Thursday, January 29, 2004

The Neo-Nazi Left Takes to the Stage, On Your Dime. This is beyond vile:

The play, called "Crown Heights," portrays the murder of chasidic scholar Yankel Rosenbaum as a tragic accident in a fight in which Jews threw the first punch. It is a production of the All Stars Project, Inc., one of a cluster of organizations connected to Lenora Fulani, a fringe political activist who has been accused of antisemitism, and to the self-described "social therapist" and alleged cult leader Fred Newman, her longtime political ally. Fulani, 53, is a co-founder of the All Stars Project. Newman, 68, is a co-author of the play and the artistic director of the Project's Castillo Theater.

The play begins with a video of interviews about the riots, mostly of Fulani and her associates, including her chauffeur and members of the All Stars Project staff. The clip presents Fulani herself as an arbitrator, calming blacks ready to take "defensive" measures against what she calls "chasidim throwing rocks and bottles."


That's the pleasent part. Here's where it gets bad:

In "Crown Heights," both blacks and Jews, played by teen actors, confront the aftermath of the death of a fictionalized Gavin Cato, the 7-year-old black child accidentally run over by a car in the motorcade of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Schneerson. According to contemporary accounts, a vehicle accompanying Scheerson's car struck the child and his cousin, who was injured but survived. A Jewish volunteer ambulance, which was the first emergency vehicle to respond, was directed by police to leave the scene without the children, because officers feared violence from a crowd that had gathered at the scene, but left only after the arrival of a second ambulance.

The dramatized "Crown Heights" depicts the incident rather differently. In the play, Scheerson's own car hits the child; both his car and a Jewish ambulance leave the scene immediately, implying that the Jews are guilty of leaving the children to die. "There's a black boy bleeding," actors sing, "as the rabbi just runs." When one of the Jews is in turmoil over his community's guilt ("we moved into their country"), and thus sympathetically portrayed, his fellow Jews prefer to take refuge in memories of their own victimhood. The black community, "hungry for justice," must only judge how to respond to the Jews, "smug and safe in their white skins," who "turned their back" on a dying child.

The play also fictionalizes Rosenbaum's death, for which two men were convicted on federal civil rights charges. The victim, an Australian tourist, was accosted by a gang of youths while walking alone, taunted with antisemitic slurs and then stabbed to death. When two groups of young men — one black and one Jewish — meet in the play's portrayal of the incident, they trade racial slurs until a Jew leaps at a black man. In the ensuing melee, one of the Jews runs into the knife, held by a black youth in safekeeping for a friend. This innocent teenager is thrown into jail, where — in the finale — he decides to marry his Jewish social worker.


I don't know whether to laugh or put my fist through the wall. Here's the best part:

The All Stars Project's $12 million, 31,000 square-foot performing arts center, located on 42nd Street near 11th Avenue on the edge of New York's Theater District, was made possible through $8.25 million in tax-exempt bonds issued by New York City's Industrial Development Agency. On November 13, 2003, the center's grand opening was marked by the New York City Council with a proclamation honoring the All Stars Project's "outstanding service to the City."

The All Stars Project, Newman's East Side Institute and the Fulani-run Independence Party share members, philosophies and contributors. The two founded the erstwhile New Alliance Party; Newman is a member of the Independence Party and the Project has given money to the Institute. The All Stars Project recorded an income of $2.5 million in 2002, without any government funding, thanks in part to support from a roster of Fortune 500 companies including Bear Stearns and New York Life Insurance Company.


This is the reason why I do not and will never again live on the East Coast of the United States. I don't know who I'm angrier at; the dispicable racist Hiterlites who concieved and produced this excerable monstrosity, the gutless Jewish leadership which can only manage token opposition to it (rather obviously because their afraid of being Mau-Maued to death on the race issue), or the morally bankrupt Leftist beaurocracy that funds hate speech like this with the help of corporations who should know better then to give their money to PC Leftist totalitarian anti-semitic drivel. Someone needs to be called on this kind of garbage. I seriously recommend writing to New York city hall and complaining. You can do it here.

World's Dumbest Self-Hating Jew Continues Slandering the President. I don't know what's worse, Eric Alterman or Eric Alterman's writing:

The Wall Street Journal thinks David Kay’s report is on its side. They don’t read very well. What David Kay is really saying is ... drumroll please, Saddam Hussein was disarmed ... by ... Bill Clinton! We just didn't know it. And we apparently didn’t need to keep bombing him all that time, particularly in 1998. But we sure as hell didn’t need that war. Anyway, here it is.

Actually, what Kay said was that Saddam wasn't disarmed and that we did need the war, specifically on the issues which the president said we did: the possibility of Saddam acquiring WMDs (which Kay says he never stopped doing) and selling them to terror groups. In other words, when Alterman isn't obsessionally slandering Andrew Sullivan he's lying through his teeth about the president of the United States in childishly awful prose. Gross.

Neo-Nazi Leftist Distorts, Lies, Blubbers Incoherently. More evidence for the prosecution:

Meanwhile he claims that the paranoid vision of “Marxist-controlled” universities is “comical” but not limited to the “totalitarian right,” noting a New York Times Book Review article written by a person Chomsky describes a “respected liberal intellectual historian” (identified in the footnotes as John Patrick Diggins) that also argues that Marxism “has come close to being the dominant ideology in the academic world.” Yet rather than analyze or and refute the arguments made by this “respected liberal intellectual,” Chomsky simply dismisses them as “so remote from reality as to defy rational discussion.” Many points that contradict Chomsky’s views are discarded that way.

Read it all. Includes a brilliant deconstruction of how Chomsky "documents" his Nazi propaganda. What amazes me is how obvious it is that everything he's writing is balderdash. No wonder all his acolytes are teaching at major universities.

PIGUA IN JERUSALEM. About a half hour ago. Expect the usual Leftist apologetics imminantly. Yet another good reason to drop a missle on Nasrallah and his pals at their little release celebration. Bastards.

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

John Kerry on Vietnam. This testimony was once fairly famous. It certainly served as Kerry's entry card into Democratic politics. Be prepared, the rhetoric is quite ugly and violent, but it goes a long way to explaining why some veterans are more than a bit angry with JFK II to this day. I don't think I need comment, the viciousness of the thing speaks for itself. I would keep in mind while reading it that the body count amassed by the Vietnamese Communist government is now well north of a million. The consequences, I would say, of America's turning.

