Monday, January 12, 2009
Bay Area TV Station Notes 'Professional Protester' Influence in Riot; Other Media Silent
California
Here's something you don't see every day.
A video report about last night's riot in Oakland related to the shooting death of an unarmed man at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer actually calls it .... a riot. What's more, the reporter notes, as is really often the case in situations such as these, how people he characterized as "professional protesters" egged others on and created the atmosphere that led to so much violence and vandalism.
CBS5 reporter Joe Vazquez filed "Inside the Oakland Riot: A First-Hand Account." It's a little too "gee whiz" to me, but it least it gets some usually unreported facts out.
Here is the full text of the video:
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Rocket hits Ashdod kindergarten
[HT:JH]
Palestinians continued to fire rockets at Israel on the 16th day of Operation Cast Lead, even during a three-hour humanitarian cease-fire. Throughout the day Sunday, Hamas gunmen fired at least 24 rockets at southern Israel...
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Obama won't deal with Hamas, 'Post' told
The incoming Obama administration will not abandon President George Bush's doctrine of isolating Hamas, the Obama transition team's chief national security spokeswoman has told The Jerusalem Post. (Snip) "The president-elect's repeated statements [about not dealing with Hamas] are accurate," Anderson said.
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[but he will meet with Iran, who is the state behind Hamas...]
Wrong Story
Below, Michael Ledeen does a good job of describing the nature of the current proxy war between Israel and Iran, and he points out that the strategic failure is not just Israel's, but America's: the failure to recognize that Iran is at war with the civilized world and that we need to win that war.
"Wrong Story," Michael Ledeen, National Review Online, December 30It's a hell of a position to be in, and discussions of tactics and methods in Gaza address only a small part of the problem. The real problem isn't even being discussed.
Everyone in the Middle East knows that the serious component of the Battle of Gaza is all about Iran. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, recently warned that Iran is trying to "devour" the Arab world. Mohammed Abdallah Al Zulfa, of the Saudi Arabian Shura Council, reminded Alhurra's viewers that "Iran is the big threat in today's world, supporting all the terrorists from Hamas to Hezbollah to some other terrorists that we don't know their names yet," and that "Iran destabilized the region by supporting all the illegal activities and activists such as Hamas." Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, in a press conference in Anakara, ranted against Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah, saying that the Iranian-run terror organization had "practically declared war on Egypt."…
The Israelis know all this, just as they know that the mullahs are building an atomic bomb destined for Israeli territory. But Israel is a small country, despite the paranoid visions of some Western ideologues who think the Israelis run the world through espionage and lobbying. Iran is more than ten times the size of Israel, and even the most feisty Israeli shrinks from the thought of an open war with Tehran. So they are left to contend with the tentacles of the terrorist hydra, while the main body remains untouched. They may chop off a piece of Hamas or Hezbollah, but it will regenerate and grab them again….
Thus, the best Israel can hope to accomplish is to buy time, praying that somehow or other the Iranian regime will fall before the mullahs launch their promised genocidal attack, or that the Israelis will find a way to destroy the atomic weapon before it is used against them, or that the West will, at the eleventh hour, recognize that Iran is a global threat and find a way to thwart it.
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Former Pentagon chief predicts Iran crisis soon
Washington - William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that President-elect Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran. Iran is ''moving inexorably toward becoming a nuclear power,'' with ominous implications for the Middle East.
''It seems clear that Israel will not sit by idle while Iran takes the final steps toward becoming a nuclear power''
[and when Israel acts to secure its survival the West's idiots who refused to prevent it these past decades will condemn Israel's 'aggression']
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Useful Idiots
The unspoken truth about the fighting in Gaza, which began on December 19 2008 when Hamas rockets broke a voluntary truce, is that this is the frontline of a much larger war. This war began thirty years ago with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is now global in scope. Its agenda is the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the West.
