Rogue irritated AIPACKER, the actual government of Israel, the actual board of directors at AIPAC, the actual "disrupt the meme" people at AIPAC, actual conservatives of the sort who go after crooksandliars.com all the time (note that people here have complained about not getting posts through on c and l, so it's not like they're rabidly anti-zionist and still they get hacked pretty regularly), some kid somewhere, anyone Steve has ever irritated.... And if it was just spam, it could be anything from something as simple as the site's showing up on a list of spammables, to an actual "attack" by any of the above.

So, as usual, I will reserve judgment until the evidence is presented.

Steve has allowed huge amounts of anti-Israeli rhetoric to go flying here, he deletes nothing. The interviews are nothing new, really. So why would there be an attack now, instead of when P/OA or Carroll or DonS or whoever first went on a rant.... the site so clearly supports some version of anti-Zionism that one would think an attack could have come at any time were it motivated by this fact.

Since I actually have no knowledge about this, I'm actually going to reserve judgment. Shocking thing to do around here....

And as for Nadine's knowledge's going beyond that of a layperson, how do you know she's a layperson? Maybe she's a computer geek? Hmmm. And since you're so convinced she's wrong about the hacking, maybe she has just picked up some technobabble and she only seems to know something.

tech: comments problems persist. Questions comment (45) shows up on preview sometimes but not in body of comments

tech: comments problems persist. Questions comment (45) shows up on preview sometimes but not in body of comments

tech: comments problems persist. Questions comment (45) shows up on preview sometimes but not in body of comments

tech: captcha/site still funky. Questions comment (45) shows up on preview line sometimes when refreshed but not in body of comments; and comments show only 45 at this time and have for a while.

tech: captcha/site still funky. Questions comment (45) shows up on preview line sometimes when refreshed but not in body of comments; and comments show only 45 at this time and have for a while.

Well, I tried to post several times, was rejected repeatedly by the captcha, and then it shows up on the front screen, but not on the comments page an hour or more later. I guess eventually several copies of my note will appear, even though the captcha said, "nope" several times.

A glitch a day will keep the IT guys well paid (and underslept).

Well, I tried to post several times, was rejected repeatedly by the captcha, and then it shows up on the front screen, but not on the comments page an hour or more later. I guess eventually several copies of my note will appear, even though the captcha said, "nope" several times.

A glitch a day will keep the IT guys well paid (and underslept).

I have no idea if this one will also post, or will post multiple times....

Steve, why are you bothering w/ us and not at some big DC
Halloween shindig where no one needs costumes to look like
ghouls?

Actually Paul, Steve and I corresponded about his suspicions on
the TWN hack attck.

I posted the link to Avidgor Lieberman, Foreign Minister of
Israel, so one who would presumably know what Israel considers
threats (short answer: everyone) saying IN MARCH that
Afghanistan and Pakistan were the biggest threats to Israel.

You can look that link up in TWN's archives or do a web search.

Rumsfeld makes money off of Tamiflu, the only drug used now
as a "remedy for "Swine flu" and the one that was hyped for bird
flu-- do your homework Paul.

Oh heck -- I'll do your homework for you.

From the UK Independent, a very reliable paper:

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
3/12/2006

(Note that this article was written in 2006, when "bird flu" was
poised as The Grim Reaper -- we actually had two trick or
treaters dressed as that last night - what's up with death and
little kids?)

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US
Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital
gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that
discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in
massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human
pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the
antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be
effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try
to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a
pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6
million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will
avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected.
Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after
symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company,
Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical
company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold,
currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and
was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush
administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before concern about
bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost quadrupled,
to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales
almost quadrupled again, to $161.6m last year. During this time
the share price trebled.

continues

http://tinyurl.com/c5uy3w

One of my best college friends works in epidemiology and a few
years back she had me do person-on-the-street interviews in
LA about the bird flu, which at that point was the overhyped flu
of the moment. She took my interviews to some big
international conference. Everyone I interviewed, and I tried to
interview from a broad sampling of LA's population, which is
very broad indeed, was terrified of bird flu.

How many people did bird flu end up killing? The Spanish flu
epidemic killed multimillions, so yes, there should be grave
concern, it's just that the death rate on this H1N1 has been very
low. I would be more concerned about the vaccine.

Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of Searle, was also involved in that
other truly sinister conspiracy, aspartame (artificial sweetener),
which sailed through the FDA (Food & Drug Administration)
vetting process and is now being found to cause all sorts of
health problems.

Article:

FLASHBACK: RUMSFELD, ASPARTAME & TAMIFLU

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not only a force in
launching the controversial flu remedy Tamiflu, he is also behind
the release of the increasingly criticized sweetener aspartame.

In fact, he's mentioned in a $350 million class action lawsuit
filed by US consumer group the National Justice League.
According to a September 2005 Ecologist Magazine cover story,
Aspartame - the shocking story of the world’s bestselling
sweetener by health writer Pat Thomas, The Ramizzini Institute
in Bologna, a non- profit, private research institution, recently
released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into
aspartame ingestion.

Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and
leukaemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20
milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the
accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to
aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory
loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and
migraines.

How did Rumsfeld, better known these days for the windfall he
has reaped from the sudden popularity of the antiviral Tamiflu,
get mixed up with aspartame? It happened when he became the
chief executive officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical G.D. Searle
& Company in 1977, some 12 years after aspartame's discovery
by G.D. Searle chemist James Schlatter. A story by Rishi Mehta,
associate commentary editor for the University of Connecticut
Daily Campus newspaper, points out the following: In 1981,
after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of aspartame, Rumsfeld
said in a Searle sales meeting that he would use political rather
than scientific means? to finally get FDA approval. Only 20 days
later, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th President of the
United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle
East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld’s - to FDA
commissioner.”

continues

http://tinyurl.com/yazope8

I also worked with the sinister characters surrounding Michael
Jackon (see: Lee Solters, now deceased thanks Goddess or I'd be
too scared of physical retribution to type this) I would not put it
past them to think that Jackson was worth more dead than alive,
but I have no "conspiracy theory" on that one.

On a foodier note: I worked on a series of very successful SPAM
commercials, for the food, well, if you could call SPAM "food",
not the "Make your girl cum in 30 seconds" type.

I've told this anecdote before, but I do think that it's funny, given
all the concern on this thread about SPAM vs spam. The craft
service lady made this delicious pate, and the crew ate so much
of it that she ran out and had to make more.

Guess what it was made out of? SPAM not spam. We all kind of
choked in our mouthes when we heard that but happily ate
more, it was that good. That cured me of my SPAM snobbery big
time.

Hey and Paul lest you forget, easy e has met me, I would say
that we are good friends now, and can confirm that what I say
about myself is true. I actually do know what I'm talking about
most of the time and, if you've notice, back it up with links as
opposed to other posters.

Steve, why are you bothering w/ us and not at some big DC
Halloween shindig where no one needs costumes to look like
ghouls?

Actually Paul, Steve and I corresponded about his suspicions on
the TWN hack attck.

I posted the link to Avidgor Lieberman, Foreign Minister of
Israel, so one who would presumably know what Israel considers
threats (short answer: everyone) saying IN MARCH that
Afghanistan and Pakistan were the biggest threats to Israel.

You can look that link up in TWN's archives or do a web search.

Rumsfeld makes money off of Tamiflu, the only drug used now
as a "remedy for "Swine flu" and the one that was hyped for bird
flu-- do your homework Paul.

Oh heck -- I'll do your homework for you.

From the UK Independent, a very reliable paper:

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
3/12/2006

(Note that this article was written in 2006, when "bird flu" was
poised as The Grim Reaper -- we actually had two trick or
treaters dressed as that last night - what's up with death and
little kids?)

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US
Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital
gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that
discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in
massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human
pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the
antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be
effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try
to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a
pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6
million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will
avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected.
Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after
symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company,
Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical
company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold,
currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and
was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush
administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before concern about
bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost quadrupled,
to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales
almost quadrupled again, to $161.6m last year. During this time
the share price trebled.

continues

http://tinyurl.com/c5uy3w

One of my best college friends works in epidemiology and a few
years back she had me do person-on-the-street interviews in
LA about the bird flu, which at that point was the overhyped flu
of the moment. She took my interviews to some big
international conference. Everyone I interviewed, and I tried to
interview from a broad sampling of LA's population, which is
very broad indeed, was terrified of bird flu.

How many people did bird flu end up killing? The Spanish flu
epidemic killed multimillions, so yes, there should be grave
concern, it's just that the death rate on this H1N1 has been very
low. I would be more concerned about the vaccine.

Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of Searle, was also involved in that
other truly sinister conspiracy, aspartame (artificial sweetener),
which sailed through the FDA (Food & Drug Administration)
vetting process and is now being found to cause all sorts of
health problems.

Article:

FLASHBACK: RUMSFELD, ASPARTAME & TAMIFLU

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not only a force in
launching the controversial flu remedy Tamiflu, he is also behind
the release of the increasingly criticized sweetener aspartame.

In fact, he's mentioned in a $350 million class action lawsuit
filed by US consumer group the National Justice League.
According to a September 2005 Ecologist Magazine cover story,
Aspartame - the shocking story of the world’s bestselling
sweetener by health writer Pat Thomas, The Ramizzini Institute
in Bologna, a non- profit, private research institution, recently
released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into
aspartame ingestion.

Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and
leukaemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20
milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the
accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to
aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory
loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and
migraines.