Vindicated Blair Hits Back

Lord Hutton finds the following:

1. Contrary to the claim by the BBC that intelligence was put in the dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services; the dossier of 24 September was published with the full approval of the JIC, including the intelligence about Saddam's readiness to use some WMD within 45 minutes of an order to do so.

2. That the allegation by the BBC that the Government deliberately inserted this 45 minute claim probably knowing it was wrong was "unfounded".

3. That the allegation by the BBC that the reason for it not being in the original draft of the dossier was because the intelligence agencies didn't believe it to be true, was also "unfounded".

4. That no-one, either in the JIC or Downing Street acted improperly in relation to the dossier.

5. That the BBC claim that it was "sexed up" in the sense of being embellished with intelligence known or believed to be false was also "unfounded".

6. That Mr Gilligan's key allegations repeated by the BBC were never in fact said even by Dr Kelly himself.

7. That there was "no dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous strategy by the Government covertly to leak Dr Kelly's name to the media".

8. That on the contrary it was reasonable for the Government to conclude that there was no practical possibility of keeping his name secret and that the Government behaved properly in relation to naming him.

9. That the suggestion that either I or Sir Kevin Tebbit in our evidence were in conflict with each other or that one of us was lying was "incorrect and not supported by the evidence".

10. And for good measure, he also dismisses the allegations surrounding what I said on a plane to journalists in these terms...

In conclusion I repeat what Lord Hutton said in his Summary, at page 322.

"The communication by the media of information (including information obtained by investigative reporters) on matters of public interest and importance is a vital part of life in a democratic society. However the right to communicate such information is subject to the qualification (which itself exists for the benefit of a democratic society) that false accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others, including politicians, should not be made by the media."

That is how this began: with an accusation that was false then and is false now.

We can have the debate about the war; about WMD; about intelligence. But we do not need to conduct it by accusations of lies and deceit. We can respect each other's motives and integrity even when in disagreement.

Let me repeat the words of Lord Hutton:

"False accusations of fact impugning the integrity of others ... should not be made".

Let those that made them now withdraw them.


Hehehehehehehehehehehe....ehhhhhhehehehehehehehehe......How sweet it is. Privatize the bastards. Every last one of 'em.

Fat, Red-Nosed Girl-Drowner Rants. Drunken Irish Liberal Dinosaur Teddy Kennedy is vomiting all over David Kay right now on CNN. What a dispicable demagogue. I'm ashamed to be from Boston everytime I see his scotch-swollen face on the TV. Kay is brilliant, by the way, his testimony is a total vindication of the president and acknowledges that WMDs may well have been destroyed and/or sent to Syria on the eve of the war. The media isn't going to be able to spin this guy against the president in any way, shape, or form, although they are certainly going to try.

By the way, when the hell did TK become a flaming Chomskyite pacifist? The Kennedys wrote the book on liberal Hawkishness during the Cold War. I can't believe how totally he's collapsed into moral and political bankruptcy. Grotesque.

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

On the Other Hand... Paul Berman, who's politics are simply unlabelable (although he certainly considers himself a Leftist) gives me faith in the possibility of Leftwing sanity:

My friend's eyes widened, maybe in astonishment, maybe in pity.

He said, "And so, the United Nations and international law mean nothing to you, not a thing? You think it's all right for America to go do whatever it wants, and ignore the rest of the world?"

I answered, "The United Nations and international law are fine by me, and more than fine. I am their supporter. Or, rather, would like to support them. It would be better to fight an antifascist war with more than a begrudging UN approval. It would be better to fight with the approving sanction of international law-better in a million ways. Better politically, therefore militarily. Better for the precedents that would be set. Better for the purpose of expressing the liberal principles at stake. If I had my druthers, that is how we would have gone about fighting the war. But my druthers don't count for much. We have had to choose between supporting the war, or opposing it-supporting the war in the name of antifascism, or opposing it in the name of some kind of concept of international law. Antifascism without international law; or international law without antifascism. A miserable choice-but one does have to choose, unfortunately."


Brilliant. End of story. And this...

"Another reason: A lot of people honestly believe that Israel's problems with the Palestinians represent something more than a miserable dispute over borders and recognition-that Israel's problems represent something huger, a uniquely diabolical aspect of Zionism, which explains the rage and humiliation felt by Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia. Which is to say, a lot of people have succumbed to anti-Semitic fantasies about the cosmic quality of Jewish crime and cannot get their minds to think about anything else.

"I mean, look at the discussions that go on even among people who call themselves the democratic left, the good left-a relentless harping on the sins of Israel, an obsessive harping, with very little said about the fascist-influenced movements that have caused hundreds of thousands and even millions of deaths in other parts of the Muslim world. The distortions are wild, if you stop to think about them. Look at some of our big, influential liberal magazines-one article after another about Israeli crimes and stupidities, and even a few statements in favor of abolishing Israel, and hardly anything about the sufferings of the Arabs in the rest of the world. And even less is said about the Arab liberals-our own comrades, who have been pretty much abandoned. What do you make of that, my friend? There's a name for that, a systematic distortion-what we Marxists, when we were Marxists, used to call ideology."


Yeah, he's got my vote.

Apologist for the Wretched Crimes of Socialism Speaks. Michael Walzer, the last sane Leftist on Earth, which, unfortunately, doesn't stop him from routinely twisting himself into knots trying to construct elaborate apologia for Leftist totalitarianism, mass-murder, and all-around political evil, tackles the vexing question of Empire.

The war in Iraq has given new urgency to the debate about "American imperialism." In fact, there hasn't been anywhere near enough of a debate; the term is used routinely by critics of the war and routinely rejected by its supporters-though some of the supporters seem to believe if not in imperialism exactly, then certainly in empire. So, is Washington the new Rome? Is there an American Empire? Was Iraq an imperialist war? It seems to me that we need a better understanding of America's role in the world than this old terminology provides. Criticizing the uses of American power is now a central political task, so we had better recognize what is going on before our eyes.

