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la vie viennoise

No doubt the Americans learned their bad habits from the English masters of two centuries ago. Here's what the British soldiers in Iraq are up to.

Mr Matairi, whose brother was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime, said he felt betrayed at being ill-treated by British soldiers he had welcomed to Iraq.

"I put flowers in my children's hands to welcome the British soldiers when they came to free us from Saddam," Mr Matairi told the court with the aid of an interpreter.

"I could not believe that these criminals were from Britain. According to our knowledge it was a civilised country, so I could not believe it."

Mr Matairi said he feared that the treatment he received would leave his three children fatherless. "We were hit all the time, continuously without knowing the reason why," he added.

Mr Matairi, part-owner of the hotel from which he and his staff were arrested, told them "we are going to die".

"They [the soldiers] were celebrating the beatings like it was Christmas," he said.

He said the soldiers laughed at his cries of pain, playing a karate chop game as they hit him.

Next time you are listening to Tony Blair droning on and on about compassion and democracy, it's worth remembering where the buck stops.

Laughing British soldiers playing games of karate chop and torturing Iraqis, innocent* and otherwise.

There is no justice in the world. While there are people doing life sentences (three strikes and you're out) for stealing hubcaps in California, one of the five core figures in business crimes which shook the American economy gets six years of minimum security. The judge even knocked time off of the plea-bargain his lawyers had made.

Andrew Fastow, who helped engineer the financial trickery that sank Enron Corp and then helped convict his former bosses in the scandal, had four years knocked off the plea deal he made, receiving a six-year sentence instead.

US District Judge Ken Hoyt said the 44-year-old former Enron chief financial officer had given "exceptional" assistance to prosecutors, had pledged to help victims and had shown remorse, and his wife had gone to prison for a year....

Judge Hoyt imposed no fine and recommended a minimum-security prison for Fastow.

Enron's crash caused investors to lose billions and cost thousands of employees their jobs and retirement savings.

No fine!

Unbelievable.

This means Andrew Fastow should be out on the street within two and a half years. Perhaps he will even have weekends out.

The Enron men should be going away for twenty years and up. Business leaders need some clear signals from the criminal justice system that their misdeeds will not go unpunished.

How can we expect honesty and diligence from:

• ordinary people
• small business owners
• employees
• politicians

when every day they see the rewards for crime.

On the other hand, a mass murderer and an election thief is allowed to stay in The White House and continue to menace the world and hold up peace in the Middle East.

We are entering a Modern Dark Ages, a latter day feudalism. There is one set of laws for hereditary lords and another for the common folk.

Any such system degenerates quickly enough into mass bloodshed and disintegration. It is the opposite of a merit-based system. It is the opposite of fairness. Such a system encourages sycophancy and corruption. Third-world nepotism makes it into the big leagues.

Frankly, these are not the rules of the game which I would wish on my children and grandchildren. Or yours.

There's been a lot of argument about whether Israel or Hezbollah won the war in Lebanon.

Here is a comment from Haaretz which pretty much sums up recent events in the Lebanon war. The comment matches Israel's stated goals against the actual outcome. It looks like a draw, at a very high cost to both sides.

Israeli Goals

1. Get release of IDF soldiers without a prisioner exchange. Failure
2. Disarm Hezbollah. Failure
3. Avoid civilian casualties. Almost 1,000 women and children dead. Failure
4. Destroy rockets. 250 landed yesterday alone. Failure
5. Win international support. Outside the USA Israel is hated more than ever before. Failure
6. Moderate Arab behavior. More arabs hate israel more than ever now including moderate states like egypt, jordan, and saudi arabia. Failure

Outcome

1. Hezzbolah is more popular than ever
2. The war cost Israel hundreds of millions of dollars.
3. The pro USA, anti Syrian/anti Hezzbolah PM is weakened.
4. Hatred for israel is at an all time high even among suni and christians in Lebanon
5. Many Israeli towns damaged badly
6. 150 Israelis dead. Hundred injured.

Conclusion

Hezbolah did not win the war but Israel definitely didn`t either. There should have been a prisioner swap from the beginning.

At this point (I don't write this war off yet), the Israelis are big losers in Lebanon.

Hezbollah is still armed, the Israelis are on their way out of Lebanon and the entire IDF and political leadership of Israel comes off as bullies, murderers and war criminals.

The words above are harsh, but nothing compared to the rage of the belligerents' own supporters, who would also like to try the Israeli government as criminals - for their failure to spill enough blood!

