chaos and honey

here's an interesting article from ha'aretz on corruption within the palestinian authority from a couple of days ago.......worth reading in full, it names people and list some of the accusations. while it may not be abundantly clear - this because most would rather look the other way - if we are ever going to accomplish anything between israel and the palestinians it will have to be between two equal entities and not by people who wouldn't qualify for amateur hour on most local tv stations worldwide.
problem of achieving peace here is largely a cultural gap - not one based on how we want to live our lives materially, but one based on what is acceptable within a modern society and the way in which to achieve a comfortable place within society . israel is no saint, we have corruption too, but the level of corruption that exists within the palestinian ranks can be best compared to the 'third world' where there seems to be no fear of getting caught as long as you know the power - or are actually the power yourself. 
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=457320&displayTypeCd=1&sideCd=1&contrassID=2jp 
corruption is grossly underestimated as a leading reason for much of the nonsense we face in the world. why are we so disinclined to speak about it openly?
where there is corruption there is bad govt and often chaos.

maybe the gravestones are lying.......

19:17:  32 gravestones desecrated in Jewish cemetery in French town north of Strasbourg (Israel Radio)

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/07/26/iraq.saddam.report/index.html

saddam's poetry?

i see a bush and i want to paint it black,
one day i'll seek revenge and firmly attack,
this bush speaks and i must scream loudly back,
a poison bush has bitten, but i will not crack,
i see a bush and i want to paint it black,
no ordinary bush, it needs a quick smack,
if i dont kill this bush, i will surely collapse,
this bush has got me but i'll always have iraq,
i see a bush and i want to paint it black....

written by zevchi with an apology to the rolling stones

unfortunately i find myself on the other side .............
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0407250266jul25,1,1177051.story?coll=chi-business-hed
.........if there were two people i would prefer not to find myself against it is george soros and warren buffet.
am i making a bad trade?
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/goldberg/2004/0506.html

it has taken almost 25 years now for anyone to recognize that it is an ideological conflict that is brewing between secularists and islamic relgious fanatics. i mark the time according to the actual success of the iranian revolution. while the western polars were quite content to gloat in their victory over the utopian communist  failure in the late 1980's and early 1990's it turned a blind eye to what was down the road.  movements take time to build and gain momentum. the 9/11 commission will go down in history as a near political white wash of what took place leading to the verbal realization that the west now has another major ideology to battle which it still has failed to issue publically in many respects.
this is about secular based civilizations against a utopian turned fanatic process. i myself still have a problem believing the conflict, wanting to feel that some basic universal good  exist that every person can accept. yet since the downfall of the failed communist regimes we have seen this ideology of religious fanatism creep into the power vacuum.
case in points are what took place in bosnia, albania, and checheyna, and the victory of the taliban in afghanistan.
u.s. is not blame free in this mix having actually helped many of these groups with early funding when they were merely a pain to the communists. israel has found out first hand with the hamas that its attempts to help aid and create counterweights politically and socially within the palestinian communitities actually helped create bigger monsters.
 it is realpolitik and it can be ugly. i believe we are only entering the violent stage of  this confrontation and believe if we are not careful we are looking at a 25 year window minimum in which those that want secular societies can in a short term  hope to defeat those who want the other........and i use the word other here carefully because if the secularlists should lose there is no telling where and how long the world will be in another dark age and what the fanatics will morph into fully. imo the secularlists will not lose unless they allow too many apologists to beg that we continue to look through the world in rose colored glasses.

sometimes israel does very stupid things in the most public ways. we are contenders for the perpetual great ego-maniac award. we think we are smarter than everyone and believe we can explain all things away. we leak things to the press constantly and become quite impressed with our own little speeches. case in point, sharon tried to take advantage of the woman who lied about being attacked on the train in paris last week - marie leblanc. no doubt there is anti-semitism in france, but it is foolish for the leader of one country to tell the citizens of another country to leave it. sharon should have wished them safety, tell them to visit israel, and to make their life decisions as they see fit. but no, he had to insult all of france and make its jewish citizens feel even more uncomfortable.
if anyone is going to insult france allow me to be the person please.
as far as israel goes, i am a zionist. israel is the one place i can wake up everyday and not worry about someone calling me a dirty jew (unless of course it is my wife merely reminding me to shower and shave). not that every jew outside of israel feels unsafe, but even if we are in a constant battle in israel to build a legitimate country and economic base we can at least go about our tasks here knowing that we are not being judged by those around us as anything less for being born jewish. as far as tranquility, there is no place safe in this world. people die in many strange ways throughout the globe, we have about a 6.5 million population in israel if you take all those killed in terrorist attacks over the last few years and add the amount of people killed in random crime acts, israel still averages out less deaths by violence than many u.s. cities annually.
i had lunch with a friend yesterday overlooking the sea while in netanya and the two of us commented that given time and peace israel will be seen as one of the few paradises on the planet geographically and economically. having said that, i may have to live until i am 120 to see that day.

i wonder what the folks at peta (people for  the ethical treatment of animals) have to say about the following:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/South/07/22/arm.alligator.ap/index.html
do they act as the deceased alligator's defense attorney? or do they just try to have the thing thrown out of 'bizzaroland' court because the woman was inflicting pain on a tree first and obviously showing malice?
and can someone please tell me if there is a group called puta (people for the unethical treatment of animals)?