Still, the easiest answer to my questions is, "Of course!" Hasn't the United States played the major role in constructing a global market? Don't we control its regulatory agencies-the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization? Aren't most countries around the world open to the profit-seeking of American corporations and entrepreneurs?


Point #1: Imperialism=Capitalism. Walzer tries to back away from it later, but never manages to refute it openly. "Critiscizing the uses of American power" is a great phrase, as if the Left is involved as anything as intelligent, discerning, and informed as "criticism". The Left is involved in one thing and one thing only: slander.

But empire is a form of political domination, and it's not at all clear that market dominance and the extraction of profits require political domination. Perhaps they did in an earlier age-so the history of European empires and of the United States in Central America suggests.

Ok, first of all, why is anyone talking about the era of European imperialism anymore? Its dead as an era can be. If there's any part of the world that has become the opposite of imperialistic, i.e. painfully timid and increasingly isolationist in every way, its Europe. The remark about Central America is barely worth commenting on. The United States involved itself, and rightfully so, in the the battle against Communism in Central and South America and the brutal crimes which the Left committed there cannot be washed out of history, no matter how hard Walzer and his ideological ilk attempt to do so. Walzer here tries to accomplish the typical Leftist sleight of hand: identifying whole countries with their Left wing. Contrary to his lies, not everyone in Nicarauga, El Salavadoe, et. al. wanted a Socialist totalitarian system, and were quite happy to recieve help from the US in resisting the brutal attempts of their indigenous Left to take over their nations by force.

If less than two years after 9/11, on the eve of a major war, we could not count on such states as Mexico and Chile-well, what kind of an empire is that? As I write today, the prospects of the United States imposing a regime of its choosing on Iraq don't look terribly good, and this after decisively winning an "imperialist" war!

Afghanistan=imperialist war. Now, Walzer doesn't seem to be endorsing this point of view, but the fact that he uses it indicates that it is a widespread belief in many circles on the Left, and this does illustrate something. Its this: the Left is still spending the majority of its time and energy defending political evil and totalitarianism. The fact that the Left is so resoundingly narcississtic that it cannot concieve of any non-imperialist reason (such as the fact that we were attacked by terrorists originating in that country and supported by its government, for instance) for the invasion of Afghanistan. Morons.

By the way, 9/11 goes virtually unmentioned in this essay, underlining the total inability of the Left to process the event in any meaningful way. They are living, and will live forever in a Sept. 10th world, just as the America Firsters spent the rest of their political lives in Dec. 6, 1941.

"Empire" needs extensive qualification if it is to describe anything like what exists, or what is possible, in the world today. (Hence the appeal of terms such as Michael Ignatieff's "empire lite.") But perhaps there is a better way of thinking about contemporary global politics, drawing on the related idea of "hegemony." In common use today, "hegemonic" is simply a less vivid way of saying "imperialist," but it really points to something different: a looser form of rule, less authoritarian than empire is or was, more dependent on the agreement of others. Consider these words from Antonio Gramsci, the foremost theorist of hegemony-who wrote, however, in the context of domestic political struggles: "The fact of hegemony presupposes that one takes into account the interests and tendencies of the groups over which hegemony will be exercised, and it also presupposes a certain equilibrium, that is to say that the hegemonic groups will make some sacrifices of a corporate nature."* Hegemony rests in part on force, but it rests also, even more so, on ideas and ideologies. If a ruling class has to rely on force alone, it has reached a point of crisis in its rule. If it is to avoid that crisis, it has to be prepared for compromise.

This is total balderdash. Walzer, for all his intelligence, still cannot escape the Marxist shibolleths about all things being political and all relationships being constructions of the application of power. What the US has today is not so much hegemony or empire, but influence. Its like the planet in Einstein's concept of gravity, an enormous mass which pulls the surrounding objects towards it. If Walzer could get his head out of the Left's obsession with America as invariably driven by sinister motivations, he might understand this. He might also be able to confront (as his colleague Paul Berman quite courageously has) the foul love affair on the Left with conspiracy theories and paranoiac analysis.

George W. Bush's unilateralism is a bid for hegemony without compromise; perhaps he sees America playing an imperial-perhaps also a messianic-role in the world. But unilateralism is not, so to speak, the natural mode of American power; since World War II we have played a major role in shaping international organizations; we have negotiated alliances; and we have generally been willing to consult with our allies in responding to critical events, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and in dealing with dangerous political or environmental tendencies, such as nuclear proliferation and global warming. The wish to act alone is new. Perhaps it has something to do with 9/11 and the fear of future terrorist attacks. But fear is a better explanation of Bush's political strength among the American people than it is of the policies he is pursuing. Unilateralism predates 9/11; it is the product of arrogance and ideological zeal, perhaps also of a certain recklessness; it reflects a view of American power as inaccurate as that held by many of Bush's critics. In the contemporary world, imperial rule is an exercise in futility-but a dangerous exercise nonetheless.

Firstly, Bush's foreign policy is not unilateral. It does, however, bypass two major factors which are held fast to the heart of the left: the United Nations and our erstwhile continental allies France and Germany. The fact that both of these factors have historically been deeply problematic and often feckless to the point of seriously undermining American security and foreign policy counts for nothing with Walzer, of course. He also buys the nonsense that these alliances have been somehow fruitful or have aided the US or the world in some substantial way, which they haven't. In fact, the UN must take credit for having helped to legitimize much of the terrorism we face today, and France and Germany with opening the European mond to the virtues of mass slaughter in the name of Islam. Hardly much of a track record. Perhaps Mr. Walzer ought to turn that oft-mentioned critical faculty of his against our allies instead of his own country for a moment.

At the height of the cold war, indeed, we refused to bear with (more or less) democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile.

They never give up, do they? The "more or less" is a nice touch. As I've said, more stupifying inability to acknowledge that the left is a specific political movement and does not define an entire country and that in internal struggles such as that between communist totalitarians and everyone who doesn't want to live under their utopian tyranny one does sometimes have to take sides.

I don't think there's much to add to this. Once again, the Left is not engaging in a debate, its having a genial, safe, utterly close-minded conversation with itself. The fact that one of the few remaining Leftist intellectuals who believes it necessary to stand against this kind of incipient intellectual totalitarianism seems unable to break out of that room of mirrors is depressing indeed.

