the talking dog
MAY 2002 POSTINGS
May
31, 2002, White Plains, New York. Well,
today ends my 8 months or so here in White Plains, New
York, located 38 miles or so from the house in Brooklyn.
This is a bittersweet day; I will miss the folks
up here in the suburbs.
On the other hand, your TD started up here in the
post-9-11 maelstrom as a temporary worker, and just
stayed on. As
of late September and early October, downtown Manhattan
was literally still on fire, and New York's economy
appeared in shambles.
Things have settled down, your TD is tired of
spending around 3-4 hours a day just getting to work, so
it is time to move on, and hence, your TD's professional
address will shift to Manhattan's Fifth Avenue. This
semi-swan song coincides (poetically?
did I plan this?)
with the closing ceremonies for the Ground Zero
cleanup efforts. I
understand that the ceremony (at least yesterday's) was,
for the most part,
a moving SILENT tribute.
This is the sort of reason I LIKE the new mayor:
he's rich enough so that he can do things in a
MODEST way. Hopefully,
his quiet manner does not mean that our once
ungovernable city is not being governed...
Your TD will also leave his Westchester sojourn
quietly and tastefully (as he does everything!) Meanwhile,
for the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), it’s out of
Hebron, and into Nablus.
If, in fact, the IDF is simply ignoring the
Palestinian Authority and arresting perpetrators of
crimes against Israel, you know what I have to say:
GOOD! This,
in the end, is the problem even with partition plans --
and especially international forces between the two:
the Palestinians will commit crimes (it’s about
time we stopped even calling what they do TERRORISM, and
just call their acts what they are) and then dive back
into the safety of their semi-sovereign enclave.
Uh, uh. This
shit has to stop. The
Palestinians had an offer to build on from Barak (a
crazy and indefensible offer from Israel's standpoint,
by the way); they could have negotiated further --
indeed, they might STILL be negotiating, for even
crazier concessions from a tired Israel.
Instead: the
intifada (that's Arabic for crime wave). Sadly, our President has dispatched arch-incompetent George
Tenet to the region again to "shore up the
Palestinian security forces".
Oy. Perhaps
he has some sort of stalling agenda, as he did when he
sent Secretary Powell a few weeks ago to circle the Arab
world. We
will hope that there is a grand strategy. Well,
God bless you, every one.
See you in June.
May
30, 2002, White Plains, New York.
Well, welcome to my penultimate day here in my
suburban digs; starting Monday, your TD will be
corresponding from Manhattan (or at least, he will be
working in Manhattan -- the logistics of blogging will
be determined later). Well...in
the news on this "literal" Memorial Day (it
used to be celebrated on 30 May regardless of whether
that yielded a 3-day weekend), as I write this, a
ceremony is underway at the site of the former World
Trade Center, commemorating the end of the clean-up.
There is something to be said for leaving part of
the site -- just part of it -- to remember, forever,
what reactionary hatred of this country and its freedom
and tolerance could do in less than a couple of hours.
As to the former mayor's STUPID and politically
expedient suggestion to make the WHOLE site a memorial:
please. If
the site is not restored into an engine of jobs and
commerce, the terrorists will have won (I'm reminded of
a New Yorker cartoon of a man sitting at a bar saying
"If I don't have a third martini, the terrorists
will have won") -- but New York is about action and
enterprise (and has been since the early 1600's).
100,000 or more jobs were lost (including your
TD's) -- on top of the 3,000 lives lost, thousands and
thousands more were disrupted.
The downtown area has to be rebuilt; fortunately,
it looks like the project is proceeding post-haste, and
there are some top people working on it. Meanwhile,
a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey has enjoined
the continuation of secret deportation hearings. Some judges still believe that we have a constitution.
God bless them. This
at the same time FBI Director Mueller admits that with a
less dysfunctional FBI and other intelligence agencies,
the horrors of 9-11 may have been averted.
(We can't find a link to the web version of the
magazine, "Duh"). Finally,
frustrated by the recent terrorist attacks that have
killed half a dozen Israelis in recent days (including
three high school students), Israeli troops briefly
occupied, and then withdrew from, Hebron. Your TD had an epiphany this morning on this subject:
the specific mechanism by which the PLO/PA
enables terrorism.
It is far more subtle than Sharon's scrap book of
Yasser's funding of terrorists: Yasser can (and does)
say: what
do you mean? I
fund lots of people!
I can't help it if some of them intend to be
martyrs toward ending the brutal occupation of the
Palestinian people, er, terrorists.
