When word came of Uncle Earl’s passing, it was the first news we’d had of him in many years. Rumor had it that there had been bad blood between Dad and his elder brother – somehow involving our Mother – ever since our parents married.
It was therefore doubly surprising that Earl left us his powder blue 1960 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. The car was simply gorgeous! She had some mechanical problems which kept her from passing inspection. She also sucked gas like a banshee. It cost us money just move her around in the driveway so that our other cars could pass. Irrespective of her color, she came to be known as our ‘white elephant’.
It took me years to understand the connection. ‘White elephant’ seemed somewhat appropriate for a large car that had white leather seats; that we would finally end up selling at a ‘white elephant sale’ for a pittance. It was only when I learned a little about India that the true meaning of the allusion dawned on me.
India was at one time divided into princely states, each one ruled by a maharajah who lived in a palace. These palaces were not immune from palace intrigue: people plotting to usurp power and such. To his most formidable opponent, the maharajah would bequeath a white elephant. The expense and care the animal would require was certain to keep the man distracted and drive him to ruin.
President Obama is like one of the maharajahs of old. He is trying to tempt us with universal health care and ‘peace in our time’ while at the same time promising to clean up the planet of pollution and guns. It is the promise of utopia - consisting of a virtual herd of ‘white elephants’ - to which we all feel curiously attracted. It’s designed to keep us distracted and drive us to ruin.
Now you know who has been tagged a threat by the Obama administration.
The Sri Lankan army’s announced defeat of the LTTE separatist group yesterday and the killing of its entire top leadership effectively puts an end to the quarter century long conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. N. Ram, Communist Party member and editor-in-chief of ‘The Hindu’ (South Indian newspaper) writes in today’s lead editorial, “It might have been very different had an organization (LTTE) that started out in the 1970’s with some kind of emancipatory political vision and even idealism not turned Pol Potist in its extremism, cruelty, and horrific disregard for human life and welfare.” Today there is celebration on the streets of Colombo.
B. Raman of the ‘Institute for Topical Studies’, Chennai, however, counsels caution. Rust never sleeps. In today’s world of journalistic activism it is always possible to re-constitute the defeated in conjunction with mocking and/or holding the victor to account for collateral damage. Already there are protesters on the streets in Europe and elsewhere wearing t-shirts bearing the likeness of Velupillai Prabakaran, demanding ‘justice’. This should suffice to re-inflame the passions of surviving separatists (and their allies in Tamil Nadu) who might be delusional enough to deny the reality of a clear-cut military defeat.
This Pelosi-CIA business and the recent Congressional warnings to Obama about Afghanistan make the Democrats look weak and feckless again on national security and defense. This noise about Iran having only a few months to come around or Obama will get tough with them is Washington kabuki for the AD/HD polity.
Peace is bad for business. Israel Knows That Peace Just Doesn't Pay By Amira Hass
May 19, 2009 "Haaretz"- May 14, 2009 -- Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests.
Economic damage:
The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.
The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.
Damage to careers:
Maintaining the occupation and a state of non-peace employs hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 70,000 people work in the security industry. Each year, tens of thousands finish their army service with special skills or a desirable sideline. For thousands it becomes their main career: professional soldiers, Shin Bet operatives, foreign consultants, mercenaries, weapons dealers. Therefore peace endangers the careers and professional futures of an important and prestigious stratum of Israelis, a stratum that has a major influence on the government.
Damage to quality of life:
A peace agreement would require equal distribution of water resources throughout the country (from the river to the sea) between Jews and Palestinians, regardless of the desalination of seawater and water-saving techniques. Even now it's hard for Israelis to get used to saving water because of the drought. It's not difficult to guess how traumatic a slash in water consumption to equalize distribution would be.
Damage to welfare:
As the past 30 years have shown, settlements flourish as the welfare state contracts. They offer ordinary people what their salaries would not allow them in sovereign Israel, within the borders of June 4, 1967: cheap land, large homes, benefits, subsidies, wide-open spaces, a view, a superior road network and quality education. Even for those Israeli Jews who have not moved there, the settlements illuminate their horizon as an option for a social and economic upgrade. That option is more real than the vague promises of peacetime improvements, an unknown situation.
Peace will also reduce, if not erase entirely, the security pretext for discriminating against Palestinian Israelis - in land distribution, development resources, education, health employment and civil rights (such as marriage and citizenship). People who have gotten used to privilege under a system based on ethnic discrimination see its abrogation as a threat to their welfare.
© 2009 Haaretz
(Reuters) - Iran launched a missile with a range of close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles) on Wednesday and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Islamic state could send any attacker "to hell," official media reported.
The stated range of the surface-to-surface Sejil 2 missile would be almost as far as another Iranian missile, Shahab 3, and analysts say such weaponry could put Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf within reach.
Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no Evil...
PM Netanyahu declares an Israel devoted to peace and and prosperous coexistence with all people in the region.
Iran answers for the minority and with a vision of destruction and hell.
A glimpse of Iran's leaders from paragraph one: "Men who expect the Twelfth Imam to emerge from a well after chaos sweeps the Earth." What a bunch of apocalyptic crazies, no question about it.
But here are Iran's leaders as depicted in the very next paragraph: "When confronted, Tehran acts meek and peaceful. When petted, Tehran acts thuggish." Now they seem to be bullies, but more or less rational ones.
Odd.
Are we in such a hurry to go to war with the Iranians that we can't even be bothered to come up with a reasonably consistent depiction of them? When we fire those cruise missiles we'll at least know who the hell it is we're supposed to be killing.
Correction. Last sentence should read "When we fire those cruise missiles we ought to at least know who the hell it is we're supposed to be killing."
Is there a question as to the embodiment of the Iranian regime?
They are on the verge of possessing WMD capability and possible economic/ social collapse that is only circumvented by regime change or reconciliation of well intentioned moderate postures by meaningful, well intentioned moderates. Most of the world is hoping for the latter.
The existing regime practices obfuscation and boisterous provocation and threats. To stand down when being confronted, buys the time needed to set the stage for moves that further the progression of the announced Islamic revolution, which again, is believed to be in the hands of man rather than Allah.
This is a huge fallacy in the dictum out of Teheran... that a few men have proclaimed that they know the Will of God and as instruments of that Will that a few men can bring His Will and prophecy manifest.
This is the danger of a few zealots.
Israel has to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount for fulfillment... there are some who wish it done for justification of a nation under prophesy. However, they are not dictating to the Nation to raze the Mount and construct their Temple. They believe God's Will is not of Man.
Addendum:
If Teheran invokes their supposed Will of God with apocalyptic Islamic zealotry to destroy Israel they could very well bring about the destruction of what is viewed by the Israelis as abomination- the Al Aqsa. What of Mecca? Who would be responsible?
It's the same as if Israel destroyed the Al Aqsa and confiscated the whole of Temple Mount for their own in a direct confrontation with Islam.
What is the difference between this?
What justification is there for the Mullahs to exist and to forward a concept of expansionism and impose their intemperate religious tenets on their neighbors?
Israel proclaims the right to exist. What is it that frightens the Iranian regime about Israel transforming the desert into a land of fruitful production and for ALL its citizens to thrive, prosper, and be proud?
Curiously, I wonder at the obvious. Obviously, the answer is too simple and is designed for the simpleto purposefully evoke the base emotions and distract from the failures of cynical, symbolic leadership devoid of reason and equality.
The Iranian population are exceptional peoples. They are hostages, the same as the refugees in Pakistan who have been able to escape the thuggery and banditry of a warped, cynical perspective that is contrary to the teachings of their faith.
Shall we watch and conjure the Spirits for guidance?
Spencer - Thank you for mentioning 'WMD' again. It jogged my memory and brought me back to the largely one-sided debate we were having just before invading Iraq. Is it just me? Weren't the arguments for going in the same as they are now? Aren't they always the same, until the body bags start being sent home; until the ADD public gets bored and no longer pays attention; until the enemy (in this case, the Taliban) can put enough scratch together to hire the likes of Qorvis Communications LLC or Clinton to spin sympathetic fantasies that the MSM is bound to pick up and run with; until the election cycle once again reaches that point where it squeezes every last bit of patriotic fiber from the fabric of our now tattered flag? No, I say, leave well enough alone. Let's try to avoid all the fuss this time around. I'm banking on them not being able to get their nukes off the ground; on them being more likely to nuke themselves than us (with their own nukes). But who will listen?
Those crazy, fanatical Iranians. Those rational, bullying Iranians. Those Iranians whose might presents a threat to the Middle East, to Europe, to the world. Those Iranians whose regime is so weak that it is on the brink of utter collapse.
I marvel at this multi-faceted case for war, as irrefutable as it is impervious to logic
It is hard not to suspect that some people just want to see mounds of charred Iranian bones for reasons that they themselves lack the self-awareness to grasp.
I absolutely love this website!!! definitely going to have to remember to add this to my blogroll.
When word came of Uncle Earl’s passing, it was the first news we’d had of him in many years. Rumor had it that there had been bad blood between Dad and his elder brother – somehow involving our Mother – ever since our parents married.
It was therefore doubly surprising that Earl left us his powder blue 1960 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. The car was simply gorgeous! She had some mechanical problems which kept her from passing inspection. She also sucked gas like a banshee. It cost us money just move her around in the driveway so that our other cars could pass. Irrespective of her color, she came to be known as our ‘white elephant’.