Thursday, January 22, 2004

House Slaves at Work

I have been to several of the left wing Israel hate fests. They are scary. There is real passion in the air. There is something about Israel that gets the juices going. Anti-Semitism is a part of it. There are a lot of people who are envious of Jews, on the left as well as the right. Patrick Buchanan thinks Jews have hijacked the conservative movement. But on the left, particularly in the academy, and in journalism, I am certain there is professional envy of the many Jewish faces and what better way to get even, and get back for sometimes losing the competitive battle, than by picking on the Jewish state as a surrogate. Leftist Jews sometimes lead the assault against Israel in these venues, thereby giving the attacks, whatever their reason, greater moral authority. Few Jews will stand up for Israel in these environments, because of the great pressure on the left to conform to the group think in the institutions they control.

Yeah, I been there back when I was a Leftist. The sense of being in a Nuremburg-rally type situation is not even slightly exagerrated. I do think he misses one thing here, which is what Malcolm X called the phenomenon of the house slave. Like the house slave of old, who was allowed into the master's household and eventually came to identify with him, a lot of Jewish Leftists have gained their positions of influence by rejecting every aspect of their Jewish identity. They have literally exchanged their previous, ethnic identity, for a political one. To take another tack on Israel automatically results in one's expulsion or ostracization from Leftist circles. It also adds the need to "prove" that one is not swayed by one's previous ethnic loyalties, thus pushing these intellectuals into more and more violent rhetoric. Of course, this also serves to legitimize the vicious statements of the non-Jewish anti-semitic Left, since their Jewish colleagues have already provided them cover. Nasty, sordid little mess, isn't it? I think there's a book in this somewhere, don't you?

Amie Eden of the Forward notes a survey proving my long held belief that my fellow American Jews are political retards. They don't think, they vote purely on ethnic lines. I certainly did, when I was still living in America. Overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, they believe the Republican Party and the Right in general is violently anti-semitic, when the Left is by far the most anti-semitic mainstream political movement in the US. I remember last Passover seeing a cousin of a high school friend spend 45 minutes on a conspiracy theory involving Iran and the Christian Coalition, which sought to prove that Bush actually invaded Iraq to harm Israel's interests. This kind of thing is widespread in the Jewish community and is nothing more than willful self-delusion. There are a myriad of reasons, historical and psychological why this is the case, but I think the main one is that American Jews feel simultaneously accepted by and alienated from American society. They express their acceptance in their economic and social success, and the alienation through their political stances, which by and large see America in a very pessimistic way and identify with the poor and other alienated minority groups. This also goes a long way to explain the continued fetishization of the civil rights alliance by American Jewish organizations, despite the fact that it has long since become discredited and irrelevent in the eyes of African-Americans, now one of the most intensely anti-semitic communities in America. What it adds up to is this: the famed political savvy of the American Jewish community is nonsense. By and large they refuse to vote their own interest, economically or otherwise, and are prone to demagogury, manipulation, and blatent mau-mauing to an extraordinary degree. I agree that there probably will not be a major shift to the Republicans this November, but it will be in spite of current realities, and not a result of them.

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Oh, and his taste in music sucks too.

What is alternative music? Here’s a partial definition in the form of a history of the magazine “No Depression” and the CD they put together to “offer some aural focus to our vision of alternative-country music.” It’s called, um, “No Depression” and it’s on Dualtone. You can start your education here.

Another alternative Dualtone band I put on a lot, but can’t quite decide if I love or only like is called BR549. I don’t know they would want to be called such a thing, but Tangled in the Pines is really decent and you can hear it here if you do the clicking.


Pretentious buffoon.

At Least Chomsky's a Genius... America's least talented self-hating Jew slams Andrew Sullivan:

I am genuinely enjoying the fact that our own Little Roy Cohn, not altogether unlike Emma Bovary, is finally, painfully waking up to the fact that the political figure to which he has betrothed himself so profoundly and abjectly during the past three years has been using him for kicks, mocking his assignations while professing his true allegiance to those who would stigmatize gays as less than human and even rewrite the U.S. Constitution to prevent their becoming—Andy’s own words—“free at last.”

The ironies are too thick and laden with multiple metaphor to unpack here. (I wonder how many slaves fell—politically speaking—for Jefferson Davis…) And I haven’t even mentioned the drunken-sailor spending spree that used to define exactly what a conservative isn’t—at least in the days before Karl Rove ran the country. My heart almost goes out to the guy. Being the world’s most famous gaycatholictoryMcCarthyiteGAPmodel ain’t as easy as it used to be.


Let's see; two McCarthy references, a pretentious and utterly unnecessary literary reference, race card played with shocking grammatical incompetance...all in all what we've come to expect from Eric Alterman, a man who proves once and for all that one can be a thoroughly incompetant writer and jaw-droppingly adolescent name-caller and still write for a major news outlet, so long as one subscribes to the Todd Gitlen "I'm-not-a-traitor-I-just-conspired-to-bring-about-my-country's-defeat-in-an-armed-conflict school of the radical chic Left. Oh, and there's no liberal bias in the media, by the way, it was all made up by the Rightwing fascists who really run the country and yet have somehow not managed to fire me from my job at a major national news outlet. The supreme irony, of course, is listening to the supremely heterosexual Alterman working himself into a frenzy over what a gay man should believe, all for the puposes of attacking someone who, unlike him, happens to be a gay man. I guess Sullivan's gone a bit too far off the reservation for Alterman's liking. Damn queers, they're just like the Jews, so hard to keep in line. Of course, in Alterman's world, Jews bedding down with those who support racist acts of mass murder against them is perfectly acceptable. Oh, and anti-Semitism doesn't exist either, its all made up by the Rightwing fascists who really run the country. Idiot.

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

What Hath Noam Wrought?

A local Jewish leader linked the two attacks to marches on Saturday protesting against a planned ban on Islamic veils in school led by an anti-Zionist Muslim leader from Strasbourg.

"What I notice in both cases is the context and the timing in connection with last Saturday's protest where violently anti-Semitic speeches were given," said Pierre Levy, regional representative of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish organizations.


Local Muslim leaders inciting anti-Semitism? Impossible! Its all racist, Zionist, imperialist propaganda! That kind of thing never happens! Anti-Semitism hardly exists in the West!