How did Rumsfeld, better known these days for the windfall he
has reaped from the sudden popularity of the antiviral Tamiflu,
get mixed up with aspartame? It happened when he became the
chief executive officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical G.D. Searle
& Company in 1977, some 12 years after aspartame's discovery
by G.D. Searle chemist James Schlatter. A story by Rishi Mehta,
associate commentary editor for the University of Connecticut
Daily Campus newspaper, points out the following: In 1981,
after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of aspartame, Rumsfeld
said in a Searle sales meeting that he would use political rather
than scientific means? to finally get FDA approval. Only 20 days
later, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th President of the
United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle
East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld’s - to FDA
commissioner.”

continues

http://tinyurl.com/yazope8

I also worked with the sinister characters surrounding Michael
Jackon (see: Lee Solters, now deceased thanks Goddess or I'd be
too scared of physical retribution to type this) I would not put it
past them to think that Jackson was worth more dead than alive,
but I have no "conspiracy theory" on that one.

On a foodier note: I worked on a series of very successful SPAM
commercials, for the food, well, if you could call SPAM "food",
not the "Make your girl cum in 30 seconds" type.

I've told this anecdote before, but I do think that it's funny, given
all the concern on this thread about SPAM vs spam. The craft
service lady made this delicious pate, and the crew ate so much
of it that she ran out and had to make more.

Guess what it was made out of? SPAM not spam. We all kind of
choked in our mouthes when we heard that but happily ate
more, it was that good. That cured me of my SPAM snobbery big
time.

Hey and Paul lest you forget, easy e has met me, I would say
that we are good friends now, and can confirm that what I say
about myself is true. I actually do know what I'm talking about
most of the time and, if you've notice, back it up with links as
opposed to other posters.

Steve, why are you bothering w/ us and not at some big DC
Halloween shindig where no one needs costumes to look like
ghouls?

Actually Paul, Steve and I corresponded about his suspicions on
the TWN hack attck.

I posted the link to Avidgor Lieberman, Foreign Minister of
Israel, so one who would presumably know what Israel considers
threats (short answer: everyone) saying IN MARCH that
Afghanistan and Pakistan were the biggest threats to Israel.

You can look that link up in TWN's archives or do a web search.

Rumsfeld makes money off of Tamiflu, the only drug used now
as a "remedy for "Swine flu" and the one that was hyped for bird
flu-- do your homework Paul.

Oh heck -- I'll do your homework for you.

From the UK Independent, a very reliable paper:

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
3/12/2006

(Note that this article was written in 2006, when "bird flu" was
poised as The Grim Reaper -- we actually had two trick or
treaters dressed as that last night - what's up with death and
little kids?)

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US
Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital
gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that
discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in
massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human
pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the
antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be
effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try
to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a
pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6
million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will
avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected.
Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after
symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company,
Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical
company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold,
currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and
was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush
administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before concern about
bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost quadrupled,
to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales
almost quadrupled again, to $161.6m last year. During this time
the share price trebled.

continues

http://tinyurl.com/c5uy3w

One of my best college friends works in epidemiology and a few
years back she had me do person-on-the-street interviews in
LA about the bird flu, which at that point was the overhyped flu
of the moment. She took my interviews to some big
international conference. Everyone I interviewed, and I tried to
interview from a broad sampling of LA's population, which is
very broad indeed, was terrified of bird flu.

How many people did bird flu end up killing? The Spanish flu
epidemic killed multimillions, so yes, there should be grave
concern, it's just that the death rate on this H1N1 has been very
low. I would be more concerned about the vaccine.

Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of Searle, was also involved in that
other truly sinister conspiracy, aspartame (artificial sweetener),
which sailed through the FDA (Food & Drug Administration)
vetting process and is now being found to cause all sorts of
health problems.

Article:

FLASHBACK: RUMSFELD, ASPARTAME & TAMIFLU

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not only a force in
launching the controversial flu remedy Tamiflu, he is also behind
the release of the increasingly criticized sweetener aspartame.

In fact, he's mentioned in a $350 million class action lawsuit
filed by US consumer group the National Justice League.
According to a September 2005 Ecologist Magazine cover story,
Aspartame - the shocking story of the world’s bestselling
sweetener by health writer Pat Thomas, The Ramizzini Institute
in Bologna, a non- profit, private research institution, recently
released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into
aspartame ingestion.

Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and
leukaemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20
milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the
accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to
aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory
loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and
migraines.

How did Rumsfeld, better known these days for the windfall he
has reaped from the sudden popularity of the antiviral Tamiflu,
get mixed up with aspartame? It happened when he became the
chief executive officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical G.D. Searle
& Company in 1977, some 12 years after aspartame's discovery
by G.D. Searle chemist James Schlatter. A story by Rishi Mehta,
associate commentary editor for the University of Connecticut
Daily Campus newspaper, points out the following: In 1981,
after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of aspartame, Rumsfeld
said in a Searle sales meeting that he would use political rather
than scientific means? to finally get FDA approval. Only 20 days
later, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th President of the
United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle
East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld’s - to FDA
commissioner.”

continues

http://tinyurl.com/yazope8

I also worked with the sinister characters surrounding Michael
Jackon (see: Lee Solters, now deceased thanks Goddess or I'd be
too scared of physical retribution to type this) I would not put it
past them to think that Jackson was worth more dead than alive,
but I have no "conspiracy theory" on that one.

On a foodier note: I worked on a series of very successful SPAM
commercials, for the food, well, if you could call SPAM "food",
not the "Make your girl cum in 30 seconds" type.

I've told this anecdote before, but I do think that it's funny, given
all the concern on this thread about SPAM vs spam. The craft
service lady made this delicious pate, and the crew ate so much
of it that she ran out and had to make more.

Guess what it was made out of? SPAM not spam. We all kind of
choked in our mouthes when we heard that but happily ate
more, it was that good. That cured me of my SPAM snobbery big
time.

Hey and Paul lest you forget, easy e has met me, I would say
that we are good friends now, and can confirm that what I say
about myself is true. I actually do know what I'm talking about
most of the time and, if you've notice, back it up with links as
opposed to other posters.

Steve, why are you bothering w/ us and not at some big DC
Halloween shindig where no one needs costumes to look like
ghouls?

Actually Paul, Steve and I corresponded about his suspicions on
the TWN hack attck.

I posted the link to Avidgor Lieberman, Foreign Minister of
Israel, so one who would presumably know what Israel considers
threats (short answer: everyone) saying IN MARCH that
Afghanistan and Pakistan were the biggest threats to Israel.

You can look that link up in TWN's archives or do a web search.

Rumsfeld makes money off of Tamiflu, the only drug used now
as a "remedy for "Swine flu" and the one that was hyped for bird
flu-- do your homework Paul.

Oh heck -- I'll do your homework for you.

From the UK Independent, a very reliable paper:

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug
3/12/2006

(Note that this article was written in 2006, when "bird flu" was
poised as The Grim Reaper -- we actually had two trick or
treaters dressed as that last night - what's up with death and
little kids?)

Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US
Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital
gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that
discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in
massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human
pandemic of the disease.

More than 60 countries have so far ordered large stocks of the
antiviral medication - the only oral medicine believed to be
effective against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease - to try
to protect their people. The United Nations estimates that a
pandemic could kill 150 million people worldwide.

Britain is about halfway through receiving an order of 14.6
million courses of the drug, which the Government hopes will
avert some of the 700,000 deaths that might be expected.
Tamiflu does not cure the disease, but if taken soon after
symptoms appear it can reduce its severity.

The drug was developed by a Californian biotech company,
Gilead Sciences. It is now made and sold by the giant chemical
company Roche, which pays it a royalty on every tablet sold,
currently about a fifth of its price.

Mr Rumsfeld was on the board of Gilead from 1988 to 2001, and
was its chairman from 1997. He then left to join the Bush
administration, but retained a huge shareholding .

The firm made a loss in 2003, the year before concern about
bird flu started. Then revenues from Tamiflu almost quadrupled,
to $44.6m, helping put the company well into the black. Sales
almost quadrupled again, to $161.6m last year. During this time
the share price trebled.

continues

http://tinyurl.com/c5uy3w

One of my best college friends works in epidemiology and a few
years back she had me do person-on-the-street interviews in
LA about the bird flu, which at that point was the overhyped flu
of the moment. She took my interviews to some big
international conference. Everyone I interviewed, and I tried to
interview from a broad sampling of LA's population, which is
very broad indeed, was terrified of bird flu.

How many people did bird flu end up killing? The Spanish flu
epidemic killed multimillions, so yes, there should be grave
concern, it's just that the death rate on this H1N1 has been very
low. I would be more concerned about the vaccine.

Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of Searle, was also involved in that
other truly sinister conspiracy, aspartame (artificial sweetener),
which sailed through the FDA (Food & Drug Administration)
vetting process and is now being found to cause all sorts of
health problems.

Article:

FLASHBACK: RUMSFELD, ASPARTAME & TAMIFLU

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is not only a force in
launching the controversial flu remedy Tamiflu, he is also behind
the release of the increasingly criticized sweetener aspartame.

In fact, he's mentioned in a $350 million class action lawsuit
filed by US consumer group the National Justice League.
According to a September 2005 Ecologist Magazine cover story,
Aspartame - the shocking story of the world’s bestselling
sweetener by health writer Pat Thomas, The Ramizzini Institute
in Bologna, a non- profit, private research institution, recently
released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into
aspartame ingestion.

Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and
leukaemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20
milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the
accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to
aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory
loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and
migraines.

