Category Archives: Iran

UPDATED: Tea Party Totals GOP Candidate

Elections, Foreign Policy, Iran, Media, Politics, Republicans

I know little about Christine O’Donnell (other than that she admires The Hildebeest), but she sure seems a sweetheart. She has just “defeated veteran politician Mike Castle for the Republican Senate nomination in Delaware.” The GOP has responded to the whipping of one of its crooked politicians with this throw down:

“Republican aides told Fox News Tuesday that the National Republican Senatorial Committee will not be funding O’Donnell’s general election campaign, leaving it up to Palin and the Tea Party Express to do the heavy lifting.”

Given GOP good will, why is O’Donnell already talking about cooperating with establishment Republicans “for the common good”?

Reaching across the aisle to get things done is a euphemism for relinquishing principles in favor of political expediency. As one hardcore tea partier said to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, “the only time I want my representative to reach across the isle is to grab a Democrat by the throat.”

Read more about what mainstream media are calling “an upset.”

* Unrelated: I am traveling to a WND event. I will be back at my desk in a few days. My WND column will resume next week.

UPDATE: (Sept. 20): Lew Rockwell wonders whether Christine O’Donnell can be all bad since she is “hated by Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, John Cornyn, the Club for Growth, and Dick Armey’s KochWorks.”

Alas, “she calls for murdering the unborn and everyone else in Iran, and is, in general, a foreign policy neocon.”

UPDATE III: An Act Of War? (Reuters Doctors Images, Allegedly)

Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Journalism, Media, Terrorism, War

Is it a prelude to an act of war? If I didn’t know better, that’s what I’d call the threat Iran has issued to send its Iranian Revolutionary Guard to escort ships attempting to break through the blockade of Gaza. Were I a resident of Israel, I’d be nervous.

But of course, I know better. After all, it would be perfectly proper, and in keeping with US sovereignty, were Turkish “activists,” escorted by the Iranian military, to wash up on American shores. I’m glad I got that straightened out in my own mind.

FOXNEWS:

Israel will do “whatever it takes” to defend itself from terrorism, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday, without elaborating what actions would be taken in the face of a potential Iranian Revolutionary Guard escort of ships to break through the blockade of Gaza.
Ambassador Michael Oren said Israel is “open to any ideas to somehow deal with the Gaza situation” but dropping the blockade is unlikely since that would mean allowing thousands of rockets to arrive in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

UPDATE I (June 7): WINNING THROUGH WEAKNESS. Daniel Pipes’ keen analysis of the strategy involving the “Amity Armada” is particularly insightful:

“One of the most important rules for a strategist is not to be put on the defensive. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, developed this concept into a doctrine of forward defense that brilliantly served his state in its early years.

Eventually, however, Israel’s enemies realized that they could not win a conventional war. Instead of launching planes, tanks, and ships at the Jewish state, they turned to other means – weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and (most recently) political delegitimization. Delegitimization turns the rules of war upside down: in particular strength is weakness and public opinion has supreme importance.

Israel’s command structure, having mastered the old ways of war (the ones that lasted to 1973), has shown utter strategic incompetence at the new ways of war (in place since 1982). The new rules require an agile sense of public relations, which means that a powerful state never physically harms, even inadvertently, its rag-tag political adversaries.”…

[snip]

Where Pipes and I depart is in that, finally, after decades of bumbling, I see an Israeli public-relations sea change. Michael Oren accounts for 90 percent of it.

UPDATE II: Nebojsa Malic’s take on the winning-through-weakness strategy:

“Israel has a powerful conventional army, navy, air force, and most likely even nuclear weapons (though not officially acknowledged). It has defeated Arab armies on numerous occasions in open warfare, and has successfully fought terrorism and insurgency through special operations. So those who wish it destroyed came up with a way of turning that strength into a weakness: cast themselves as innocent, unarmed, helpless victims and howl as loud as possible about being abused by that very Israel whose strength no one can dispute.”

UPDATE III (June 8): Fox News reports:

“In one photo, an Israeli commando is shown lying on the deck of the ship, surrounded by activists. The uncut photo released by IHH shows the hand of an unidentified activist holding a knife. But in the Reuters photo, the hand is visible but the knife has been edited out.”

The blog ‘Little Green Footballs’ challenged Reuters’ editing of the photo.

‘That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo. Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. There was a huge controversy over whether the activists were armed. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it,’ the blog stated.”

