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#136
08-17-2006, 12:16 PM
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Did you see "The Simple Life?" I agree she's a rather innocuous figure to beat up on but Oh Mah Ghod, she's a poster child for cluelessness in how the world works, a syndrome on the increase, I'm afraid.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K 
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#137
08-17-2006, 12:28 PM
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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone 
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#138
08-17-2006, 08:26 PM
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Either the clinics would be blown to smithereens by Hezbollah/Hamas/or whomever the local nutjobs are, or they would have to be so heavily guarded that we would take grief for "making the clinics inaccessible".... That sounds like an interesting idea on paper... but making it happen effectively in the real world is unlikely at best. Mike
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_____ 1979 300 SD 350,000 miles _____ 1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy _____ 1985 300TD 270,000 miles _____ 1994 E320 not my favorite, but the wife wanted it www.myspace.com/mikemover www.myspace.com/openskystudio www.myspace.com/speedxband www.myspace.com/openskyseparators www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic
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#139
08-17-2006, 08:32 PM
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That demonstrates why prostitutes are so great, and one reason that the practice should be legal: You're not actually paying for the sex... You're paying them to shut up and LEAVE immediately after!  .... which is priceless... There's gotta' be one of those Visa commercials in there somewhere!  Mike
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_____ 1979 300 SD 350,000 miles _____ 1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy _____ 1985 300TD 270,000 miles _____ 1994 E320 not my favorite, but the wife wanted it www.myspace.com/mikemover www.myspace.com/openskystudio www.myspace.com/speedxband www.myspace.com/openskyseparators www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic
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#140
08-17-2006, 08:43 PM
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The only problem is, she's seen as an idol and a "role model" by many young people, who seem to have trouble realizing that she REALLY doesn't go through life acting like the completely f***ing moronic character that she presents on the show... A lot of young girls seem to be emulating her, which sucks, and also speaks poorly of their parents, who allow them to do so. I wouldn't worry about her squandering the Hilton estate... She probably will have little or no control over what actually goes on in the day-to-day operations of the company. Plus there's her sister, Nicky, who seems to have a pretty good head on her shoulders. I can't believe I'm even discussing Paris Hilton! WTF???... My girlfriend watches entirely too much E! Channel.  Mike
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_____ 1979 300 SD 350,000 miles _____ 1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy _____ 1985 300TD 270,000 miles _____ 1994 E320 not my favorite, but the wife wanted it www.myspace.com/mikemover www.myspace.com/openskystudio www.myspace.com/speedxband www.myspace.com/openskyseparators www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic
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#141
08-18-2006, 01:29 AM
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OK, back to topic.
August 14, 2006
Worry About the West — Not Israel by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The reactions and media coverage coming out of the West regarding this latest war in the Middle East are as bewildering as they are instructive. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., for example, recently said, "I don't take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against Israel ." Meanwhile, the Western news agency Reuters, responding to scrutiny by bloggers, withdrew wire photos taken by a freelance photographer of a smoky and burning Beirut . Reuters had failed to catch the freelancer's doctoring of the photos to emphasize unduly the damage from Israeli bombs. And the Associated Press notes that initially reported Lebanese claims of 40 "civilians" killed by Israeli air strikes at Houla, Lebanon, in fact, were mistaken — and that the latest reports have lowered the death toll to one. In Qana, where the Israeli military had hit an apartment building (and were quickly censured by European statesmen), the number of civilian fatalities reported also kept decreasing as reports were scrutinized. Plus, we have learned that several hours lapsed between the dropping of the bombs and the fatal collapse of the building, raising further questions about the relationship between the bombing and the fatalities that followed. Finally, based on photographs from the scene, the onsite rescue appeared staged for reporters. These discrepancies suggest we have little idea what actually happened on the ground there — other than that Qana has been a favored missile-launching site against Israel , as a recent deadly aerial assault from there on Haifa attests. There is a depressing pattern here. The sources for Western erroneous reports and faked pictures always seem to exaggerate the damage to Lebanon — but never to Israel . Likewise, Western news agencies rarely list a precise number of Hezbollah losses, instead lumping them in with civilian fatalities. Does that mean that someone who launches a missile in Levis and sneakers is not a combatant? In addition, the history and nature of Hezbollah do not matter to many in the West. Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah's propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization. Most ignore as well that Hezbollah precipitated the present crisis by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, and launching missiles against Israel 's cities. In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces use precision bombs to target combatants and try to avoid civilian casualties (though the latter is nearly impossible against an enemy who doesn't wear uniforms and uses non-combatants as "human shields"). In contrast, every random missile launched by Hezbollah is intended to hit a civilian target. On one side of this conflict is a true democracy that was attacked. On the other are terrorists who hijacked the sovereign government of Lebanon , instituted theocratic rule over a third of the country — and started a war. Hezbollah, of course, has been enabled in large part thanks to Iranian petro-dollars and intimidation. But the nature of Hezbollah's patrons doesn't seem to matter to many Westerners, either. Those now calling for "dialogue" with the "major players" ignore that Iran promises to wipe out Israel . The French foreign minister was quick to praise the regional role of theocratic Iran as "stabilizing." Then there's Hezbollah's other patron, Syria, a country that brutally occupied Lebanon, harbors terrorists and is suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanese reformist Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. So, what then does matter to so many Westerners about this war? Our fear, of course. We want to avoid messy complications like stirring up another 9/11 or Madrid bombing, spiking oil prices to over $80 a barrel, or treading on politically incorrect ground by criticizing the "other" of the former Third World . The Western press — usually so careful to condemn hate speech — is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads. Still, when this is all over, we should not worry about the survival of Israel . For weeks, pundits have been lecturing how canny and adept Hezbollah has proved — and how a clumsy Israel could only respond by destroying Lebanon 's infrastructure. Yet, when the dust settles, the world will learn that Lebanon outside Hezbollah's domain is not destroyed. And, one hopes, those who have suffered in the Hezbollah-controlled south will reexamine their support for a terrorist organization that has brought them — and itself — to near ruin. Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else.
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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone
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#142
08-18-2006, 12:33 PM
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We must use the right tool for the job.
When you need to drive a nail, you don't pick up a micrometer, do you?.... And the only tool in the box that I can imagine will work in this situation is the ERADICATION of all the Radical Muslims. Period. Mike I always liked the way you think Mike. No one is going to do anything of substance until one of these whack-jobs sets off a nuke in a US or western european city. We are all too busy sitting on our butts, worrying about the economy, investments, the price of gas, etc. to do what needs to be done. It will be a sad day if I am right but at least then maybe the gloves will come all the way off as it will surely bring "perspective" to the American people. RT
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When all else fails, vote from the rooftops! 84' Mercedes Benz 300D Anthracite/black, 171K 03' Volkswagen Jetta TDI blue/black, 93K 93' Chevrolet C2500HD ExCab 6.5TD, Two-tone blue, 252K
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#144
08-18-2006, 05:57 PM
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Mike
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_____ 1979 300 SD 350,000 miles _____ 1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy _____ 1985 300TD 270,000 miles _____ 1994 E320 not my favorite, but the wife wanted it www.myspace.com/mikemover www.myspace.com/openskystudio www.myspace.com/speedxband www.myspace.com/openskyseparators www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic
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#145
08-18-2006, 06:13 PM
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I'm not convinced the job can be done with force alone, either before or after a nuclear attack on one of our cities. I think a workable solution is hard to come by. I don't think the current people in power have any brilliant ideas in this regard, either, or we would be doing more. I'm not sure apathy is to blame.
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Ralph 1985 300D Turbo, CA model 248,650 miles and counting...
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#147
08-18-2006, 06:23 PM
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How about we start by not making excuses for them and subjugating ourselves for them?
