Bloodthirsty Liberal

Well, that certainly ups the ante

Whatever this means, Bolton is a brave guy for putting his name to this. If they attack, he will be blamed for part of it.

Former US envoy to the UN John Bolton said Monday that if Israel wants to prevent Iran from acquiring a working nuclear plant, then a military strike must be launched against the Bushehr nuclear power facility within the next eight days. The comments were made in an interview with the Fox Business Network.

Russia, who is supplying the uranium fuel for the plant, announced last week that they will begin loading the Bushehr reactor on August 21.

Bolton doesn’t believe that Israel will attack Iran in the next 8 days.

- Aggie

I come across something like this

From Time:

The Soft Bigotry Of Soft Bigotry
Shame on all those Republicans salivating over President Obama’s support for the Cordoba Islamic Center, which is to be built several blocks away from Ground Zero in New York. Despite all the high-minded words about “sensitivity” for the families of the victims, this is slimeball politics, pure and simple, except for when it descends into outright religious bigotry–which seems to be what happens every time Newt Gingrich opens his mouth. Does that demented, anger-infused doofus actually believe that putting the mosque near Ground Zero is the equivalent of putting a swastika next to the Holocaust Museum? Does he really want to slander the tens of thousands of hard-working, freedom-loving, fiercely entrepreneurial Muslims living in this country? I mean, what a jerk.

The refusal to understand that there is a legitimate concern about the feelings of friends and families of the victims, and the crude assault upon people who disagree, the very tone of the article, is, in a nutshell, tearing the country to pieces.

Let’s convert the sentences about Gingrich to sentences about Obama: Despite all the high-minded words about “values” and Islam, this is slimeball politics, pure and simple, except for when it descends into outright hatred –which seems to be what happens every time Barack Obama opens his mouth. Does that demented, anger-infused doofus actually believe that attacking the loved ones of those who died in the worst attack on American soil, ever, is the equivalent of not allowing a mosque to be built in the Bronx? Does he really want to slander the tens of thousands of hard-working, freedom-loving, fiercely entrepreneurial Americans, who happen to disagree with him, living in this country? I mean, what a jerk.

See what I mean? It doesn’t advance any argument. It advances hatred, distrust, and an inability to move the country into any useful direction. The response from the conservatives will be equivalent to what Klein has written. If this were a marriage, we would just get a divorce. If it were a family squabble, the members would stop communicating with one another, the relationships would freeze and they’d be done. But since it is a country, with geographic boundaries, I’m not sure what will happen.

- Aggie

They spent six years investigating and came up with nothing.

Best quote:

“The new politics is, it’s no longer good enough to beat you on policy, they have to completely drown you and put you in prison and destroy your family and your reputation [and] your finances and, then, dance on your grave,” DeLay said. “I hope that people will look at my case and decide that the criminalization of politics and the politics of personal is not beneficial to the country and our system, and hopefully it will stop.”

It won’t stop.

- Aggie

Taliban stones young couple in Afghanistan

The Taliban on Sunday ordered their first public executions by stoning since their fall from power nine years ago, killing a young couple who had unsuccessfully tried to elope, according to Afghan officials and an eyewitness.

The punishment was carried out by hundreds of the victims’ neighbors and even their family members in a village in northern Kunduz Province, according to Nadir Khan, 40, a local farmer and Taliban sympathizer, who was interviewed by telephone.

As a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious “court,” Mr. Khan said the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship.

“They said, ‘We love each other no matter what happens,’ ” Mr. Khan said.

The executions were the latest in a series of cases where the Taliban have imposed their harsh version of Shariah law for social crimes, reminiscent of their behavior during their decade-long rule of the country. In recent years Taliban officials have sought to play down their bloody punishments of the past as they concentrated on building up popular support.

“We see it as a sign of a new confidence on the part of the Taliban in the application of their rules, like they did in the ’90s,” said Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner on Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission. “We do see it as a trend, they’re showing more strength in recent months, not just in attacks, but including their own way of implementing laws, arbitrary and extrajudicial killings.”

The stoning deaths, along with similarly brazen attacks in northern Afghanistan, were also a sign of growing Taliban strength in parts of the country where until recently they had been weak or absent. In their home regions in southern Afghanistan, Mr. Nadery said, the Taliban have already been cracking down.

“We’ve seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women,” he said.

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan. The head of the Ulema Council in Kunduz Province, Mawlawi Abdul Yaqub, interviewed by telephone, said Monday that stoning to death was the appropriate punishment for an illegal sexual relationship, although he declined to give his view on this particular case.