Apparently, we attacked Lebanon today. About time.

Edwards. This guy, on the other hand, is pretty damn impressive. Now I do disagree with everything he says and is, but he gives a mean stump speech and I think he actually means most of what he says. The aggressively sunny, optimistic attitude he takes is fairly infectious considering Kerry's dour sermonizing and Dean's Hitler-style over-gesticulated bloviating. I wouldn't vote for him, but he's definately the most appealing of the Iowa pack. I actually wouldn't mind seeing him run against Bush, it might actually be a contest of differing ideas instead of the bitter poison fest we would be subjected too if the Dean's stormtroopers (yes, that's what they call themselves) pull it off.

Kerry. I have to say, however, that I didn't expect this outcome at all. I assumed that Dean's Birkenstock Brownshirts still had too much of a stranglehold on the nominating mechanism to be denied (which may yet prove true, he's leading in New Hampshire). It seems that John Kerry has far more appeal then I had imagined. Maybe that's because I come from Boston, where Kerry has been the Senator for the better part of a quarter century. My impression of him was always that of an unscrupulous panderer and ambition-corrupted political hack who would do or say damn near anything to advance his career. A machine politician in the classic Boston mold. He's never had any strong ideological positions and his personal charisma is negligiable (I've seen him speak live, believe me, its less than inspiring). Its possible that he's undergone some sort of personal growth in the course of the campaign, but I doubt it, I think his appeal that he's familiar. He's Mike Dukakis, Ed Muskie, Anthony Cuomo and every other good government mediocrity the Democratic Party's churned out over the last thirty years all rolled into one. His ideology is standard meat and potatoes bring-back-the-New-Deal Massachusetts Liberalism. Faced with Dean's psychopathic, bleeding from the eyes rampaging, they picked the easiest and most comfortable alternative, not surprisingly, it was Kerry, a man who's worked all his life to make himself an outstandingly inoffensive mediocrity.

Unsparing. The NY Post puts the boot in:

In an Iowa meltdown, Howard Dean got socked with a disastrous third-place finish last night, as John Kerry pulled off a stunning political comeback to win the first-in-the-nation Democratic contest for president.

Dean's collapse, combined with the combined surge of Sen. Kerry (Mass.) and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), who finished second, threw the race wide open.

It also raised fresh questions about Dean's temperament when he launched into a screaming, clenched-teeth rant before his supporters after the vote count...

Rolling up his shirt sleeves and shrieking so loud that his voice cracked, a raging Dean rallied his supporters with forced optimism and a pugilistic tone that stood in contrast to the formal upbeat speeches by his opponents.

"He's crazy," said Republican pollster Frank Luntz...


Well, not very smart at least...

Classic. Click and scroll down.

The Chomskyites Spin. They seem to think the main problem was bad advertising:

Another thing... what the &%$^&# are we giving our hard earned money to the campaign if they can't use it to CREATE and air EFFECTIVE advertising. Most of these ads put even myself to sleep. I can't imagine what it does to people who are questioning whether to support him or not.

Yea we can blame the press for some bad coverage and the other candidates for all targeting us. But Goddamnit! Its time the campaign take some responsibility for some of the mistakes they've been making.

New Image. New Message. New Ads...


Or the press:

The vast majority of journalists don’t have serious political biases. Most of them aren’t after an agenda, they’re after a drama. That MISSION ACCOMPLISHED thing, the Jessica Lynch rescue, Thanksgiving dinner with the soldiers. “President Bush sends his regards,” that’s what they want. That’s all they want. Give it to them.

Dean played so well early because it was a drama. It was a damned movie script. The underdog candidate, with morals and passion, shoots up in the polls driven by the sheer will of the American people. That is cinematic *gold.* Now the other guys are trying to write a new story. We don’t like this story. This story sucks! So give me something better. Give me Dean as a wartime general, facing opposition on all sides, fighting an uphill battle for good. Give me Dean as the lone voice of rationalism in a chaotic party. Give me Dean not as the enemy of established Democrats, but as the natural leader of the stronger, better Democratic Party of 2004. Give me Dean as a man so clearly above the petty partisan BS that nobody would even ask him about it. Give ‘em a drama! That’s how you win the press.


Maybe you lost because your candidate is a blubbering anti-American demagogue who's permanently stuck in the 1960's. Much like this guy:

The power of the grassroots will be shown in NH! "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." -MLK Jr. That said we must not wait for the media, and the republicans to give us our country, we must take it back!

But that, of course, would require you to admit that you don't, in fact, live in wickedly evil imperialist Amerikkka, and that George Bush may not, in fact, be Hitler.

And we can't have that, now can we?


Chomskyification Suffers a Minor Setback: Voters.From the NY Times:

But a funny thing happened on the way to the caucuses. New people turned out, as Dr. Dean had hoped, according to an entrance poll that showed half the caucusgoers had not taken part in one before. But, the poll found, most chose Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts instead.

"All the phone-calling we did, we'd have people who'd say, `I'm a Dean supporter, I'm a Dean supporter.' " said Kelly Chambers, Dr. Dean's captain in Precinct No. 83. "But when it came to caucus night, we only had 11 people show up for Dean. It just seems like all my hard work's been for nothing."


You know, if I were still a Democrat, I might actually be proud to be one today.

Monday, January 19, 2004

Proof of Chomskyfication. From TNR's excellent anti-Dean blog:

But there's another source for Dean's ignore-the-center strategy: George Lakoff. According to The Boston Globe, Lakoff is Dean's favorite academic, and the two met in June. The January 19 edition of U.S. News reports:

Though Dean did not enter the race with the expectations of winning, he did see a way to win. "Karl Rove [President Bush's political guru] discovered it, too, but I discovered it independently," Dean says and adds that the theory is embodied in the writings of George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley. "What you do is crank the heck out of your base, get them really excited and crank up the base turnout and you'll win the middle-of-the-roaders," Dean says. The reason, according to the theory, is that swing voters share the characteristics of both parties and eventually go with whatever party excites them the most. "Democrats appeal to them on their softer side--the safety net--but the Republicans appeal to them on the harder side--the discipline, the responsibility, and so forth," Dean says. "So the question is which side appears to be energetic, deeply believing in its message, deeply committed to bringing a vision of hope to America. That side is the side that gets the swing voters and wins."