August 18, 2006
Arab Nationalism Run Rampant at Middlebury By Franck Salameh At Middlebury College's Arabic Summer School, where I recently taught Arabic, students were exposed to more than intensive language instruction. Inside the classroom and across campus, administrators and language teachers adhered to a restrictive Arab-nationalist view of what is generically referred to as the "Arab world." In practice, this meant that the Middle East was presented as a mono-cultural, exclusively Arab region. The time-honored presence and deep-rooted histories of tens of millions of Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Jews, Maronites, and Armenians--all of whom are indigenous Middle Easterners who object to an imputed "supra-Arab" identity--were dismissed in favor of a reductionist, ahistorical Arabist narrative. Those who didn't share this closed view of the Middle East were made to feel like dhimmi--the non-Muslim citizens of some Muslim-ruled lands whose rights are restricted because of their religious beliefs. In maps, textbooks, lectures, and other teaching materials used in the instruction of Arabic, Israel didn't exist, and the overarching watan 'Arabi (Arab fatherland) was substituted for the otherwise diverse and multi-faceted "Middle East." Curious and misleading geographical appellations, such as the "Arabian Gulf" in lieu of the time-honored "Persian Gulf," abounded. Syria's borders with its neighbors were marked "provisional," and Lebanon was referred to as a qutr (or "province") of an imagined Arab supra-state. Nor was the Arabic school's narrow definition of Middle Eastern culture restricted to the classroom. Alcohol was prohibited during school events and student parties, and although a school official claimed the ban reflected Middlebury's campus policy, beer and wine flowed freely during cookouts and gatherings organized by the German, French, and Spanish schools. Banning alcohol is a matter of Islamic practice and personal interpretation--not accepted behavior throughout the Middle East--and reflected the Arabic school's conflation of Arabic with Islamic. Similarly, the Arabic school's dining services conformed to the halal dietary restrictions of Islam, an act implying that all Arabic speakers are Muslims, and that all Muslims are observant; yet less that 20 percent of the Arabic school community was Muslim. No such accommodations were made for Jewish students who kept kosher, even though they outnumbered the Muslims. Arab nationalism was also evident in the school's official posture toward America's national holidays. The Arabic school was alone among Middlebury programs to ignore Fourth of July festivities. Worse, visiting faculty from the Middle East cold-shouldered older students sporting the closely cropped hair, courteous manners, and discipline suggesting membership in the U.S. armed forces. Most students and faculty avoided contact altogether with those dubbed hukuma (government) or jaysh (army). Such attitudes and practices aren't confined to Middlebury. A former student of mine who recently took a summer Arabic course at Georgetown University relates that one of her professors, an otherwise excellent language instructor, refused to allow the word "Israel" to be uttered in class. And his bigotry wasn't confined to the Jewish state: during a class discussion on nationalism, my former student argued that "many Lebanese did not think of themselves as Arabs." The instructor's response: "while they might say that, it's just politics, because all Lebanese people know on the inside that they are indeed Arabs." Arabism flies in the face of historical fact. Ethnic minorities in Lebanon, as throughout the Middle East, have suffered at the hands of Arabs since the Arab-Islamic invasions in the early Muslim period. Of the efforts of Arab regimes and their ideological supporters in the West to de-legitimize regional identities other than Arab, Walid Phares, a well-known professor of Middle East studies, has written: "[The] denial of identity of millions of indigenous non-Arab nations can be equated to an organized ethnic cleansing on a politico-cultural level." This tradition of culturally suppressing minorities is the wellspring of the linguistic imperialism regnant at Middlebury's Arabic Summer School. Yet healthier models for language instruction are easy to find. In the Anglophone world, Americans, Irish, Scots, New Zealanders, Australians, Nigerians, Kenyans, and others are native English-speakers, but not English. Can anyone imagine an English language class in which students are assumed to be Anglican cricket fans who sing "Rule Britannia," post maps showing Her Majesty's empire at its pre-war height, and prefer shepherd's pie and mushy peas? Yet according to the hyper-nationalists who run Middlebury's Arabic language programs, all speakers of Arabic are Arabs--case closed. A leading Arabic language program shouldn't imbue language instruction with political philosophy. It should instead concentrate on teaching a difficult language well--on promoting linguistic ability, not ideological conformity. Academics should never intellectualize their politics and then peddle them to students under the guise of scholarship. Those who do may force a temporary dhimmitude on their student subjects, but in the end they only marginalize their field and themselves. This marginalization has never been clearer than it is today, when Middle East studies scholars are depressingly consistent in their condemnation of American policy in the region, including its support for the democracies in Israel and Turkey. The same Arabist orthodoxy that seeks to indoctrinate summer language students in Vermont is at work every day in classrooms across the country, where professors whose vision is limited by ideological blinders ill serve their students and the nation. Set against this backdrop, Middlebury's Arabic Summer School is a window into an academic field in crisis. Mr. Salameh teaches Arabic studies at Boston College. He writes for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
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-livin' in the terminally flippant zone
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#148
08-18-2006, 06:40 PM
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Mike
__________________
_____ 1979 300 SD 350,000 miles _____ 1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy _____ 1985 300TD 270,000 miles _____ 1994 E320 not my favorite, but the wife wanted it www.myspace.com/mikemover www.myspace.com/openskystudio www.myspace.com/speedxband www.myspace.com/openskyseparators www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic
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#149
08-18-2006, 06:47 PM
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Hat trick?
