. July 26, 2006 SouthAmerica: Reply to Hapaboy and to Optionpro007 I started playing your own game and I guess you guys donât like that when the ball is on your court? .
The only "game" you played was to reveal that you have zero objectivity, no analytical skills, and are prone to hysterics. In short, you have the credibility and the qualifications of the average moonbat journalist. If you make a living writing, it is proof positive that mediocrity reigns in Brazil, if that. However, you may take comfort that the Brazilian standards for journalism are pretty much on par with the main stream media in the US, so at least you have that going for you.
We do it with style. You don't. Please don't take this the wrong way, but the more you show us your "intellect", the more you sound like a ignorant ranting biatch....no offense. Aren't you going to reply to tradernik's questions ? (no bolas?)
Southamerica, here are 5 quick ways to shut up a zionist Israel's ethnic cleansing to create a Jewish majority http://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General/Story1649.html Israel's occupation of the West Bank. http://www.palestinemonitor.org/maps/bantustans.htm Israel's foreign lobby and U.S. foreign policy http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/$File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf U.S. churches boycotting Israel http://www.catdestroyshomes.org/article.php?id=464 ...and one you haven't considered.... INBREEDING AND GENETIC PROBLEMS FROM MILLENIA OF KEEPING TO "THEIR OWN". Just ask them about it
. July 28, 2006 SouthAmerica: When Bush got re-elected in 2004, I suggested that he replace Donald Rumsfeld with General Anthony Zinni as the Secretary of Defense. Then a few people brought to my attention that General Anthony Zinni could not qualify to be secretary of defense since that position goes to a civilian and anyone leaving the armed forces has to wait at least 10 years before he is eligible to be secretary of defense. But I donât think that the same rules do apply for the Secretary of State position. With the Middle East spinning completely out of control it is time for the United State to have real diplomats and competent people in charge of US foreign policy. I donât know what George W. Bush is waiting to fire Condi Rice and the rest of the people who are advising him about foreign affairs. James Baker might be too old to be Secretary of State once again â but another name comes to mind that might be a good choice. General Anthony Zinni â in the past he has commanded America's troops in the Middle East and he knows and understands very well the people from that part of the world. General Zinni is very smart, he is articulate, he has the right background to handle the current crisis, he understands the Middle East and its players, and he would bring some credibility to the job. The only problem is that I don't know if General Zinni would want to put his reputation on the line for such a lost cause as the Middle East - an area that is in the process of engulfing itself into a major war. In the other hand, Condi Rice should stick with a career as a piano player â playing the piano, singing and dancing is more up her ally â since as a secretary of state she is doing a job that stinks. .
. July 28, 2006 SouthAmerica: Today The Financial Times published an article âWhy the fires of the Middle East cannot be containedâ â It is a very good article about the mess that has engulfed Israel, Lebanon, Iraq - And also the USA foreign policy which is in complete disarray. **************** âWhy the fires of the Middle East cannot be containedâ By David Gardner Published: July 28 2006 The Financial Times â UK There is a despairing sense of deja-vu enveloping the fighting in Lebanon, that what we are watching is but a rerun of a long-running and wearisomely familiar grudge match. Certainly, there is a strong element of that. But it should not obscure what is so dangerously different in this extraordinarily inflammable situation. Previous episodes have been bad enough. The worst was Israel's full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organisation. That led to a two-month siege of west Beirut that killed 19,000 people (as well as the massacre of refugees at Sabra and Shatila). It destroyed not the PLO but Israel's reputation. And, of course, it incubated Israel's nemesis, Hizbollah. In the present conflict, Lt Gen Dan Halutz, Israel's chief of staff, may have been more truthful than he intended when he made his outrageous threat to "turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years". But in all previous chapters of the conflict, the multiple combatants who used the soil and sectarian divisions of Lebanon as a platform for proxy war (Syrians and Israelis, Saudis and Iraqis, Libyans and Iranians, Jordanians and Americans) were mostly able to contain the fighting inside the Lebanese arena. This is different. The geopolitical context and contours of the Middle East have changed. Iraq, above all, has moved the region's tectonic plates. Today's protagonists are playing with matches in the world's