And less than a week earlier, the national Ulema Council brought together 350 religious scholars in a meeting with government religious officials, who issued a joint statement Aug. 10 calling for more punishment under Shariah, apparently referring to stoning, amputations and lashings.

Failure to implement such “Islamic provisions,” the council statement said, was hindering the peace process and encouraging crime.

Etc. They are savages. Who in the world does this?

- Aggie

Our local blog, Solomonia, did the research and learned that Harvard did not divest

Update, and this should settle it: The following is the email that people are receiving in response to inquiries from John Longbrake, Senior Communications manager at the Harvard Management Company:

Thank you for taking the time to write.

The Management Company’s most recent SEC filing details changes in holdings, as is routine, but no change in policy. The University has not divested from Israel. Israel was moved from the MSCI, our benchmark in emerging markets, to the EAFE index in May due to its successful growth. Our emerging markets holdings were rebalanced accordingly. We have holdings in developed markets, including Israel, through outside managers in commingled accounts and indexes, which are not reported in the filing in question.

I hope that this is helpful.

Sincerely,

John

I’m very, very glad that they didn’t divest.

- Aggie

The Archdiocese of Boston attempts to educate Catholics about the Holocaust

As she has many times before, Rena Finder recalled the day her family and thousands of others were forced from their homes and herded into the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland.

What struck her most about that day was not the sight of Nazi soldiers waving their machine guns in the air or the sound of screaming children being pried away from their mothers. It was the silence from the neighbors who looked on, sitting at their windows as they watched the beginning of a genocide unfold through the curtains.

“The feeling of abandonment was so strong,’’ said Finder, 81, during a seminar aimed at helping local Catholic school teachers examine how the choices made by ordinary citizens in the 1920s and 1930s ultimately led to the murder of millions.

The seminar is part of a three-year initiative spearheaded by the Archdiocese of Boston and the nonprofit group Facing History and Ourselves to provide educational development courses for Catholic school teachers on a range of social justice issues and their historical application to Catholic education. Several anonymous Catholic donors are funding the initiative.

This year’s seminar focuses on the Holocaust, centering on its history and the profound moral questions it raises.

“We’re hoping to bring to light these issues and see how they’re central to Catholic teachings, how religious institutions need to play a role in social justice,’’ said William McKersie, associate superintendent for academic excellence for the archdiocese.

The Catholic Church has long been criticized by some for being silent during the rise of Nazism in Europe.

It is wonderful that they are doing this, but the most interesting aspect of it is how long it has taken and, beyond that, how they could have been ignorant until now. In any Jewish family in the United States, in the post-war era, this material was absolutely common knowledge. The only way that Catholics and other Christians could have been ignorant is if they worked to hide the obvious from themselves. And where is the Protestant Church?

The controversy most often surrounds the role played by Pope Pius XII, whose papacy began at the outset of World War II. In some accounts, he privately sheltered hundreds of thousands of Jews and has been praised for the wisdom of his diplomacy.

But many decried his public silence about what was happening to the Jews.

Elie Wiesel believes the pope failed miserably.

“Even when they were persecuting the Jews of Rome under the windows of the Vatican, he did nothing to protest,’’ Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and a Nobel laureate, said in an interview.

The 81-year-old Wiesel has been an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church’s wartime response to Jewish victimization since he gained fame for his book “Night,’’ which chronicles his experience as a young Orthodox Jew in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Yet, he said that one of the most profound responses to “Night’’ he received came from Catholic theologians, who told him the book had a powerful effect on their religious outlook. He also credits today’s Catholic Church for its strong stance on fighting discrimination through education, as evidenced by the Boston Archdiocese’s efforts.

“I just hope that they will be honest with themselves and tell the truth,’’ he said. “Parts of it are dark; other parts are not.’’

The article goes on to address many of the righteous gentiles who risked their own lives to save the Jews from the Nazis, including Oskar Schindler. Schindler is a personal hero, a flawed man, a real person, who rose to the occasion. He was able to save 1,200 Jews and today in the world there are thousands of descendants of the people he rescued. He is the only Nazi party member buried in Jerusalem. If you go, you can visit his grave and pay your respects.

- Aggie

They feel that the Palestinians will not attack anymore

This is not the entire barrier, just a small section separating Jerusalem from Beit Jala.

The Israeli military on Sunday began dismantling a concrete barrier that protected residents of a once-troubled district on the edge of Jerusalem from Palestinian sniper fire.

At the height of the second intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising that broke out in 2000, the barrier’s tall concrete blocks had shielded the residents of Gilo, most of whom are Jews, from gunmen who took over homes and rooftops in a West Bank village across a ravine.