Here are some of the comments from just one story:

6. The West DOES see
mike - USA
08/15/2006 22:45

The West, like the rest of the goy world, wants to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jewish people. Unfortunately, so does Israel's current government. I can understand the motivations of the West -- the goyim have always been out to exterminate us and always will be. However, the motivations of the Olmert government are less obvious. Perhaps the Olmerites' goal is to steal lots of money from the public treasury and run under the cover of Israel's chaotic destruction. Perhaps the Olmerites are being paid and/or blackmailed by some foreign intelligence service. Either way, Israel is lead today by a treasonous government.

3. A war Israel should and could have won
Kenneth S. Besig - Israel
08/15/2006 21:43

The war just ended in Lebanon with a Hizbulla victory should never have turned out that way. Israel had the means, the will, and the force to win, but because of our inexperienced and fearful political and military leaders, that is Olmert, Peretz, Livni, and Halultz, we not only gave Hizbulla a victory over us, we gave them a victory over Lebanon. I once thought that an Israeli government inquiry into the political and military misconduct of the war would be enough. Now I am inclined to think that a criminal trial of our leadership might be in order.

With supporters like that, the Israeli Prime Minister would do better to clean house at home, than waging war abroad.

Olmert and the Olim

Instead Prime Minister Olmert was celebrating a Volksdeutsche moment at the airport, welcoming those olim who chose to immigrate from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. during his recent quest for Lebensraum, a.k.a. the 2006 Lebanon campaign.

For a profound look at Israeli cynicism regarding war and human loss from the inside, I cannot recommend enough a good read of one of the latest articles in the Jerusalem Post: Anglos voice Israel's case to foreign media. Here are just a few teaser quotes.

Anglo-Israelis know how to better shape a message because they know how its received, Spigelman argued. "We can understand how things sound to an international audience because we were once part of the international audience."

That knowledge is what leads the IDF Spokesman's Office to release different tapes of army operations to local and foreign journalists. The former might receive a heave dose of the air force destroying bridges to reinforce success. But to internationals, Spigelman said, "It looks like we're destroying roads people take to get to work."

So instead, he explained, they got footage of rocket launchers being used in Kafr Kana. "They needed more convincing that Kafr Kana was a hotbed of terror, whereas in Israel, they know that. They've been receiving the Katyushas up north."

"For an American, you might want to be more aggressive, more vocal, more victorious in tone," Ovits said. "For a European, you might want to emphasize humanitarian [aspects], because pictures of tanks... bring up very negative emotions."

If the right accent helps, the wrong accent can be a "turn-off," according to Spigelman. He said a "slick" American wouldn't seem authentic to Europeans the way an officer with a slight Israeli accent would, making the latter a better choice.

It looks like the Israelis read Goebbels private diaries carefully.

We certainly wouldn't want people abroad to see the bridges pointlessly blown up, preventing people from going to work or doing their shopping.

Fortunately (unlike in Iraq where the policy of screening embedded journalists and indiscriminately shooting independent journalists succeeded in limiting information), we have other sources for our footage and our news than the IDF.

In theory the war in Lebanon is over. But it isn't really. The Israelis had to stop do to international pressure. Perhaps the greatest pressure was that the assault on Lebanon was virtually indistinguishable from Germany's attacks on its neighbours before World War II:

A jingoistic regional power using trumped up border incidents as an excuse to annihilate and annex territory.

The comparison between the Nazi regimes early World War II accomplishments and the civilian terror that Israel was raining down upon Lebanon ever day was so stark and obvious, that Israel was about to lose forever its trump card - victimhood.

Editorials in many papers were denouncing the resurgence of anti-semitism all over the world. Anti-semitism hardly seems to be the right word to describe the hypocrisy of the Israeli leadership in claiming to be victims (two soldiers kidnapped on the border) while razing whole city blocks. Letters to the editor were filled with outrage and disgust at Israeli actions, many signed "A former supporter of Israel".

As outrage spread in the press everywhere except the US, I imagine there were a few tough phone calls from Holland, France and the UK from powerful and wealthy supporters of the Jewish state asking Prime Minister Olmert if his singular intention was to put them at risk of expropriation, exile and pogroms.

The ongoing attention to Israeli war activities also had the effect of bringing the ongoing plight of the Palestinians to the forefront of world attention (what was happening to the Lebanese has been going on for ten years and more in the Occupied Territories). The recent Lebanon war has led to significant talk of putting pressure on Israel to move back to the 1967 borders and settle the Palestinian question conclusively with a dual state solution. Such attention to what Israel preferred remained internal issues is deeply unwelcome.

Now that the Israelis have the propaganda credit for having accepted the ceasefire (although why it was necessary to carry on hostilities over the weekend in an enormous land grab is something of an open question as it appears that the Israelis are indeed retreating from that land expediently), they are looking for any excuse to reignite the conflagration.

• The IAF have threatened to continue to bomb any transport from Syria which they consider might be carrying arms.
• The IAF have threatened to forcibly disarm Hezbollah if they don't feel the Lebanese government has done so in the way the IDF wants.