And the January 12 issue of Time has this:

Lately Dean has been intrigued by the writings of University of California, Berkeley, cognitive linguist George Lakoff, the author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Lakoff argues that liberals, with their "nurturing parent" view of the world, have lost ground in the values debate to "strict father" conservatives. In the middle, Lakoff writes, are "bi-conceptuals," who have internalized both parents. The question for Dean in reaching that small slice of swing voters is, Can he win over their inner mom without seeming like a too permissive dad?


So, Dean's guru is an obscure professor of linguistics from one of the most Left-wing universities in America? But wait, there's more:

For instance, in an October 29, 2001 essay for In These Times, a socialist newspaper, Lakoff praised his representative, Barbara Lee, for casting the sole vote against going to war in Afghanistan. Lakoff wrote:

Justice is called for, not vengeance. Understanding and restraint are what is needed. The model for our actions should be the rescue workers and doctors--the healers--not the bombers. We should not be like them, we should not take innocent lives in bringing the perpetrators to justice. Massive bombing of Afghanistan--with the killing of innocents--will show that we are no better than they.


Wait, Dean's guru is an obscure ultra leftist anti-American professor of linguistics from one of the most Left-wing universities in America?

My friends, I have long said that Dean is the Chomskyian candidate in this race. Its good to be right. By the way, that bit about Liberals and Conservatives reacting to the "severe father figure" is just priceless Leftist gobbledygook. It couldn't be that people actually have different ideas and beliefs then they do...no, were all traumatized by our oppressive father/ogre. No wonder they can't win any elections. Morons.

Friday, January 16, 2004

Dreaming of the Battle of Algiers. A fascinating movie review of The Battle of Algiers over at paleo-lefty journal The American Prospect. It gives a fascinating insight into the way in which Leftists today are simply incapable of looking at the world as it is, and instead insist on seeing it through the lens of their Leftist past. Check this out:

The first half of The Battle of Algiers is the Panther primer. The movie begins in medias res, with the French army having tortured a pitiful Algerian informer to reveal the lair of the last extant urban guerrilla leader, Ali. It then jumps back three years to show Ali's political awakening and recruitment into the National Liberation Front (FLN), usually referred to in the film as "the Organization." As Ali's previously inchoate rage is instrumentalized in revolutionary struggle, so the Organization cleans up vice in the casbah and launches a campaign of assassination carried out largely by women and children against the French police.

The casbah -- occasionally referred to in the subtitles as "the ghetto" -- is sealed from the rest of the city, and elements in the colonial administration set off a devastating explosion within it. Pressed by the enraged Arabs, the Organization takes revenge. In the movie's crucial sequence, three fetching revolutionary women adopt Western clothes. They make their way through the checkpoint, one with a child in tow, to set off simultaneous bombs in the commercial heart of European Algiers. Pontecorvo individualizes both terrorists and victims -- and makes sure that the terrorists acknowledge those whom they are about to vaporize. Where once this sequence might have suggested tragic necessity, it's impossible to watch it now without recalling the images of suicide bus bombings and the Twin Towers collapse. Our moment of danger is September 11, the day The Battle of Algiers came home. The FLN now seems the cradle of Middle Eastern terror. As the Pentagon flier put it: "Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"


Actually, no, it does not. The American invasion of Iraq has not brought colonists with it, nor turned Iraq into a permanent part of the United States. It does not seek to impose foreign rule in perpetuity. In fact, it deposed a dictator who was universally considered, even by the Chomskyite Left, one of the most odious murderers of recent times. The only major area of trouble is the middle third of the country, and even there unrest is clearly the product of a violent minority which lacks the support of the larger population. The major US mistep may prove to be not staying too long, but leaving too early. What strikes one about the Algerian War is how little it has in common with the situation in Iraq today.

What is really striking about the attitude of this reviewer, however, is how quickly it morphs into political evil. For what this review, like the film it aggrandizes, utterly and deliberately ignores is the horrifying monster that Algeria has become: a brutal, oppressive police state which has rejected democracy in favor of military rule and which, a scant few years after its independence, viciously cleansed itself of its ancient, hundred thousand strong Jewish population. An honest look at the horrendous implications of the movement which is herein mythologized: the rise of Arab supremacism, the institution of military dictatorship, the embrace of genocidal anti-semitism, and most of all, the sanctification of terrorism, can find no place in the cosmology of Third World resistance and glorious revolt against colonial (read: white European) oppression. In the rush to validate arrogant, obsolete views of the world, truth is left behind, and murder raised on its pedestal. This is not ideological blindness, this is the nostalgia of slaughter.

Saturday, January 10, 2004

The Birth of Neo-Zionism?

It is a rare experience to witness an entire intellectual movement repudiated by its founder. Those who woke up yesterday morning to Benny Morris’s extraordinary interview in Haaretz were granted just such a privilege. It was no surprise to those who have followed Professor Morris’s work, or participated in his classes, in the years since the failure of the Camp David negotiations, that he rejected total Israeli responsibility for the ongoing conflict, or that he faulted the Palestinians with being fundamentally irredentionist and beholden to terrorism. What was surprising, however, even shocking, was his renunciation of one of the most fundamental tenants of the post-Zionist movement he did so much to found: the belief that Zionism itself was, due to its methods and fundamentally flawed and unjust nature, a mistake.

Not by chance does Morris’s shocker comes on the heels of Tony Judt’s much debated repudiation of Zionism in the New York Review of Books. Both have effectively redefined the demarcations of intellectual debate on the Middle East conflict, lines shattered by the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the Camp David negotiations, events which rendered decades-old ideological sureties obsolete. As polarized as their positions are (as indeed all positions on the issue have become), for all intents and purposes, Morris and Judt are in agreement on basic principles. Both men are convinced that the Palestinian national movement cannot be reconciled to the existence of the Jewish State, and, as a result, peace will, in all likelihood, remain permanently elusive. This is not merely a hard-headed policy conclusion, however, for both Judt and Morris are moralists as much as they are intellectuals. Their conclusions force them back into history to ask the essential question: if the Jewish State could only be created and can only be sustained by force of arms against the will of its neighbors and at the cost of great suffering for all, is it really worth it? Judt says no. Morris, no doubt to the shock of many, says yes.

