Do we need to listen to the same Jack Beatty drivel every Friday week after week?

Yes we should, he’s one of the very few who still calls it like they see it!And you’re free to disagree. I’m not always in agreement with the man but he articulates his opinions with clarity and convinction.On point is sometimes flat without him!(no offense Tom!)

lobbyist, gitmo, hopefully next obama will tell israel the crap they did in gaza will not happen again and there will be punishment for the killing of so many innocents, than maybe he’ll start investigating all the crime the bush admin has committed.

but good start in trying to bring america to the moral light and high standing it once had before from the secrets and lies the bush admin so commonly used

“Freed by U.S., Saudi Becomes a Qaeda Chief”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/middleeast/23yemen.html?hp

Even the NY Times is reporting that freed Gitmo prisoners take up again their terrorist activities.

Of course Mike doesn’t care if people in another part of the world get killed.

Does Mike care about rockets being launched into Israeli towns and villages?

Probably not.

Wavre, Jack Beatty isn’t and “independent voice.” His comments are as predictable as the Muslim Friday prayers.

“Gazan doctor says death toll inflated Physician at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital tells Italian newspaper number of dead in Israeli offensive ’stands at no more than 500 or 600, most of them youths recruited to Hamas’ ranks’. Senior Palestinian Health Ministry official denies claims…”

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3660423,00.html

Thank God for Jack Beatty. He is always the most level headed and forthright of your commentators. I am particularly fond of his willingness to be forthright in his opinion. Nothing clouded about where Jack stands. While I do not always agree with him, he expresses a well considered point of view.

Yes Toby, Israel was provoked and acted only after seven years and 6 thousand rockets later.

I don’t know another country that would have waited that long to act.

In any case, for what it’s worth, CNN is reporting 1300 Palestinian fatalities, and 22,000 buildings destroyed. That works out to one person killed for about every seventeen buildings taken down. Strikes me as pretty amazing. I’m confident that German and Japanese cities that had a similar number of buildings destroyed had exponentially more casualties. Leaving aside the blurry definition of “civilian” in this context, when none of the enemy fighters wear uniforms, and all of them hide behind their families and legitimately civilian neighbors, it looks like extraordinarily accurate targeting by the Israelis. I’d say there’s no remotely likely way Hamas or any of their fellow travelers can credibly claim anything other than a crushing defeat here.

Hold the phone!!!

You have got to be kidding me.

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs–Prince Saud al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud is criticizing our president about indifference towards the people of Palestine during the recent war and giving him warning?

That is exactly why the Palestinians are situated as they are.

How transparent and ham-fisted is the prince?

Dear President Obama,

Please please please, call him on it. Are you going to let the play the same old game? Spell it out for the American people just how this relationship operates.

Why is the new lobbying executive order being waved for William Lynn, slated to be #2 at the Pentagon?

Why weren’t TV cameras at the second oath-taking?

Why is Obama giving first class plane tickets to the mainland to terrorists? Seems like he is accomplishing their goal for them. What’s next flying lessons?

It’s an all-Obama panel this Friday. Should be a real lovefest! I think I’ll see who Diane Rehm has on.

Something is not right here.

The euphoria is because finally we have someone in office who’s going to deal with our problems instead of deny them. Nobody thinks we’ve arrived.

Tom, why are people criticizing Obama’s speech as not meeting expectations? He knew he had the attention of the whole country and the whole world, perhaps for the only time, and I expected him to say exactly what he needed to say. I thought it was excellent.

The euphoria is because we finally have a president who will deal with our problems rather than deny or trivialize them. What’s childish is avoiding the work ahead.

Mark Engle, are you being paid to say that?

Thursday, January 22, 2009
ABOUT GAZA
01/23-2009

ABOUT GAZA

Tragedy is not that this has happened, or that this could happen, the tragedy is that this will happen again, and again and again. And that the Islamic countries, the US, the Europeans and the UN will all be shedding crocodile tears once more. No one can control Hammas ( the Palestinians) and its “uncivilized” terrorists, and no one wants to control the “civilized” Israeli response. I don’t claim to know that if the conditions in Gaza were any better there won’t be any ” terrorists, but I do know that so long as Israel continues to run her concentration camps for the Islamists there will not be any peace.
posted by The Prophet at 9:56 PM 0 Comments

BACK TO POLITICS
01/22/2009

BACK TO POLITICS

No I did not give up writing, but you have been busy too, watching too much BS. Did you not know that Obama is black? Or was it the news lately that he had won the presidency? Or that Martin Luther King was one of the great leader of his community and of this country, and that Dr King had paved the way for Obama to become president. So what was this over doing of the same old hash and rehash.
Oh yes, you are brain dead, and the media knows this.

