Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Update VI: Beware Of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy (& In Praise Of One Lunatic)

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Natural Law, Ron Paul

Update III: The excerpt is from my new column, now on “Taki’s Magazine. I’m not even going to post the title the editor gave it. The attendant disclaimer reads: “This outrageous title is the product of the festering imagination of the editor, not the author.”
Update IV (June Eighth): Mr. Reavis did NOT approve of the poor column’s latest title, as you can see from the estimable Judge’s comment hereunder. Writers are pretty powerless in this respect.
Update V (June 9): The column’s title has, thankfully, been changed.

“About certain moral (and legal) matters, patriotic, freedom-loving Americans agree instinctively. For example:

When brave, border patrolmen Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean shot an illegal alien drug dealer in the derriere, they were defending their state, country and countrymen.

For hastening the descent into hell of two career criminals, who had broken into the country before breaking and entering at the home adjacent to his, Joe Horn—another fine Texan—is the best of neighbors.

Another acid test is the case of Frank Ricci, a firefighter from New Haven, Connecticut. Ricci was denied a promotion because he bested all the blacks in the department on a test 77 other candidates took. City officials didn’t like the results, so they voided the test, and put the promotion on hold until a less sensitive test could be developed—one that better screened-out proficiency and ability.

The individual with a healthy moral compass will agree that Ricci was wronged. What is licit or illicit in the natural law is inescapably obvious in the other vignettes as well.

But not to libertarian deviationists (by which I mean deviants, as opposed to dissenters).” …

The complete column, previously “Beware Of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy,” is now on Taki’s, differently titled by the editor.

Which is where you can find it every week. Miss the weekly column on WND? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine, every Saturday.

Update (June 6):In Praise Of One Lunatic. The “KNAPPSTER,” Tom Knapp, and I have had a fractious exchange in the Comments Section. I’ve posted two of Tom’s comments, starting with a highly unpleasant post, aimed at my person. Not unpredictably, Tom was most injured by my correct claim that his newsletter, which I dubbed a libertarian organ, and which I read regularly for its news items (not its commentary), has not featured my column in years.

Somewhat disingenuously, Tom disagreed, posting a list of my blog posts and columns on his site, claiming they were featured recently in the newsletter he mails out to thousands of libertarians.

(This was followed by an ugly personal note, calling me a liar, but I will not be dragged down by purveyors of smut.)

Now, I know and remember everything I’ve ever written. Check the dates on these posts; they are all old, exactly as I asserted. I repeat: These are all older column and blog posts.

The most recent entry is from 2006 (three from 2007, although “Tasers R Us” has vanished from the list; “Don’t Tase Me Big Bro,” which I would have thought Tom would love, never made it onto the list, as far as I can tell).

Here are the dates of each individual post on the Rational Review’s newsletter: 11.16.05, 06.22.06, 09/11/06, 06.11.07, 11.16.05, 11.27.06, 12.04.06, 08.24.06, 11.20.06, 06.28.06, 06.28.06, 03.28.06, 03.15.06, 09.04.06, 12.23.05, 03.22.06, 10.19.06, 08.07.06, 01.31.06, 05.23.06, 10.28.05, 09.27.06, 03.06.06, 02.08.06, 01.17.07, 07.02.07, 09.06.06, 01.20.06, 04.25.06, 12.11.06, 12.20.06.

It’s a shame, because I’ve said things in the cause of freedom—my cause and Tom’s cause—few libertarians have dared to (and better).

Just two Examples:

1) My hardcore propertarian defense of Michael Vick (other libertarian dog lovers offered a watered-down, states’-rights defense. Sean Hannity could not find a defense such as mine, which is how I made it onto his radio show on that rare occasion).

2) “They’re Coming For Your Kids”

Now, in his defense (I try and be immutably fair; although Tom is fighting dirty these days), the KNAPPSTER I once knew is quite a rare creature among libertarian cults. He has always appreciated contrarians and the vitality they bring to the movement. Rare. Like mainstreamers, libertarians spend a lot of time huddling in their purist corners, enforcing party lines, following a Cult Leader, and peering at the contrarian from behind heavily fortified ideological parapets.

