Friday Afternoon Roundup - The Leaking Roof of the Global Order
(photo credit Evgeny Bouden)
The Wikileaks mess is a reminder that the enmity of the International Left did not die when the Soviet Union did. It sends the stark message that we have political enemies who are using the internet to organize their attacks in new and dangerous ways. From Soros to Assange to Chavez, the International Left is a highly active and dangerous foe, and it is working to aid Islamic terrorists.
But what the actual Wikileaks dump mainly reveals is that diplomacy is a farce, underneath which none of the countries much like east other, and most of whom think Iran is a threat, but aren't willing to say so. The drops that fall through the leaking roof of the global order reveal just how little roof there really is.
Despite all the denials, most of the region thinks that Iran's Ahmadinejad is crazy and dangerous. Despite all the praise and flattery, American diplomats know that Turkey's Erdogan is corrupt and uses that corruption to rule. Naturally Iran and Turkey, and some on the far right and far left are pushing the message that Wikileaks is an Israeli conspiracy. But then we are dealing with people to whom everything is a Jewish or CIA conspiracy... or both.
It's not so much the details of the revelations themselves that matter, because there are few revelations. What Wikileaks tell us is that the view of the world promoted by everyone from the State Department to Thomas Friedman does not represent reality. It's a fantasy consensus developed by people who often know better, but refuse to say it except in confidential communiques. Because speaking the truth out loud would be "unhelpful" and embarrassing to the Muslim regimes whom they fear and whose favor they court.
And that's why the truth needs to be hidden away and left unspoken. Because the whole global superstructure from the United Nations on down is built on those lies. It's built on the illusion of global progress and global unity. The very term "rogue states" is meant to draw a picture of a united world, where someone like Kim Jong Il is an aberration, not the norm. But the ugly truth is that Kim Jong Il and Ahmadinejad are more the norm, than Western elected officials are.
This is not a Benetton world. It's a place ruled by dictators who preside over ignorant populations. A world where most countries don't like each other. Where diplomacy is futile and cocktail party chatter becomes intelligence. Where all countries spy on each other, few trust each other and none show their true faces except the positively insane.
Wikileaks is a small peek into what the world is really like. A narrow window through the spin and idealism into what really matters behind the scenes. It's not that anything that most of us didn't know or couldn't have guessed. But that a lot of the general public isn't told.
So the greatest damage that Wikileaks did was to the Grand Illusion of a progressive united world. It was a blow delivered by the left to its own most cherished hope and dream.
Turning now to the other major story, the out of control fire in Israel, let's look at what isn't being reported.
First, Israel has been suffering from wildfires set by arsonists, both Muslim and foreign leftists from groups that claim to be civil rights tourists, but are actually terrorist supporters. Israel's supplies were perilously low because of a string of such fires set during the summer. Which is one reason why outside help was needed.
It is not clear if this fire was arson or not. So far the death toll stands at 42, most of it prison guards in a bus coming to evacuate a nearby prison. Two Arab Muslims were arrested in connection with different arson cases, who have now been released. As usual it's difficult to make much sense of early reports, because Israel's chaotic bureaucracy means that you get competing quotes from different agencies, which usually contradict each other. And a biased left wing media tends to slant the story its way.
For now there are claims that the fire was started by burning trash, though it seems to have started in several locations at once. Which suggests arson, more than it does trash.
Second, illegal Arab Muslim construction in the area is widespread and unregulated. While the international community condemns every Jewish house, whether it's built with or without a legal permit, any attempt to regular construction by Muslims is also condemned by the international community. Besides the massive land grabs, illegal construction also presents a real and serious safety hazard.
A commenter at LiveJournal for example described the following
I work with electricians and with firefighters in Hevrat Hashmal. Sitting down for dinner with them at the table, they warned that this could happen. That they constantly report to superiors about the danger. But the higher up the information, the more it is ignored. Jews can be punished for such violations to the fullest, but to touch the Arab and Druze - they are afraid.
and
I already wrote several times to the fact that my Hevrat hashmalevskie firefighters (I wrote the programs for them) complained about the hundreds of illegal connections elektiricheskih (plus and theft of electricity), sparking, without complying with the rules. Yes, illegal dumping, operating an illegal welding. They can curse. But those superiors who knew it and were afraid to utter a word against the Arabs should be fired.
Even if it wasn't intentional arson, a climate in which Muslims are effectively exempt from laws and building codes, where their villages are dangerous to even enter for a non-Muslim, can breed such hazards.
Take the following story of a Jewish repairman's visit to fix a washing machine in a Muslim village, which nearly ended with his murder
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We received an order from an Arab Muslim village. We first wanted to send the Arab technician, but then decided - it's on the road to Ma'ale Adumim... and they sent me... found this house, it was only 500 meters from the highway... I finished the repairs, and when I came out, a hefty stone whizzed past me. Then another and another. Miraculously, no hit. I went into the house. The hostess, knowing what was happening, jumped out. The stones also flew at her. At the gate is already a raging crowd. In the distance I heard thunder.