Nothing else was going on in the world, but that since the first of the year we were going to have a black president, and the world stood still, even poor ole Martin himself did not matter any more.

Did we not already congratulate ourselves enough? Can we just move on along please?
posted by The Prophet at 8:51 PM 0 Comments

Jack Beatty has a right to his utter contempt for Obama. I’m not sure what it’s based on, but it sings out every time he speaks about him. But, simply saying things like nothing has changed since the inauguration and Obama might fail is really hollow. Of course, Obama might fail – where is the information or insight in that? I like to listen to programs like this to hear some information, some analysis, not to listen to empty statements.

here for the fools who somehow believe that taking other peoples rights, abusing them, torturing them, killing people

it does not work, fear and hate, does not solve problems and the detainees release and recaputured, i ask have we have times and dates and who or just it happen and no evidence to show from it? sound alot like bush reasoning for mutiple failed policys(just believe me u dont need proof)

I think what gets these naive, uninformed people is so mad is that, obama gets people to be involved, become informed, what to stop injustices and so much more and these fools, used to being and wanting to be closed minded to the world outside there communities hate this, and come up with excuses and reasons for people to be scared and hate whats going on. as seen of fox news and talk radio.

but i say your agenda, fake moral, has loss, i dont dislike what u think but pity it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7843307.stm

worth reading,

President Bush’s admistration was full of wonderful intellectuals & prolific writers who came to government with acclaimed treatises. This accomplished litany of think tank leaders brought these writings with them to office; thereby availing heretofore unavailabe intricacies of policy into the public record. (For example PNAC and its predecessor “Securing The new Realm,” which featured contributors who would construct the pillars of Bush’s policies)

President G W Bush & Company neither strayed away from American values nor did they develop drastically novel standards opposed to the mainstay of American international governance. (With few deviations promulgated nationally e.g., the Patriot Act and data mining to name a couple)

The problems. which ostensibly tainted the image of the United States exemplified in torture, extraordinary rendition, preemptive wars & arrests, secret prisons, etc., arose out of the pronounced status of this paradigm — that was spelled out to the nation & world as a war against terror.

Be as it may, these time tested methods are tools of empire and power; Can it truly be said the US never tortured before Mr. Bush and wont again after his departure? I think not amd the record incontrovertibly shows that the entire “atonement” of the Obama administration is in essence a “feel good” enterprise to reinvigorate US citizens and recapture the popularity of its higher principles and reassert founding pledges of the US Constitution.

I love America and admitedly have benefited from its power and the projection of its tentacles around the globe. These have kept me relatively safe in a world mired with oscilating dangers of myriad competition. Even so, having been born in the Caribbean nation of Haiti and migrating to the US at the age of ten, I know first hand the macabre side of wielding super power. Our nation has seen five empires across two centuries wreak havoc against our poor, humble yet proud people.

Nevertheless, President Obama should be commended for taking the underbelly of our great country out of the limelight of world opinion and restoring it to its rightful sector of secrecy and its antecedent plausible deniability apparatus.

First, I really appreciate Jack Beatty’s commentaries. I find him level-headed, insightful, and clear. Thank God for Jack Beatty!

Second, today is the dawn of a new day in America. With our new president’s inauguration we are waking up from a protracted 8 year nightmare. Sadly, even though the clouds, mists, and darkness are receding, we can clearly view the destruction of the previous 8 years. What we see around us, the problems that we face, are frightening and very daunting. But the sun is shining again! The sun brings light, and light brings clarity and understanding. We can honestly assess the challenges in front of us. We can right past wrongs, we can bend our collective will to make America rise up to its promise once more. We can and must work while the sun shines!

We are in the bright dawn of a glorious new day.

GOBAMA! I will follow!

GAZA WILL HAPPEN AGAIN?

AGAIN JUST ENDED LAST WEEK.

The Palestinians are pawns, human fodder for the Saudis (mainly). and other states in the region. They can be convenient for us at times as well because we dance to the same beat.

The Saudi tut-tut two step is a dance that kicks-off with precision at the turn of U.S. administrations.

Obama, Clinton, got your dancing shoes on?

Posted by Robbins, on January 23rd, 2009
“CNN is reporting 1300 Palestinian fatalities, and 22,000 buildings destroyed. That works out to one person killed for about every seventeen buildings taken down. Strikes me as pretty amazing.”
—————————————————

Robbins, are you a socio-path?

Seriously, seriously? You are celebrating the deaths of civilians just because they are Palestinians? Were they Israeli, such a statement would get 500 NPR listeners calling you anti-semitic and an advocate of “the final solution”. Your lack of respect for (non-Jewish) human life is simply “amazing”. Do you also torture and kill little animals for fun?