It took me years to understand the connection. ‘White elephant’ seemed somewhat appropriate for a large car that had white leather seats; that we would finally end up selling at a ‘white elephant sale’ for a pittance. It was only when I learned a little about India that the true meaning of the allusion dawned on me.
India was at one time divided into princely states, each one ruled by a maharajah who lived in a palace. These palaces were not immune from palace intrigue: people plotting to usurp power and such. To his most formidable opponent, the maharajah would bequeath a white elephant. The expense and care the animal would require was certain to keep the man distracted and drive him to ruin.
President Obama is like one of the maharajahs of old. He is trying to tempt us with universal health care and ‘peace in our time’ while at the same time promising to clean up the planet of pollution and guns. It is the promise of utopia - consisting of a virtual herd of ‘white elephants’ - to which we all feel curiously attracted. It’s designed to keep us distracted and drive us to ruin.
Now you know who has been tagged a threat by the Obama administration.
The Sri Lankan army’s announced defeat of the LTTE separatist group yesterday and the killing of its entire top leadership effectively puts an end to the quarter century long conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. N. Ram, Communist Party member and editor-in-chief of ‘The Hindu’ (South Indian newspaper) writes in today’s lead editorial, “It might have been very different had an organization (LTTE) that started out in the 1970’s with some kind of emancipatory political vision and even idealism not turned Pol Potist in its extremism, cruelty, and horrific disregard for human life and welfare.” Today there is celebration on the streets of Colombo.
B. Raman of the ‘Institute for Topical Studies’, Chennai, however, counsels caution. Rust never sleeps. In today’s world of journalistic activism it is always possible to re-constitute the defeated in conjunction with mocking and/or holding the victor to account for collateral damage. Already there are protesters on the streets in Europe and elsewhere wearing t-shirts bearing the likeness of Velupillai Prabakaran, demanding ‘justice’. This should suffice to re-inflame the passions of surviving separatists (and their allies in Tamil Nadu) who might be delusional enough to deny the reality of a clear-cut military defeat.
This Pelosi-CIA business and the recent Congressional warnings to Obama about Afghanistan make the Democrats look weak and feckless again on national security and defense. This noise about Iran having only a few months to come around or Obama will get tough with them is Washington kabuki for the AD/HD polity.
Peace is bad for business.
Israel Knows That Peace Just Doesn't Pay
By Amira Hass
May 19, 2009 "Haaretz"- May 14, 2009 -- Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests.
Economic damage:
The security industry is an important export branch - weapons, ammunition and refinements that are tested daily in Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo process - negotiations that were never meant to end - allowed Israel to shake off its status as occupying power (obligated to the welfare of the occupied people) and treat the Palestinian territories as independent entities. That is, to use weapons and ammunition at a magnitude Israel could not have otherwise used on the Palestinians after 1967. Protecting the settlements requires constant development of security, surveillance and deterrence equipment such as fences, roadblocks, electronic surveillance, cameras and robots. These are security's cutting edge in the developed world, and serve banks, companies and luxury neighborhoods next to shantytowns and ethnic enclaves where rebellions must be suppressed.
The collective Israeli creativity in security is fertilized by a state of constant friction between most Israelis and a population defined as hostile. A state of combat over a low flame, and sometimes over a high one, brings together a variety of Israeli temperaments: rambos, computer wizards, people with gifted hands, inventors. Under peace, their chances of meeting would be greatly reduced.
Damage to careers:
Maintaining the occupation and a state of non-peace employs hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Some 70,000 people work in the security industry. Each year, tens of thousands finish their army service with special skills or a desirable sideline. For thousands it becomes their main career: professional soldiers, Shin Bet operatives, foreign consultants, mercenaries, weapons dealers. Therefore peace endangers the careers and professional futures of an important and prestigious stratum of Israelis, a stratum that has a major influence on the government.
Damage to quality of life:
A peace agreement would require equal distribution of water resources throughout the country (from the river to the sea) between Jews and Palestinians, regardless of the desalination of seawater and water-saving techniques. Even now it's hard for Israelis to get used to saving water because of the drought. It's not difficult to guess how traumatic a slash in water consumption to equalize distribution would be.
Damage to welfare:
As the past 30 years have shown, settlements flourish as the welfare state contracts. They offer ordinary people what their salaries would not allow them in sovereign Israel, within the borders of June 4, 1967: cheap land, large homes, benefits, subsidies, wide-open spaces, a view, a superior road network and quality education. Even for those Israeli Jews who have not moved there, the settlements illuminate their horizon as an option for a social and economic upgrade. That option is more real than the vague promises of peacetime improvements, an unknown situation.
Peace will also reduce, if not erase entirely, the security pretext for discriminating against Palestinian Israelis - in land distribution, development resources, education, health employment and civil rights (such as marriage and citizenship). People who have gotten used to privilege under a system based on ethnic discrimination see its abrogation as a threat to their welfare.