Actually, even your TD finds something credible
in that. Trying
to directly link Yasser to terrorism is probably not the
answer; to be frank, Yasir is too busy stealing aid
money to bother with the day to day handing of terrorism
anymore. The
problem actually relates to a more basic concept of
policing. How do the police usually stop gangs, or the mafia, or other
organized criminal enterprises (such as Hamas, Al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade, or Islamic Jihad, to name 3 such
criminal enterprises). How? You know: snitches,
undercover agents, and the occasional turncoat lead
authorities to foil crimes, and catch perpetrators. But
wait a minute: in the Palestinian Authority controlled territories, the only
crime for which punishment is actually meted out by the
Authority is "collaborating with the Israeli
occupiers" -- not terrorism, not car theft,
certainly not stealing aid money.
(I am reminded of an episode of the “Powerpuff
Girls”, where a villain named Princess buys the city
and declares crime legal, meaning that if the PowerPuff
Girls were to try to STOP a criminal, THEY could be
arrested for violating the "crime is legal"
rule!) Recall the recent spate of PA executions of
"collaborators". The
message is simple: if
you're a terrorist, "shame on you" (which in
Arabic means, Allah and Saddam and Crown Prince Abdullah
will see that your family gets at least $10,000). However,
if you try to snitch on a terrorist, we will hang you. Result?
Well, we
see it on the news on a daily basis: more
terrorism, not less. THIS
is the reason why the lawless and insane PA has to be
dismantled -- not reformed, dismantled. Yasser can be the figurehead -- but basically, until someone
in the Palestinian hierarchy is willing to acknowledge
that encouraging terrorism against Israel will (1) not
cause all the Jews to leave and (2) WILL increase the
suffering of the Palestinians – it’s business as
usual.
White
Plains, NY, May 29, 2002. Well,
for those of us who try to think of these things in
anyway that makes sense, the five Supreme Court justices
who basically said that the federal court has an
interest in overturning how a state court interpreted
state laws in an election (you remember Bush v. Gore, of
course) now tells us that the federal government, after
over 200 plus years of basically exclusive sovereignty
of navigable waters, must yield to the states in the
arena of harbor management, relying on the heretofore
never used for this purpose 11th amendment of the
Constitution. See
this
OK. You
figure it out. I
can't. It’s
one thing if the Court just makes a bad decision; its
another thing if it just makes no sense! Meanwhile,
the FBI will "reorganize" to aid in assisting
in the nation's security and fighting terrorism.
Its a good thing our president has a hobby ranch:
he should be familiar with the timing of when to
close the barn door. In
the "I told you so" department, I give you:
Operation
Buzzard. Apparently,
those feisty Taliban, led by Mullah Omar himself, are
trying for a comeback.
Well, here's rooting for our British allies to
stop them -- and to keep them in...Pakistan? Stock
advice for investors in the Cheney-Bush administration: Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco.
(Sorry about that Enron tip; who knew?)
White
Plains, NY, May 28, 2002. Well.
A 17-year-old Palestinian male decides to blow
himself up in an obscure strip mall in suburban Tel Aviv
near an ice cream parlor, so he can take out a
grandmother and a 2-year-old girl (as well as another
person and wounding dozens; as in the Haifa bombing,
this mall employed a lot of Palestinians!).
This on top of waves of other civilian attacks
and bombings, that are often documented here, and are
well, TOO MUCH. This
is not a national liberation struggle. This is a crime wave. The
Palestinian people, for whatever reason, have thrown
away their societal health and the values of a normal
people, and have instead opted for CRIMES.
You know where the TD stands on this: if you want
to play with illegitimate means, you don't get to have
your ends met. That
the world singles out Israel for exercising its
sovereign prerogative to STOP CRIMES AGAINST ITS PEOPLE
can, at least in the context of European and Arab
interlocutors, unfortunately be attributed to
anti-Semitism. Alas,
things are more complicated with respect to this
country. Let's
just say that oil is an important industry, and poor
Israel just isn't sitting on top of any. Meanwhile,
as (unfortunately, because I often end up being right
about such things!) suggested in this blog last fall, it
appears that both the Taliban and al Qaeda upper
echelons are intact and "regrouping" under the
friendly tutelage of their long time allies, the
Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency,
despite an increase in vehemence in the American
campaign in Afghanistan (there WAS a time we probably
had these bastards on the run, but at the time, this was
a proxy war designed NOT to incur American casualties).
By doing it that way, we must now play catch-up,
as well as being burdened by an inability to run through
our "friend's" backyard in Pakistan.
Result: far
more extensive U.S. field casualties, than if done the
right way the first time.
Consequences for letting Mullah Omar escape?
More U.S. casualties, though General Franks (who
should have been fired and court-martialed for that
particular catastrophic error in military judgment of
seeking a legal opinion before pushing the button on
Omar) is, instead, still in charge, with the president's
full confidence. Ditto
Messrs. Tenet and Mueller, of course. Failure
just is not cause for concern among the Bushie upper
echelons. And
our Veep tries to preemptively strike out against a
proper investigation of pre-9-11 intelligence failures.
