Monday Postings
Bush on the way out?
The recent tremors in the American political world are starting to suggest a major power earthquake that will cost the Republicans terminally in the mid-term November elections, and IF the Democrats can get a landslide win, Bush runs the real risk of being impeached
There are many tell tale signs.
Fears of a the Republicans losing has led to a massive military aid weapon stockpile increase in Afghanistan.
PR Firms in the Untied States are sensing an upcoming political shift are now hiring Democrat lobbyists.
Joe Lieberman's loss in the Connecticut Senate primary this month. One of the seemingly most impregnable Democrats could not retain his own party's support. He was beaten because of his support for the war, by a businessman with a simple campaign mantra: "Bring the Boys Home."
According to one recent poll, two-thirds of Americans no longer accept his argument that Iraq has become “The central front in the war on terror”
More revealing is the stand ofChris Shays, a Connecticut Republican who supported the war but last week broke ranks with the White House and called for a firm timetable for withdrawal.
So much for Hezbollah starting the war on purpose
Remember all those voices claiming Hezbollah started the war with Israel by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers on purpose? Hmmm, looks like Hezbollah didn’t plan that at all…
Nasrallah sorry for scale of war
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war. "Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it," he said in an interview on Lebanese TV. He added that neither side was "heading towards a second round" of fighting.
BBC
Anything you can do, I can do better
Forget kidnapping Journalists from Fox news, Israel went one better by bombing Journalists..
Israeli rocket hits Reuters car
An Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City during a security operation has injured a Reuters news agency cameraman and a local journalist. At least one rocket hit the car as the cameraman was filming, knocking him unconscious, while the second man received serious leg wounds. The Reuters car was clearly marked all over as a media vehicle.
BBC
Police arresting Union leaders is never a good look
You know things are getting ugly when the Police step in and start arresting Union negotiators when they are striking. Low wage worker Unions are finally organizing themselves into forcing large companies with bad worker condition records to start negotiating better conditions.
Field about to get mown?
After even more revelations yesterday on TV One’s Sunday programme may force Clarke’s hand to dump Taito Phillip Field..
Clark says Field's future as MP in doubt
Prime Minister Helen Clark said today the latest allegations against her embattled colleague Taito Phillip Field are "awful" and he should reconsider his future as an MP. She said it would be hard for Mr Field to continue in the job.
"It's very hard to come back from something like that because the degree of public humiliation has been pretty high," she said. "I think he is rethinking his options he'll be thinking where he goes from here."
NZ Herald
posted by Bomber @ 1:23 pm
23 comments
23 Comments:
Impeachment would be good. Cathartic.
There was a great bumper sticker around when Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the chief prosecutor, in an attempt to save his corrupt presidency. It just said:
Impeach the Cox-sacker.
"It's very hard to come back from something like that because the degree of public humiliation has been pretty high," she said. "I think he is rethinking his options he'll be thinking where he goes from here."
Helenspeak for "You're sacked but not until the election".
bye bye Bush and about time, please take Helen Clarke and Don Brash with you.
" "Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it," "
Sorry - do you really believe that? What the guy is actually saying is that we was *surprised* that Israel reacted? Brewer, Bomber at al. have spent the last 3 weeks talking out Israels history of overreaction - and now you are saying that Hezbollah "was genuinely surprised that Israel reacted.
Either the guy is lying, or he is stupid. I think the former
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Hmmm, people like you Scott have been mouthing off that Hezbollah did this on purpose, we have been saying there were other factors, Shebaa Farms, Prisoners that Israel is unjustly holding, and that the kidnapping of the soldiers had more to do with that - Israels violent reaction was a planned response, we know that now, here is the Hezbollah leader saying that, and you run him down. You can lead a blogger to a site, but you can't make him read.
Well back the truck up. Of course there are other factors - Israel has caused much hate. But for the leader of Hezbollah to have not known that the Israelis would have reacted disproportionally is surprising.