Their allies in the West are either stupendously ignorant or morally blind. Here is the self-revealing declaration of the Associate Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin:
“The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with ‘Terror.’ It has nothing to do with the long-term ‘security’ of the Jewish State. What it has to do with is the evil Jews and their evil American supporters
In the midst of the global war that radical Islam has declared on the West, the conflict in Gaza has revealed the presence of a fifth column in the West so detached from its own communities and civilized values that it now constitutes a clear and present danger to our survival...
[Recommended > ]
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GUTTING SECURITY
PRESIDENT-elect Barack Obama's appointments to Homeland Security, the Justice Department and now the CIA indicate a virtual abandonment of the War on Terror.
As Homeland Security chief, he's named a governor whose only experience has been with the US-Mexican border. His attorney general pick, meanwhile, took the lead in pardoning FALN terrorists. Now he has rounded out his national-security and Justice Department teams by naming ultraliberals.
Leon Panetta, his choice for CIA chief, is as liberal as they come he long ago embraced the left with the fervor of a convert and brings these values to the CIA.
As President Bill Clinton's chief of staff (a tenure that coincided with my own work with Clinton), he was a dedicated liberal, opposing accommodation with the Republicans who ran Congress and battling hard against a balanced-budget deal. After winning re-election, Clinton jettisoned Panetta for the more moderate Erskine Bowles in order to reach a deal with the GOP... [snip]
Bush's legacy shows one clear achievement: He kept us safe after 9/11. Now his successor's policies are about to eradicate that singular achievement. The liberals will, of course, all cheer these appointments and the policies they'll pursue once in office, but these appointments make it frighteningly more likely that we will, indeed, be hit again.
[it's hard to give the new guy 'the benefit of the doubt' when so much is on the line, but we've little choice at this point other than to pay close attention. The immediate point made by this piece is that the media's mantra of 'moderate' appointments is sheer fabrication - let's hope the weight of their positions brings some degree of responsibility]
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Obama completes national security team
Obama picked retired Adm. Dennis Blair as the national intelligence director and Leon Panetta to head the CIA [snip]Obama said he has given the men the clear charge to restore the United States' record on human rights...
[so the focus of our intelligence organizations, at time of war, is to be restoring our 'reputation' on human rights?]
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Cold War Lite
[HT:BN]
Vladimir Putin's ambition of re-establishing Russia's Cold War empire ought to have been curtailed by the precipitous economic collapse of his country's oil-centered economy. Instead, as is so often the case with dictators, failure has made him more desperate and hence more belligerent.
Hence Russia's decision to cut off supplies of natural gas to Europe. As the article below explains, the target isn't Western Europe but the middle-man, Ukraine, through which the natural gas pipelines pass. Ukraine is the last of the former Soviet Republics (not counting tiny Georgia) to have a relatively free system of government and to align itself with the West, and Putin wants to destabilize it.
As a result, the Europeans are going to learn a lesson about allowing themselves to become so dependent on Russian fuel supplies. Putin has put the "cold" into Cold War Lite, and millions of Europeans will spend a dangerously cold winter as a result.
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Russia declares gas monitoring deal void
MOSCOW - President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia considers an EU-mediated deal to monitor gas flow across Ukraine void because of changes made by Ukraine. Moscow has said it will not restart gas supplies to Europe until it has a valid deal. Supplies have been halted since Wednesday.
[now what could Russia possibly have against simply monitoring the actual {vs. claimed} flow of gas?]
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Gas crisis has to power EU reforms
The European Union has rightly put top priority on trying to secure an early end to the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute that has left millions of EU citizens short of fuel. It must now put the same effort into implementing much-discussed energy reforms to limit the risks of a future supply shock again threatening the health and even the lives of its people.
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[then again, maybe not...]
Slovakia to restart nuclear plant
BRUSSELS: Starved of gas following Russia's dispute with Ukraine, Slovakia has announced plans to restart a Soviet-era nuclear reactor in defiance [?] of the European Union... [snip]
The decision, made late Saturday, is expected to provoke sharp criticism at a meeting of European energy ministers in Brussels on Monday, and was condemned by the Austrian government on Sunday as "completely unacceptable."