How did Rumsfeld, better known these days for the windfall he
has reaped from the sudden popularity of the antiviral Tamiflu,
get mixed up with aspartame? It happened when he became the
chief executive officer of a worldwide pharmaceutical G.D. Searle
& Company in 1977, some 12 years after aspartame's discovery
by G.D. Searle chemist James Schlatter. A story by Rishi Mehta,
associate commentary editor for the University of Connecticut
Daily Campus newspaper, points out the following: In 1981,
after over 15 years of FDA disapproval of aspartame, Rumsfeld
said in a Searle sales meeting that he would use political rather
than scientific means? to finally get FDA approval. Only 20 days
later, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as 40th President of the
United States, appointing Rumfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle
East and Arthur Hayes Hull Jr. - a friend of Rumsfeld’s - to FDA
commissioner.”

continues

http://tinyurl.com/yazope8

I also worked with the sinister characters surrounding Michael
Jackon (see: Lee Solters, now deceased thanks Goddess or I'd be
too scared of physical retribution to type this) I would not put it
past them to think that Jackson was worth more dead than alive,
but I have no "conspiracy theory" on that one.

On a foodier note: I worked on a series of very successful SPAM
commercials, for the food, well, if you could call SPAM "food",
not the "Make your girl cum in 30 seconds" type.

I've told this anecdote before, but I do think that it's funny, given
all the concern on this thread about SPAM vs spam. The craft
service lady made this delicious pate, and the crew ate so much
of it that she ran out and had to make more.

Guess what it was made out of? SPAM not spam. We all kind of
choked in our mouthes when we heard that but happily ate
more, it was that good. That cured me of my SPAM snobbery big
time.

Hey and Paul lest you forget, easy e has met me, I would say
that we are good friends now, and can confirm that what I say
about myself is true. I actually do know what I'm talking about
most of the time and, if you've notice, back it up with links as
opposed to other posters.

I would be more prone to see it as a trojan entity, offering an alternative enticement to corral the more moderate American Jews into pursuing the same ends that the Jews supporting AIPAC are pursueing. When one considers goals, what is the difference between AIPAC's and J Street's? The difference is in strategy and tone.

If someone lures you into the alley with a cheaply priced Rolex, or hits you in the head and drags you in, it matters not. When you come to, you're still gonna find out you've been rolled.

I would be more prone to see it as a trojan entity, offering an alternative enticement to corral the more moderate American Jews into pursuing the same ends that the Jews supporting AIPAC are pursueing. When one considers goals, what is the difference between AIPAC's and J Street's? The difference is in strategy and tone.

If someone lures you into the alley with a cheaply priced Rolex, or hits you in the head and drags you in, it matters not. When you come to, you're still gonna find out you've been rolled.

I would be more prone to see it as a trojan entity, offering an alternative enticement to corral the more moderate American Jews into pursuing the same ends that the Jews supporting AIPAC are pursueing. When one considers goals, what is the difference between AIPAC's and J Street's? The difference is in strategy and tone.

If someone lures you into the alley with a cheaply priced Rolex, or hits you in the head and drags you in, it matters not. When you come to, you're still gonna find out you've been rolled.

twn seems more broke today then yesterday... no amount of refreshing works... i see 41 comments here, but it says 59 on the main page... something is screwed up! before i had to wait a few minutes to see the comments... now i get nothing new since last night!

twn seems more broke today then yesterday... no amount of refreshing works... i see 41 comments here, but it says 59 on the main page... something is screwed up! before i had to wait a few minutes to see the comments... now i get nothing new since last night!

tried to post this and here is the message i got :

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Publish failed: Writing to '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Opening local file '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Permission denied

2nd try now.... 3rd try now, lol... 4th...5th

twn seems more broke today then yesterday... no amount of refreshing works... i see 41 comments here, but it says 59 on the main page... something is screwed up! before i had to wait a few minutes to see the comments... now i get nothing new since last night!

tried to post this and here is the message i got :

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Publish failed: Writing to '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Opening local file '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Permission denied

2nd try now.... 3rd try now, lol... 4th...5th... 8 or 9 tries later and this is now what i get!!!!

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Too many comments have been submitted from you in a short period of time. Please try again in a short while.

on my 12th or 13th try i am guessing....

Paul: "But when a commenter who is absolutely convinced that the swine flu is a hoax initiated
by a former Bush official (Rumsfeld) claims that the blog is hacked...."

If you are referring to me, I am not convinced or even sympathetic to the idea H1N1 is a hoax, or that it was initiated by Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld merely profits from human disease. Tamiflu was an only an example of how side effects cannot be ignored. I am concerned that an increasing number of corporations with a fundamentalist religion of profit hold the power of life and death in food, medicine, and a lot of other areas for human citizens of America and many other nations.

I am fairly certain TWN was hacked. POA for months has been goading Steve to more fully open the Israeli/Palestinian question, and not long ago Steve apologized for being busy and saying he was behind on putting up an interview with a Palestinian farmer. The promise of an interview with a farmer did not placate those, including me, who see the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as genocide lite, or just-below-the-American-media-radar.

Then ten days or so ago Steve began posting a surprising number of stories on Israel vs Palestinians. And then we have the recent "failure" of the TWN site. Nadine has been quick with multiple suggestions that this is a technical or viewing or ISP problem. But mentions of unusual pro- and anti- Israel comments suggest that there are people disturbed to the point of action about TWN's apparent change of course. I personally don't see any reason that a person holding views that Israel has acted brutally against the Palestinians would now have a reason to mess with TWN. And the anti-Israel "posters" are an easy way to confuse things. But it is clear that those who view Israel as blameless no matter what it does have every reason to wish for TWM to go away or in some other way get fouled up.

Paul: "But when a commenter who is absolutely convinced that the swine flu is a hoax initiated
by a former Bush official (Rumsfeld) claims that the blog is hacked...."

If you are referring to me, I am not convinced or even sympathetic to the idea H1N1 is a hoax, or that it was initiated by Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld merely profits from human disease. Tamiflu was an only an example of how side effects cannot be ignored. I am concerned that an increasing number of corporations with a fundamentalist religion of profit hold the power of life and death in food, medicine, and a lot of other areas for human citizens of America and many other nations.

I am fairly certain TWN was hacked. POA for months has been goading Steve to more fully open the Israeli/Palestinian question, and not long ago Steve apologized for being busy and saying he was behind on putting up an interview with a Palestinian farmer. The promise of an interview with a farmer did not placate those, including me, who see the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as genocide lite, or just-below-the-American-media-radar.

Then ten days or so ago Steve began posting a surprising number of stories on Israel vs Palestinians. And then we have the recent "failure" of the TWN site. Nadine has been quick with multiple suggestions that this is a technical or viewing or ISP problem. But mentions of unusual pro- and anti- Israel comments suggest that there are people disturbed to the point of action about TWN's apparent change of course. I personally don't see any reason that a person holding views that Israel has acted brutally against the Palestinians would now have a reason to mess with TWN. And the anti-Israel "posters" are an easy way to confuse things. But it is clear that those who view Israel as blameless no matter what it does have every reason to wish for TWM to go away or in some other way get fouled up.

I am no foreign policy expert, but I am both mature and Jewish. My only comment on all the above is this.

Until folks on every side stop the stereotyping and recognize the individual persons in all their diversity who comprise the "sides", we will make no progress.

I for one lament power of fundamentalists on all sides to destroy the lives and the religions of all concerned

I am no foreign policy expert, but I am both mature and Jewish. My only comment on all the above is this.

Until folks on every side stop the stereotyping and recognize the individual persons in all their diversity who comprise the "sides", we will make no progress.

I for one lament power of fundamentalists on all sides to destroy the lives and the religions of all concerned

I am no foreign policy expert, but I am both mature and Jewish. My only comment on all the above is this.

Until folks on every side stop the stereotyping and recognize the individual persons in all their diversity who comprise the "sides", we will make no progress.

I for one lament power of fundamentalists on all sides to destroy the lives and the religions of all concerned

twn seems more broke today then yesterday... no amount of refreshing works... i see 41 comments here, but it says 59 on the main page... something is screwed up! before i had to wait a few minutes to see the comments... now i get nothing new since last night!

tried to post this and here is the message i got :

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Publish failed: Writing to '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Opening local file '/var/www/vhosts/thewashingtonnote.com/httpdocs/archives/2009/10/captcha_plus/index.php.new' failed: Permission denied

2nd try now.... 3rd try now, lol... 4th...5th... 8 or 9 tries later and this is now what i get!!!!

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Too many comments have been submitted from you in a short period of time. Please try again in a short while.

on my 12th or 13th try i am guessing....

i am going to save this somewhere else and try later.. it is now 10:28 am pdt...

it is now 14th try and 12:37pm pdt..

i get it! post and wait 5 hours before checking to see if it posted!! steve, let us know when the system is fixed... thanks -

Full 68 comments show now and are back in order. I see Paul was probably not responding to my post, but that post was not visible to me til now. And I see my multiple post attempts came up as multiple posts, as it did with others. A very nice screwup.

When's the best time to screw things up? On a weekend when fixers are recreating. Must consult MOM on this: motive, opportunity, means.

This is a test, only a test.

Just trying to see if I can post now. I couldn't post last night because the file was write-protected; I assumed that Andrew was working on it. Since the messages are now back to first on top order, someone clearly is working on the program.

I'm still chuckling over POA's assertion that I know more about "techie stuff" than any "lay person" should know. Gosh, when I was writing software nobody told me I had to join the priesthood. I'll leave it to POA's (paranoid) devices to figure out just how my knowledge of techie stuffs proves that I am working for the Mossad. Or something.

Well, if any of you are in the mood for a chuckle, or desire a perfect role model on how NOT to moderate a blog, heres what I did to amuse myself while TWN was down....

http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/11/01/sarah-palin-is-now-the-gop-establishment-2/

Read the comments.

Paul, please scroll up to see the proof of Rumsfeld's involvement
with Tamiflu, the "remedy" for bird & swine flu. Rumsfeld and
his cohorts in Big Pharma made and keep making fortunes off of
flu scares.

I'm really kind of getting SICK ( pun intended) of you accusing
me of bullshitting on issues that you know nothing about. I
realize that you don't live in this country (the US - the only
country that counts -- where is Norway? I'm not kidding -- I
have no idea where Norway is except that she's claiming Arctic
oil so must be a bit north of Arizona) and are not a journalist,
but I back-up just about every claim I make with links.

