I’ve been in a lousy mood all week. All week. Unhappy, worried, thinking about how hard things are.
Last night, I fell down the last few stairs in my condo, giving myself a bunch of bumps and bruises, but no real damage.
This morning, I am in an absolutely wonderful mood.
I wonder if I landed on the reset button.
Just out of curiosity, let’s take a look at Yahoo News Mideast headlines over the past 16 hours.
Egyptian army orders protesters out of palace area AP – 2 hrs 32 mins ago
Syria criticizes NATO move on Patriot missiles By ZEINA KARAM – AP – 26 mins ago
Jordan king in West Bank to support Palestinians By DALIA NAMMARI – AP – 46 mins ago
Baghdad, Kurds said to reach security agreement By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA – AP – 55 mins ago
Egypt’s army moves to restore order after protests By HAMZA HENDAWI – AP – 2 hrs 21 mins ago
Syria blasts NATO move on Patriot missiles By ZEINA KARAM – AP – 2 hrs 55 mins ago
Egyptian army deploys tanks at presidential palace By MAGGIE MICHAEL – AP – 3 hrs ago
Israel bars academic from Berlin diplomatic event By AMY TEIBEL – AP – 4 hrs ago
Party of former Israel FM gets boost from defector AP – 4 hrs ago
Jordan king visits West Bank in nod to Palestine AP – 4 hrs ago
Syria official: US exploits chemical weapons issue AP – 5 hrs ago
Gunmen kill 5 policemen south of Iraqi capital By SINAN SALAHEDDIN – AP – 6 hrs ago
Syrian state TV: Bomb blast in Damascus kills 1 AP – 6 hrs ago
Death toll in latest Iran quake rises to 6 AP – 6 hrs ago
Overnight clashes in Cairo kill 5, crisis worsens By HAMZA HENDAWI – AP – 7 hrs ago
Overnight clashes in Cairo kill 3, crisis worsens AP – 8 hrs ago
Islamists battle opponents as Egypt crisis grows By HAMZA HENDAWI and AYA BATRAWY – AP – 13 hrs ago
Syrian civil war spills over into Lebanon By BASSEM MROUE – AP – 16 hrs ago
Egypt descends into political turmoil Associated Press – AP – 18 hrs ago
Report: Morocco honorary consul in Syria killed AP – 16 hrs ago
Fascinating. Twenty articles, Egypt and Syria in crisis and war, the Iran situation remains unchanged, the Saudis and the AP still manages to use up four of them on Israel , one an update on the Jordanian king’s visit to the faux statelet of East Palestine. Nothing on Turkey or Iraq, nothing on the human rights issues in Iran. Presumably these are the headlines sent by the AP news service to sites like Yahoo News, so they’re not chosen by Yahoo’s editors, but by the AP.
Figures.
In case you’re wondering where the posts are, well, I’m going through another one of those rough phases. I just can’t stand looking at the news sometimes. It’s the same-old, same-old. It’s depressing. It’s anti-Israel, all the time, all the mainstream media.
On top of that, I’m dealing with financial issues again due to being downsized to part-time. I don’t have a reliable, steady paycheck anymore, and COBRA is expensive.
So I’m not in the mood to do my standard posts. The economy is nosediving, and now that the election is over, the media has “discovered” how bad it is. I could have told them about it months ago.
You want to help? Spread the word about my novel. I got my first “royalties” (they’re really profits, not royalties, since I’m my own publisher) from it last week, and will get more at the end of December. It’s nowhere near enough to live on, but it’s a few hundred extra dollars, and that’s helpful.
Meantime, I’m plugging away at the plotting for Books Two through whatever (I’m no longer sure how many books there will be in the series), with a scheduled publication date of “sometime in 2013.”
I really hate uncertain paychecks. I haven’t had to live paycheck to paycheck in a long time. And this time, I don’t even know how much each paycheck is going to be. Fun times.
The UN General Assembly has voted to demand that Israel open its nuclear plants up to UN inspection and join the NPT, and then presumably disarm itself.