Tom,
I for one was really disappointed that President Obama choose the middle-east conflict as the first foreign policy problem to address. His first order should have been to cut-off all funding and military weapons to Israel. We are NOT an honest broker and I’m tired of 3-5 Billion dollars of tax-payer money being wasted on this fantasy of middle-east peace.

The entire world continues to devote sweat, blood, and treasure towards this wasteful fantasy. We need to dis-engage COMPLETELY until both Israelis and Palestinians grow up and take responsibility for their OWN peaceful solution. THEY have to want peace MORE than we do. Otherwise both the U.S. and Iran are simply giving alcohol to a bunch of drunkards who refuse to acknowledge that they are alcoholics.

u go ann, also to note about gitmo

by the pentagon 18 former detainee have return to the fight and 43 suspected not 61 also when asked to provide the identity of the fromer detainess or what theier terrorist activities were, he could not, sounds both fishy and dumb to make statements from the pentagon with no information to back it up

Hey Ann-Marie it’s to bad your tired of tax payer money towards things YOU don’t believe in. Have you ever been to Gaza? Do you know that Hamas routinely kills it’s own people for such things as playing music at weddings.

Do you support them? Do you support this kind narrow, nasty, backward ideology that is Islamic fundamentalism?

Calling people sociopaths because they support Israel is a bit much as well. I hate what Israel did in Gaza, it was big mistake, however the Palestinians are no saints.

Israel apparently killed more children than militants. Your tax dollars at work. Pretty amazing.

No places to accomodate those detainees in this huge US penitentiary infrastructure that is housing numerous serial killers and other psychopaths? All of a sudden everything become soooo complex?Getting out of Iraq..sooo hard? How did we got there?Letting them run their own country as they see fit will be hard on us? Why?

The forces of the statu-quo have a way of muddying the waters to obstruct change.

Mr President don’t listen to them. The world is waiting for your leadership to promote justice and fairness for all.You have a date with History: The first world leader for a better planet!You can discuss with Iran on its nuclear program, You can finally make peace and deal with North-Korea,You can bring Israelis and Palestineans to compromise for peace as long as you’re perceived as a fair broker, this conflict doesn’t go back centuries contrary to popular beliefs(the animosity maybe but not the conflict).Conflicts have come and passed, those will pass as well, and it’s just up to you and your leadership.And finally, let me remind you of the words of a young senateur from Illinois, who you may know and who had inspired the all nation and the world and gave us hope,telling us:
YES, WE CAN!
Dear President,YES, YOU CAN!!

Ugh, Ruth Marcus again?

more on israel and children

One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza’s densely populated civilian areas.

But the head of neurosurgery at the El-Arish hospital, Dr Ahmed Yahia, told me that brain scans made it clear that a number of the child victims had been shot at close range.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7843307.stm

wow israel fight terror with even worst acts, wow that’s going to work…..not

now that Bush is out of office can you guys move on from using Jack Beatty, he is so predicable. I can even here the pause and sigh in Toms breathing patterns when Jack chimes in. Sorry Jack if you are reading this, but you just dont add anything interesting. We all know what you are thinking. get a new schtick.

Mitchell is a lost cause. He didn’t even know what to call the Palestinian side of his two state vision vision. total joke, 4 more years of nothing, i hope im proved wrong..

Tom, I like Jack. Sure he is not an independent and objective voice, but who is? Everyone on the show, whether you agree or disagree with them, has her or his own opinion, and if this opinion did not show through then the show would be another boring lecture. If I want this style of reporting, I can easily read the AP. I believe the show is designed not to report but to engage and discuss the many difficult views out there. Anyway, I enjoy Jack’s participation in the program. Sorry Jack about all the negative comments, not that it should matter. You have supporters out there too, and you cant please everyone, so keep up the good work!

What does it say about a people that will allow a terrorist group like Hamas to use them as tools of terror. Terrorist are cowards, they use people as shields and hide around the innocent in order not to be hit. They care little it small children are killed, this helps with propaganda, that way if you hit them you most certain will kill children and others. If the Palestinians would run off the terrorist, then if attacked they would have a gripe. Sleeping with enemy must mean you like them. What person would allow their children this suffering for a religion that requires death to please their god! This is the root of the problem, religion. Land is just the excuse.

This is the absolute truth …hahahah

BBC gets it right for once

The BBC got it right here, but probably for the wrong reasons. Very funny !

See below for the usual BBC / Channel 4 / Sky News guidelines for Israel….