If you don't read the links, that's your problem, but leave me out
of what seems to be your congenital contrarian streak.

Lighten up brother Paul, and scroll back up should you have the
guts to see how I refute every single accusation you've hurled at
me of not being informed or not being able to provide proof of
what I'm nattering on about.

I still want to know why Steve was typing on here on a
SATURDAY Halloween night instead of downing pumpkin
flavored vodka shots with Holbrooke, Harman, Wolfowitz, and
other similar reprobates.

We had a great time -- we made the outside of the house look
really scary then sat outside drinking beer and handed out 12
bags of candy because of all the Mexicans who come up here to
score chocolate. I'm not kidding on this one, one of the women
who I would guess were mothers of the kids they were trooping
around told her friend in Spanish that we had chocolate and not
cheap stuff.

Waiting for Questions to call me a racist in ... Hey, I understand
Spanish pretty damn well, especially when I'm drunk, and a good
% of our Trick or Treaters were not speaking el ingles, and I
swear many of them were over 40.

At least they didn't try to kidnap us.

SMILE or try to at least once a year. Paul, that means you.

"Miscreant" at the Taylor March blog... hmm...who on earth could be behind that
moniker?

Certainly not Questions.

----------------------------

JamesL - no I was not responding to your post, but to posts by OA.

"Rumsfeld merely profits from human disease." (JamesL) Well, exactly - in the case
of the swine flu pandemic, there is no evidence so far suggesting that he is
"involved" in ways extending making profit. (Although I`ve read credible articles
years ago regarding a sinister role in drugs causing blindness among sick people in
some African countries, etc. etc). The fact that A stole something from B two years
ago, doesn`t prove that A is the one who stole something from C last week.

I know that you think I should give Outraged some slack, James. But someone who
refers to profit as "proof" of the profiteer in some sinister ways being "behind the
swine flu hoax" is quite a stretch. Someone quoting A. Lieberman saying that he
regards Afghanistan and Pakistan as existential threats to Israel, as "proof" of
Israel being behind the AfPak strategy, is also quite a stretch. And the list goes
on and on. And she seems to think that the very act of linking to some article in
itself is proof of whatever outlandish claims she make - like now, backing up her
claim that Rummy was behind the "swine flu hoax" by some link that showed that Rummy
profited on the bird flu some years ago. Some of this stuff is not less outlandish
than the biased distortions Nadine frequently presents as truth and facts.

The trouble with this, as I see it, is that Outraged - besides her outrageously
ridiculous theories - often claims things that are highly likely or even true as
well - for example that Israel wants America to attack Iran - which could cause
mayhem far beyond the ME region. But she discredits even the good and important
points - merely by signing them with her discredited moniker - and this distracts
the discussions and make even good points dubious. That`s why I don`t want to give
her some slack on this stuff.

Yes, it looks like TWN perhaps was hacked. But the fact that OA was the first one to
claim this, made it sound highly dubious for a while.

Paul, you miss my point. They know full well that I'm PissedOffAmerican. I have never denied it, or sought to hide the fact.

Read the comments. I'm curious what you think of Taylor's "moderation".

Put simple: If I write a comment claiming that it would be foolish to escalate the
war in Afghanistan by sending 40 000 soldiers, at the time when the government in
Kabul is weak and discredited ---- then I would not be happy if some guy supported
my opinion, but in the next paragraph claimed that the strange weather pattern in
Arizona is caused by manipulations by some Mongolian post-punk band with
mysterious links to powerful transnational corporations.

"Yes, it looks like TWN perhaps was hacked. But the fact that OA was the first one to
claim this, made it sound highly dubious for a while"

Oh come on, Paul. You couldn't reach the conclusion the site was hacked without outside input? Despite the obvious nature of the "glitches", it wasn't possible the site was hacked simply because it was OA that pointed it out?

Sometimes your criticism of OA seems a bit vindictive, rather than simply being intellectually critical, Paul. I too am guilty of the same sin, but I try not to employ it simply because someone says the sky is blue.

"....the strange weather pattern in
Arizona is caused by manipulations by some Mongolian post-punk band with
mysterious links to powerful transnational corporations"

Oh shit, who leaked that? I thought we had it deeply concealed.

Damn it, now we are going to have to contact the Council Of Zardon and postpone our final process of colonization.

Possible? Certainly.

But from there to reaching a waterproof CONCLUSION that the site was hacked by Nadine or
her Zionist friends - based on the sole fact that the comment section was screwed up -
would be quite a stretch as I see it. I try to avoid equaling suspicion with conclusion.

And yes, POA: If OA in the future writes a post claiming that the sky is blue, you bet
I`ll start to doubt it, and look up to see if it`s true or just some weird theory of
hers.

Rumsfeld spoke openly about using his political connections to get
aspartame to the market. READ Paul READ.

Well, maybe you should read my comment above first - I`ve already referred to
that in my 9:03PM comment: "(Although I`ve read credible articles years ago
regarding a sinister role in drugs causing blindness among sick people in some
African countries, etc. etc)."

And I immediately added something that may be worth considering, OA: "The fact
that A stole something from B two years ago, doesn`t prove that A is the one
who stole something from C last week."

Paul,despite your grasp of 36 languages I'm starting to think I'm
smarter than you are. I connect the dots, you and Questions,
and I do think that you two should long distance date, meander.

But I also talk to experts all the time. People who know much
more than I do.

Tamiflu and Rumsfeld are intertwined, did you even bother to
read what I posted? These two flu scares have caused Tamiflu's
stock to shoot up, and Rumsfeld has made a fortune off of the
flu scares. Again, he has talked about using his political
connections to gain profits for the companies he's affiliated
with.

IIRC there was a book written about Rumsfeld and his roommate
at Princeton and all their nefarious schemes. Now you're going
to force me to look it up. Frank Carlucci, former Sec of Defense
was Rumsfeld 's roomate. Carlucci is tied in to the Carlyle Group
along with George Bush The First, Soros, Baker and John Major.

Two more on Rumsfeld:

http://en.allexperts.com/e/d/do/donald_rumsfeld.htm

http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-04-30/news/the-carlyle-
connection/1

And I honestly don't mean to be rude, but I think that you are
somewhat naive Paul. These people are ruthless, and I don't
think that you are, so you can't fathom their utter contempt for
the suckers, who would be us.

oa, i think you underestimate paul..

Hey is this an open thread I guess?

I see Hillary assures us it matters not to the legitimacy of the Afghan rereun election (a legitimate government, of course, being prerequisite to more troops) if Karzi has any competition.

And Hillary also assures us that Bibi has attained the status of Mr. Wonderful in the ME. Only Abbas isn't quote so convinced, and wont play this particular iteration of the game. Who is gaming who anyway?

Just to be sure I got to write my quota of incensed rhetoric today I drafted a letter to Congressional rep about the disgrace that will be the Tuesday Hose vote (condemning Goldstone) HR 867)

And now we hit the submit button and hope for only the usual level of complications. Congrats Steve, I hope, for getting things back in order. May the hackers rot.

Don,

thanks for helping us getting this tread back on track - raising the three most
important stories unfolding right now!

With one short trip, Hillary Clinton has completely and irrevocably derailed any chances for Isr/Pal peace negotiations, and has completely discredited herself and Obama as even handed mediators between Israel and the Palestinians. The entire Muslim community is decrying this betrayal. Only an idiot can fail to see the damage that this inept and blatantly biased diplomacy has wrought. Such damaging "diplomacy" cannot possibly be by accident. But in the remote chance that it is, Hillary should resign, or be fired.

From the Arab News...

(The Middle East's Leading English Language Daily)

Editorials: Widening the gap

2 November 2009

The request by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the US to allow Israel to complete building thousands of units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank before halting construction there, as well as to allow the government to construct public buildings and continue construction in East Jerusalem — a territory Palestinians hope will be their future capital — is unprecedented in the annuls of the conflict. The establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories has no legal validity as registered by UN Security Council resolutions. Israel’s settlement policy is illegal, discriminatory and a violation of Palestinian human rights.

As jolting as Netanyahu’s suggestion was the reply by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who qualified Israel’s settlement policy as putting “significant limits on settlement activity.” What a huge U-turn for the US that not long ago had demanded Israel halt all settlement building. However, the US reaction is not so surprising when put in context. When Netanyahu took office seven months ago, the Obama administration called on Israel to halt all settlement building before negotiations could resume. Netanyahu did not oblige, forcing Washington to call for the next best thing: To get the negotiations going again.

By refraining from exercising any level of pressure on Tel Aviv to halt settlements, Washington has in effect approved this policy, leaving Palestinian negotiators with nothing to discuss in any future peace talks. This is bound to create another wave of tension amongst Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.

And if Clinton also agreed with a statement by Netanyahu that Palestinians had never demanded a settlement freeze in the past as a condition for sitting down with Israel, that would be because there have never been so many Israeli settlements. Israel is preparing to issue tenders for 500 housing units in East Jerusalem and refuses to halt construction of 5,970 settlements in the West Bank. Now Netanyahu wants to finish building 3,000 units in the West Bank. By contrast, since 1967, not a single Palestinian home has gained permission to be built in West Jerusalem. Moreover, while Israel built more than 50,000 settler units for Jews in and around East Jerusalem, not a single apartment was built by the Israeli state for the town’s Palestinian inhabitants.

This is an illegitimate land grab, the size of which transgresses anything seen in the past.

Visits by the Middle East special envoy George Mitchell have so far failed to produce any tangible action. US President Barack Obama personally tried to jump-start talks in September by bringing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu together with Obama but that high-profile sit-down produced no breakthroughs.

