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?

Updated: Arnold Issuing IOUs

Classical Liberalism, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Government, Inflation, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

For a long time, “moderate” Republicans considered California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a member of the “saner” Republican guard. Arnold drove his state to insolvency, and insolvency, you see, can shore up a moderate’s credentials.

Schwarzenegger has pumped up his state’s bloated bureaucracy and ballooning parasitical class. Now, in a referendum, California voters have rejected milquetoast measures that would allow The Terminator to continue to hobble along with his $21 billion deficit.

The Republican governor made sure he was out of town during the vote. “He was not the public face of the effort,” reports the New York Times. But rather, Arnold “let teachers and firefighters do his talking for him in advertisements, and indeed was not even in the state the day of the vote.”

“Representative democracy,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Bureaucracy, “cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government pay roll. If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.”

One of the causes of inflation and debt is the public sector—with its capacity to hire while the public sector must fire—and award its members with inflated wages and benefits, the kind we can only dream of.

Update (May 20): Arnold gave it a bash; he tried to peddle a “package of budget-balancing measures that he promised would temporarily fix the state’s financial crisis.”

MSNBC: “Schwarzenegger said the state’s residents have had to sell off motorcycles, second cars and hold garage sales to make ends meet in recent months. Now, they’re telling state officials that the government has to shrink, too.

“Don’t come to us for extra help. That was the message.”

Me: Moocher-in-chief, however, knows how to try and prolong the party, with some leverage against the moochers he governs:

“Still, Schwarzenegger said the budget cuts to come may be more painful than California voters realize. While they may not want to pay more for services, they can’t say specifically which services they would pare, he said.

He said cuts will certainly come in education, health care and in prisons by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal facilities and transferring more non-violent offenders to local jails. He plans to meet with state lawmakers in the afternoon to discuss the state’s options.”

Olbermann's State Worship

Britain, Government, Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, The State

Obama’s Doberman, Keith Olbermann, thinks he’s so smart. However, Olbermann appears clever only because he swims in such polluted professional waters. When the competition on cable is “Billo,” Barack’s bitch gets to cleave to his delusions of cleverness.

This partisan hack tickled himself pink by savaging Michael Savage for his alleged hypocrisy. For his strident commentary, the Talker was banned from the police state of the UK, and has since solicited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assistance in reversing this ban. Olbermann delighted in pointing out that:

It is delicious irony that [Savage] must call on the State Department, after calling our new Secretary of State everything from Godless, Hitler-like, to responsible for the death of JFK Jr, to accusing her of starting a race war.

Now Savage is forced to seek Hilary’s diplomatic intervention, gloated Keith.

This is the reaction of a born-and-bred statist, with a skewed perspective on the role of government. Keith thinks of citizens as subjects.

Hillary is supposed to SERVE Savage, stupid! It matters not how disrespectful Savage has been to Hillary, or to any other politician. They work for him. It is incumbent upon politicians to help the people at whose pleasure they serve. What else is their function? Ornamental? As deities, objects of supplication, to be held close to the adoring heart, as Keith holds Obama?

Keith’s statism trips him up again and again, but no one is the wiser, becasue, all are statist partisans now.

Olbermann’s State Worship

Britain, Government, Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, The State

It is delicious irony that [Savage] must call on the State Department, after calling our new Secretary of State everything from Godless, Hitler-like, to responsible for the death of JFK Jr, to accusing her of starting a race war.

Now Savage is forced to seek Hilary’s diplomatic intervention, gloated Keith.

This is the reaction of a born-and-bred statist, with a skewed perspective on the role of government. Keith thinks of citizens as subjects.

Keith’s statism trips him up again and again, but no one is the wiser, becasue, all are statist partisans now.