The Arabs stoned smashed my car. I immediately called the police and explained what had happened, said that my life was in danger and asked them urgently to send help. But the operator instead asked questions like who I am and what I do. I could not stand it, shouting: "Do not you understand? There is a threat to life here!" She was indignant. - We try to help you and this is how you act!" "And hung up. In the street, the shouting did not stop and stones continued to fly. At any given moment they could enter the house. I had no weapon with me. I went to the kitchen to at least the knife was at hand.
Then I called the repair company and asked them to call the police. By this point, the Arabs had enough time to kill me. And then about ten minutes later, an Arab enters the house and goes straight to me. Before I somehow managed to respond, he began pulling me forward. I replied: "No, I will wait the police." He said: "Do not wait for the police - the police will not arrive soon. Will be a big farce. Better come with me. "
I waited, I realized that the police did not come and went with him. We left the house through the backyard and went to the car. It was smashed. The roof was broken and the windows were gone. We both got into the car. Still had to go through the crowd. I do not know what position in the village the Arab man who escorted me occupied, but the crowd seeing him with me in my broken-down car, silently stepped aside.
Leaving the village, I stopped and my savior left. When he left, I called the police and said that I was on the outskirts of the village, told them what happened. They said: "Urgently leave there at once! Meet us at Gibe-Tsarfatit in Jerusalem. At the Gibe-Tsarfatit I waited twenty minutes for the police. Finally, he came and immediately assailed me, why, he said, did I go to that village. "Even I would not go there in an armored vehicle. The last time I was there in an armored vehicle, they blocked both sides of the road with trash for two hours and I could not get out."
"Do you want to take the statement now, I have witnesses," I asked him. "Like the woman whose washing machine I fixed."
He looked at me with pity. "You go to the police station on Salah a-Din. Take a certificate. Get the mass rehush - compensation for those those affected by terror. And forget about the statement. No one will take it from you. The Arabs will not help us."
"Why not," I said, "one of them helped me."
"Yes he helped," agreed the police officer. "If you had been murdered there, it would have brought unwelcome attention to the village. He didn't help you. He helped himself."
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In this kind of landscape, it's no wonder that massive fires could be set, intentionally or unintentionally. And unsurprisingly there are celebrations in at least one Arab village over the fires.
Haifa radio is reporting that 'Israeli Arabs' in the village of Fureidis are celebrating the massive fire in the Carmel forest north of Haifa
This attitude is also a window on the views of figures like Helen Thomas, who continues to push the same agenda. Along with rants about Jews controlling Wall Street and all the banks.
"The Zionists have to understand that's their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists."
And the Jews were there long before the Arab Muslims took over by conquest. They were there in the country and around it, living as subjects of Muslim rulers. Second-class citizens with few rights.
Via Ed Driscoll at PJM
“I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter,” she said in a 2002 speech. “Now I wake up and ask myself, ‘Who do I hate today?’”
Nothing more left to say about that. Except that the grand matre of the press corps is not only a bigot, but suffers from poor grammar. Which makes her an all too proper exemplar of the media today.
Back at the Wikileaks ranch meanwhile, more information on just how Obama turned the entire apparatus of American foreign policy into a vehicle for promoting the will and whim of the Dar Al Islam
The U.S. State Department directed its staff to "engage" and help to "empower" France's Muslim minorities, according to classified documents released by WikiLeaks and reviewed by WND.
The cables reveal U.S. government staff were instructed to use the French media to educate that country's public on minority issues and to improve the lot of French Arabs and Muslims. The process called for "considerable discretion, sensitivity and tact."
A cable dated January 2007 and directed to various U.S. missions in France outlined that the U.S. government must show it "takes seriously the threat of disenfranchised and disadvantaged minorities around the world, including in France, and we are committed to empowering minorities as part of our fundamental belief in participatory democracy."
The directive accused the French news media of "falling short both in its coverage of discrimination towards them (French Arab and Muslims) and of juvenile delinquency among them."
U.S. staff members in France were asked to engage in a French news media blitz "to convey official policy messages" on the issue of France's Arab and Muslim minorities.
The Muslim riots were described as France's Intifada. Now disturbingly enough, the United States had covertly begun treating France like Israel, and defining France's internal issues with Muslims as an issue of national security.
Public education campaigns aimed at the citizenry of another country are an offensive and hostile act. Yet the EU and the US have repeatedly targeted Israel that way. Now apparently the US targeted an EU member state in the same way.
That should be a disturbing sign of just how far down the rabbit hole we are.
Some anti-Jihadist bloggers are celebrating the Swiss vote on deporting criminals. But celebrations seem premature as the law is sure to be watered down. Additionally when even Switzerland can only get 53 percent of its citizens to vote to deport foreign criminals-- then that's a long way from any kind of victory.
Via Jawa Report, more airline security goodness
A British Airways computer expert who is alleged to have offered himself as a suicide bomber appeared in court today to deny terrorism charges.
Thank Allah, the infidels did not profile this man at any point in time.