It is Clinton’s turn these days. With regard to Israeli settlements, her expressed goal is to “narrow the gap to a sufficient degree” so both sides can agree to resume negotiations. If she cannot fair any better than Obama and Mitchell, then at least she should try to make sure things don’t slide backward. But her unabashed alliance with Netanyahu over the settlements widens the gap further and creates a slide more precipitous.

continues....

From the India daily....

Hillary Clinton's support for illegal Israeli settlement raises question about Obama Administration in Pallestinian camps and Islamic nations

Sarin Goshwami

Nov. 1, 2009

The jewish political forces control the Clintons just like they did George Bush and his father. Is Obama just a spokesman of that political wisdom or he has an opinion that favors a middle ground?

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton, just like her husband Bill Clinton has endorsed the Israeli prime minister’s stance that a renewal of talks should not hinge on a settlement freeze. That is shock for many in the Palestinian camp and the Islamic nations who saw the new Obama Adminsitarion a nutral just force that can be dealt with.

Palestinian officials accused Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, of backtracking on pledges by the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton did not blink. She says she support Israel. The reason is of course well known. Most American politicians are funded by the Jewish power blocks. That makes America an integral component of Israel-America power block in the middle east.

But where soes Obama stand in this? Does he have a say at all? Is he just a spokesman of the same power block that wanted a "moderating face in the front" to show the world that America has changed?

continues....

From the Arab Monitor....

Arab League chief Amr Moussa rules out resumption of peace talks under current conditions

Marrakech, 1 November – While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's praise of Israel's alleged “restraint on the (Israeli) policy of settlements” was received as a slap in the face by Palestinians struggling to hold on to their homeland, Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa ruled out any resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians without and ahead of a freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Talking to journalists at the sidelines of the international World Policy Conference in Marrakech, where Clinton intended to shore up support for the US administration's acceptance of Jewish colonization of occupied territories in Palestine, Amr Moussa said: “If there is no freeze on settlements, there is no logic. What are you negotiating? Why build more settlements? Why create another fait accompli? It is not serious. If they want to continue this practice and enjoy protection against international law, then so be it, but then there can be no normalisation”. Pushing Arab and Islamic states to end Israel's isolation in the Arab world by establish normal diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv was one of the declared goals of the current US administration's foreign policy. Commenting on the meaning of US Secretary of State's call for a quick resumption of peace negotiations between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority, Amr Moussa asked: “Why do they (Israelis) change the demographic make-up, the geographic character (of the occupied territories), why do they expel people from their homes ? If you go to Jerusalem, you’ll see families living in the street, outside their apartments which belong to them but from which they’ve been expelled. Do you think that’s a prelude to peace or an environment which could lead us to a just peace?”

continues....

From the Jordan Times...

Jordan, Egypt back Palestinian stand on talks

AMMAN (JT) - Jordan and Egypt emphasised on Sunday that it is “illogical and unacceptable” to proceed with peace talks while settlement activities are ongoing, especially in East Jerusalem.

In remarks to the press following a meeting between His Majesty King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abul Gheit said peace efforts face a “real problem” as Israel keeps evading commitment to the roadmap peace plan, which calls for the full halt of settlement activities.

The Palestinians on Sunday accused US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of undermining progress towards Mideast peace talks after she praised Israel for offering to curb some Jewish settlement construction, the Associated Press reported.

After meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders during a visit Saturday, Clinton called for an unconditional resumption of peace talks and welcomed Israel's offer for a slowdown in settlement activity. But Palestinians rejected the idea of resuming talks, reiterating their demand that Israel must first freeze all construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - lands they claim for a future state, according to the news agency.

Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh referred at the joint press conference with his Egyptian peer to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' meetings with Clinton and US special envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell, saying it seems that “there are difficulties” emerging in light of the meetings' outcome.

continues....

From Al Jazeera....

US accused on Middle East peace


In their talks earlier, Abbas, right, rejected Clinton's request to resume negotiations [AFP]

The Palestinians have accused the US of destroying any chance of peace talks after backing Israel over the building of illegal settlements on occupied land.

It comes after the US called for talks to start as soon as possible and without preconditions, a climbdown on earlier demands for Israel to stop settlement building.

Nabil Abu Rdeineh, a spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said: "The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel's intransigence and America's back-pedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon."

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, also said that pressuring the Palestinian leadership to make further concessions to accommodate Israel was not the solution.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president is under pressure at home before elections due at the beginning of 2010. The Fatah leader met Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, in the US in September, despite previously refusing to such an encounter unless Israel agreed a settlement halt.

His move was seen as a climbdown, particularly among supporters of the rival faction Hamas.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, had said at a news conference in Jerusalem late on Saturday that the settlement issue should now be considered as part of peace negotiations only.

"There has never been a precondition. It's always been an issue within the negotiations," she said.

The administration of Barack Obama, the US president, had previously demanded that Israel halt all settlement building before negotiations could resume, a move that was applauded by the Palestinians but which brought the US and Israel to loggerheads.

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem correspondent, said: "The Americans would never admit to backtracking, but if we watch the way that the language has changed and the way the emphasis has changed, it's quite clear there has been a slide in the American position.

"Now, we hear Hillary Clinton urging an immediate resumption of talks - 'get back on the path', she said, really not wanting to look at conditions."

Hassan Khitab, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, told Al Jazeera: "Frankly speaking I did not expect this shift to happen.

"Now the question is 'what needs to be done?' The Palestinians will have great difficulties allowing the resumption of negotiations alongside the continuing of the settlement expansion.

“Especially that Israel has increased its provocative activities through settlers whether in the West Bank … or in occupied East Jerusalem, through restricting the right of Palestinian Muslims for worshiping in addition to restricting the rights of all Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the eviction process that has increased recently.”

Shifting position

In May, Clinton had said Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions".

The US had initially demanded a halt to any construction in the occupied territories [AFP]

But after bringing Abbas and Netanyahu together at the United Nations in New York in September, Obama called only for "restraint" on settlements, not a "freeze".

Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor to The Middle East Report, said that it was not surprising that the US had changed its stance.

"In January [and] February this year there were all kinds of hoorays on the basis that the Obama administration was somehow going to effect a revolution in American foreign policy.

"If you look at what's happened over the course of the past year, it's basically been a gradual collapse of the American position, which in my view [means] there is] absolutely no surprise that they've ended up where they are now - basically heeding Israel's decision to continue settlement constructon in the occupied territories," Rabbani told Al Jazeera from Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Rabbani said a "pattern is consistent with American policy since the beginning of Israel-Palestine diplomacy in the early 1990s - always leaning on the Palestinians to make concessions in order to solve the problems they're having with the Israelis. No surprise here; nothing new."

Akiva Eldar, the chief political commentator with the Israel's Haaretz newspaper, described the move as a "betrayal"

"The secretary of state, I assume with the full support of the president, has turned around after 10 months of negotiating the precondition of freezing settlements ... she says there is no precedent to preconditions.

"The fact that there was no precedent actually demonstrates why there are now 300,000 settlers living in the West Bank and just 16 years ago when the Oslo Agreement was launched there were 109,000 settlers.

"The message from Obama was change. Not about keeping the same kind of American policy that turns a blind eye to Israel putting facts on the ground."

continues....

I wonder if the developments POA referred to will result in a new cycle of violence
in the coming months. If so, it would not be surprising. And on top of this, the US
Congress will condone the massacre in Gaza on Tuesday.

America, stop sucking up to Israel
By Gideon Levy

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124928.html

"Israel of 2009 is a spoiled country, arrogant and condescending, convinced that it deserves everything and that it has the power to make a fool of America and the world. The United States has engendered this situation, which endangers the entire Mideast and Israel itself. That is why there needs to be a turning point in the coming year - Washington needs to finally say no to Israel and the occupation. An unambiguous, presidential no."

Oh, this is far far worse than merely "sucking up", this is the purposeful placement of the Palestinians in a completely untenable position. These pieces of shit, Hillary and Obama, handed the Palestinians an imperative precondition to negotiations, by demanding that Netanyahu cease all settlement expansion and construction. They then abandoned and betrayed the Palestinians, declaring the Palestinian preconditions as an impediment to peace. This is one of the slimiest bit of international political backstabbing I can recall, and is equal to the despicable machinations that Bush/Cheney engaged in. As Paul points out, this will undoubtedly result in further violence, and has COMPLETELY exposed Obama and Hillary as lying posturing sacks of shit, that CANNOT be trusted to give the Muslims a fair shake, no matter WHAT kind of propagandized excrement flows out of the Oval office. This diplomatic blunder will affect EVERY and ANY attempt Obama makes to impose foreign policy in the Middle East.

If this is what we can expect from Obama and Hillary, our engagement with Iran has become infinitely more dangerous. These two inept assholes could prove to be more dangerous, and more damaging, to our national security than George Bush and Dick Cheney were.

And BTW, Dan Kervick, this has unfolded EXACTLY how I told you it would, months ago, when you were naively lauding Obama's "sincerity".

And here is the evidence that there was collusion between the Obama Administration and Israel, behind closed doors, to arrive EXACTLY at this end, despite the horseshit being defecated publically by Clinton and Obama about a cessation of settlement expansion or construction....

http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=66&docid=4429

New "Fast Track" for Construction Permits in the Settlements

Hagit Ofran 22/10/2009

A few weeks ago we obtained a letter written by the engineer of one of the regional settlement councils, in which he refers to a new "fast track" offered by the council for initiating new settlement construction. This new fast track shortens and expedites the process necessary for starting new construction by letting people obtain a permit to dig and lay foundations, rather than begin construction on the building itself. This is not business as usual. Normally when a building permit is granted, that permit applies to everything – the structure and its foundations. Getting such a permit is not a quick process, since applicants must satisfy a series of planning, safety and bureaucratic requirements. The new “fast track” is clearly designed to circumvent this longer process. Why? Simply stated: so that settlers can get as much activity going on the ground as possible, in the hopes that if/when a settlement freeze is declared, anything that is already underway will be exempted from the freeze.