largest petrol station. It is not simply that Israel's assault on Lebanon is in danger of becoming as deadly and wanton as in 1982. Nor is it just that Israel's elite forces are meeting Hizbollah resistance fiercer than they encountered during the occupation they eventually abandoned in 2000. It is that every shot fired in Lebanon now echoes around the region and the world. Look carefully, and you will see it is a delusion to imagine this conflict can be contained, while Israel either destroys Hizbollah or drives it out of rocket range. The prior delusion, of course, was Iraq. That enterprise was supposed to enable the US to pursue a radical new freedom agenda in the region (tough on terrorism, tough on the causes of terrorism). Iraq is now a broken state, a cockpit for sectarian war between Sunni and Shia Islam that claims 100 lives a day, and a target-rich frontline for the totalitarian jihadism preached by Osama bin Laden. The newly empowered Iraqi Shia majority - which is just about preventing the total meltdown of the US project - is inflamed by Israel's US-licensed destruction of Shia Lebanon. Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, modelled on Hizbollah, which fought alongside it against US troops at the 2004 siege of Najaf, is itching to launch a new uprising. An even more obvious way for the conflict to expand is if Hizbollah carries out its threat to fire longer-range missiles into the heart of Israel. That looks inevitable with this pace of escalation - and it would send Israel ballistic. Under a weak government that defers to an army command with its pride wounded and worried about the erosion of its deterrent power, the urge to retaliate against Hizbollah's patrons and suppliers in Syria and Iran would surely be very high. How we got from border incidents provoked by Hamas and Hizbollah to the brink of regional conflagration is worth examination. The Bush administration's lethal combination of diplomatic fecklessness and faith in its (and Israel's) ability to bomb its way to a better future is an important part of the reason. It is not just because the Iraq debacle has consumed so much energy that the conflict at the heart of the Middle East's volatility - between Israel and the Palestinians - has been left to fester. Rhetoric about Palestinian statehood aside, George W. Bush, US president, has acquiesced in Israel's creeping landgrab on the occupied West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem. The US has forfeited nearly all legitimacy in the Arab and Muslim world where, in one of the great dramas of our time, several polls reveal that democratic America is perceived as a greater threat than theocratic Iran. These polls - including a study of Muslim attitudes by Gallup - show that sentiment is determined by hostility towards US policies rather than western values. Three particular moments under the Bush administration have shaped this hostility. In April 2002, the Arab world watched aghast, live on satellite television, as the Bush administration gave Israel the diplomatic space to retake the West Bank and take apart Palestine's nascent national institutions (thereby, incidentally, helping prepare the ground for the triumph of Hamas). In April 2004, even bigger Muslim audiences watched, sometimes on a split screen, the US razing of Fallujah and Israel's destruction of Rafah in south Gaza. Soon after, the scandal broke over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and on April 16 Mr Bush endorsed a letter for the now stricken Ariel Sharon recognising Israeli tenure in illegal West Bank settlements - seen by Arabs as a second Balfour declaration. The third moment is unfolding, as Mr Bush and Condoleezza Rice, his secretary of state, confuse diplomacy with the realisation of Israel's war aims, and what is left of America's reputation is buried in the smoking ruins of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. One aspect of this moment needs to be read with especial care. In the wake of Iraq, Israel has correctly noted the growing alarm of the US and its Sunni Arab allies at the advance of Shia radicalism under Iran's leadership. There was even some private satisfaction, in Cairo, Riyadh and Amman, at the beating ostensibly being administered to Hizbollah - at the beginning. Saudi officials warned against confusing "legitimate resistance" with "irresponsible adventurism"; the kingdom's Wahhabi clerics counselled the faithful against sympathy for the idolatrous Shia. But Israel's unbridled destruction of Lebanese lives and livelihoods has changed all that. Arab leaders fear the reaction of their peoples, it seems, as much as they fear Iranian influence in the Levant and the Gulf. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a close US ally who in 2002 got an Arab summit unanimously to offer a comprehensive peace to Israel in return for all the Arab land it seized in the 1967 Six Day War, said this week that "patience cannot last forever". In his stated view, the stakes are now clear and have never been higher: "If the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war." .