Conclusion?
There must be something to hide.
I didn't say it: the
Vice President did.
Just as he did with respect to the GAO's
inquiries regarding his energy task force.
There simply must be something to hide.
We've come to expect this from presidents lately,
but especially those named George Bush. Finally,
it is ironic while we in the New York area swallow a bit
before crossing, say, the Brooklyn Bridge, a barge slams
into the I-40 Arkansas River bridge in Oklahoma, killing
at least a dozen people.
What else can you say?
May
24, 2002; White Plains, NY. As
your TD wends his way through the close of his
professional exile in suburban Westchester County...
Breaking news: our own Rabid Dog (remember him?)
has scooped everyone with the
definitive Chandra story.
Well, don't the rest of us feel bad for poor
Congressman Condit?
He seemed like such a nice, upstanding man: to
have his career wrecked over something like this... Meanwhile,
our own fearless leader is in Moscow takin' it to his
good buddy (a man whose heart he looked into and saw
someone he could do business with) Vlad "the
Derailer" Putin.
Dubya had better be talking some serious turkey
about Iran: like, hey Vlad:
WE'LL pay you NOT to sell oil rich (and
Hezbollah-sponsoring) Iran both nuclear power plant
(read: plutonium
manufacturing) technology AND medium range (about 2,000
kilometers -- enough to more than reach Central Europe,
let alone Central Tel Aviv) ballistic missiles.
Got that Vlad? Honestly: in the midst of our war on terrorism, the thought
of our new “friends" arming the biggest member of
the Axis of Evil just ain't good bidness. Nonetheless,
despite the upturn in violence in the Middle East, your
TD is bizarrely optimistic for a resolution of the
Israeli-Jew Hating Murdering Bastard Palestinian crisis.
Why? Because,
finally, Ariel Sharon has shown some balls -- i.e., he no longer gives
a shit about being re-elected.
Thus, he summarily dismissed his former allies in
the Shas party, and turned Bibi Netanyahu's "no
Palestinian" state resolution back on him, rubbing
it in Bibi's smug face.
If Sharon shows the same balls-to-the-wall
creativity in dealing with Arafat (and he's coming round
to the fact that he'd BETTER deal with him), then we can
have some real leadership on at least ONE of the
competing sides, and maybe an ultimate resolution (i.e.,
other than the Jews leaving). In the meantime, check out The
National Review for an article on how the
Palestinian dismissal of the laws of civilized conduct
of war will only bite them in the ass ultimately.
White
Plains, NY, May 23, 2002. Slow
news day? Chandra
Levy's body turns up in Washington, DC just about the
only way the DC police were ever going to find it:
somebody's dog just happened to discover it
completely at random.
This will doubtless be of comfort those, such
as uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan who have tacitly
supported soon to be ex-Congressman Condit in his
defenses, such as the "random attacker"
theory. Obviously,
it is a tragic day for the Levy family, who now, alas,
must give up the gossamer hope of Chandra's well-being
somewhere. Unapologetic
septugenarian White Supremacist Bobby Frank Cherry was
convicted of the 1963 murders of Addie Mae, Denise
McNair, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson by a jury of
9 Whites and 3 Blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, and faces
an overdue mandatory life sentence. Suicide
bombings are on the rise in Israel, including attempts
at some spectacular targets, such as Tel Aviv's own twin
(50 story) towers and a gas processing terminal. And
the White House, apparently in a move designed to DIVERT
attention from its handling of apparent indications of a
major terrorist incident coming last summer (which may
or may not have put it in a position to foil the events
of 9-11, though we know we will never REALLY know the
answer to this while anyone alive today is, well, still
alive), the White House has now admitted to more
contacts than previously disclosed with Enron!
(By the way, it now appears from the same
"debriefings" that convinced us all that the
Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge are about to be
blown up, that the actual destination of Flight 93 was
not, in fact, San Francisco, as the airport monitor
said, nor even the Capitol, but the White House!
Todd Beamer and company, in their heroism, may
well have saved the White House.
More on this, unless the White House finds
further need to suppress ALL references to September
11th!
White
Plains. NY, May 22, 2002. Well,
I was wondering what I would find at the entrance to the
Brooklyn Bridge this morning from the Brooklyn-Queens
Expressway, given the heightened paranoia regarding that
span expressed in local and national news reports.
Alas, it was the usual lone police officer who,
until this week, had been making sure there were at
least two occupants of vehicles crossing into Manhattan
below 14th Street between 6:00 am and 10:00 am (given
the virtual completion of the Ground Zero clean-up, this
was what we had all thought was a really stupid rule,
particularly since it forced me over a toll bridge every
morning). Now
we learn, of course, that this bridge and the Statue of
Liberty were, according to distant hearsay accounts of
al Qaeda detainees now held in Cuba and/or Afghanistan,
who noted that these "famous landmarks" are on
the al Qaeda list of places to blow up.