Here is a translation of the letter:

From: Itzik Rosenberg
Date: September 15, 2009, 16:24

Re: instructions for receiving a building permit, Stage 1 only

Following are the instructions to submit Stage I building permits = digging lot, support and foundations:
1. Preparing full "harmonica" with all its parts including calculating areas and signed by the engineer responsible for laying the foundations.
2. Having the settlement department stamp "permitted" on the harmonica.
3. Attaching static calculation and engineer statement.
4. Making agreement with laboratory for foundation concrete.

All of the 58 other requirements and amending the plan according to our instructions, calculation corrections, safety room confirmation, laboratory confirmation, fire department, electric company confirmation, sewage confirmation and more and more and more… will be the condition to receive a Stage 2 building permit to continue building the whole house from the foundations until the end.

Paul,

What is happening in I/P is exactly what I predicted here (not claiming special credit, as everybody who understands the situation said the same): Obama PREVENTED new peace talks by introducing his idiotic new demand for a total stop to all construction east of the Green Line, even in Jerusalem. Naturally Abu Mazen at once endorsed it and won't back down since Abu Mazen doesn't want new talks and has been quoted as saying that the official Palestinian position is to give nothing and wait to get things for free. Netanyahu handled it more shrewdly by giving a show of compliance, thus positioning himself as the more reasonable party, which is what Hillary Clinton is being forced to acknowledge.

Somebody should tell President Obama that he should select political positions that UNITE his allies and DIVIDE his opponents. On both the Mideast and healthcare, he has got it backwards.

I don't know why you keep talking about US influence over I/P. The US has some influence over Israel since the Israelis consider the alliance very important (the aid itself is minor by comparison, since Israel has a $100 B GDP and could do without it; it's much more important as a barometer of the alliance), but as POA keeps wailing, the Congress won't back a position they see as dangerous to Israel's existence. Forcing peace talks when there's an opening, okay, but forcing peace talks when the Palestinians are completely intransigent and are basically taking Hamas' position? No way.

There is no evidence that the US has any influence over the Palestinians. None. I don't know why you keep speaking as if there were. You really must try to read reports from both sides and not just the regurgitated Palestinian agitprop that passes for European reporting.

Obama asked Abu Mazen to make a gesture to improve the tone. Abu Mazen said no. Obama asked Abu Mazen not to be the one pushing Goldstone, don't oppose it, just don't be the one out front supporting it. Hamas called Abu Mazen a running dog and he caved in two days. Hamas has 100 times the influence over Abu Mazen and the PA than the US does. The Pals could be influenced if something threatened their aid money, since they don't really have much of an economy, but of course the poor, poor Palestinians must always get their aid money no matter what, right? If the US doesn't ante up the Euros will. The Iranian money would only stop if the negotiations began. When you consider Palestinian actions, you must consider who is paying their leadership and for what.

they wouldn't be able to suck up with an israel lobby in the usa... israel doesn't want peace.. that much is very obvious....

with - without....

Nice work guys!
this is just Amazing!
Thanks

uh oh, the jeans spammers are back.

The jeans and jewelry spammers usually post every night around 1 or 2 AM,
while most Americans are sleeping. Then I guess Steve removes their crap
manually when he wakes up.

POA, Obama placed himself in the untenable position by stupidly picking a fight that he could not win. Obama introduced the new precondition, which hadn't been there before. Only after he introduced it did he figure out that it would cost him far more to win than the game was worth to him, esp. as Abu Mazen made it clear that he wouldn't get a single concession in return from the Palestinians if he did slug it out with Israel. Nada.

So Obama has climbed down from his untenable position. Now Abu Mazen can choose between following him down, or being seen as the party blocking the resumption of talks that President Obama has called for so noisily. Netanyahu, shrewdly, is loudly calling for the resumption of talks.

Did I hear you call Obama and Clinton inept assholes? Wow, a point of agreement. But I'll call them worse than that. They are ignorant, arrogant and profoundly naive. A very dangerous combination. At least Obama is. I'm not sure if Hillary agrees, or is just following his lead. But she is careless and sloppy in what she says.

Obama's mental model of negotiations just does not work. He thinks you negotiate by either handing out free concessions or making demands you can't enforce. Bibi just danced circles around him. We can be thankful that Israel wants no more than not to be forced to give away more concessions for nothing in return. But Iran wants to hurt the US and they are also dancing circles around Obama.

AS I suggested to my Congressman, relating to the upcoming House vote on Goldstone:

"Is this akin to the recent vote at the UN regarding the policy of embargo on Cuba, where the US and Israel alone in the world -- the US against the UN with Israel (and it's radical mouthpiece AIPAC) as the wedge factor determining what US foreign policy should think and be?"

Call it collusion. Call it betrayal. Call it calumny. Call it cowardice. Call it what you will. Hillary and Obama have managed to continue the long tradition of a Israel-biased policy wrapped in the thinest of rationales and the most obvious of lies.

Nadine's analysis is wrong in it's assumptions, and too simplistic. The US cannot wrest concessions from Israel not because Bibi is so cagey, or Obama/Hillary so inept (both of which are true), but because Obama either does not believe in the need to follow through with pressure on Israel or lacks the political courage or power to do so.

If Israel's GDP is indeed $100 bil, then she should graciously
refuse our meagre tithe of $3-16 bil. I'll take it.

Yes, I do know that "tithe" means 10% of what you make, so
we're vastly underpaying the State of Zion, although at this point
the US is making nothing, both literally and figuratively.

But we're making it up to Israel with the trillions we're spending
on the slaughters in Iraq, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, "Af-Pak",
South Ossetia.

POA, I'm sure you've seen this by now but here's Sibel Edmonds
on antiwar.com. This is a transcript of her interview with antiwar
radio.

I find her so confusing. Almost as much as Kotzi -whatever his
name is, and Questions. You might be able to make some sense
of the Edmond's interview.

FBI Whistleblower (Sibel Edmonds) Names Names

http://tinyurl.com/ybxeng3

And ..., I have tremendous respect for someone who can write
English, supposedly it's one of the most difficult languages to
learn, but I post links backing-up my assertions and Paul
ignores them, and instead blubbers on ( do they hunt whales in
Norway? Narwhals? ) about how I don't know what I'm talking
about.

Paul and Questions like to ponder things, like the existentialist
nature of a Big Mac and how it relates to their navels and / or
the opening up of China in terms of the thoughts of the average
Chinese person's innate quest to consume crappy beef covered
in Velveeta and how it affected Chinese desire to overthrow
Communism and become another America, except one where all
the citizens only have one skin color.

*SNORES*

I swear Paul and Questions are meant for each other. Think
GREEN CARD Paul.

You can come here, hook-up with Questions-girl, then divorce
her once you get that green card, write a screenplay about life
in a hut on the fjords and your existential angst, while living on
Venice beach surrounded by bubble breasted, bikini clad
"actress/ models", get a whole bunch of venereal diseases, write
a second screenplay (but this one will end-up as a weepy on
LIFETIME) about your struggle with HIV, and die happy.

Seriously, I'm a great yenta. I've set so many couples up and
only about 90% have ended in "irreconcilable differences."

BTW: the sky is blue or mostly blue in Phoenix for something
like 300 out of 365 days a year. Jeee-a-lus much Paul? I'm
going swimming all week at a friend's heated, outdoor, pool.
Should be something like 90 F all week. Nyah.

"Obama placed himself in the untenable position by stupidly picking a fight that he could not win."

"He thinks you negotiate by either handing out free concessions or making demands you can't enforce."

Nadine, I would only change those sentences by replacing the relevant parts of them with the phrases "picking a fight he was unprepared to win" and "making demands he was unwilling to enforce".

This is why I place no stock in the ongoing "J Street" nonsense. The changes in Israeli policies that J Street and other liberal American Jews claim to support are changes that are deeply *opposed* by both the Israeli government and the majority of the Israeli people. That means that in order for these changes to occur, the effect of talk is sincerely limited, and some measure of coercion must be applied.

But when the time comes to apply the coercive sticks, these J Street clowns will be nowhere to be found. That's because, just like their Aipac brethren, they think Israel and Israelis are super-duper special, important and lovable, and they will never be prepared to support a coercive application of US power against them.

I asked MJ Rosenberg back in April what further steps he would support if Netanyahu simply said "no". He wouldn't even go there. It was unthinkable to him that Netanyahu would be able to resist Obama's magic mojo. MJ's new movement is weak and unserious. The new lobby's ability to attract members seems directly related to the fact that its members can be confident that the only opposition to Israeli policies they will ever be called on to support is verbal.

As has been said by many, Israel holds all the cards, as between Israel and the Palestinians. Therefore it is Israel the must be pressured to make significant moves, and it is Israel that must be pressured until it relents.

Israel cannot continue to be allowed to take the US and the world down the road of insanity. If Obama isn't beginning to get that message (now that he's tried it Hillary's way and the Kumbaya way) he might as well just call off the resources and let the thing unfold willy nilly. Can't be much worse.

Hillary’s Ill Will Tour

A most undiplomatic diplomat

by Justin Raimondo, November 02, 2009

In what the Los Angeles Times described as "a fence-mending trip" to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to tear down more fence posts than she repaired. Abrasive, arrogant, and condescending, she fired a series of verbal RPG volleys that nearly demolished what remained of good relations between the U.S. and its principal ally in the region.

On the fight against al-Qaeda:

"Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it ‘hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.’ Al-Qaeda, she said, ‘has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002.’"