The U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to quickly open its nuclear program for inspection and backing a high-level conference to ban nuclear weapons from the Middle East which was just canceled.
All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on Nov. 23 that it wouldn’t take place, citing political turmoil in the region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was Israel’s refusal to attend.
The resolution, approved Monday by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “without further delay” and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting “no” were Israel, the U.S., Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
Note how the AP explains the non-binding resolution.
Resolutions adopted by the 193-member General Assembly are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion and carry moral and political weight.
The moral and political weight of a UN resolution–wow, that’s one heavy burden to bear, coming from the organization that did nothing about the Rwanda massacres, did nothing about the mass starvation and prison camps in North Korea, is doing almost nothing about Syria, and spends its time chastising Israel.
And here, they point out that Israel isn’t the only state with nuclear weapons, but we have no reference to the sanctions on North Korea nor the state of near-nuclear war that India and Pakistan once reached. No, only Israel–which has never exploded a nuclear bomb–must be hit with the full “moral and political weight” of a worthless, non-binding UN General Assembly resolution.
Israel refuses to confirm or deny it has nuclear bombs though it is widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal. It has refused to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, along with three nuclear weapon states — India, Pakistan and North Korea.
Here would have been a good place to mention the history of those other three nations, with perhaps a reference to the binding UN Security Council resolutions sanctioning North Korea. But wait, it gets better. The AP actually quotes a Syrian diplomat on peace. Yes, really. A representative of the nation that has murdered over 40,000 of its own people, including tens of thousands of women and children, is being quoted on the subject of Mideast peace.
Syrian diplomat Abdullah Hallak told the assembly his government was angry that the conference wasn’t going to take place because of “the whim of just one party, a party with nuclear warheads.”
“We call on the international community to put pressure on Israel to accept the NPT, get rid of its arsenal and delivery systems, in order to allow for peace and stability in our region,” he said.
Presumably after giving that quote, the diplomat collapsed into giggles.
By the way, the Obama Administration stabbed Israel in the back over this one. You have to read to the very end of the article to get this.
While the United States voted against the resolution, it voted in favor of two paragraphs in it that were put to separate votes. Both support universal adherence to the NPT, and call on those countries that aren’t parties to ratify it “at the earliest date.” The only “no” votes on those paragraphs were Israel and India.
Exit statement: 21 out of 25 UN resolutions this session have been about Israel.
Think Hillary or Kerry can just call up Assad and stop all this? Yeah, they were all about how Assad is a “reformer”. I think he’s reforming the Assad reputation for killing large amounts of its own citizens–upward. Syria is mixing the agents needed to create sarin gas, and apparently getting ready to slaughter its own people. Read the article in full; Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman have a huge store of links about what’s going on. But don’t expect to see the UN get too out of sorts about it until after Syrians are killed. After all, it isn’t Israel that is getting ready to murder thousands of Syrians. It’s just the Syrians about to do it.
Reality sets in: Gazans discovered again that all Hamas is good for is screwing them over. And I like these comments. If only she were representative of the majority, instead of the minority.
“What kind of victory?” asked Um Ram Abu Rokba, covered in traditional Islamic attire as she walked home from afternoon prayer. “They are lying to the people. It is a kind of blackmail.”
As groups of children gathered around her, Abu Rokba, who would give only her nickname, said, “The Jews are hurt, we are hurt. If they lose a child, they cry. If we lose a child, we cry. It is the same. My own wish is only peace and security.”
The AP whitewash, cont’d: A Palestinian terrorist rammed a military Jeep with his car, overturning the Jeep. He then attacked the people in the car with an axe, wounding two, before being shot dead. The AP reports the news, but insists on explaining the attack this way:
Palestinian truck driver Rafik Salem says the Palestinian car hit the jeep at high speed Monday before veering into an olive grove. He says an ax-wielding man emerged from the grove and attacked the Israelis.