I suspect that the lone officer's task (which I
do not envy) is now all the more urgent. My
personal feeling is that the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue
of Liberty were additional targets for 9-11, assuming
that ALL of the al Qaeda hijackers then in motion could
crash their respective planes where they wanted,
although only 4 made it off the ground and only 3
crashed into cities, thanks to the quick decision to
ground all non-military aviation that morning.
(Your TD, for logistical reasons involving having
gone to Manhattan's Civil Court building that morning,
crossed the Manhattan Bridge on foot on the morning of
9-11, rather than the Brooklyn Bridge; I did fear that
either or both spans might also be targeted, though the
Brooklyn Bridge seemed a more fitting prize for the Arab
bastards than the busier, but uglier and less
historically and symbolically significant Manhattan
Bridge.) Your
TD believes that the far likelier target is the George
Washington Bridge -- if for no other reason, because of
its name (despite the fact that the Wahabi extremist
bastards should LOVE George Washington himself, as he
owned slaves, though admittedly, Martha apparently
didn't have to wear a burqa). Obviously,
9-11 taught us all that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans
have provided us with only the illusion of
"security", the price of freedom is eternal
vigilance, etc. But
isn't creating a national panic just at the very moment
the nation is questioning the Bush Administration's
handling of a national security matter...
Clintonesque? (With apologies to the Fox News Network: I
make my call, but you decide.)
White
Plains, May 20, 2002. Kudos to Vice
President Cheney on his clear and well thought out
warning. I'm
going to avoid all of those likely terrorist targets for
the foreseeable future. And
congratulations to the people of East Timor, who, after
a long and horrible struggle against our
"friends" in Indonesia, have finally joined
the family of sovereign nations, as the world's newest
basket case. White
Plains, May 20, 2002. And it’s nice
to see everyone's favorite TV character, Osama, making
more videos.
We are offering a free The Talking
Dog
tee shirt to the first person who correctly identifies
Osama's whereabouts, based on the background in the new
tape.
Brooklyn,
May 18, 2002.
Well, once in a while, your TD gets to bask in
the coming to life of some of his
"predictions" (which are simply yet to be
disclosed truths!) Thus,
we are all shocked, SHOCKED WE TELL YOU, to hear
that the nation's intelligence services (any more Tenet
plans, anyone?) notified the president of
"threats" -- some taken so seriously that
cabinet members vacation plans were altered so they
would be in or near Washington -- but these threats were
too vague to act on.
We can come back to why no one sought, or got,
permission to search Mr. Massoui's computer (until well
AFTER 9-11!), or looked into the flight schools, etc. Of
course, airlines were also warned of
"threats", which amounted to "beware of
Arabs" -- and even these were extraordinarily
vague! Your
TD will be the first to say:
the prior government's handling of similar
affairs left a great deal to be desired, and indeed, in
many ways it can be argued, led inexorably to 9-11.
Your TD predicts that sufficient documentation
will NEVER (and that means 100 years from now) be
declassified in order to determine if, or whether, in
fact, the government really DID have sufficient
information to have foiled the 9-11 plot. What we do know, FOR SURE, is that certain government
agencies failed the rest of us, and failed us badly.
And rather than do what one might expect as a
consequence of catastrophic failure -- i.e., firing Mr.
Tenet (and others) for obvious intelligence failures --
quite the opposite happened. (This may either be another unfortunate legacy of the Clinton
administration, remembering that Slick Willy failed to
ask for future Florida Governor and then attorney
general Janet Reno's resignation after the Waco fiasco.
Or it may be a result of rewarding personal
loyalty that seems to be a Bush family hallmark.
What this signals is that failure, of a
catastrophic nature, is just not a cause of concern
among members of the Bush team.
Your TD leaves it to the imagination as to what
it DOES mean for the rest of us, especially residents of
the City of New York!) Further,
there are intimations that Yasser is going to call for
democratic elections (you are respectfully referred to
the TD's April Fool's day posting in our archives). While,
despite my occasional ravings, neither the United States
nor Israel is likely to level Mecca, it IS interesting
that years of "restraint" by Israel in the
face of an all-out war against its civilians led to
progressively increased levels of progressively nastier
violence. On
the other hand, a couple of weeks' worth of sustained
IDF military actions seems to have brought not only the
level of suicide bombings way the hell down, but seems
to have re-started the peace process and "reform of
the Palestinian Authority". It
would be more than a little ironic if the first true
democracy in the Arab world ended up being the
Palestinians -- and especially so if the second were
Iraq. It’s
about time we realized that the anger at the United
States (at least the anger resulting in 9-11) did not
come from poor and free peoples, but from well-off (or
at least relatively well-off nationals of) dictatorships
(a/k/a our "moderate Arab allies"). In
the end, the United States' expedient
"alliances" with countries that are NOT
liberal democracies has always come at a high price. Maybe we have finally realized too high a price? Your
TD can't hold his breath for very long...