Again: The KNAPPSTER I knew was not like this. Yes, he got heated about his perspective, but he never barred mine.

On the other hand, libertarian women folk can be real Stalinists in their approach to someone like myself. Last I was kicked off a distribution list it was by one such Siren of intolerance.

I am hopeful that some positive has come from this over-heated exchange, and that Tom, who doesn’t appreciate being perceived by readers (on this humble forum) as less than open-minded, will feature my column on his informative newsletter. He has not done so for a few years, as you can see from the dates the columns and post carry.

In that spirit, I’d also like to credit the KNAPSTER I knew (I do hope his women folk, and here I include women with the YY chromosomal makeup, have not gotten to him on this front) with being unique among (lower case L) libertarian anarchists in advancing one of the most cogent defenses of Israel. (I hope he will send me a link to that splendid tract.)

Peace (and give us a smile, KNAPPSTER).

Update II: Here is “Context is everything: American libertarians and Israel, part 1,” forwarded by Tom.

The KNAPPSTER, I believe, is cracking a grin. We’re good again.

Update VI (May 26): Postscript. I’ve been collegial and fair to a fault in my dealings with one Thomas L. Knapp, who has not carried any of my columns in his “newsletter” since this exchange—despite saying he would. My integrity tends to bring out the best in otherwise innately nasty pieces of work. In the case of this individual, my ability to elevate worked fleetingly—only while he was exposed to it during the exchange on this blog.

Update VI: Beware Of 'Absolut' Libertarian Lunacy (& In Praise Of One Lunatic)

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Natural Law, Ron Paul

Update III: The excerpt is from my new column, now on “Taki’s Magazine. I’m not even going to post the title the editor gave it. The attendant disclaimer reads: “This outrageous title is the product of the festering imagination of the editor, not the author.”
Update IV (June Eighth): Mr. Reavis did NOT approve of the poor column’s latest title, as you can see from the estimable Judge’s comment hereunder. Writers are pretty powerless in this respect.
Update V (June 9): The column’s title has, thankfully, been changed.

“About certain moral (and legal) matters, patriotic, freedom-loving Americans agree instinctively. For example:

When brave, border patrolmen Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean shot an illegal alien drug dealer in the derriere, they were defending their state, country and countrymen.

For hastening the descent into hell of two career criminals, who had broken into the country before breaking and entering at the home adjacent to his, Joe Horn—another fine Texan—is the best of neighbors.

Another acid test is the case of Frank Ricci, a firefighter from New Haven, Connecticut. Ricci was denied a promotion because he bested all the blacks in the department on a test 77 other candidates took. City officials didn’t like the results, so they voided the test, and put the promotion on hold until a less sensitive test could be developed—one that better screened-out proficiency and ability.

The individual with a healthy moral compass will agree that Ricci was wronged. What is licit or illicit in the natural law is inescapably obvious in the other vignettes as well.

But not to libertarian deviationists (by which I mean deviants, as opposed to dissenters).” …

The complete column, previously “Beware Of ‘Absolut’ Libertarian Lunacy,” is now on Taki’s, differently titled by the editor.

Which is where you can find it every week. Miss the weekly column on WND? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine, every Saturday.

Update (June 6):In Praise Of One Lunatic. The “KNAPPSTER,” Tom Knapp, and I have had a fractious exchange in the Comments Section. I’ve posted two of Tom’s comments, starting with a highly unpleasant post, aimed at my person. Not unpredictably, Tom was most injured by my correct claim that his newsletter, which I dubbed a libertarian organ, and which I read regularly for its news items (not its commentary), has not featured my column in years.

Somewhat disingenuously, Tom disagreed, posting a list of my blog posts and columns on his site, claiming they were featured recently in the newsletter he mails out to thousands of libertarians.

(This was followed by an ugly personal note, calling me a liar, but I will not be dragged down by purveyors of smut.)