Either of these events would probably draw Hezbollah into reprisal and reignite hostilities.

In the rematch, Israel is hoping to have its propaganda pieces better lined up. Not only must Israel categorically win the conflict, they must be the victims as well. A rematch might allow them to attempt to reclaim victim status. Moreover, properly handled in the news, a second Lebanese war in such a short period would be old news. Much of the infrastructure to support international journalists and even communication with the outside world has been destroyed in Lebanon.

It's a pity that there are no winners in war.

I don't think the world will forget so quickly the destruction wrought throughout Lebanon by the Israelis nor the civilian victims of their terror strikes from the air. The world's memory and threat of worldwide reprisal is what keeps Israel in check right now.

We will not forget.

No matter how many trumped up talking heads argue about smoke clouds over Beirut being darkened in Photoshop.

The Jerusalem Post is a paper of record in Israel. I believe it's owned by that magnate of the new world order and proponent of 21st century colonialism Conrad Black.

Here are the kinds of things their readers write today:

123. Finish the Job
Major - USA
08/10/2006 05:13

I am glad you are ignoring the weak sisters of Europe and the UN..... Those EU governments have become so unbelievably corrupt, it makes me sick to my stomach... Unfortunately, you started out fighting this too methodically....all the key targets should have been massively destroyed the first week...all the key assassinations the first day....Nasrullah should have been taken out the first hour of the war... A lengthy war gives the terrorist appeasers time to martial their propaganda machine ... You had Iran and Syria cowering the first week...but since you didnt apply overwhelming force, they have become emboldened... You still need to finish them off...or you will have wasted your war.

Israel Supporters Continues »

famous doctored photo of Beirut skyline before and after

The American news media is so self-important and fatuous. The Boston Herald's Jules Crittenden is very concerned that a few retouched photos might destroy our belief that something bad is happening in Beirut and Lebanon.

And what is tragic about this is, as a Boston Herald photo editor noted, editors everywhere can no longer trust the pictures from Lebanon. The public cannot know what is staged and what is real. They cannot know the true scope of the devastation that Hezbollah’s aggression against Israel and its cynical tactics have brought on the Lebanese people. The con artists have shafted themselves and their own people with their cheap tricks.

Nobody is dying in Beirut, Jules. Buildings aren't falling. Neighbourhoods are not being destroyed. The problem is with the photographers. If we could only get the photographers to behave, people in Lebanon would stop dying.

The cynic here is the American reporter who would write that a few retouched photos negate the destruction of whole city blocks.

Israeli paper Haaretz ran an article on the retouched photos as well.

Some of their readers point out the obvious. Response one:

There is no major difference..except the smoke looks somewhat darker in photo No. 2. Whatever, it still caused the same damage. It is ridiculous.

Response two:

There`s a bottom line. There is a ton of destruction being seen on both sides. A doctored photo doesn`t change that fact.

If you want to feel your blood run chill, read through Keir Lieber's and Darryl Press's essay on the nuclear state of the world in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.

Apparently, the United States is on the cusp of developing something called nuclear primacy, a technical term which means the ability to win a nuclear war based on a first strike. Nuclear primacy is the opposite of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

How did this come about? The Soviets stopped taking maintaining and updating their own nuclear forces (land, air and submarine). The US continued to update and expand their own nuclear capabilities, including development of a retaliatory strike shield (the ill-famed Star Wars) and the refinement of many stealth bombing capabilities (both planes and missiles).

The tipping point has apparently been reached. If the United States launched an all-out unannounced nuclear strike on Russia or China (Pearl Harbor in reverse), the United States would be likely to survive more or less unscathed.

The current and future U.S. nuclear force, in other words, seems designed to carry out a preemptive disarming strike against Russia or China.

Hopefully the Chinese, Russians and French all have subscriptions to Foreign Affairs magazine, as they all have some work to do if they don't want to face regular nuclear blackmail within a year or two.

One thing is clear from this article - there is absolutely no need for a preemptive strike on Iran. Even if Iran had a small nuclear arsenal, there's not much they could do with them, without assuring the complete and absolute annihilation of their country.

It also makes previous concern about the Joint Chiefs of Staff March policy paper on nuclear warheads dramatically understated.

Unbelievably hilarious resumé of ex-Washington (4 terms) mayor Marion Barry's career:

Getting reelected mayor after being videotaped smoking crack should make him a shoo-in for the Politicians' Hall of Fame.

Eugene Robinson uses the occasion to give F. Scott Fitzgerald a poke. It seems times have changed since he wrote:

"There are no second acts in American lives" is one of the few truly dumb things F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote. Everybody in America gets an Act II, and even an Act III -- look at how Arnold Schwarzenegger went from bodybuilder to movie star to governor.