NASA is trumpeting the discovery of a lifeform that can live in arsenic as if it's a big deal. That would be because Obama has basically shut down NASA, scrapping its ability to actually leave earth, forcing it to find wacky new things to comment on right here at home.
Coming up next, NASA will discover how cool bicycles are and teach children about the importance of good nutrition. That's what an agency that once represented American exceptionalism and inspiration looks like under Obama.
Real Americans Defend Israel has more wildfire photos and video. So does Yael at Boker Tov Boulder.
Robert Avrech looks at the real meaning of Chanukah
The Maccabees fought savage wars in order to win the independence of the state of Israel from cruel foreign oppression. They yearned to purify the holy Jewish Temple from foreign worship, and they spilled oceans of blood to unite Jerusalem.
The Maccabees did not tolerate Jewish fifth columnists who claimed to love Israel while undermining the very foundations of the state.
Every single battle fought by the Maccabees took place in Judea and Samaria—AKA the West Bank. And, of course, the most ferocious battle took place in Jerusalem—mostly against Hellenized Jews, the J Street of their time.
The battles of the Maccabees are not over. We are fighting them again. It seems we wage the same battles time after time—on the same bloody ground.
Lawrence Auster has two snapshots that show just where the Western elite is heading. Straight to Burqatown.
Moshe Dann has an Op Ed that Obama's agenda is to delegitimize Israel until it gives in
What if, however, Obama's goal has nothing to do with any "peace process," agreements, or concessions? What if, magician-like, he and his administration are distracting from their hidden agenda: delegitimizing Israel?
In April, Obama suggested that the safety of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America's "vital national security interests" were linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he blamed Israel for the impasse.
Obama's strategy to weaken and isolate Israel by forcing concessions is evident in his focus on Israeli settlements as "illegal" and "unacceptable," his extreme protests against any and all Jewish home-building in Judea and Samaria, even Jerusalem, and his direct challenge to Israel to expose its nuclear capability and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Demanding another "freeze" for 3 months fits the pattern of maligning Israel.
Finally, a look back at my own piece on Chanukah from last year.
In turn Judah walked among his brothers and fellow rebels and spoke to them of the thing for which they fought; “O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshiping God. Since therefore you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover that liberty, and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws, and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle. Fight therefore manfully; and suppose that you must die, though you do not fight; but believe, that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put yourselves into such an agreeable posture, that you may be ready to fight with the enemy as soon as it is day tomorrow morning."
In those few words was the heart and soul of the Jewish nation fighting to be reborn, and that for which they fought, for their God, the freedom of their faith and country, and to stand as men of honor in defiance of a tyrannical empire. And though the Macabees were but three thousand, starving and dressed in bare rags, the God for whom they fought and their native wits and courage, gave them victory over thousands and tens of thousands.
Worn from battle, bloodied and standing among heaps of the enemy dead, the Macabees did not flee back into their Judean wilderness, instead they proceed to the heart of Israel, to its capital of Jerusalem and its Temple, to reclaim their land and their God. But through the armies of the Seleucid Empire may have fled, and their traitorous Jewish collaborators along with them, the Temple and the capital stood in ruins. And the brave rebels who had bested an empire entered the holy city only to confront the devastation and disgrace that their enemies had imposed on it. Some wept and others hung their heads in despair.
And so once again they bent their backs to the task, this time not of war but of peace, reclaiming the Temple, cleansing its precincts and sanctifying it again. But though they could raise up walls and clean away the blood and filth from stone and metal, some things they simply could not do. The great golden candelabra of the Menorah stood empty, for of the sacred oil, made of only the first squeezed drop of the olive, kept in purity and sealed with the High Priest’s seal, only one flask remained.
The Macabees had fought courageously for the freedom to worship God once again as their fathers had, but courage alone could not make the Menorah burn and thus renew the Temple service again. Yet it had not been mere berserker’s courage that had brought them this far. Like their ancestors before them who had leaped into furnaces and the raging sea, they had dared the impossible on faith. Faith in a God who watched over his nation and intervened in the affairs of men. And so on faith they poured the oil of that single flask in the Menorah, oil that could only last for a single day. And then having done all they could, the priests and sons of priests who had fought through entire battalions to reach this place, accepted that they had done all they could and left the remainder in the hands of the Almighty.
If they had won by the strength of their hands alone, then the lamps would burn for a day and then flicker out. But if it had been more than mere force of arms that had brought them here, if it had been more than mere happenstance that a small band of ragged and starving rebels had shattered the armies of an empire, then the flames of the Menorah would burn on. The sun rose and set again. The day came to its end and the men watched the lights of the Menorah to see if they would burn or die out. And if the flame in their hearts could have kindled the lamps, they would have burst into bright flame then and there. Darkness fell that night and still the lamps burned on. For eight days and nights the Menorah burned on that single lonely pure flask of oil, until more could be found, and the men who for a time had been soldiers and had once again become priests, saw that while it may be men who kindle lamps and hearts, it is the Lord Almighty who provides them with the fuel of the spirit through which they burn.
From NY to Jerusalem,
Daniel Greenfield
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