White
Plains, May 16, 2002. Reports are now
surfacing confirming the conspiratorially minded TD's
suspicions (raised obliquely in this blog frequently
last September, with lower Manhattan still smoldering
and the dead still not fully counted): the Bush Administration had specific information that bin
Laden -- by name -- was planning to highjack airliners,
and that American flight schools were one aspect of his
plan. While
the Administration (by that free-speech champion
spokesman Ari Fleischer) is quick to point out obvious
facts like (1) it gets a lot of terrorist threats, most
not specific; and (2) the information it had did not
reveal that the plan was to hurl airliners INTO OFFICE
TOWERS using suicide bombers.
(After the Cole, of course, there was no reason
to suspect that bin Laden would use suicidal Arabs as a
weapon of choice -- oh wait, he did).
I suppose he should ALSO point out that the
information the White House had (keep in mind that Mr.
Massoui, the "20th hijacker", was ALREADY in
custody at that time as a result of immigration charges
and his activity at a Minnesota flight school -- having
said "stop with the take-offs and landings, just
show me how to steer") did not include the exact
flight numbers and the date of the intended hijacking,
or flight plans, I suppose, either. In
all fairness, the prior administration wasn't very good
at dealing with Osama, either.
I recall encountering a clipping from June, 1999.
The article concerned an important case on behalf
of the State of New York being handled by Mrs. TD,
concerning the constitutionality of the so-called
commuter tax whereby non-City residents who work in the
City were subjected to around a 1-2% income tax
surcharge, which resulted in hundreds of millions of
dollars in City revenue, which, interestingly, Mayor
Bloomberg, New York's answer to Silvio Berlusconi, says
does not have to be reinstated, despite the City's
desperate need for revenue.
Of relevance here: on
the flip side of the New York Post page was a
picture of, you got it, Osama himself, with another
article concerning his role in the Cole and embassy
bombings, and how he seemed to be eluding American
"efforts" to pick him up. White
Plains, May 15, 2002. Well, part of
being a leader is, occasionally, admitting you made
mistakes. Of
course, if that leader is Yasser Arafat, one must watch
very carefully just what mistakes he admits to.
In this case, it concerns deals made regarding
the imprisonment and/or exile of Palestinian killers, in
order to end costly, mutually embarrassing stand-offs
both in Ramallah and Bethlehem, and his
"mistake" was agreeing to the deals that ended
these situations! (These
are Yasser's MISTAKES!
Obviously, as your TD does not speak or read
Arabic, he is unable to tell you what Yasser publicly
claims as "successes", but I think you can
measure those at Israeli cemeteries.) Unfortunately,
as your TD noted, despite decrying Yasser as
"irrelevant", by needlessly confining Yasser
to quarters for weeks on end under IDF house arrest (as
opposed to, say, simply not letting him leave Ramallah),
Sharon has, unfortunately, reinstated Yasser's tarnished
liberation leader credentials among the rank and file
Palestinian killers. Doubtless,
there are some Palestinians who are NOT homicidal
Jew-haters -- to be honest, maybe MOST Palestinians are
rational, put-upon people who resent the shit that their
"leaders" and the rest of
the Arab world have thrust upon them, and want
peace as much as the average Israeli or New Yorker.
Alas, these
rational Palestinians tend to be rather reticent, as the
only known active Palestinian "justice" seems
to be reserved for "collaborators".
Thus, the news reports only let us hear about the
proud families of suicide bombers; one chillingly
telling picture showed the mother of a Palestinian
"martyr" walking around holding the photograph
of her now exploded son (who took out a dozen or so
innocent civilians, whose crime was being in a
restaurant, with him) in the same pose as relatives of
missing September 11th victims shortly after those
events. Meanwhile,
in other historical action, it looks like Russia will be
tacitly joining NATO; the president raised THIRTY
MILLION DOLLARS for the GOP at a fundraiser, Shaq and
the Lakers are steaming toward a three-peat...
(I guess if its REALLY important, you'll probably
read about it in The Talking Dog!)
White
Plains, New York,
May 13, 2002. Well,
Bibi Netanyahu, proving he, IS the Bill Clinton of
Israel (Right, left, does it matter?
Telegenic, articulate, brilliant, self-serving
and evil – that's Bill, or Bibi – the rest is less
important!) Bibi
and the Likud Party have passed a resolution
embarrassing Ariel Sharon stating that more or less
under no circumstances will Israel (i.e., the Likud
Party) consent to the creation of a Palestinian State.