It was not clear if the assailant acted on his own or on behalf of a group.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank have dropped off sharply since an uprising a decade ago, but tensions remain high.
Note that they cast doubt on whether or not the driver of the car was the axe-wielder, and then they have to reach back ten years to minimize the violence. In reality, there are hundreds of terrorist attacks like this every year. Here are the ones from January to May.
The no preconditions preconditions: I swear, Israel lives in a constant Alice-in-Wonderland world. Witness:
“I’ve said a thousand times that we want to resume negotiations and we are ready to do it,” Abbas told the Palestinian reporters.
“We are not setting any conditions but there are at least 15 UN resolutions which consider settlement activity as illegal and an obstacle to peace which must be removed,” he said. “Why don’t (the Israelis) stop settlement?”
He stipulated that if Israel withdraws to the 1967 lines, allows the Palestinians to establish a state with Jerusalem as its capital and offers a fair solution to the refugee problem, the PA will guarantee that 57 Arab states will recognize Israel and solve its “isolation problem.”
Now compare that to this:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
Off with his head.
Are you on social networking sites?
I’d love it if you’d grab this image and link to send around to your friends on Facebook and other social networking areas. Just right-click to copy the image, and paste in the URL.
http://merylyourish.com/free-chapters/
It will be much appreciated.
A rare twofer: Tig decided to see if he could get Gracie to play with him.
Nope.
The UN General Assembly cheered and roared as the faux mini-statelet of East Palestine–which is, let’s face it, what they really voted for yesterday–was voted a “Non-member observer state”. Like the Vatican. Can “Palestine” vote on UNGA resolutions? Nope. But it can go to the ICC, which is part of Mahmoud Abbas’ plan to delegitimize Israel.
In a fair court, the charges he’ll bring up wouldn’t stand a chance. But there are no fair courts in the UN where Israel is concerned. In order to keep up the appearance that everyone loves “Palestine,” the UNGA kicked out half the members of a Jewish NGO that had been granted passes prior to the vote. In case you were wondering about how even-handed the UNGA is, in 2012, it issued 21 resolutions condemning Israel, and only four referring to the rest of the world. That’s an amazing percentage. Eighty-four percent of UN General Assembly resolutions condemned Israel. Syria has murdered 40,000 of its own people, the vast majority of which were civilians, and they managed to garner only one resolution of disapproval. But it’s not surprising, either, considering that major human rights violators sit on the UN Human Rights Council.
There is no fairness in the UN concerning Israel. There will be none, ever.
The significance of yesterday’s vote was not lost on any regular observer of the Palestinians. Once again, they expropriated Israel’s history. Sixty-five years ago, on November 29th, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition the British protectorate of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. The Palestinians deliberately chose the anniversary of that date so that the AP would write glowing comparisons of the Palestinians with the early Israelis, while ignoring utterly that the reason there is no state of Palestine is because the Palestinians have refused and refused and refused to negotiate with Israel. They don’t want the faux mini-statelet of East Palestine. When they say “Palestine”, they mean the entire territory of the protectorate–minus Transjordan–from November 28th, 1947. They think that this can be attained via the UN and the ICC.
People forget what “Palestine” was like in 1947. The Jewish state was a collection of bantustans in the worst areas of the territory, and Jerusalem was declared an international zone. (That did not, however, stop the Jews from accepting the partition plan.) Yesterday, the UNGA stated that “Palestine’s” borders were to go to pre-1967 lines–in other words, the 1948 Armistice lines from which the Arabs attacked Israel repeatedly. The UNGA has now recognized the Armistice line in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which states that Israel and the Palestinians must negotiate the return of territories. It is yet another case of the Arab world trying to force Israel into giving back what it lost in battle, in return for… nothing. And remember, Israel never asked for war in 1967, in spite of the lies the Arabs and the complicit anti-Israel media now spread.