It is astonishing that a U.S. diplomat would say this in a public forum – at a question-and-answer session with Pakistani journalists, no less. One U.S. official tried to justify this outburst with the "explanation" that "You’ve got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11." But what has that got to do with the plausibility of Hillary’s contention that the government of Pakistan is holding out on us as to Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts? Exactly nothing. If she has evidence Pakistan is knowingly harboring the world’s most wanted terrorist, then she should state it publicly, rather than engage in unfounded innuendo.

A more inflammatory remark would be hard to imagine – unless it’s what she said about U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory. Asked if she thinks attacks that kill innocent civilians constitute terrorism – "execution without trial," as one questioner put it – Clinton replied, "No, I do not," and then refused to discuss the matter further, citing "security" reasons. The audience of Pakistani women sat there in stunned, horrified silence. Which was similar to the reaction of an audience of businessmen, who were told:

"’At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities,’ she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes ‘everything that moves and everything that doesn’t, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.’"

Hillary is miffed Pakistan doesn’t plunder its citizens to the extent we do, but that doesn’t mean the central government in Islamabad scores high points in any index of economic freedom. Pakistan’s poor bear the lion’s share of the tax burden in that country to such an extent that their Supreme Court recently intervened to lower the gasoline tax, overruling the national legislature. The lower and middle classes cheered, but Hillary will have none of it: how dare those Pakistanis lower taxes!

What’s scary is that Hillary considers this to have been a "charm offensive" – and, by her standards, it is. Having inflicted maximum damage on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, she took her bull-in-a-china-shop routine to Israel, where, standing next to Netanyahu, she declared:

"What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements … is unprecedented."

Well, yes, Netanyahu’s absolute refusal to freeze all "settlement" activity is unprecedented – in its stubborn intransigence. This is specially evident in the context of the U.S. demand that, as Hillary put it not long ago, we "see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions." So much for taking the administration’s pronouncements seriously.

The Palestinian reaction was to declare that the peace talks – which Hillary had been sent to the region to kick-start – are indefinitely stalled. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority head honcho Mahmoud Abbas, averred, "The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s backpedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon."

It is often said that the election of Barack Obama boosted our image in the world: suddenly, after eight years of unmitigated hatred directed against George W. Bush’s America, we’re popular again. Yet it looks like Hillary is trying as hard as she can to undo all that with her ill-will tour. The woman is John Bolton in a dress.

Just as I predicted upon her appointment to State, Clinton is conducting her own foreign policy while Obama, preoccupied with domestic matters, dithers and lets his "team of rivals" carry the ball. The problem is that the Clintonian policy is a blunt instrument with which our remaining allies are being hit over the head, and the results aren’t pretty. Hillary left Pakistan even more destabilized – and hostile to the U.S. – than it was when she arrived, and her trip to Israel is similarly disastrous.

This administration is hopelessly divided when it comes to foreign policy, with the Obama loyalists sending out hopeful signals in the form of the Dear Leader’s matchless rhetoric (e.g., the Cairo speech) and the the Clintonians in effective control of the foreign policy apparatus, contradicting and neutralizing whatever positive effects result from the president’s pronouncements.

Not only that, but at the policy level, where words are translated into concrete actions, Queen Hillary and her minions are carrying out another policy altogether, one virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s in style and content. The same blundering crudity is used to express and justify a policy of unmitigated aggression and complete disregard for human life.

There is nothing diplomatic about Hillary’s words or the tone in which they are uttered; she speaks with the bold assertiveness of Obama’s co-president, rather than as a member of the cabinet. Which is, indeed, precisely what she is, having been ceded the entire realm of foreign affairs by a chief executive clearly staggering under the burden of his office.

The point is that, once again, American voters are faced with a coup at the top. They never voted for a more belligerent foreign policy – quite the opposite, in fact – and yet that is precisely what they are being given. Obama is the happy, smiling, politically correct face of a policy that remains essentially unchanged, which is why his secretary of state feels free to travel the world recklessly pushing her weight around and insulting everyone within range of her smug, grating, hubris-inflected voice.

So you thought you were getting change, eh? Not a chance, not as long as Obama refuses to rein in his secretary of state. It is going to take more than a mere presidential election to effect fundamental change in our interventionist foreign policy. We are in for a long, hard slog. So dig in, check that you have enough rations, and get ready for a protracted struggle against the War Party – which has by no means retired from the field.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/11/01/hillarys-ill-will-tour/

. . . and the Hillary said, after she left, with respect to Pakistani's trusting the US, "We're not there yet".

The be all and end all of a "successful" policy: we get "there"; by some measure they "trust" us and the wonderful example the US sets for the world (in it's mind).

Shovel another $1.5 B per year there way Hillary. Maybe then they'll be "there". I hate it when you can't buy good will, or even the pretense thereof.

. . . . . . .. .

Flash: Karzi in by acclimation! What a gift to Obama! Get out now!

Outraged,

if your friend easy e is willing to confirm your claim that the sky is blue in Phoenix,
I`ll be inclined to believe it. Until then, I have a strong suspicion that it`s green.
And if you`re interested, I can provide several links showing that Richard Perle`s
garage is painted green, and that his favorite musician is the cellist Yo-Yo Ma - just
to prove beyond doubt that Perle is the designer of the artificial Arizonan sky.

The sky is blue. Phoenix awaits you in open arms.

US Words Thwart Middle East Peace
by Ira Chernus

Two loud wake-up calls came in from the Middle East over the weekend. The next voice you hear will be from the U.S. House of Representatives, which will vote this week (perhaps as soon as Tuesday) on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored resolution denouncing the Goldstone Report. That's the UN fact-finding mission accusing Israel as well as Hamas of war crimes in Israel's attack on Gaza last December.

more here...http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/02-2

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are about to set the Middle East on fire.

Bravo Turkey.

* * * * *
Erdogan criticizes West over hypocrisy on Iran
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:29:47 GMT

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says countries with huge nuclear arsenals have no right to lecture Iran about the threat of atomic weapons.

"Those who criticize Iran's nuclear program continue to possess the same weapons," Erdogan said in a televised address on Saturday.

Erdogan was referring to nuclear-armed states that accuse Tehran of attempting to produce nuclear weapons but at the same time refuse to eradicate their own nuclear arsenals.

"I think that those who take this stance, who want these arrogant sanctions, need to first give these (weapons) up. We shared this opinion with our Iranian friends, our brothers," he noted.

The Turkish premier made the remarks following his two-day trip to Iran earlier this week.

Iran says it enriches uranium for civilian applications and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to the technology already in the hands of many others.

Erdogan has vocally supported Iran's right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, saying world policymakers have been treating Tehran "unfairly" over its enrichment program.

"Iran does not accept it is building a weapon. They are working on nuclear power for the purposes of energy only," Erdogan said in a recent interview with The Guardian.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=110125§ionid=351020101

Paul, the sky IS green, we're all just looking at it without our
yellow-tinted glasses on.

I'll call up easy e when he wakes up, which is around 3 PM, the
lazy sod, and get him to confirm that the sky indeed is blue in
Phoenix right now.

In the meantime, you can check out this weather link, which has
obviously been hijacked by propagandists from the Phoenix
Tourism Board. No clouds all week and highs in the 90s F.

The best part of October is in the mornings we can open the
windows and get fresh cool air and then swim in relative heat in
the afternoons, after which we go on a coyote hunt at sunset,
skin them and boil the meat to make into tacos and baby food.

Arizona, take off your Indian braids. POA is probably the only
one of you losers who would remember that song.

WeatherUnderground.com --an invaluable site for those
obsessed with the weather, which would be every Canadian I've
ever met.

http://tinyurl.com/yj74npl

Oh wait, easy e is up! Easy, how is the weather in Phoenix right
now, is the sky blue? What about that greenish tint towards
your part of town? Martian invasion? Or did Palo Verde nu-
kleor plant just blow-up? Must be Al Qaeda, can't they damn
well just sit still and let us slaughter their co-religionists will
nilly???

Nobody in the Arab world expected anything else while Bush was in charge of the "peace
process". But with Obama`s well received Cairo speech and his former demand of a
settlement freeze in fresh memory, the disappointment and outrage may reach new levels
- especially when you add the dismissal of the Goldstone report.

Hillary and "trust". When you start out a comment "I find it hard to believe . . .", you might expect that Pakistanis might react, in many ways, but most simply in pointing out their own lack of trust. Except they can trust that they see the US footprint, drone print, invasion history.

It's not as if Clinton is telling blunt truths. Just blunt.

So who is about to tell Hillary to STFU?

One of the days the non-aligned countries, and the other great posers may just decide they've had enough of America's arrogance and that actually the US needs their cooperation a whole lot more than the reverse. That would validate the neocons wet dream but also highlight the waste of political capital that the administration seems bent on pursuing. Does the Erdogan message that easy e notes above hint about calling the US/Israel bluff?

"So who is about to tell Hillary to STFU?"

The stupid jackassette is backpedaling furiously today, but the damage is already done. Whats more, she is backpedaling by reading a prepared statement. So obviously someone felt the need to shut off her disasterous ad libbing and hand her a script. Truth is, she should be fired.

I imagine Reid and Hoyer are all smiles today, reveling in how completely this arrogant ad libbing asshole Clinton has derailed any hopes for peace or constructive mediation on our part. But the REAL celebration is undoubtedly in Huckabee's camp, who must be ecstatic at Hillary's efforts to get all the fuses lit.

Turkey's been calling Israel's bluff a lot lately: here's Erdogan on
Avigdor Lieberman's threats to nuke the Gaza Strip.

Report: Turkey PM says Lieberman threatened to nuke Gaza

October 26, 2009

claiming that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to
use nuclear weapons against Gaza, The Guardian reported
Monday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as making the allegation in an
interview published by the British newspaper. The comments
came amid a crisis in ties between the two allies, which erupted
earlier in the month after Turkey banned Israel from
participating in a NATO air force drill.