Guys, its a little late for this!
The Palestinian State is coming.
Yes, thanks to US-UK might (perhaps enforcing a
Cyprus-style green line), democracy can be imposed on
it, by force, and we can impose Yasser as its president,
and he can have as much (or less) power than the
ceremonial president of Israel (or Queen of the UK, for
example). But
Likud guys (they are mostly guys), that Palestinian
State, on, perhaps 96% of the former West Bank and all
of Gaza is coming, with an elevated highway connecting
the two enclaves. Like
Clinton before him, however, Bibi doesn't really give a
shit about the future of his country, just the future
of, well, Bibi... Meanwhile, in the chess game that is the Bush Administration's foreign policy, an apparently historic nuclear weapons reduction agreement with Russia was just signed. If reduction of nuclear weapons everywhere is the policy goal of this Administration, then great. (Perhaps the Administration should also better fund the agency that buys old fissionable material to keep it out of the hands of you know whom, as well.)
Brooklyn,
May 12, 2002.
Happy
Mothers Day. Perhaps if former President Carter's mother Lillian were
alive, she would have told him to go back to peanut
farming for real, and stop with the "peanut farming
of international diplomacy" in which he seems to be
devoting the rest of his time. While, obviously, he is mostly harmless (and as you know, your
TD thinks Habitat for Humanity is a GOOD thing),
especially compared to the pure self-serving evil of a
Jesse Jackson, he is also proving as dangerously
ineffective as an ex-president as he was as a president. This
takes us to Havana. I
heard of an historic "petition campaign"
(11,000 Cubans signed a document demanding various human
rights and freedoms, such as freedom of assembly). If
anything changed, Castro would have played it the way
one of the dissident groups in Cuba did -- and said: you
see, of course we are a free country, we have petitions!
Instead, the knee jerk response, this is another US public
relations stunt. Which,
to be fair, it probably is! Hey,
Castro is a Stalinist style dictator, but honestly, he
is barely a monster on the scale of, say North Korea's
Kim Jong Il, who (current president aside) this country
has been trying to woo for a long time. Castro
remains a special case because of his demon-status among
an ever less important Cuban voting bloc in Dade County
Florida. If
anything has changed, it is because politicians
recognize that EVERY OTHER voting bloc in Florida
resents the Cubans, and supporting them could result in
a backlash. That's
all.
White
Plains, May 10, 2002. Well, its about
time: apparently, a "European Union" sponsored
initiative, the Church of the Nativity fiasco has
finally come to an end. Again, in conjunction with the end of the Ramallah house
arrest, your TD is optimistic that we may have the model
for an ultimate resolution of the currently untenable
Mid-East situation.
A combination of American and British force can
simply intervene and keep the two parties apart
(possibly forever).
An unfortunate Cyprus-type solution, but as good
an idea as it gets.
Jews, to the left of the green line; Arabs, to
the right. Ironically,
the first point of embarkation for the exile of 13 of
the Palestinian killers (to be honest, two words that
your TD thinks will become as common as "homicide
bombers"-- no wait-- as common as "Druse
militiamen") will be...Cyprus. Meanwhile,
domestically, in Boston, Bernard Cardinal Law will now
have to PERSONALLY justify the withdrawal of settlements
of various cases involving abuse by priests.
Your TD notes, for the record, that not getting
the cardinal's resignation is going to prove
extraordinarily expensive to the Church -- not just for
its loss of moral weight, but now, its growing financial
cost. While
vows of celibacy and women's role in the Church are
issues that will ultimately need to be considered
carefully by the Church in the context of a great many
things, Cardinal Bernard "I Am The" Law does
not seem to be a hard question.
Oh well.
May
9, 2002, Brooklyn, New York.
Well, its happy 65th birthday to TD's Dad, and
happy 4000th hit to this site; we are finally findable
on Google -- it took long enough!
Perhaps other search engines will follow.
As always, thanks for your continued support,
without which, we would probably get bored and update
this site as regularly as the proprietors of www.jarjarmustdie.com. In
other personal news of note, the commissar of labor has
decided that the TD has sufficiently served his exile to
suburban Westchester, and he will soon be barking at a
doghouse in Midtown Manhattan.
Look for the "Manhattan" dateline
coming in June. Meanwhile,
in World News, we are saddened to hear of yet another
massive suicide bombing in Israel; obviously, Israel
will retaliate, as it must.
But, of late, our featured link The Weekly
Standard is running articles on UN (and, ergo American
taxpayer) sponsorship of the suicide bomber training
camps -- also known as the Jenin refugee camps.