What is most fascinating of all, however, is how the two men have, in essence, exchanged ideological positions in order to arrive at their conclusions. Judt, who has longstanding Zionist connections, including a stint as a Kibbutznik, has emerged as what can only be described as an anti-Zionist, as he now opposes outright the existence of a Jewish State in favor of a rather vaguely defined bi-national entity. Morris, a longtime Leftist whose books were among the first to recast Israeli historiography from what at the time was termed a “post-Zionist” point of view, has written for years of the Zionist movement and the Israeli state it founded from a position which was unmistakably critical, portraying Israel as, at best, a brutal, expansionist conqueror. He was and remains the most popular and most influential of the “post-Zionist” historians. Yet here is Morris in the pages of Israel’s most highbrow daily, read by all his intellectual peers, quite explicitly stating that, whatever Israel’s sins may be, it is irrelevant to the question of Israel’s essential right to exist. The morality of Zionism, he is effectively arguing, is axiomatic. Whatever Israel may or may not do, or whatever policy it may or may not undertake, the right of the Jewish people to national existence is an inalienable one.

This is hardly a new argument. One can quite easily cast Judt as Judah Magnes and Morris as Ze’ev Jabotinsky (indeed, Morris’s current positions are nearly indistinguishable from Jabotinsky’s) and we have nothing more than a return to the pre-state debates of the 1930s, with Magnes arguing that no Jewish State ought to be imposed on the Arabs against their will, even it means never having one; and Jabotinsky insisting that, the world being what it is, it is no shame for a people in grave danger and suffering the worst forms of persecution to make use of power, even military power, to achieve its national independence.

But, while one can easily see Judt in the role of Magnes, right down to his affection for utopian bi-nationalism, it is much harder to conceive of Morris in the role of Jabotinsky, for Morris has always been, and in many ways still is, a man of the Left. In fact, it is difficult to see Morris’s current stance reflected in any of Zionism’s previous history, which may be its true, even historic importance; springing, as it does, as much out of a reaction to the excesses of universalism as Zionism’s original ideological roots.

It is no coincidence that Morris makes mention of Albert Camus, who suffered so much opprobrium from his former intellectual allies because of his position that considerations exist which are higher than ideological, intellectual, or even moral purity. Camus rejected the school of thought which holds that things must be as absolute in life as they are in one’s calculation, and holds the world to be no more than a corrupted shadow of the mind’s perfect forms. If one decides, for instance, that war is evil and immoral, then one must oppose war in any and all circumstances, even it means refusing to take up arms against the likes of Hitler, Stalin, or somewhat lesser ghouls like Saddam Hussein. For Camus, contradictions are inherent in life itself, and to deny them is to embrace the kind of absolutism which can only end in collaboration with murder and political evil. Most famously, he remarked that, whatever his feelings on the Algerian question, he could not support a movement which might well kill his mother in a terrorist attack. His loyalty to his mother came before his dedication to any political cause.

It is on this simple point, that human loyalties are superior to philosophical calculation, that Judt and Morris part ways. Judt holds that if Israel cannot pass philosophical muster, then it must cease to exist. Morris charges deeper considerations. It is easy to sympathize with Judt, who is willing to stick to his principles even to the point of self-immolation; but there is also something dark, even terrifying about such fanaticism. It was Camus himself, after all, who theorized that the demand for absolute unity could only end in murder. Since no one is perfect, can that mean we are all condemned for our impurities? Isn’t there something almost, well, less than human about such reasoning, a kind of disturbing negation of the most natural human impulse towards self-defense and self-preservation?

And there is an even more disturbing question, one which constitutes the heart of Zionism itself: what good is this tremulous universalism, this absolute dedication to the rights of all, if it cannot provide a place for the Jewish people? Is there not some essential flaw in a system which, at the risk of sounding propagandistic, demands a 23rd Arab state at the expense of the sole existing Jewish State in the world? Are Israel’s flaws so overarching and foul that they cannot be repaired and reformed without the threat of existential annihilation? Is there not room in this hierarchy of rights for us as well?

Morris, to his credit, has the intellectual courage to ask these questions, and his answer is surprising. He affirms. He is saying yes. Perhaps out of depressed resignation, perhaps out of wounded idealism, but nonetheless, the affirmation exists. What makes this extraordinary is that for the better part of the last decade he has been the favored intellectual of those who say no, and this may be the real significance of Morris’s “conversion”. It may prove to be the opening salvo of a new strain of intellectual Zionism, one which springs not from within Zionism itself but from its rejection. Which is why it is so significant that it is Morris who has fired the shot. Perhaps unintentionally, he has provided Zionism a way out of the intellectual impasse in which it today finds itself, trapped between its most high-flown dreams and the bitter reality of war. He has presented the means to transcend the dirt of the past and the disappointments of idealism sullied by conflict, because what Morris is ultimately saying is that Israel can live with this dirt, that the shadows are not all-consuming.

For Morris, this is a tragic transcendence. He postulates an uncertain, perhaps apocalyptic future, but one which is, in the end, worth fighting for. Perhaps, in his mind, his people have taken the place of that mother whose possible murder Camus could not countenance. Or perhaps he has reached that tragic but purposeful conclusion that many Zionists, including Herzl himself, have reached before him: that universalism and human rights are, at best, empty, even fundamentally unfulfillable, promises, and that, at some point, one must say either yes or no, and decide whether one is going to submit or revolt against the fate assigned. Zionism may just have burst its chains.


Beersheva
January, 2004

Friday, January 09, 2004

The End of Post-Zionism.

And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?

"You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well."

If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?

"No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings."


I dont know what to write about this article. I think it will be prove immensely significant, perhaps even historic. It not only announces the end of post-Zionism but also perhaps the transcendance of the intellectual impasse in which Zionism has found itself at this point in history. The translation is very bad and the complete Hebrew version is far superior, but I stongly advise you to read it all.