The crisis was deepened two weeks ago, when Ankara refused to
take off the air a television drama that depicts Israeli soldiers
killing Palestinian children.

continues

CAUTION --CLOSE THE HA'ARETZ PAGE after you've read the
article otherwise it will slow your computer down.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1123646.html

Sorry forgot it was November -- still recovering from easy e
waterboarding me with tequila.

Diplomacy is in the service of a nation's policy. Hillary is more about making/contolling policy than implementing it. She may well think that the skills she has used to muscle her way in domestic politics are adequate, if not excellent, for the role of international diplomat. They are not.

http://palestinenote.com/cs/blogs/blogs/archive/2009/11/02/obama-administration-flip-floping-on-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

MJ Rosenberg

Blog Summary » Obama administration flip-floping on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

There have to be limits. I understand that in politics and diplomacy one often says one thing and does another. But the Obama administration's flip-flop on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, even for politicians, awesome to behold.

Before I set out describing what the administration appears to have done, I will offer a caveat, maybe even a prayer. During Barack Obama's Presidential campaign I often had doubts that he would pull off winning the election. He would take an action that I considered sure to fail but, in the end, he was invariably proven right. So there is a part of me that hopes that he knows exactly what he is doing in the Middle East right now and that I am not smart enough to see it. But, to be honest, I don't think so.

It is important to remember that Barack Obama did not have to pledge to play "honest broker" between Israelis and Palestinians in his first year in office. He did not have to go to Cairo to deliver a speech in which he promised to achieve an Israel settlements freeze as a first step toward full scale negotiations. Secretary of State Clinton did not have to follow up on that pledge with her own statement that the President demands "a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions." In subsequent meetings between Israeli and American officials, at all levels, the demand was made again and again. The United States wants settlements frozen, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Some say that the White House made a mistake by emphasizing settlements, an issue so volatile that it could blow Prime Minister Netanyahu's cabinet apart. But it had little choice. The Palestinians have made settlements a condition for serious negotiations since the Oslo process began. The Israelis rightly demanded an end to violence as their precondition for negotiations ("we can't talk to them while they are shooting us. The Palestinians made a settlements freeze their precondition "we can't negotiate over the final disposition of the land while they are building settlements on it"). Besides, previous Israeli governments have accepted this logic and has agreed to freezes in the past.

At this point, however, it does not matter whether the Obama administration was right to focus on settlements. It did. And it reiterated its demand over and over gain, restoring credibility among Palestinians and in the Muslim world at large that we haven't had for a decade at least.

It is no surprise that Prime Minister Netanyahu rebuffed the administration. He was expected to do that, just as it was expected that, when he did, Obama would apply the pressure. (Israel is, after all, the number one recipient of American aid in the world),

What was not expected was that the Obama administration would not exert pressure but would capitulate which is what happened yesterday. Secretary of Hillary Clinton, following meetings with the various leaders, made clear that the United States no longer accepted the Palestinian demand for a moratorium on settlements. She said that although the United States still desired a freeze, she characterized Netyahu's offer of "restraint" on settlements as "unprecedented" (which it most certainly is not. Prime Minister after Prime Minster has offered "restraint" and some have offered -- one even implemented -- a full freeze). In fact, it is hard to know what restraint she is referring to.

And, according to the New York Times, she "conspicuously avoided criticizing the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem" despite the fact that religious settlers are seizing property in Palestinian Jerusalem at an unprecedented rate. Their goal is to ensure that there is no possibility of a Palestinian state with any part of Jerusalem as its capital. Their secondary goal is simply to increase Palestinian suffering.

In return the United States is "sucking up" to Netanyahu with abandon. It is said that the President is upset with his 4% approval rating in Israel (why should he care? Israel is not Iowa). He might better have focused on America's rising popularity in every other country in the Middle East and Muslim world precisely because of the belief that Obama was going to play the role of "honest broker" between Arabs and Israelis, and not just as Israel's big powerful friend. That is probably over now along with President Abbas' credibility. (He told Palestinians to trust the new administration).

Netanyahu and the Israeli right must be ecstatic. The United States blinked on settlements without even a big battle. Netanyahu said "no" and we said "Not to worry."

Israelis have a word for people who are routinely taken advantage of by other more clever people. The term is "freier" and its closest equivalent in English is "sucker." I bet they are using that term about the United States and Israel right now. There is not much question about who has earned that term.

Right now we are watching three geopolitical events unfolding more or less
simultaneously:

1) Israel continuing the settlement policies, ignoring former US demands.
2) Russia announcing that sanctions against Iran would be unwise.
3) Afghanistan announcing that Karzai is the winner of the election.

And the White House pretending that everything is fine.

Of course the whole world realize that these are serious strategic setbacks. Are we
witnessing the current POTUS exposing the limits of US diplomacy, the way the former
POTUS exposed the limits of US military power?

In other words: are we basically witnessing an inevitable process, or events happening
largely due to personal weaknesses and lack of judgement in the White House - both by
Bush and Obama?

Or are the diplomatic setbacks largely a result of the military adventures of the
former POTUS?

TWN appears to be back in one piece, due no doubt to hours of detestable hairtearing weekend work by Steve and multiple computer geeks.

With kudos to POA for supplying the long versions, the time TWN was down just about covers one of the shortest and most debilitating time periods modern US history, bringing great black clouds to the western horizon. To whit:

Eye surgeon Abdullah pulls a calculated Al Gore withdrawal from the Afghan runoff election citing government and election commission misconduct in the aftermath of a massively fraudulent election. Abdullah is quickly rewarded by the Afghan election commission with the declaration of oil man Karzai as the winner. Hillary says that's ok and the US will support any president at all that fake Afghan elections come up with. Axelrod avoids the nut, magnanimously accepts the outcome, and says it will have no effect on whether 40,000 more US troops ship out to Afghanistan. Big Oil, Karzai's drug kingpin brother, China, and Russia are ecstatic. The US drops its canteen trying to staunch the blood from another hole in the foot and limps off in the heat waves in the direction of the some really tall dunes.

Clinton says Israel has given unprecedented concessions on Israeli squatting projects at the same time the squatters are being given beaurucratic dispensation to accelerate squatting.

Pakistan, ignoring its 2 million internal refugees due to its military treasure hunt for Taliban or Al Qaeda or (pick you favorite evil), who are already in training as the next legion of Taliban or Al Qaeda or (pick you favorite evil), is described in terms best described as Albrightian as doing the right thing and being on the right course, but not doing enough of it.

Clinton, missing by a few hours and a few miles the personal experience of a car bomb, can't figure out why Pakistan hasn't been able to find Al Qaeda.

The US Congress is set to abandon American ideals and condemn the Goldstone war crimes report.

In terms of Sisyphus, Clinton has almost single handedly knocked the chock out from under the rock of Israel, blithely creating a long trail of crushed bodies and leaving Americans to once again shoulder the metastasizing boulder at the bottom of the hill and continue the financing of the effort with Chinese dollars.

One measure of a US residential administration is how confident it is about giving appointees working latitude, but not being afraid to chuck out those who become counterproductive. As much as I appreciate the many fervent women who wanted Hillary to become the first woman president, Hillary has in a few hours managed to more firmly set the US against world opinion and identified current US foreign policy as somewhere on the other side of the globe from the very foundations of American beliefs. The State Department is supposed to be the seat of diplomacy and the generator of soft power. Clinton has debauched State by abandoning diplomacy. Biden is hung with a label that Clinton deserves. Obama either agrees or has allowed Clinton to set US policy.

Mother Night, pray for us.

Paul, I grant OA much more entertainment value than you do, being TWN's current version of Hunter Thompson. Her graph containing the word "hut" comes to mind as a little white anti-cancer humor pill.

Also, one must connect dots today because hiding things in plain sight is the cheapest, easiest way to confound Americans and set them to harrassing and stomping each other, as recent TWN posts demonstrate. Rummy will never appear in a blue blazer and white boater in a Tamiflu dance line. In a warehouse of bazookas, the search for Cheney's smoking gun will never quite bear fruit. Lee Oswald will never be declared not guilty. (Stop Paul, resist the inclination to read too much into these.)

James,

what`s the point of a gonzo journalist without an establishment provoked by his or her
stunts?

I`m happy to pose as the despicable establishment in this particular context. In the
long run, I would guess that the Hunter S. of this blog will be content with this
arrangement as well, under her green Arizonan skies designed by the Prince of Darkness.

Paul's obviously falling asleep at his keyboard or the Northern
Lights are blinding him from seeing his screen.

Paul, I would venture to guess that the vast majority of posters
here respect and value your input, including me, so calm down.

"Obama placed himself in the untenable position by stupidly picking a fight that he could not win."

"He thinks you negotiate by either handing out free concessions or making demands you can't enforce."

Nadine, I would only change those sentences by replacing the relevant parts of them with the phrases "picking a fight he was unprepared to win" and "making demands he was unwilling to enforce".

******************

Dan, there is little difference for practical political purposes. If you over-extend your political credit for some purpose where your own followers are not enthusiastically behind you, you destroy your own chances of doing anything else. That was what GW Bush did to his own Presidency with the war in Iraq, even though nearly all Republicans stayed behind him on that. But he couldn't reform Social Security or do anything else he tried. Obama might be able to bludgeon Netanyahu into full compliance against the will of the entire Israeli public, but only if it were more important to him than health care reform. Which, obviously, it's not.

As for J Street, they are shrinking as people discover that their claims to be "pro Israel" are fraudulent. As they are seen to be a left-wing group that is to the left even of Meretz, they will attract only those people who are in that camp. A lobby can't be large when the group it is lobbying for is tiny, except by fraud.

stopping the 3 billion a year payments to israel would send a positive message.. obama could do this if it mattered... it appears hot air is a lot easier to give then action with obama..