. July 29, 2006 SouthAmerica: Here is a short biography of General Zinni. He has a few more credentials for the job than Condi Rice. If you remember when Condi Rice was promoted to US secretary of state some of her credentials were: 1) Very good concert pianist 2) Very good ice skater and so on⦠No wonder she has a job that is away above her head. I donât think she will be able to play the piano or ice skate her way out of the Middle East mess. In my opinion, General Zinni would be a better choice for US Secretary of State to handle US foreign policy on this time of major crisis. ********** Short Bio: General Anthony Zinni General Zinni joined the Marine Corps in 1961 and was commissioned an infantry second lieutenant in 1965 upon graduation from Villanova University. He has held numerous command and staff assignments that include platoon, company, battalion, regimental, Marine expeditionary unit, and Marine expeditionary force command. His staff assignments included service in operations, training, special operations, counter-terrorism and manpower billets. He has also been a tactics and operations instructor at several Marine Corps schools and was selected as a fellow on the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group. General Zinni's joint assignments include command of a joint task force and a unified command. He has also had several joint and combined staff billets at task force and unified command levels His military service has taken him to over 70 countries including deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific, Northern Europe and Korea. He has also served tours in Okinawa and Germany. His operational experiences include two tours in Vietnam, emergency relief and security operations in the Philippines, Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey and northern Iraq, Operation Provide Hope in the former Soviet Union, Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope, and United Shield in Somalia, Operations Resolute Response and Noble Response in. Kenya, Operations Desert Thunder, Desert Fox, Desert Viper, Desert Spring, Southern Watch and the Maritime Intercept Operations in the Persian Gulf, and Operation Infinite Reach against terrorist targets in the Central Region. He was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Proven Force and Operation Patriot Defender in support of the Gulf War and noncombatant evacuation operations in Liberia, Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Eritrea. He has also participated in presidential diplomatic missions to Somalia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia-Eritrea and State Department missions involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and conflicts in Indonesia and the Philippines. He has attended numerous military schools and courses including the Army Special Warfare School, the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and National War College. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from Villanova University, a master's in international relations from Salvae Regina College, a master's degree in management and supervision from Central Michigan University, and honorary doctorateâs from William and Mary College and the Maine Maritime academy. General Zinni's awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster; the Distinguished Service Medal; the Defense Superior Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters; the Bronze Star with Combat "V" and gold star, the Purple Heart; the Meritorious Service Medal with gold star-, the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat "V" and gold star; the Navy Achievement Medal with gold star; the Combat Action Ribbon; and personal decorations from South Vietnam, France, Italy, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, and Bahrain. He also holds 36 unit, service, and campaign awards. His civilian awards include the Papal Gold Cross of Honor, the Union Leagueâs Abraham Lincoln Award, the Italic Studies Instituteâs Global Peace Award, the Distinguished Sea Service Award from the Naval Order of the United States, the Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The Chapman Award from the Marine Corps University Foundation, the Penn Club Award, the Marconi Award from the Order Sons of Italy of America, the St. Thomas of Villanova Alumni Medal, the George P. Shultz Award for Public Service from the U.S. State Department, and the UNICO Grand Patriot Award. He currently holds positions on several boards of directors and advisors of major U.S. companies and non-profit organizations. In addition he has held academic positions that include the Stanley Chair in Ethics at the Virginia Military Institute, the Nimitz Chair at the University of California-Berkeley, the Hofheimer Chair at the Joint Forces Staff College, the Harriman Professor of Government appointment and membership on the board of the Reves Center for International Studies at the College of William and Mary, the board of Villanova Universityâs Center for Responsible Leadership and Governance, and the Weissberg Chair in International Studies at Beloit College. He has worked with the University of Californiaâs Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Henry Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. He is President of UCLAâs Center for Middle East Development. He is also a Distinguished Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an Honorary Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has also been appointed by the Governor as a member of the Virginia Commission on Military Bases. General Zinni has co-authored a New York Times best selling book with Tom Clancy about his career, Battle Ready. He recently co-authored a book with Tony Koltz, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose, analysis of America's current global position. .