…
In the past only the ravine separated Gilo, built by Israel on land it captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, from the predominantly Christian West Bank village, Beit Jala, and other localities sprawling over the opposite hills near Bethlehem. Within the Jerusalem city limits defined by Israel’s leaders after the war, Gilo is considered by most Israelis to be one of the city’s southern neighborhoods. But most Palestinians consider it a settlement built on occupied land.

During the early years of the second intifada, frontline streets like Ha’anafa and Hashayish, which once featured views with biblical overtones, became a battleground. Palestinian militants fired bullets and some mortar shells across the valley, seriously wounding several people. Israeli tanks stationed on the ridge fired back.

…
Art students painted murals on the gray panels, depicting the hills, olive trees and houses that the wall obscured. It was like a local, downsized version of the West Bank security barrier that Israel started building shortly afterward, with the declared intention of keeping out suicide bombers. Large sections of that barrier, made up of fences and wall, are also clearly visible from parts of Gilo.

After several years of quiet, some thought it was time for the antisniper barricade to go. Residents raised the issue with the Jerusalem municipality, a city hall spokesman said, and security officials agreed that the protective blocks could be removed.

“We are not where we were in 2002,” said Yoram Biton, an officer from the military’s engineering corps, who watched as a crane lifted the blocks onto trucks. “The Palestinian Authority got stronger and has an orderly police force.”

Ricki Peretz, a resident who was out walking, praised the barricade’s removal, saying that it was time “to take away the fear.”

Many residents seemed unconvinced.

“The shooting is bound to start up again,” said Racheli Aroeti, 30, a mother of four who lives on Hashayish Street. “They are making a mistake.”

Hilda Aharoni said that she did not trust the Palestinians. “It is about our security,” Ms. Aharoni said. “The view does not interest me.”

The concrete blocks are being taken to a nearby army base. Military officials said that if necessary, they could always be brought back. Each block has been numbered, so that if the Gilo barricade has to be reassembled one day, the pieces can be placed in the right order, keeping the murals intact.

If they are right, it is, as Martha would say “a beautiful thing.” If wrong, people will be seriously injured or murdered. So let’s hope they’re right.

- Aggie

Antisemitism at the world’s “greatest” university

In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.

Harvard Management Company stated in its 13-F Form that it sold 483,590 shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) for $30.5 million; 52,360 shares in NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) for $1.67 million; 102,940 shares in Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) for $3.6 million; 32,400 shares in Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) for $1.1 million, and 80,000 Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) shares for $1.8 million.

Harvard has a long history of antisemitism. They used to have a quota on Jews, and some Jews went so far as to change their name, legally, in order to gain admission. During the Nazi era, they hosted and feted a representative of Hitler’s regime, while throwing a desperate Rabbi, a man who was trying to find out what was happening to Germany’s Jews, off campus.

The Harvard University administration during the 1930s, led by President James Conant, ignored numerous opportunities to take a principled stand against the Hitler regime and the antisemitic outrages it perpetrated, and contributed to Nazi Germany’s efforts to improve its image in the West. The administration’s lack of concern about Nazi antisemitism was shared by many influential Harvard alumni and students. A faculty panel that supervised a mock trial of Hitler in 1934 ruled that Hitler’s anti-Jewish actions were “irrelevant” to the debate. Nazi leaders were warmly welcomed to the Harvard campus and invited to prestigious social events, as the Harvard administration strove to build friendly relations with thoroughly Nazified universities in Germany. By doing so, Harvard’s administration and many of its student leaders offered important encouragement to the Hitler regime as it intensified its persecution of the Jews and strengthened its armed forces.

President Conant’s insistence on treating Nazi academics as part of the “learned world,” and his reluctance to offer faculty positions to prominent Jewish refugee scholars, was shaped in part by his own antisemitic prejudices. When the DuPont corporation sought his advice about hiring a German Jewish scientist who had fled the Nazis, Conant urged it not to employ him, noting that he was “very definitely of the Jewish type–very heavy.” The scientist they rejected, Max Bergmann, was described by the New York Times as “one of the leading organic chemists in the world.”

Prominent Harvard alumni, student leaders, and some faculty assumed a major role in the friendly welcome accorded the Nazi warship Karlsruhe when it visited Boston in 1934, flying the swastika flag. Boston’s Jewish community protested vociferously. President Conant remained silent. Officers and crewmen from the warship were entertained at Harvard, and professors attended a gala reception in Boston where the warship’s captain enthusiastically praised Hitler.