I dont take him at his word. I dont take Dubya at his word. I suspect his comments are part of the propaganda war - designed to increase his popularity of himself and his cause
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Scott, the man comes out and says he wouldn't have kidnapped soldiers if he had known the response - this is very different from all the voices at the beginning of this who claimed Hezbollah wanted a war - now I'm as skeptical as the next person, but his comments run true with many other factors in this conflict. Brewer has detailed many solid points that paint Israel as a very aggressive state bordering on apartheid, and this statement from Hezbollah seems to place more of the blame on Israel.
"Israel as a very aggressive state bordering on apartheid"
Surely Hezbollah know this to be true more than anyone, so surely they *should* have anticipated the response.
Israel has a track record of such "disproportionality", so I fail to see how they could be surprised.
Lets use an analogy - Man goes into the jungle to chase a Cobra snake - knowing full bloody well that if he pisses the snake off it will bite him, and its poisonous. If he doesnt know that the Cobra will bite back, he is a fool. If he gets bitten, but then says that him chasing the snake didnt cause the bite, he is lying.
............But hezbollah does acknowledge, as you write, that the kidnapping "lead to such a war"
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Yes but if we remember the original accusations, Hezbollah planned this from the start and simply wanted a war - we've proved on this site that simply wasn't the case - there were many justifiable motivations for Hezbollah
But the question I have raised is my doubt about the accuracy of the comments of Hezbollah being surprised.
and we love BOMBER how you said "Forget kidnapping Journalists from Fox news" like it isnt important.
If Iran nuked washington, Bomber would argue that it was justified. But if Israel fired a BB gun at Nasrallah it would be an over-agressive disproportionate move
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Sigh - where to begin
Deano - do you have the memory of a goldfish? Sheeba Farms, the thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners that Israel holds illegally - all of those points Deano, remember - then there was the white paper I brought up pointing out that the Israeli's had this as a plan for a year and then Seymour Hersh's article pointing out the same - come on Deano, I know you are pissed that Israel got its arse kicked, but don't take it out on me.
Oh and Anon (above) for fucks sake son, I was joking, did you even read the whole thing or just the sentence you wanted to bitch about ?
So why have you not condemmed the kidnapping of the fox journalists? Not even a mention!
Because the kidnapping of the Fox journalists does not fit Bomber's simple world-view of West and Israel wrong, muslims always right. Actually if Bomber did write about it, he would no doubt say the kidnapping was caused by Western Imperialism and was actually orchestrated by CIA Death Squads.
I love it how Bomber will take the leader of Hizbollah at his word, yet everything that Bush says comes with an ulterior motive.
Blair, it seems the Israelis are terrorists, and Bush is a Machiavellian of epic proportions, who even uses weather control devices to unleash cataclysmic hurricanes on his own people, as a pretext to push his country into martial law, so he can put all his opponents in detention camps, while leading the world to Armageddon in the Middle East.
Only the forces of good and justice, led by Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmenjabad of Iran, and Osama Bin Laden, the courageous freedom fighter, stand between the innocent of this world and the evil of America and Israel.
I think the problem here is the fact that when challenged, and I have been very careful in how I have argued things, the arguments of bomber and brewer fall done
I quote something - they rubbish it because it was written by someone they dont like, without ever actually dealing with the argument. To say that, for instance, Iran is about peace - when today, according to DPF he wrote to the german chancellor practicing denying the holocaust, is bullshit.
This is the problem, when ideology confuses reason
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Scott that's bullshit and you know it! Don't side with Deano, he's had his arse whipped several times in debates - this isn't about ideology - you just haven't managed to convince us that Hezbollah is the evil that you tried to paint them out as - Christ Scott If I remember correctly you had a major backdown after reading that Sheeba Farms peice - and weren't a lot of you jumping up and down supporting Israel right up until they got their arse kicked and Seymour Hersh brought out his peice prooving that Israel planeed this military over reaction?
Well again I reitterate my central thesis, which you bomber have agreed with - there are larger factors (game) at play.
I am NOT pro-Israel - i merely try to understand the decisions that they make.