Now, I know and remember everything I’ve ever written. Check the dates on these posts; they are all old, exactly as I asserted. I repeat: These are all older column and blog posts.

The most recent entry is from 2006 (three from 2007, although “Tasers R Us” has vanished from the list; “Don’t Tase Me Big Bro,” which I would have thought Tom would love, never made it onto the list, as far as I can tell).

Here are the dates of each individual post on the Rational Review’s newsletter: 11.16.05, 06.22.06, 09/11/06, 06.11.07, 11.16.05, 11.27.06, 12.04.06, 08.24.06, 11.20.06, 06.28.06, 06.28.06, 03.28.06, 03.15.06, 09.04.06, 12.23.05, 03.22.06, 10.19.06, 08.07.06, 01.31.06, 05.23.06, 10.28.05, 09.27.06, 03.06.06, 02.08.06, 01.17.07, 07.02.07, 09.06.06, 01.20.06, 04.25.06, 12.11.06, 12.20.06.

It’s a shame, because I’ve said things in the cause of freedom—my cause and Tom’s cause—few libertarians have dared to (and better).

Just two Examples:

1) My hardcore propertarian defense of Michael Vick (other libertarian dog lovers offered a watered-down, states’-rights defense. Sean Hannity could not find a defense such as mine, which is how I made it onto his radio show on that rare occasion).

2) “They’re Coming For Your Kids”

Now, in his defense (I try and be immutably fair; although Tom is fighting dirty these days), the KNAPPSTER I once knew is quite a rare creature among libertarian cults. He has always appreciated contrarians and the vitality they bring to the movement. Rare. Like mainstreamers, libertarians spend a lot of time huddling in their purist corners, enforcing party lines, following a Cult Leader, and peering at the contrarian from behind heavily fortified ideological parapets.

Again: The KNAPPSTER I knew was not like this. Yes, he got heated about his perspective, but he never barred mine.

On the other hand, libertarian women folk can be real Stalinists in their approach to someone like myself. Last I was kicked off a distribution list it was by one such Siren of intolerance.

I am hopeful that some positive has come from this over-heated exchange, and that Tom, who doesn’t appreciate being perceived by readers (on this humble forum) as less than open-minded, will feature my column on his informative newsletter. He has not done so for a few years, as you can see from the dates the columns and post carry.

In that spirit, I’d also like to credit the KNAPSTER I knew (I do hope his women folk, and here I include women with the YY chromosomal makeup, have not gotten to him on this front) with being unique among (lower case L) libertarian anarchists in advancing one of the most cogent defenses of Israel. (I hope he will send me a link to that splendid tract.)

Peace (and give us a smile, KNAPPSTER).

Update II: Here is “Context is everything: American libertarians and Israel, part 1,” forwarded by Tom.

The KNAPPSTER, I believe, is cracking a grin. We’re good again.

Update VI (May 26): Postscript. I’ve been collegial and fair to a fault in my dealings with one Thomas L. Knapp, who has not carried any of my columns in his “newsletter” since this exchange—despite saying he would. My integrity tends to bring out the best in otherwise innately nasty pieces of work. In the case of this individual, my ability to elevate worked fleetingly—only while he was exposed to it during the exchange on this blog.

Arabs Trashed Israel: What's New?

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Propaganda

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is alleged to have presented Obama with Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, which documents the American satirist’s “post Civil War tour” to Palestine.

The New York Times disagrees with Bibi’s deductions, drawn from Twain’s impressions. Nevertheless, it reports the following:

“Nine years ago, in a book of his own, A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, Mr. Netanyahu cited some of the observations in Innocents Abroad, about how sparsely populated certain parts of the land were at the time of Twain’s visit, as proof of ‘what every civilized and educated person knew at the close of the nineteenth century: that the land was indeed largely empty.’ Mr. Netanyahu quoted several passages from Twain’s book to support his argument that, even decades after the American writer visited the Holy Land, ‘this wasteland of Palestine,’ with ‘its miniscule Arab presence, making use of virtually none of the available land for the people’s own meager needs, could hardly be considered a serious counter to the claim of millions of Jews the world over to a state of their own.'”