That year, the Harvard administration welcomed a top Nazi official, Ernst Hanfstangl, who was Hitler’s foreign press chief as well as a virulent antisemite, to the campus for his 25th class reunion. The student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, editorialized that the university should award Hanfstangl an honorary degree “as a mark of honor appropriate to his high position in the government of a friendly country.” The joyous reception Hanfstangl received on campus was interrupted when a local rabbi confronted him and demanded to know what Hanfstangl had meant when he recently remarked that “everything would soon be settled for the Jews in Germany.” The rabbi cried out, “My people want to know . . . does it mean extermination?” Hanfstangl replied that he
“[could] not discuss that. I am on vacation. I am with my old friends.” The Nazi official proceeded to President Conant’s house for tea.

Anti-Nazi activists opposed Hanfstangl’s visit. Some put up posters in Harvard Yard, only to have the Harvard police tear them down. Others held a rally in Harvard Square. Seven demonstrators who tried to speak at the rally were arrested, and sentenced to six months at hard labor. Conant called the demonstration “very ridiculous.”

Several months later, the Harvard administration permitted the Nazi German consul-general to lay a wreath bearing the swastika in the university’s chapel, beneath a tablet honoring Harvard men killed fighting for Germany in World War I.

During the next several years, Harvard participated in academic student exchanges with Nazi universities. In 1936 Harvard contributed significantly to Nazi Germany’s effort to gain international respectability by accepting Heidelberg University’s invitation to send a delegate to its 550th anniversary festival. Heidelberg had expelled its Jewish professors, reshaped its curricula to reflect Nazi ideology, and staged a massive public burning of books by Jews. The Germans had exploited the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Bavaria to extol Nazism. It should have been obvious they would do the same at Heidelberg. American newspapers described the Heidelberg festival as a “brown-shirt pageant” in which Nazi leaders delivered antisemitic harangues.

Moreover, Conant did not sign a petition that some American educators circulated in 1937 when Polish universities required segregated seating for Jewish students. Poland’s Jews considered this a major step toward ghettoization in all areas of life, and appealed to Western educators to denounce it.

It is shameful that the leaders of America’s most prestigious university remained indifferent to Germany’s terrorist campaign against the Jews in the critical years leading up the Holocaust, and on many occasions even assisted the Nazis’ efforts to improve their public image in the West.

They haven’t changed all that much. They should be deeply ashamed of their antisemitism, but who will call them on it?

- Aggie

I wonder who was responsible for this?

Tens of thousands of Roman Catholic worshippers were evacuated from Lourdes in southwest France after a bomb threat, officials with the Notre Dame de Lourdes confirmed Sunday.

- Aggie

He’s used to affection from the peons

Thanks to reader, Carol, for pointing this out.

It seems the dems are working hard to win our votes this year, because they know we’re ticked off. What was their first clue?

A year ago, dozens of protesters gathered outside the district office of Representative Ike Skelton, a Democrat who has represented a wide stretch of western Missouri since 1976. The anger they directed at health care legislation — and by extension most Congressional Democrats — left the party in a state of near panic.

“I take it very seriously,” Representative Ike Skelton said of the unrest among his constituency.
Related

It may, in retrospect, have been the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Skelton and his colleagues.

In the arsenal of advantages that Republicans hold as they seek to win control of Congress this year, one thing is missing: the element of surprise. Unlike 1994, when Republicans shocked Democrats by capturing dozens of seats held by complacent incumbents, there will be no sneak attacks this year. Democrats have sensed trouble for more than a year, with the unrest from town-hall-style meetings last August providing indisputable evidence for any disbelievers.

Yeah, I guess we could have been a bit more subtle, huh? But this is the best part, brought to us by Carol. Barney’s delicate widdle feewings are hurt:

“Some people were taken aback by the anger,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who is hardly among the most vulnerable Democrats but said he was campaigning harder than any other election since 1982. “We’re professional people who are used to affection. It’s almost disorienting.”

He’s not feeling da love! Is that why he had a fit when he couldn’t save a dollar on a ferry ticket? Is this all a huge misunderstanding?

I have a sad prediction to make for those who don’t reside in Bloodthirstan. Barney Frank will be reelected. I hate to break the bad news, but moonbats rule in his district. However, it is great to see him so concerned.

Cheerier news from the rest of the country:

Even though he voted against the health care overhaul and several other administration initiatives, the animosity directed at Democrats comes through in conversations with voters and in more outward signs. A tractor-trailer outside the town of Rich Hill, along U.S. 71, has a message in giant black letters: “Democrats are parasites.”

- Aggie