So what’s the upshot of the failure of Israel to prevent this vote? Nothing, aside from the upcoming anti-Israel cases in the ICC. It’s ridiculous to blame Netanyahu and Lieberman for this vote. The only one who could have truly influenced it was the American president, and only by threatening to cut off all Palestinian aid, period. Which would never happen. Obama’s people tried to get Abbas to back off and failed. Would another president have succeeded? I have to say I don’t think so. The Palestinians feel perfectly safe in insulting the U.S., knowing that their free lunch from American taxpayers isn’t about to end.
Face it, the majority of the world is on the side of the Palestinians. They have successfully painted themselves as the victims in this story, and of course, they do have a case in that regard. Some of them did lose their homes in the war. But if they had shared the land 65 years ago, there would have been no war, and there would have been a state of Palestine, and it would have celebrated its 65th anniversary, along with Israel, on November 29th.
And so the faux mini-statelet of East Palestine now has observer status in the UN. Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist. The Palestinian Authority continues to steal funds that are meant for its own people. The world media continues to cover for the Palestinians and slam every move that Israel makes. In other words, it’s business as usual.
The world has never liked the Jews.
Seems to me that this is the right thing to post.
They can call the West Bank whatever they want. Am Yisrael chai.
Well, besides the fact that there are about sixteen different ways to spell Chanukah.
Wow. Could that commercial be any lamer?
I watch the last remaining soap opera on ABC, General Hospital. I’ve seen my favorite soaps get canceled (or get terrible–I used to be a big Days of Our Lives fan), one by one, network by network. I love the soaps. My cousin got me hooked on Days in the late 70s, back when Marlena and Roman were only just beginning to be a supercouple, and Bo and Hope were still kids. One of the best jobs I ever had was freelance copy editor for Soap Opera Digest. The office was a great, open loft in the lower 20s near the Flatiron building. There were televisions on every editor’s desk, and the editors and writers were all really nice. The soaps were on in the background, and every time there was something big going on, like a major wedding, everyone would gather around during the scene, watch it, and then get back to work. It was so much fun it hardly felt like work. Alas, they didn’t want another staff copy editor, so I had to settle for being called in fairly regularly for a few months, then finding other work. One thing working for Soap Opera Weekly did was make me like soaps even more. I dabbled in all the networks just to keep up with what was going on in the soap world.
These days, since the demise of One Life to Live, I watch General Hospital–where some of the OLTL characters wound up after their show was canceled. It’s a smart idea, and it’s also because the former OLTL executive producer and head writer are now on GH. So we get to see some of our old favorite stars, and a few guest stars.
Today’s GH was absolutely a hoot. There has only been one other soap that I saw acknowledge when they had the same actor play two different parts–the long-gone Santa Barbara.
Now they’re doing it on GH. The actor who played Tomas Delgado on One Life to Live is the same guy who played Lorenzo Alcazar on GH. So his widow and ex-lover see an article in the newspaper about how Tomas Delgado is getting married this weekend, and the game is on.
I cannot wait to see how this plays out. I’m finding this mixing of General Hospital and OLTL a lot of fun.
So, any GH fans out there? How are you liking the mix?
Who killed Arafat? Barry Rubin has the answer.
Suddenly, I received all of these phone calls from journalists asking me to talk about who murdered the late Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. The news peg is that he’s being dug up to see if someone poisoned him. Guess who?
I tell them that in a sense Arafat was murdered. Excited, they ask who did it. And I respond: Fatah, the PLO, and the Palestinian Authority, all organizations that Arafat headed. I don’t mean literally that they set out to kill Arafat but they were the ones really responsible for his death.
Of course, the standard answer is going to be: The Jews Israelis.
If you don’t read Barry’s columns, he should be on your regular reading list. His take on Israel is one of the most well-informed in the world, and of course, as a result, is ignored by the MSM. Can’t break the narrative. They want people to think that Israel murdered Arafat even on such an obviously made-up charge.