The UN does other valuable services of course
(enabling genocides, condemning democratic Israel on a
more or less clockwork basis, throwing the US off of the
human rights commission), but few of us are aware of the
valuable contribution to world peace the UN makes with
respect to Palestinian "refugees" (why, for
example, do they continue to live in refugee camps in
what is ostensibly, their own country of origin?
Perhaps Yasser likes it that way?) Finally, kudos to the FBI for capturing the perpetrator of the Midwest bombings -- a 21-year-old kid for whom we still don't have an adequate explanation of his actions. Obviously, the Europeans will snicker about yet another "stupid American". Had he been a EUROPEAN lots of people would have DIED. (They are SO kick-ass compared to us!)
White
Plains, May 7, 2002. Well, the mirth
and merriment continue out of the Mideast:
with Ariel in Washington with his scrap book of
Yasser's financial ties to terrorism (we at The Talking Dog
are SHOCKED to find that Yasser Arafat and the PA have
ANYTHING to do with sponsoring terrorism -- SHOCKED we
tell you!), his negotiating team forgot to ask Italy
about taking suspected terrorists as part of the
Bethlehem deal. When
asking other countries to voluntarily accept some of the
most dangerous people in the world, it IS often a good
idea to ask them. Also,
a housewarming gift might be in order as well.
We understand PM Berlusconi is partial to Danish
hookers and Remy Martin.
No wait, that's Kim Il Jong of North Korea. Meanwhile,
a bizarre rash of pipe bombs continues to haunt the
Midwest, once again, bearing disproportionate pain upon
our postal workers.
As with the anthrax case, we can conclude that
our FBI is, at least at the moment, apparently clueless
as to the perpetrator(s).
(The only thing we know for certain about both
the pipe bomb case and the anthrax case is that these
acts were NOT committed by agents of Iraq).
[Editor’s Note:
Unless this is another Richard Jewel scenario, perhaps
the FBI isn’t actually so “clueless.”] Well,
unfortunately, we are the recipients of that ancient
Chinese curse: may
we live in interesting times.
White
Plains, May 6, 2002. Well, obviously
the Burmese (or Myranmarese or whatever the hell they
are) finally decided that they didn't want to be the
only place holding a Nobel Peace Prize winner in house
arrest, and released Madame Aung San Suu Kyi. Apparently she is now free; we'll hope for the best. Meanwhile,
fearing Le Pen-type protests, the Dutch simply arranged
to have THEIR right-wing candidate, Pym Fortuyn, gunned
down and killed! (Again,
the Europeans proving that they are just better than us
state-siders in EVERYTHING, but especially in gun
violence!). As
always: the
Europeans can stick their moral superiorities up their
stuck up noses. Fortuyn's
shtick was an anti-immigrant platform; he didn't have a
lot of the Fascistic baggage associated with Le Pen and
the National Front (or even the Italian Northern
League). He
was simply RELATIVELY conservative.
That's enough to get knocked off in Europe these
days, especially when his non-lefty elite party might
pick up seats! And
ESPECIALLY when taking on "immigration",
which, to be blunt about it, is code for "rampaging
Arabs". Which
takes us back to...Jean-Marie Le Pen himself, duly
trounced with around 19% of the vote to Chirac's 80+ per
cent. It is
ironic that Le Pen, le rightwing nut with periodic
forays into fascism and old-style anti-Semitism, billed
himself in part as someone who could HELP France's
700,000 or so member Jewish community against North
African hooligans who were rampaging synagogues.
(The Chirac government has all but said: go
ahead and attack the Jews!
The irony is, of course, on THIS score, Le Pen
may have been right!) The French, of course, lead Europe in polls supporting the
Palestinians -- even though their brethren Arabs are
most likely to take out their violence on the average
Frenchman than on just about any other European!
While one could just chalk all of this up to
"anti-Semitism", Le Pen's pissoir poor showing
(his usual 17-18-19%) belies this, and suggests
something possibly even more sinister.
In fact, the intellectually (and morally)
bankrupt French left (the dominant sentiment) basically
sides with "Le Underdog", which in this case,
are Les Arabs, especially against Les Judens, who, by
doctrine, are supposed to be the victims anyway (how
dare they and those arrogant Les Americains defend
themselves!) Thus,
the French, the vanguard of European elites and
elitists, regard the Mid-East differently from we naive
Americans. [Editor’s
Note: Very
nuanced thinking. Though
the worldview of The New York Post is perhaps
elsewhere available to our readers.] We foolishly think that the people who target airliners and
office buildings and bat mitzvahs and pizza parlors and
hotel dining rooms and school buses have lost any
entitlement to our sympathy while simultaneously
undermining whatever legitimacy their cause may have. The sophisticated French see this as a battle of North-South,
strong-weak, third-world vs. first-world.
