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A note from Shalom Lappin
I received this communication from Shalom Lappin in regard to a post from July 20: “Several of the comments on your blog cast doubt on the chronology of events that I give in my post on Normblog concerning the current conflict in Lebanon. In particular, they insist that Hizbollah did not initiate large scale shelling of Israeli towns and villages
Qana
There’s nothing I can say about the horror in Qana, other than it’s the indirect and direct result of U.S. policy — indirect in that the U.S. continues to frustrate efforts toward a ceasefire, direct in that the bomb that fell on the building on Qana was in all likelihood American. To the U.S., immediate ceasefires are worthless, but immediate
Mel Gibson’s passion
Alcoholism is correctly referred to as a disease, but in this case may it prove to be a cure — a cure for the delusion that Mel Gibson had no antisemitic agenda in making “The Passion of the Christ.” Memo to Jewish “leaders” and pundits on the right who signed on to Gibson’s whitewash campaign around the film: Just look
The silence of the libs
There’s been talk about the reluctance of the big liberal bloggers (Daily Kos, etc.) to take on the Israel/Lebanon issue. Sullivan thinks they’re “wimping out.” Kos insists, “we’re stuck with a war that will not end in any forseable [sic] future. It doesn’t matter what we bloggers say.” Kevin Drum notes: “The conflict is fantastically complex, and the partisans on
Sophistry
I overheard an impassioned argument about Israel/Lebanon the other day. The person on the left argued that Israel’s assault was “no different” than the terror practiced by Osama bin Laden. It’s odd — I was less than half a mile from ground zero on 9/11 and I don’t recall seeing any leaflets dropped from the sky, warning us of the
Chavez in Belarus
Via Harry’s Place — Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visits Belarus and proclaims it “a model social state.” Here is the Human Rights Watch overview on Belarus. Needless to say it’s a horror show. What will it take for progressives like Harry Belafonte to stop lionizing Chavez? We’ll see. One of his next stops is Tehran.
Iraq’s civil war
Rumsfeld weighs in: Q: Is the country [Iraq] closer to a civil war? SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I don’t know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries,
Turkey-Iraq drama
Turkey has been threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan to put an end to PKK attacks launched from Iraqi soil. Turkish hardliners are drawing direct comparisons to the Israel/Hezbollah situation. A Turkish invasion would be yet another calamity on the global stage, but one comment gives me some hope: For all the clamor for a military strike, “the sane members of