UPDATE IV: Netanyahu: ‘This Was No Love Boat’

Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Terrorism

For the first time in a very long time Israel has beaten the global Palestinian PR machine. It posted footage of the mob lynching to which their Navy SEALs had been subjected right away; and they’ve galvanized a superb spokesman in the person of Michael Oren (whose son is in a similar unit). No longer are we faced with bumbling, heavily accented tough men and women who know how to pick up arms in defense of their existentially imperiled nation, but know not how to speak to the left-liberal degenerates of the world.

This has changed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau has just outlined clearly (an act beyond the ken of his ruffian predecessor) the events of May 31 upon the Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza. He spoke of the hypocrisy of the international community in no uncertain terms, and made clear that Israel would vigorously inspect and interdict cargo headed for its shores—all the more so when the cargo carriers refuse to go through its approved channels. Dah!

Such are the capabilities of news media these days that footage and transcripts of Netanyahu’s live address are not available as I write (11:16 Pacific Time, June 2). Will post these as soon as they materialize on the internet.

HERE is the Israeli PM’s masterful, measured address: “Once again Israel faces hypocrisy and a biased rush to judgment. this is not the first time. … Israel cannot permit Iran to establish a Mediterranean port a few dozen kilometers from Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. Here’s our policy, it’s very simple: Humanitarian and other good can go in; weapons and war material cannot. … Each week an average of 10,000 tons of good enters Gaza. The offer to delivery the good this time was rejected. Navy personnel had not choice but to board these vessels. On 5 of the ships Israeli personnel met with no serious violence. On the larger ship, something very different happened. … Met with a vicious mob [footage in the background]; stabbed, clubbed, and fired upon. One soldier was shot in the stomach, one in the knee; they were going to be killed. The attackers had prepared their violent action in advance.” …

UPDATED I: I know these are Jews, so the anti-Semites find it hard to see them as human, but as I said in the related post, “What if these were your Navy SEAL sons?”

Heather Robinson of the Washington Examiner echoes the sentiment:

“They jumped me, hit me with clubs and bottles and stole my rifle,” one of the commandos said. “I pulled out my pistol and had no choice but to shoot.” The fact that several of the commandos were injured, two of them gravely, attests to the fact that the “peace activists” posed a serious threat.
(Anyone who would argue that the commandos used “disproportionate” force should consider what he or she would do if faced with the very real prospect of being lynched).

UPDATE II: Myron, what’s with the allusion about Captain B. Netanyahu’s military past being vastly different from his heroic late brother’s, Yonatan Netanyahu? Writes Wikipedia:

Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces in 1967 where he served as a commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, taking part in many missions including the hostages rescue mission from the hijacked Sabena Flight 572 in 1972.

How many American presidents had the right stuff for a Special Ops unit? As for his “ideas”; he’s big on Maimonides. To quote:

Benjamin Netanyahu: “It is not enough to be a Thatcherite, a Jew should go even further and become a Maimonidite.”

UPDATE III: “Love Boat” security cameras capture the “flotilla Rioters [as they] Prepare Rods, Slingshots, Broken Bottles and Metal Objects to Attack IDF Soldiers.”

UPDATE IV (June 3): Better close-up footage of IDF soldiers being beaten with pipes and chains and shot at by the terrorists. Anyone who casts these hapless soldiers as aggressors is mindless or blinded by hatred for the Jew Among Nations. In fact, the IDF should conduct an inquiry as to why, one after the other, the soldiers slid into the midst of a lynch mob.

Fascism Rising

Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Iran, Law, Republicans

We live in a country where snowballing a “timid” city snowplow driver and a police officer’s unmarked vehicle is a felony punishable by five years in prison, and a maximum fine of $2,500, mens rea be damned.

If you absent-mindedly and fleetingly cross a passenger screening checkpoint to plant a kiss on your girlfriend at an airport occupied by the American federales, you will be arraigned after a nation-wide manhunt. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat, promised to put the next such love-sick pup in jail for ten years. The lout is legislating to that end.

Just how pervasive is fascistic America? Search BAB under the categories “Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Law.” Ditto the articles archive, where you can reread “Don’t Tase Me, Big Bro, They’re Coming For Your Kids! Tasers ‘R’ Us, Remember Reno! ‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” and others.

As the state and its stooges strain sights on Iran, let us, of the reality based community, “Fret About Our Own Tyrants.”