[better that people freeze]
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Politicians, power and a new religion
Since this is the moment in the year when forecasts are demanded, I shall pick a sad certainty. Parliament will create more offences, lots of them. The Government, astonishingly, has apparently created a new imprisonable offence every four days for the past decade. Curiously little row has been made about this, least of all by what passes for the parliamentary Opposition. Many of the new offences in the coming year are sure to stem from the new religion: global warming.
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Global Warming Update: 'Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age'
A possibly inconvenient truth has just been presented to the international community:"The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science."
Additionally, the entire bogus manmade global warming theory that climate alarmists and their surrogates have been forcing down the throats of the citizenry"is based on data that is drawn from a ridiculously narrow span of time and it demonstrates a wanton disregard for the ‘big picture’ of long-term climate change."
Such was reported by Russia's Pravda Sunday, and it not only goes quite counter to the junk science being espoused ... but which has also been regularly proffered by many of the real scientists and climatologists around the world that global warming loving media not only refuse to cite and/or interview, but also disgracefully ridicule as deniers and flat earthers.
According to Pravda, it is Gore, Hansen, Schmidt, and all their sycophant devotees that are the flat earthers who are distracting the world from a much more serious climate threat (emphasis added throughout):
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Plasma television screens set to be banned under new energy legislation
The plasma screen television is set to become the next victim of the battle against climate change. Giant energy-guzzling flat screens are expected the be banned under legislation on TV energy use expected to be agreed by the EU this spring. Plasma screens, which are popular in pubs and supermarket, as well as in homes, have been nicknamed the '4x4s' of the living room because they use up to four times as electricity as traditional cathode ray sets.
["battle against climate change" - insane.]
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House Democrats Push Bills to Extend Limits on Pay Discrimination Lawsuits
House Democrats expect to pass two anti-pay discrimination bills Friday that Republicans charge will not only increase the number of lawsuits but virtually end the statute of limitations for filing claims against employers.“This should be the highest priority to us,” [?] “This means economic security of our country. [?] Tomorrow, Congress passes serious civil rights legislative reforms that prove our commitment to equality in this country.”
Supporters of the legislation point to Census Bureau statistics that show, on average, women earn 77 cents for every $1 earned by men in the workforce. While serving as a senator, Obama paid women 78 percent of what he paid men.“The Paycheck Fairness Act would increase government’s role in how wages are set,” ... “Their view is that wages are incorrectly determined by the marketplace, and this would be a politicization of wages in the workforce.”
Both Census and the Secretary of the Senate statistics are without regard to education, experience or job position.
[equality of result - regardless of reason.]
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Obama's Choice: FDR or Reagan
FDR's answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes -- like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.
The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot."
But politically, the New Deal was a smashing success*, with FDR's landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.
Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the "stagflation" of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.
Reagan's answer was a tight money policy and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent. While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.
From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. "The Seven Fat Years," author Robert Bartley called them. Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson's wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in "The Roaring '20s," a time of unrivaled prosperity.
The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.
[* but politically, it buys politicians indentured voters - and I fear Obama will have the same 'success' FDR did - and failure.]
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Can Media Be Legally Liable For Worsening Economic Crisis?
If exaggerated reports of global economic distress act to further dampen consumer confidence and actually worsen the situation, can press outlets be held legally liable?
Such was espoused by a corporate lawyer Thursday in response to a poll that found 77 percent of Americans
"think the financial press is making the economic crisis worse by projecting fear into people's minds."
As reported by Breitbart New Years day (h/t Hot Air headlines):
Richard L. Scheff, a national expert on corporate liability and white collar crime issues, warns media that they could potentially be exposed to liability despite apparent constitutional protections:
"Although statements by the media are protected by the First Amendment, the survey results demonstrate that the public believes that the press bears some responsibility for the lack of confidence in the economy. One would hope that the media would act less out of self-interest in these times of national crisis,"
said Mr. Scheff, vice chairman and partner with Philadelphia-based law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads.