© 2009 Haaretz
(Reuters) - Iran launched a missile with a range of close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles) on Wednesday and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Islamic state could send any attacker "to hell," official media reported.
The stated range of the surface-to-surface Sejil 2 missile would be almost as far as another Iranian missile, Shahab 3, and analysts say such weaponry could put Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf within reach.
Yea, though I walk through the shadow of death, I will fear no Evil...
PM Netanyahu declares an Israel devoted to peace and and prosperous coexistence with all people in the region.
Iran answers for the minority and with a vision of destruction and hell.
A glimpse of Iran's leaders from paragraph one: "Men who expect the Twelfth Imam to emerge from a well after chaos sweeps the Earth." What a bunch of apocalyptic crazies, no question about it.
But here are Iran's leaders as depicted in the very next paragraph: "When confronted, Tehran acts meek and peaceful. When petted, Tehran acts thuggish." Now they seem to be bullies, but more or less rational ones.
Odd.
Are we in such a hurry to go to war with the Iranians that we can't even be bothered to come up with a reasonably consistent depiction of them? When we fire those cruise missiles we'll at least know who the hell it is we're supposed to be killing.
Correction. Last sentence should read "When we fire those cruise missiles we ought to at least know who the hell it is we're supposed to be killing."
Is there a question as to the embodiment of the Iranian regime?
They are on the verge of possessing WMD capability and possible economic/ social collapse that is only circumvented by regime change or reconciliation of well intentioned moderate postures by meaningful, well intentioned moderates. Most of the world is hoping for the latter.
The existing regime practices obfuscation and boisterous provocation and threats. To stand down when being confronted, buys the time needed to set the stage for moves that further the progression of the announced Islamic revolution, which again, is believed to be in the hands of man rather than Allah.
This is a huge fallacy in the dictum out of Teheran... that a few men have proclaimed that they know the Will of God and as instruments of that Will that a few men can bring His Will and prophecy manifest.
This is the danger of a few zealots.
Israel has to rebuild the Temple on the Temple Mount for fulfillment... there are some who wish it done for justification of a nation under prophesy. However, they are not dictating to the Nation to raze the Mount and construct their Temple. They believe God's Will is not of Man.
Addendum:
If Teheran invokes their supposed Will of God with apocalyptic Islamic zealotry to destroy Israel they could very well bring about the destruction of what is viewed by the Israelis as abomination- the Al Aqsa. What of Mecca? Who would be responsible?
It's the same as if Israel destroyed the Al Aqsa and confiscated the whole of Temple Mount for their own in a direct confrontation with Islam.
What is the difference between this?
What justification is there for the Mullahs to exist and to forward a concept of expansionism and impose their intemperate religious tenets on their neighbors?
Israel proclaims the right to exist. What is it that frightens the Iranian regime about Israel transforming the desert into a land of fruitful production and for ALL its citizens to thrive, prosper, and be proud?
Curiously, I wonder at the obvious. Obviously, the answer is too simple and is designed for the simpleto purposefully evoke the base emotions and distract from the failures of cynical, symbolic leadership devoid of reason and equality.
The Iranian population are exceptional peoples. They are hostages, the same as the refugees in Pakistan who have been able to escape the thuggery and banditry of a warped, cynical perspective that is contrary to the teachings of their faith.
Shall we watch and conjure the Spirits for guidance?
Spencer - Thank you for mentioning 'WMD' again. It jogged my memory and brought me back to the largely one-sided debate we were having just before invading Iraq. Is it just me? Weren't the arguments for going in the same as they are now? Aren't they always the same, until the body bags start being sent home; until the ADD public gets bored and no longer pays attention; until the enemy (in this case, the Taliban) can put enough scratch together to hire the likes of Qorvis Communications LLC or Clinton to spin sympathetic fantasies that the MSM is bound to pick up and run with; until the election cycle once again reaches that point where it squeezes every last bit of patriotic fiber from the fabric of our now tattered flag? No, I say, leave well enough alone. Let's try to avoid all the fuss this time around. I'm banking on them not being able to get their nukes off the ground; on them being more likely to nuke themselves than us (with their own nukes). But who will listen?
Those crazy, fanatical Iranians. Those rational, bullying Iranians. Those Iranians whose might presents a threat to the Middle East, to Europe, to the world. Those Iranians whose regime is so weak that it is on the brink of utter collapse.
I marvel at this multi-faceted case for war, as irrefutable as it is impervious to logic
It is hard not to suspect that some people just want to see mounds of charred Iranian bones for reasons that they themselves lack the self-awareness to grasp.
I absolutely love this website!!! definitely going to have to remember to add this to my blogroll.