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

The Return of the King

Well, finally saw the damn thing and, I have to say, I was a little disappointed. To confess, I'm not a Tolkien fan and I've never read the books, so my relationship to these movies is decidedly not of the fanatical brand. However, I do love movies and there's no question that, in terms of pure cinematic ambition, these films have to rank with the likes of Intolerance and Greed as some of the gutsiest movies ever made. I was also fascinated, particularly in The Two Towers, by some of the themes involved in these films: the duality of Tolkien's moral universe, the anti-modernism of his sensibility, the extolling of midevil values, all come through in the movies brilliantly well. I also have to count myself as among those who feel that these are amazingly timely movies, particularly with their emphasis on the virtue of courage and the weak, vascillating monarchs who realize all too late that war is at hand and, in the end, bring evil upon themselves through their weakness. One can't help drawing parallels to our current situation, as well World War II and the Cold War, although I understand that Tolkien himself hated such speculations.

These strengths are definately present in The Return of the King ("I bid you stand, men of the West!", someone should send it to Jacques Chirac), but overall I wasn't as moved by this one as by The Two Towers (particularly Sam's speech at the end of the film: "That there's something good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and its worth fighting for!" I was very moved by that moment when I saw it the first time, in our age its almost a cry of defiance). A lot of it seems like a repeat of the second film, but on a larger and more grand scale, which doesn't make it much more exciting. There were some extraordinary moments (Gandalf's speech on the afterlife springs to mind) but overall it lacked the emotional core of the other two films, and at the end it simply descends into banality (its also far too long, half of its last half hour could have been cut). I also have to confess to a sincere dislike for the character of Golum, who is meant to be profound but ends up simply annoying, and I felt the special effects lacked the verisimillitude they displayed in the previous two films.

Of course, there's a lot to like. The acting is excellent, particularly on the part of Ian McKellan and Elijah Wood, and the look of the films is extraordinary, especially as its sustained so consistantly throughout the trilogy. Some of the imagery almost harkened back to the age of silent cinema, its all so extraordinarily visual, which is really a triumph when adapting a dense literary work. And, of course, there's Tolkien's mythology, which appears to have survived mostly intact, and raises the films above simple adventure stories into something sublime.

Sullivan for Dean. Andrew Sullivan's been making some good arguments for why it would be better for all concerned if Howard Dean is the nominee for president. His argument basically boils down to the idea that the country is polarized anyways, so its a good idea to get it all on the table and hash it out in a reasonable, democratic manner. I respect Sullivan a lot (he's a raging philo-Semite, an endangered species these days among the rationally inclined, and hates Tony Kushner only slightly more than I do) but I'm not with him on this, there's basically two reasons why:

1. Sullivan postulates that Dean respresents the soul of the Democratic Party, which was co-opted by the Clintonites in the last two elections, and its better to let the Party deal openly with its "id" as he describes it. In other words, Sullivan accepts the Dean/Nadar argument that the Democrats are, at heart, an extreme Leftist party which only runs Centrist to win elections; he differs with them only in the fact that he approves of the Clintonite co-opting instead of disdaining it. I disagree. In my opinion, Dean is not the candidate of the "real" Democrats, but the candidate of an arrogant, extremist clique which gained control of the party by rewriting the nominating rules in their favor back in the 1970s. This clique basically consists of urban, upper-middle class Leftists who hail almost exclusively from the bad 50% of the boomer generation and, of course, their disfunctional, college-age children. This clique owns the nominating mechanism but not the soul of the party, people like my father, who voted Republican once in 1972 and has not done so since. To give you an idea of how badly the Deanites have alienated Democratic core voters, i.e. the non-Birkenstock Brigades, i.e. the lower middle class people who work for a living, my father has already told me he'll vote Bush if Dean is nominated. That's saying something.

2. The political movement which Dean represents, which, again, is an elite, minority movement, is not healthy for this country or its democracy. Firstly, Dean hasn't the slighest idea of what the causes are of Islamic terror, or how to deal with it and, worse, he doesn't seem overly interested in finding out. He often appears to be in denial that the problem exists at all or that it needs to be dealt with through military and not criminal measures. He is also frighteningly prone to the paroxysms of self-flagellation and incontinent character assassination we've all come to know and hate from our so-called intelligensia and feckless European allies. At this moment in history that is, simply, dangerous. Second, Dean's supporters, who are far more radical than he is, are a Chomskyite movement whose ideology, such as they have one, is a lot uglier than Dean's himself. They are prone to conspiracy theories, frighteningly anti-semitic, contemptuous of democracy as a system, and, most importantly, ferociously socialist on economic issues. These people really believe that Bush is Hitler and America is Nazi Germany. If Dean is nominated, we are facing the real risk of the Chomskyfication of the Democratic Party, a process which is already underway in the big city Democratic machines. Such a process is not good for the Democrats and not good for the country.

In my view, Sullivan is a bit too nonchalant about the dangers of a Dean candidacy and, particularly, the effect of his supporters on the Democratic Party itself. He's right about the necessity for an open debate of all sides in a polarized society such as ours, but that doesn't mean we should approve of the hijacking of a major political party by its extremist wing, particularly when we are at such a dangerous and delicate moment in our history.

Thursday, January 01, 2004

Oh, Why Not...

Against my better judgment, I present the following predictions for the coming year:

1. Either Howard Dean or Wesley Clark will be the Democratic nominee for president. Both will be destroyed but Dean by a substantially wider margin. Against Clark Bush wins by 55%, against Dean we are in second Reagan landslide territory.

2. Jesse Jackson will (finally) be indicted for tax evasion and fraud.

3. There will be a new Supreme Court justice and he/she will be disappointing.

4. The Israeli settlements of Netzarim and Migron, along with others, will be evacuated.

5. Yasser Arafat will die.

6. So will Noam Chomsky. (They will join Edward Said for cappucino and conversation in the Ninth Circle)

7. American forces will leave Iraq too early.

8. The deficit will continue to rise.

9. Leftist bias in academia will finally become an issue of public debate.

10. The Labor and Likud parties will form a National Unity government after the pro-settlement Right leaves government in protest.

and...

11. I will finally get to see The Return of the King.

This Guy's Even More Rampagingly Pro-Israel Than I Am

...the amount of pious crap spouted about the Palestinians is so vast that every once in a while I do feel the need to cut through it by pointing out the facts.

From Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit. In the name of God read the whole thing.