August 18, 2006
Hope Amid Despair? A reluctant world begins to confront reality. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Pessimism is now the conventional wisdom about the wars in the Middle East , and, indeed, it is hard to find any good news in the recent ceasefire. Syria and Iran stage celebrations as news emerges from the ruins of southern Lebanon revealing just how well-armed Hezbollah was — and how impotent the Lebanese “government” really is. The only suspense remaining is whether the United Nations peacekeeping force or the Lebanese army will prove the most craven in giving Hezbollah a green light to rearm and terrorize. The old Arab agenda of recapturing “stolen” land has been superseded by a new Islamist jihad that is as fanatical as it is inhuman. The Islamists care not a whit for ground, but only for the abject destruction of the Jewish state and to finish the Holocaust that they claim did not take place. Few of the pundits now clamoring for “engagement” care to recall that Syria probably murdered Rafik Hariri, or that Iran promises to wipe Israel off the map. The near criminal indifference of the international community is cause for greater depression still. No one says a thing about horrific Arab racism and anti-Semitism that brazenly offer the world pictures of our Secretary of State as a primate and constant hate speech of Jews as apes and pigs. And here at home, a celebrity actor, the staff of a failed congresswoman in Georgia, and a crazed Muslim with a gun in Seattle all shout about the evils of the “Jews” — a good cross-section of just how insidious is the growing anti-Semitism. The globalized media is absolutely discredited after the coverage of Lebanon . Reuters has destroyed its reputation, gained from 150 years of world reporting, by releasing doctored pictures and tolerating staged photo-ops. Almost all the Western media outlets failed to distinguish Lebanese civilian from military casualties — as if the Hezbollah terrorists they never filmed and never interviewed never died. Indeed, thanks to the unprofessional reporters abroad, and their disingenuous chiefs back home, the world never saw the killers who sent the rockets nor many of their civilian victims on the ground in Israel . Nor did the reporters apprise their audience of the different landscapes in which they worked: candor in Israel might win loud disagreement; truth in Lebanon meant death. It would be as if Reuters, AP, or the New York Times embedded its reporters within the Waffen SS, beaming daily reports back home about the great morale and noble suffering of the Wehrmacht as it advanced into the snowy Ardennes. There was greater lunacy still. Hezbollah bragged of the deadliness of its antitank rockets purchased with Iranian petrodollars — as if weapons that it can’t fabricate or even maintain are signs of its own expertise. In the world of southern Lebanon , terrorists celebrate their victory in the ruins of their bombed-out hideouts by setting off fireworks — as if to remind themselves of the fiery spectacle of more Israeli bombs. And then that craziness was topped by the Lebanese defense minister reminding the world that the Lebanese planned to renege on their responsibilities to disarm Hezbollah, whining that if Israel couldn’t do it, how could the Lebanese — as true as it was surreal to confess. Nasrallah, Assad, and Ahmadinejad blabbered ad nauseam about their newfound sense of “honor” and “pride,” as if they were talking heads in some stale Viagra infomercial. Once more, the pathetic obsession of the Middle East with lost manhood is explicable by a society immersed in gender apartheid, patriarchy, and tribalism. It is as if the Middle East fundamentalist and dysfunctional family has been elevated to the national government, and then its resulting adolescent insecurities are aired for the long-suffering world. Iran promised relief aid to Hezbollah — and, of course, immediately sent thousands of chadors. Mike Wallace interviewed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pronounced him charming, but never quite got him to explain his promises to wipe Israel off the map, much less his role in the 1979 storming of the American embassy in Tehran, his conversations with the lost imam, or whether Osama bin Laden was ever given sanctuary in Iran. Instead, the fascistic Iranian president proved he’s attuned to left-wing politics inside the