“Twain’s description of Jerusalem under Muslim rule” … was far from flattering:

Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal “bucksheesh.” To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.

[SNIP]

Arabs trashed Palestine and never dried one swamp. Jews dried the swamps—died in droves of malaria doing so—planted orchards, started industries, and generally built the place into what it is today.

Past is prologue: Palestinians continue to punish the land.

So, what’s new under the sun?

Talent, Beauty, Intelligence: Noa & Mira Awad

Europe, Human Accomplishment, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

As a fan of chamber music and hard-core progressive rock, I don’t pay much attention to pop music, all the more so considering the genre has been overrun with the toxic sludge of American, booty shaking bimbos with bedroom voices and no talent.

(Pop rock is even worse. )

Me on “cut-and-paste” hip-hop electronica: “The P. Diddy or Missy Elliot-type electronica entails taking ready-made sample CDs on which drums, keyboards and guitar have been recorded. Aided by a computer program operable even by a simian, the mouse is used to drag and drop these samples anywhere along the track. Riffs and beats can also be dropped in the software way into the “song.” An entire band of backing tracks is thus “produced” with a computer and more often than not without a single instrumentalist.”

The overwhelming nature of the bad makes one forget that there is such a thing as a well-executed, pleasant warble, accompanied by competent musicians.

The gifted Noa is a striking Israeli Yemeni singer. Now Noa, in collaboration with Mira Awad, an Arab-Israeli talent, have united to represent Israel at the Eurovision. These are musical, intelligent, gracious, modest women, who speak soberly about the issues, and do not vaporize in the vernacular of Oprah—another American pop-pollutant.

I’ve heard some boosters tout American cultural products as export-worthy. I’ve argued that: “American mass entertainment continues to spread around the world like the cultural kudzu it is, not because of its quality or the vigor of its values, but because, in form and in content, it’s as easy as a prostitute on a street corner. It demands nothing but for the performer and his audience to relinquish artistic standards and shed inhibitions.”

I’m done. Over to the ladies. Here they spoke of what brought them together. And here they sang what ought to have been the winning “Eurovision” song, so achingly beautiful is it: There Must be Another Way

There must be another
Must be another way

Einaich, achot
Kol ma shelibi mevakesh omrot
Avarnu ad ko
Derech aruka, derech ko kasha yad beyad

Vehadma’ot zolgot, zormot lashav
Ke’ev lelo shem
Anachnu mechakot
Rak layom sheyavo achrei

There must be another way
There must be another way

Aynaki bit’ul
Rakh yiji yom wu’kul ilkhof yizul
B’aynaki israr
Inhu ana khayar
N’kamel halmasar
Mahma tal

Li’anhu ma fi anwan wakhid l’alakhzan
B’nadi lalmada
l’sama al’anida

There must be another way
There must be another way
There must be another
Must be another way

Derech aruka na’avor
Derech ko kasha
Yachad el ha’or
Aynaki bit’ul
Kul ilkhof yizul

And when I cry, I cry for both of us
My pain has no name
And when I cry, I cry
To the merciless sky and say
There must be another way

Vehadma’ot zolgot, zormot lashav
Ke’ev lelo shem
Anachnu mechakot
Rak layom sheyavo achrei

There must be another way
There must be another way
There must be another
Must be another way

Beautiful Noa in an old performance—interesting Yemeni beat, and a stage presence that is powerful, alluring, without being remotely slutty:

The Yemeni beat, Arabic beat, so so intricate and interesting; yet so foreign to North American ears schooled in the hip-hop, rap, deadening hump-a-long . 

Lyrics
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s hot and steamy
Don’t go around too dreamy
You’ll be trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Can I find a future here?
Everything is so unclear
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Can I ever find a life?
Under threat of fire and knife
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
It’s a game we play
And it’s very scary
With all those maniacs running around
Y’know
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour, 18 years old
Caught under the wheels
It’s a pretty bad deal
But this is my hometown
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Changing tide
Changing tide