Posts Tagged ‘middle east’

Free speech in France

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

I thought I had previously posted on this subject but it must have been on another blog.  The story is  here except that James Fallows, a left wing writer for the Atlantic, took the Palestinian propaganda version as the truth. Here is another version of the story but it is still not the truth.

It is now widely believed among objective observers of the Palestinian story, few enough as there are, that the boy was never killed and the entire sequence was a propaganda film. A lengthy court struggle in France, pitting the France 2 network and its powerful supporters in the Chirac government, against a single web site owner, has resulted in the defeat of the TV Goliath by the independent David.

Phillipe Karsenty is a hero to all journalists and his improbable win should join the annals of great media stories.

It probably won’t. 

 
More here. This is a big story for Israel but also for all of us who care about truth.

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Posted in History, politics, terrorism | 2 Comments »

Obama’s Chicago roots begin to show

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

This is only the first of what I suspect will be a voluminous literature on Chicago politics by November. There are some pretty odd characters here. William Ayers, for example, is another example of a 60s radical from a wealthy background who has somehow avoided prison. They seem to have been able to resume lives in society although a few are in prison where most of them belong.

Some of them, of course, blew themselves up. Diana Oughton was one whose family was prominent in Dwight, Illinois. Her father operated a restaurant for years that was adjacent to the family’s old patent medicine plant.

It will be interesting to see how this evidence of Obama’s radical background plays out.

UPDATE: Here is more on Obama and the women in his life. No, I don’t mean that kind of women. His mother and his wife are very revealing about a man who has almost no history. He is a blank page (or an empty vessel if you prefer that metaphor). Others see what they want to see.

Now they are even checking his facts.

Oh Oh. The honeymoon may be over.

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Posted in politics, terrorism | 2 Comments »

Obama as the Arabs see him

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

There has been much rhetoric about Obama “restoring our place” in the world after George Bush wrecked the great love that everyone had for us. Maybe his ideas need more thought if this analysis of Arab opinion is any guide.

I hope he knows more about the Middle East than he knows about the army.

Obama gets some support from ABC’s Jake Tapper who has talked to the captain. He was commanding a platoon when he was a lieutenant and a couple of the other parts of the story are different. Still, Obama got it mostly correct.

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Posted in History, politics, terrorism | Comments Closed

A clumsy blunder

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

The Secretary of State was once the subject of a boomlet for the presidential nomination after her boss’s term ends. That was back when it seemed she was going to do a good job. Lately, that boomlet has disappeared and what we see are clumsy statements that make her sound like one more State Department Arabist. The Palestinians had the opportunity for an historic peace in 2000 and Dennis Ross has documented that effort. Arafat turned it down and resumed the Intifada, only with suicide bombers this time instead of stones. Of course, Arafat has his apologists but what would you expect from the New York Review of Books? I was once a subscriber and used to chuckle over the singles ads in the back that stated “No Republicans.”

Condi would have been well advised to take Ross’s advice but there seems to be a never ending supply of wishful thinking at State and she has imbibed freely. I have previously posted my opinion of the Annapolis talks and they went nowhere.

What next ? That will be for the next Secretary of State to determine.

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Posted in politics, terrorism | 7 Comments »