United States : Howard Dean-like, he mouthed tired complaints about mythical high American unemployment and our poor health care! Yet, all is not lost, since lunacy cuts both ways. Iran and Syria unleashed Hezbollah because they were both facing global scrutiny, one over nuclear acquisition and the other over the assassination of Lebanese reformer Rafik Hariri. Those problems won’t go away for either of them — nor, if we persist, will the democratic fervor in Afghanistan and Iraq on their borders. We still don’t know the extent of the damage that Hezbollah suffered, but it perhaps took casualties ten times the Israelis’ — losses — not to be dismissed even in the asymmetrical laws of postmodern warfare. Hezbollah’s leaders were hiding in embassies and bunkers; Israel ’s were not. For all the newfound magnetism of Nasrallah, he brought ruin to his flock, and fright to the Arab establishment around Israel . A surprised Israel now has a good glimpse of the terrorists’ new way of war, and probably next time will attack the supplier, not the launcher, of the rocketry. And when the Reuters stringers go away, the “civilians” of southern Lebanon, off-camera, might not be so eager to see more real fireworks lighting up their skies — or far-off, pristine Syria and Iran in safety praising the courage of the ruined amid the rubble. Note how Hezbollah already is desperately racing around the craters to assure its homeless constituency that it has enough Iranian cash to buy back lost sympathies. Even the ceasefire can come back to bite the Islamists and their supporters. Hezbollah won’t be disarmed as promised, much less stay out of Katyusha range of the border. And that defiance will only reveal the impotence of the Lebanese and the U.N., reminding both that they have talked themselves into a corner and now are responsible to keep caged their own pet 7th-century vipers. This can only work to Israel ’s favor when the next rockets go off, since no one then will be proposing an “international” solution — although it will be interesting to see whether Jacques Chirac talks of the “nuclear” option once his soldiers begin to be picked off by Hezbollah. In a larger sense, the foiled London terrorist plot won’t endear either Islamists or their appeasers to millions in the world who face travel delays, cancelled flights, and body searches — on top of paying billions more to the Arab oil producers who in response whine even more in their victimhood. As the cliché goes: the Middle East needs to wake up and disown Islamic fascism. Otherwise, insidiously the entire world is turning against it, as radical Islam proves to be every bit as frightening an ideology as German Nazism or Soviet Communism — whether this is ascertained from the use of human shields, tribal lynchings and beheadings, Joseph Goebbles-like propaganda, Holocaust-denial, racist rants, or primordial hatred of Jews. Three years ago no one was talking about profiling at airports. Now the British are exploring how best to do it. Indeed, one of the stranger developments in recent memory is now taking place the world over: Young, Middle-Eastern, Muslim men are eyed and studied by passengers at every airport — even as governments still lecture about the evils of the very profiling that their own millions are doing daily. Muslims can thank al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and an entire culture that won’t condemn terrorism for such ostracism, which only increases with each suicide bomber, human shield, hijacking, kidnapping, and macabre reference to genocide and Jew-killing. In an amorphous war of self-induced Western restraint, like the present one, truth and moral clarity are as important as military force. This past month, the world of the fascist jihadist and those who tolerate him was once again on display for civilization to fathom. Even the most timid and prone to appeasement in the West are beginning to see that it is becoming a question of “the Islamists or us.” In this eleventh hour, that is a sort of progress after all.
__________________
-livin' in the terminally flippant zone
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#150
08-19-2006, 04:00 AM
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The Hydra Headed Beast. It's not just a myth.
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1986 300SDL, 362K 1984 300D, 138K
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