1. always accept the Palestinian version without question

2. interview at least 8 Palestinian supporters to every Israeli supporter

3. assume the UN is impartial, and a shining beacon of justice in a dark world

4. assume any video / photos provided by Palestinians are always reliable – never question their veracity. It’s probably not worth bothering viewers with the fact that much of the media is doctored or staged – this will only confuse them

5. gloss over the last 60 years of history (never mention how 6 Arab armies tried to destroy Israel in ‘48, ‘67, and ‘73)

6. don’t report how Hamas (etc) bully, torture and murder their own people, or misappropriate aid/finance (or if you do, play it down)

7. NEVER mention that Iran / Hamas / Fatah have vowed to destroy Israel and kill every Jew in the world (if you do mention it, assume they don’t really mean it)

8. Report only the words that Fatah say in English, never what they say in Arabic

9. if you interview an Israeli (or misguided supporter such as Colonel Kemp, Mark Regev), make sure you interrupt them frequently. If you’re coming off second best, tell them you’re running out of time

10. if interviewing a Palestinian (or Annie Lennox, Alexei Sayle), make sure you ask them lots of really open questions, allowing lots of time to air their views without interruption – nod frequently to show your support. Don’t interrupt them, as this is disrespectful

11. above all, the tone of your voice should exhibit disapproval towards Israel, and sympathy towards Palestinians

12. ensure you use the word “occupation” as much as you can (don’t get involved in meaningless discussions concerning how Israel either paid huge sums for swamps / wilderness in ‘48, or won it when arabs declared war on them)

13. never report anti-semitic attacks/incidents from the UK or elsewhere (we are unsure as to why these are increasing, but certain it has nothing to do with how we are portraying the situation)

14. don’t report Pro-Israel activity such as marches – nobody cares, and these people are misguided anyway. If the politicians from all parties turn a blind eye, why shouldn’t we ?

15. if you get the facts wrong (Israel murders 1000’s in Bethlehem), never issue an apology or retraction

16. It is probably more news-worthy if you paint Israel as the aggressor – so don’t mention that Hamas launched over 6,000 rockets into Israel after Israel had vacated the Gaza strip

17. On proportionality, probably not worth mentioning comparisons with civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, or WW2 Germany (this will only confuse people). The fact that Hamas deliberately booby-trapped civilian homes and made people go into them, we are sure, has nothing to do with civilian casualties….

15. probably not worth mentioning the Bible – Jesus, a Jew, born in Bethlehem, visiting the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (this is only 2000 years of history anyway….)

Note to Producers – make sure that when interviews are taking place that you loop some video showing ultra-left wing Norwegian doctors running after ambulances performing chest compression on live patients, and female Hamas supporters screaming uncontrollably about how their terrorist husbands were mercilessly martyred by the IDF. Remember, it really doesn’t matter what the interview says because people will remember the images

Neil Turner , Watford, UK (01.24.09)

Majawill , you know that’s a lie….

mike you work in gaza? If anyone shoots at close range is hamas criminals

Great piece on 60 minutes last night on democracy Israeli-style. Apartheid by any other name.

It’s a pity no one is seeing the forest for the trees on the Middle East.

Re. the mideast, If you are not talking about oil, islam or economics, you’re not talking towards progress.

Corriere della Sera challenges the conventional wisdom on Gaza
Corriere della Sera challenges the conventional wisdom on Gaza
Posted By: Stephanie Gutmann at Jan 25, 2009 at 10:31:15 [General]
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents
Tags:View More Corriere della Sera, Gaza strip, israel, Lorenzo Cremonesi, Operation Cast Lead

There was a very interesting article in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last week. It suggests that Palestinian hospital administrators and other government officials in the Gaza strip gave greatly exaggerated casualty figures to foreign reporters and aid groups during Israel’s just-ended Operation Cast Lead.

The number that has come to be seen as “official” — only because of repetition — is 1,200 to 1,300. But reporter Lorenzo Cremonesi spoke to a Gazan doctor who told him, “The number of deaths was between 500-600…Most were young men between 17 and 23 who were recruited into the ranks of Hamas, which sent them to be slaughtered…It was strange that the non-governmental organizations, including Western ones, repeated the high number without checking, but the truth will come to light in the end.”

“It’s like what happened in Jenin in 2002,” the doctor said, referring to a UN investigation which contradicted media claims of a Israeli Defense Force “massacre” in the West Bank and set the number of Palestinian dead at about 45. “At the beginning they spoke of 500 dead; afterwards it was clear there were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fighters.”

“It is sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand that the numbers don’t add up.” Cremonesi wrote. He also noted that in nearly all of Gaza’s major hospitals, and especially those in major conflict zones, he found most beds empty.

Cremonesi also wrote that Gazans he interviewed confirmed Israeli accusations of Hamas war crimes, especially the deliberate use of the civilian population as human shields. When local Gazans demanded that Hamas and its allies not take up positions near them, one interviewee said the terrorists responded:

“Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?”

I hired a translator to have the existing English translations checked. A partial English translation of Cremonesi’s article can be seen here.

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