The current Arafat-was-murdered meme began when very large amounts of radioactive material were “discovered” on his clothing. This substance is scientifically known to break down on a very regular schedule. For such a quantity to be found there would have meant there would have been a gigantic amount—was he hosed down with radioactive poison?—when he died eight years ago. In other words, the stuff had been planted only hours at most before it was found, no doubt by the same people who put it there. In short, the accusation makes no sense but it is being treated seriously. Such is the way Israel is dealt with on many things by respectable people in the West. The accusation is made by anti-Israel propagandists who spew out the most vicious antisemitic hatred and lies yet are given a large measure of credibility. Such is the way Israel is dealt with on many things by otherwise respectable people in the West nowadays.
Don’t worry, the AP has already set up the narrative that there’s no way to prove conclusively that he wasn’t poisoned.
Palestinians have claimed for years that Israel poisoned Arafat, who died in a French hospital. Israel has denied the charges.
The exhumation marked the end of months of procedural wrangling but only the beginning of the testing. Palestinian officials said it would take at least three months to get results, and even then, they might not be conclusive.
Got it? They’re going to say that the tests proved that polonium wasn’t a factor, but that the tests weren’t conclusive, thus adding to the belief that Arafat was poisoned. Look how they’re already setting the narrative:
The three teams will separately analyze the samples for possible poison, including polonium-210, a lethal radioactive substance first detected in elevated amounts on some of Arafat’s clothing this summer.
Polonium disintegrates rapidly, and experts have cautioned that too much time may have passed since Arafat’s death to reach a conclusive result.
Polonium was used in the 2006 killing of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer turned Russian government critic. Litvinenko blamed the Kremlin for poisoning him.
Israel has denied killing Arafat, but many Palestinians believe Israel’s then-prime minister, Arafat nemesis Ariel Sharon, had means, motive and opportunity.
See how they throw in the blame on Israel even while pretending to write an objective rebuttal? Also note that they don’t include the half-life of polonium is 138 days. An Israeli expert asks the questions that the AP is not asking.
“Because of the half-life of the substance, the conclusion is that the polonium is much more fresh,” he added.
Karmon added that the Al Jazeera report raised additional unanswered questions. Referring to the fact that Arafat’s widow, Suha, provided the researchers with Arafat’s belongings, Karmon asked: “If Suha Arafat safeguarded these contaminated materials, why, after seven years, was she not poisoned too? She touched these things and Arafat in hospital.”
The media narrative is already set. Take a look.
No questions about the half-life of polonium and the impossibility of Arafat’s being poisoned by it are being asked in the WaPo’s rewriting of the AP article.
Euronews can’t bother with scientific accuracy.
The Christian Science Monitor waits until four paragraphs from the end of the story to point out that Arafat suffered no hair loss or other signs of radiation poisoning.
Slate gladly uses Arafat’s photo and exhumation as an “Explainer” article, pointing out that Alexander Litvinenko “remains the only high-profile known case of deliberate polonium poisoning.” It remains one of the only cases of deliberate polonium poisoning. Go ahead, try to find more. I couldn’t.
The New York Times goes with the Palestinian narrative. But of course.
CNN surprises with a balanced story throughout. Good for you, CNN.
But don’t worry. The world will blame Israel no matter what. Arafat was 75, in terrible health, and didn’t take care of himself–but it’s Israel’s fault he died. Right.
We keep hearing how it onlys costs terrorists about $1,000 to fire a kassam rocket into Israel, and it costs tens of thousands for each interceptor. This op-ed by Akiva Hamilton of Shurat HaDin, the people that are fighting terrorism with lawfare, shows how wrong that theory is. Akiva says that Israel is bankrupting Hamas, not the other way around.
The actual marginal cost of production of a Tamir interceptor is low and reflects the costs of the basic raw materials; metal, fuel, explosives and electronic components used in its manufacture, and the labor required to run the assembly line. If the IDF ends up ordering 10 times as many interceptors as originally estimated, then their “cost” will likely drop to around $5,000. At 100 times as many the “cost” will approach the marginal cost of less than $1000.
So how about those $1,000 Hamas rockets?