Needless to say, most of Europe is fucked up in
this regard, and we should ignore them (lest we ALSO
forget how much MONEY they make in trade with places
like...Iraq, Iran, Syria). Well,
we are pleased that the Palestinians appear on the verge
of another paper victory, while the Israelis get the
real victory by getting themselves off the front page,
if the Church of the Nativity situation can be resolved.
Let's hope it can. This sideshow has to end soon. Meanwhile, the US has to stop screwing around and finish off
the damned Taliban (as we predicted last fall, they are
"regrouping" amidst the chaos of the Afghan
countryside which we allowed by refusing to allow
peacekeepers outside of Kabul), and then take on Saddam
once and for all.
White
Plains, May 2, 2002. Well, National
Palestine Radio (NPR) reports that the crowds in
Ramallah were exultant, with Yasser flashing the V-sign,
after he was released from his "siege" (i.e.,
IDF house arrest) this morning.
In exchange, the handful of Palestinians
apparently responsible for the wanton murder of Israeli
Tourism Minister Zevi (one of the last of Israel's
"founding fathers" who was such a maverick, he
refused governmental bodyguards) have been moved to
detention at Jericho, under a joint American/British
guard team. What
we have here may be the nucleus of the ultimate cold
peace in the region:
George Bush has publicly remained neutral
(calling for Israel to "withdraw immediately".
"I said immediately, I meant
immediately".
"Come on, hurry up".
"No, really, I mean it") while
everybody really knows that in his heart, he wants NOT
to repeat the mistakes of his father, and as a result,
favors Israel, even if it is headed by the overweight
and disagreeable lout, Ariel Sharon.
As such, he is the perfect "dishonest
broker" the region needs. Bush
more or less imposed the end of this standoff on Arafat
and Sharon: Israel
gets some measure of security (6 Palestinian killers are
out of circulation) backed up by American (and British)
might, and the Palestinians get a symbolic victory
(actually, the Israelis get ANOTHER victory, because
Sharon's childish incarceration of Arafat simply raised
his stature and gave him some measure of victory at a
time when the IDF was ACTUALLY eliminating any real
power he or the PA had through the destruction of the
"infrastructure of terror", also known as,
well, the PA). Thus,
Arafat's personal "martyrdom" comes to an end
-- which, frankly, will prove ultimately to benefit
Israel more than the septuagenarian terrorist and
murderer.
White
Plains, NY, May 1, 2002. Happy
May Day. Workers
of the World, Unite; you have nothing to lose but your
gains. Was
that Lenin, or the Enron employee manual? No
matter: welcome
to another month (and a fresh column, so you don't have
to scroll that far to get to the talking dog joke and
our links!) here at TheTalkingDog.com, the best of
whatever the hell it is, and the only one of its kind
(except for all the others). We're up to 3800 hits, despite, as always, being on no known
search engines, and on the links of no other bloggers!
Bloggers on, help! Tell your fellow internetters, on chat rooms or discussion
groups or something.
Or, of course, don't do anything at all, if you
want. That's
why America is great! Well,
let us take this May Day opportunity to congratulate
Generalissimo Musharraf, for successfully pulling off
his blatantly extra-constitutional personal referendum
to coronate himself the "legitimate" ruler of
Pakistan (making him the first recipient of the
"Robert Mugabe Democracy Medal").
Obviously, if Musharraf played it by the book
(i.e., let the democratically-elected parliament pick
the president) he might not win!
Notwithstanding
the fact that he has bought our indulgence and
silence through his impressive support in our war
against the Taliban as well as cracking down on
Pakistan's own Islamic extremists, your TD kind of has a
problem with pronouncements of "legitimacy"
since there was a "higher than expected turnout for
the referendum" (largely because usual rules, such
as voting age, were greatly relaxed to ensure such a
high turnout). The
successful coup leading general and self-proclaimed
President (whose coup, by the way, actually interfered
with what was then a U.S.-Pakistani operation to hand
the United States bin Laden for his role in the Cole and
African Embassy attacks) now claims
"legitimacy" from his own leadership.
I don't think so: your TD don't play that. While
the United States has every reason to be pleased with
Musharraf, and has rewarded Pakistan in terms of foreign
aid and lifted sanctions (though, to satisfy that the
short term political gains of a handful of southern
senators, NOT tariff reform on textiles which Pakistan
actually desperately needs), there is no reason to
declare him the "legitimately elected" leader
of Pakistan. He
is not. While
most Pakistanis were glad to see the coup replace the
inept prior government, the bizarre streak of certain
leaders (Mugabe comes to mind!)
for "legitimacy" is impressive; of
course, we tacitly supported the coup AGAINST
democratically elected Hugo Chavez in Caracas (remember
Chile, anyone?), because as always, there are democratic
principles, and then there are profits (ESPECIALLY oil
profits). |