Bomber did you see the comments made today by a former Pakistani intelligence officer that the US intend to invade Syria and Iran in September? I dont buy it, but if true it would certainly rip to pieces my thesis, and I might end up owing a few people on here a drink and my profound apologies
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Hmmm - September? My fear is that there are people in the US who honestly think they could win a war in Iran - it can't be true can it? I mean I see they have been doing all they can to 'keep the option on the table' - but they surely don't think it's an option, I mean a REAL option do they?
Oh Bomber....
"My fear is that there are people in the US who honestly think they could win a war in Iran "
There are also lots of people who voted Bush, and these people believe every word he says. But fuck, there are midterms coming, wag-the-dog...
Israel could lead action - on CNN the other day an Israeli dude was quoted as saying that they believe that within 6-12 months the Iranian nuclear program will have passed the point of no return. I think September is logistically too soon however, but its concievable that December/January
Like I have been saying for a long long time - bigger game is definately at play.
There are unconfirmed reports that Hezbollah are rearming (with a possible supply line of Syria) - Israel is not going to sit back and watch it - the ceasefire looks shakey as it is - it is possible that what we saw in the last 6 weeks was only round 1.
Interesting times....
sdm makes a good point, when you poke a snake it gets angry. But perhaps we can expand on the nature of Hizballah/Israeli relations a little further.
Although a state of belligerency had existed between Hizballah and Israel since its 2000 withdrawal, the period 2000-2006 actually represents one of relative passivity. Prior to withdrawal an average of 25 Israeli soldiers had been killed annually (Hizballah achieved near parity to this rate) By comparison, in the post-withdrawal years up to and including July 12 that figure had been reduced to a rate of 6 Israeli soldiers killed annually. In addition, 1 Israeli civilian was killed by a Hizballah anti-aircraft round fired at Israeli planes violating Lebanese airspace. The level of conflict was contained through the mechanism of a set of 'rules of the game' which developed between Israel and Hizballah in the 1990's. Building upon an agreement following the Qana I attack ..(in which 102 out of 800 civilians sheltering in a UN base were blown apart by Israeli missiles).. not to target civilians, the rules defined how combat would be conducted in south Lebanon. Israeli territory would not be invaded and in return Israel would not hit civilian targets. For example, attacks on Israeli army posts in the Shebaa farms area would be met with limited shelling of Hizballah outposts and sonic booms over Lebanon. Hizballah stretched these rules on July 12th, and it is difficult to imagine that a response was anything but expected. But the question remains over whether Hizballah expected a limited response or the major escalation that occurred. Hizballah will be well aware that in 1982 Israel used the attempted assasination of Ambassador Shlomo Argov by a blood foe of Yasir Arafat as a pretext to go after Arafat, the PLO guerillas, their proto-state institutions and all that they stood for. Any action taken by Hizballah, or indeed any action taken by a group other than Hizballah, could provoke a similar response against them. However, if we take more recent examples the inevitability of such a response seems far less certain. In 2000 when Hizballah captured 3 Israeli soldiers 3km south of the Shebaa farms Ehud Barak chose not to respond. In 2002, Ariel Sharon chose not to respond when several soldiers were killed along the border, preferring instead to conduct indirect negotiations which led to the eventual prisoner release of 2004. Whatever your feelings on the expected or unexpected nature of the response, this latest war undoubtably represents a sharp break from the status quo that had prevailed since at least 2000.
Nasrallah has to justify himself to the Lebanese people, not the international community. My feeling is that the meaning intended was that he did not expect a response on this scale, not that he didn't expect a response at all, because frankly the lebanese people would never believe that.
I think it's worth noting that Hizballah had signalled its intention to kidnap soldiers, had dubbed 2006 'the year of retrieving the prisoners', and had made at least one failed attempt in recent months. The kidnappings should not have surprised anyone, least of all the Israelis.
While I'm at it I have to add that Hizballah doesn't deserve all the credit for this war. Many other groups are also reporting casualties, among them the Lebanese Communist Party, SSNP, and the Amal movement. This is basically absent from all coverage.
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MY GOD - Anon, thank you so much for such an amazingly detailed post - please keep contributing
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