The supply line from Iran to Gaza is an extremely convoluted and expensive one which involves huge losses from IAF action bombing convoys and factories in Sudan, and interception by western navies. Large bribes have to be paid at every step of the way, particularly to the Beduin in Sinai and the Egyptian soldiers in Rafah who are supposed to be stopping the smuggling.
And the losses continue once the Grad gets to Gaza, with the IDF regularly destroying rocket caches. Thus, 1,000 Grads, which cost Iran $1 million to purchase, may end up as 300 Grads which cost a further $2 million in “delivery charges.” This turns a $1,000 Grad rocket in Iran into a $10,000 Grad rocket in Gaza.
Between that, and the accuracy getting better–costs go up exponentially for Hamas as accuracy improves only a couple of percentage points–it’s looking like Iron Dome was definitely the best way to go. But wait, there’s more–the new Magic Wand system has just been successfully tested, which minimizes the threat from Lebanon. It looks like if the Arab armies want to destroy Israel, they’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way–send in their armies and get their asses kicked. Iran is courting Jordan to try to surround Israel with enemies on all sides. Because that worked so well in the past.
I’m starting to think the missile defense is a game-changer, as the op-ed says. Pretty soon, the only missile to be afraid of will be a nuclear-tipped one. And by the time Iran gets to that point, I’m thinking Israel will have an ABM system working and ready to go. And then–well, perhaps the Palestinians will realize they can never defeat Israel, and peace will be possible. One can only hope.
So it’s pretty much all bad news, huh? Let’s take a look.
The new Pharoah: Morsi’s standing tough on his power grab, and the Obama Administration has yet to say much about it.
The new pseudo-state: The Palestinians are still going strong on their bid for UN Observer State status, or whatever the hell they’re calling it now.
Saudi ERA Watch: The Saudis are now enabling text messages for the medievalists who want to make sure they know where there women are at all times. Yes, that’s right, you can put an app on your daughter’s/wife’s/sister’s/mother’s phone that will alert you when she crosses the border, just in case she might have tried to escape from this seventh-century hellhole. Let’s hear again how wonderful and liberating Islam is for women. Because you know, I think that may not be true.
Wait, here you go. Something good to end the post with, and something to show why Israel utterly rocks in so many ways, but especially as an island of equality in a sea of medieval states.
Israeli Girl Power: Woman singlehandedly drives terrorist away. A terrorist from Gaza infiltrated an Israeli town across the border and thought he’d have easy pickings when he found a womand with children alone in the house. She fought the bastard off, locked him in a bathroom, and called for help. The IDF took him out a short while later. He is now an ex-terrorist.
Well, let’s see. I worked on Friday. Went to services Friday night. Picked up Jake and went to services Saturday morning and then home for a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. Worked Saturday night, because my HR department is once again behind schedule on Open Enrollment. Finished the movie marathon this morning, took Jake home this afternoon, and am about to have dinner and then work some more.
Well, we had fun watching the three extended LOTR movies in a day and a half. We watched two yesterday and one today. I taught Jake about Movie Legolas’ Captain Obvious moments, and we couldn’t stop laughing about how the actor who plays Elrond is always so angry. Except when he gave his daughter to Aragorn, after which we decided it was Arwen that was making Elrond so happy, because he smiled when he gave her away.
We are now both ready for The Hobbit, and the next time I want to watch all three movies, I will start earlier. I don’t see that happening for a few years, however. It’s been about that long since I last saw the trilogy.
Time to reread the novels so I can get the bad taste of some of the Peter Jackson scenes out of my head. I’m probably going to have to reread The Hobbit immediately after seeing the film, knowing how much he’s going to be making up. Really, did he have to make Deneothor such a selfish bastard that he’d not call for help from Rohan? And did he have to ignore the ages-old friendship between Rohan and Gondor in order to make it seem more dramatic when Theoden decided to help rescue Gondor? I could understand it if what he did improved the story. But it did not.
Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to bitch about after I get home from seeing The Hobbit in a few weeks.