. July 30, 2006 SouthAmerica: Today I went to a party and some of the other guests told me that Europe News and also the BBC News television channels were reporting that Condi Rice is so irrelevant as a US Secretary of State that people that she was supposed to meet during her latest trip â they refused to meet with her regarding the Israeli/Lebanese war. Last night when she was supposed to have diner with the Prime Minister of Israel â when the cameras put the spotlight on the table where they were having that diner â it looked peculiar to see Condi Rice in that environment â she did look completely out of place. I donât know if after the news cameras were turned off â if the other guests asked her to do some entertaining and play the piano â I donât know if she knows how to play â Hava naguila hava â¦. The Jewish tune goes something like that. I hope she has polished her tunes from âFiddler on the Roof â â that might come handy. ************* OpEdNews - July 30, 2006 âThe Bush White House Piano Playerâ "I am deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life," said the Bush White House Piano Player, emerging from a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz which was, seemingly, taking place while the Piano Player was voicing her CONCERNS to him, she says, about the impact that that Israeli military operations would have on innocent civilian Lebanese life. How magnanimous of her ... to voice her CONCERNS that, "your bombs," (meaning U.S. made, Israeli launched bombs, will have a harmful effect on innocent civilian Lebanese life.) How noble of mind and heart to express a free-floating concern, about innocent civilian Lebanese life, without delivering any kind of strong words to the Israelis that they must STOP THE MASSACRE being conducted by U.S. made, Israeli delivered, bombs, on the innocent civilian Lebanese life. How magnanimous of Piano Playing Condoleezza Rice to understand that, "...this kind of warfare is extremely difficult... [for whom, I wonder, because it does not seem to be so for her and that...] ... it unfortunately has awful consequences sometimes," and with that, go on playing the same Bush encore that, "an enduring peace must be had." How very noble of this childless woman to recognize that, "this kind of warfare is extremely difficult," then go on to stay the course, and play the ENDURING PEACE score, not for enduring peace, not for the men, women and children of Lebanon (or Israel for that matter) for whom she has expressed concern, not for world peace, but for the People for the New American Century, and for her power-and-control crazed Bushes. How magnanimous of her to want "a ceasefire as soon as possible" without making demands for a ceasefire NOW and with that allow the massacre to continue. How courageous of her not to travel to Lebanon after the strikes in Qana which killed at least 27 children this morning U.S.A. time. How upbeat, upper handed, and upstaging of her to say that she called Prime Minister Saniora to cancel her visit to Lebanon-rather than gracefully admit to the Prime Minister's press announcement that he called her requesting that she postpone her visit to his country after said early morning Israeli attack on Qana... The White House Piano Player must have the upper hand, the beat of her tune must play for the world the notion, much maligned these days, that the United States is a super power well liked and well respected in many parts of the world. The White House Piano Player is the concert master. She chooses the score. She chooses the tune. She chooses the notes. She chooses the melody or lack thereof. She must not play any soft notes, lest her heart and mind begin to realize that she is playing to the wrong tune and the wrong notes in an empty stage where her piano playing can crumble and her notes become an unwanted, sourly admission that the world does not want to go along with the libretto, the play, or the piano score upon which her fingers seem to glide. And yet... She, the Bush White House Piano Player, keeps on, playing her somber notes and score on a world stage to an audience that refuses her, applause. .
. July 31, 2006 SouthAmerica: When this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah started 3 weeks ago â I thought when Israel moved against Hezbollah in Lebanon â Hezbollah would be defeated very fast. After all I thought that Israel had the capability of taking on and win most of the Arab world as they had done in the past. Few things that Israel had done militarily in the past that gave me the impression that they had a superior army â The Antebbe raid, the surprise attack at Saddam Husseinâs nuclear reactor, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and so on. Today I know all of that was just an illusion. But now, after 3 weeks of an Israeli offensive against Lebanon I realized that maybe the Israeli army is not as good as I thought â a small group of Lebanese freedom fighters â Hezbollah â is giving Israel more trouble than anyone would expect. I know Israel is dropping a ton of bombs from the air and they are using satellite guided missiles. I guess any âFoolâ can do that against a country without any defense against such weapons. I would be impressed if they were doing that against Russia or China, but not against Lebanon. But under such a disadvantageous position Hezbollah has been able to fight back. Can you imagine what would happen if Hezbollah were fighting on an even field? Bombing a country without any defenses is making Israel look bad all over the world. The question that everybody might be asking is: how a people who cry so much about a holocaust can do that to other defenseless people? I would expect that the Jews would be more in tune and have a better understanding about repression and aggression and the resulting suffering of helpless and innocent people. I have been watching on television the destruction of Lebanon and I find it to be disgusting and not an act of civilized people â that is more like an act of Barbarians. .