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Seniors: Economy's nothing like Great Depression
CEDAR LAKE, Ind. - Indiana seniors in their 80s and 90s who've heard comparisons of the nation's current financial woes to the Great Depression say today's crisis can't compare to the hardship that followed the 1929 stock market crash. Joseph A. Furman, a 93-year-old from Cedar Lake, said he's fed up with people calling today's economic troubles a depression.
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Universal coverage? First, look at the disaster in Massachusetts
To much fanfare from both right and left in 2006, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to require all residents to buy health insurance. A new state health insurance clearinghouse was created, with taxpayers subsidizing those who couldn’t afford to buy coverage. (Snip) 43 mandatory benefits — including those that many people did not want or need, such as invitro fertilization — raised the costs of coverage for Massachusetts residents by as much as 56 percent
[how many examples of abject failure must be created before folks get the message that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and government involvement in health care will inevitably ruin it to the degree we allow it in]
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Obama pledges schools upgrade in stimulus
Washington - Barack Obama probably cannot fix every leaky roof and busted boiler in the nation's schools. But educators say his sweeping school modernization program — if he spends enough — could jump-start student achievement. More kids than ever are crammed into aging, run-down schools that need an estimated $255 billion in repairs, renovations or construction.
[interesting; we spend more of our state income tax dollars on education than everything else combined - plus federal and lotto funds - yet they whole system's in shambles coast to coast? So why don't we change the system instead of throwing yet more money at it?]
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The Workshops Of Identity
by Bill Whittle
Part 1: The Heartbeat:
Step back with me for a minute. Back out of Hollywood, out of America, out of the Western Tradition. Sit in the middle of a darkened crater at the south pole of the Moon. Sit back, look down and back into time, and watch the rise and fall of Civilizations on the Big Blue Ball.
If you could see human activity and genius, if you could watch poetry and medicine as points of golden light in the darkness of fear and superstition, you would soon detect a rhythm: a pulse, a heartbeat – the Heartbeat of Civilization.
It would begin in the Land Between the Rivers – a place known only in the last instant by the inhabitants down there as “Iraq,” but for almost the entire beating EKG before that it was called “Babylon” and then “Mesopotamia.”
That culture grew brighter, flourished and then suddenly winked out. Then, a little to the west, the Nile delta slowly blossomed, peaked, and fell. Then Greece. Rome. Constantinople. Arabia. Italy. Spain. France. Britain – and with Britain, that spark of medicine and architecture and government married to science and steam literally remade the world.
And from your perch on the frozen, bone-dry lunar sand you would see the same pattern, the same pulse, the same heartbeat: a slow, steady rise, followed by a precipitous, shockingly quick fall… and then centuries, or even millennia of darkness, fear, superstition, disease and ignorance before the spark took hold again elsewhere.
One thing in common these patterns bear: the rise slow, the fall seemingly precipitous, and in every case we find the loss of nerve and strength and will comes not from the bottom, not from the common people at all, but from the rulers, the philosophers, the most affluent and educated who, in their comfort and Narcissism, abandon duty for self-absorption and self-gratification and who in boredom or self-loathing decide to fling open the gates of the city to the barbarians beyond, while the common man still stands at the walls prepared to die for the people in his charge.
And now here stands America...
[Recommended > ]
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PETA's latest idiotic demand - fish are 'sea kittens'
RADICAL international animal rights group PETA has launched its most bizarre campaign yet, demanding fish be renamed "sea kittens". PETA - People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals - believes calling fish sea kittens will make sea food less appealing. It wants to change the image of fish as slimy and slithery creatures by claiming they are similar to cuter, more popular animals.
[you can't make this stuff up]
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