now that the 9/11 white wash papers have been published it should be said by others who are not historical fabricators that
it is clear that clinton and his cohorts should share most of the blame along with congress for the failure that led to the 9/11 scenario. clinton though caved into (or created himself) such a feel good politically correct atmosphere that it became impossible to act in a strong manner against bin laden. it goes with the whole idea of it being better to look good than feel good. simple math is fairly clear, he was in office eight years and thus had the time to take proper actions against bin laden and the merry pranksters. instead clinton allowed the terrrorists attacks to continue their rampant escalation leading to the bombings which should have been deemed an act of war in kenya & tanzania.
the following is a scathing article about clinton intel and its failures from the national review posted in april of 2003. note if you will the information regarding sandy berger's failures also, particularly interesting considering what has happened the past week:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/nr_comment042903.asp
so let me understand this correctly, sandy berger putting documents inside his socks was because of sloppiness? what did he forget to use foot powder that morning? interesting how the docs pertain to clinton's handling of al-qada.also interesting that berger was working for kerry also until he resigned this week when some of his follies (high crimes possibly?) have been exposed.....well, i am sure that there is nothing to it, afterall they are democrats and surely only doing what is good for america
and as bill clinton seemed to suggest this week - america should just laugh along.....

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/international/europe/19CONV.html?hp
 
here's an article that can best be compared to what the world faced when it decided to battle communism as a utopian belief system which only sowed hardship for the most part. it is this type of info which leads me to believe we have no idea what we are going to face (in terms of chaos) for the next twenty years at least..........

http://www.lepow.com/tag/
the above is one of the funniest things i have seen in a while. it says a lot for free speech........and a pretty good marketing sense.

a friend of mind just sent me the following regarding the effect 'the left' fears nader will have on the upcoming election. but i ask this, if the left is so worried about nader taking votes away from kerry shouldnt they have found a candidate that would simply be able to win the election by being able to get many more votes than bush? nader is clearly an ego driven 'politician' and i use the word politician losely. no body will remember him in 100 years time except when comparing him to the contemporary movement of trying to gain as much publicity for yourself to increase the amount of money you receive at speaking engagements or while performing on television. paris hiltion and ralph nader are alike in many ways. they both absolutely adore seeing themselves on magazine covers and in ten second news bits but they are all air. nader, i know, had his moment of importance when he was doing consumer advocacy in the 70's, but 30 years later he shows that he is really not concerned with the outcome of things as much as he is concerned about making himself look good. nader running in this election is a bit like a 60 year old man walking around in leather pants in miami who is well past his prime. you cannot get the 60 year old man to stop wearing the leather and you cannot get nader out of this election. while i understand that 'the left' is concerned that nader is ruining the election for kerry, what intriques me more is that the left is so willing to try and elect the wealthiest u.s. president of all time. perhaps instead of worrying about nader and his effect on kerry, they should start worrying about what is inside the heinz-kerry stock portfolio. ahhh wait, the republicans will probably help them with that too. anyone going to wal-mart today? here is the bulletin sent to me:

Progressive Unity News
Breaking Events in the 2004 Progressive Campaign to Beat Bush
Michigan GOP Openly Launches Nader Petition Drive
Bush Forces Now Driving Nader Ballot Efforts in At Least Five Battleground States: Oregon, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania & Michigan
The American Right has now openly launched a full-scale campaign in support of getting Nader on battleground state ballots. While in 2000 such support was covert or provided so late that disclosure was only required after the election, in 2004 there is now an open alliance: It's the GOP, Bush, Dick Armey... & Ralph Nader.
The "support" from right-wing Bush groups now seems to dwarf Nader's own campaign organization. In Pennsylvania alone, and fresh from its Nader work in Oregon, Dick Armey's right-wing "think-tank" Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) boasts an organization of 10,000 volunteers to get Nader on the ballot[1]. In Michigan, meanwhile, the state GOP has announced the Party will actively circulate petitions for Nader's ballot campaign[2]. Such massive reactionary forces backing Nader's campaign calls into question whether Nader needs any campaign allies or organization at all -- it hardly matters if the Green Party refuses Nader ballot access, or if the Reform Party grants it. Nader's campaign is now the golden child of America's most powerful political machine -- the Corporate and Religious Right.
Perhaps Nader has been correct all along: he's been saying he'd get lots of conservative support. But please, Mr. Nader, let's not confuse the Pro-Bush Right putting you on the ballot with them actually voting for you. They know how much harm your campaign can do to progressive causes. We only wish you could face the same reality.

"To say she's frustrated would be a light term," Rich Nichols, Jones's longtime lawyer and business manager, said. "But I think she's getting stronger as the Olympics get closer, because it's sort of like she's the Muhammad Ali of her era. Her integrity is being attacked and she has the credibility and the courage to stand up to that."

i offer the above quote taken from a ny times article this morning on marion jones and nominate it for the hypebole statement of the year. i dont remember ali ever being accused of taking steroids, what he did was take a political stand which was very unpopular with half a nation. just how does jones compare? but of course in this day and age of media gone mad, where 'rumors' about al-qada planning a terrorist attack are suddenly news again nothing really surprises me. just when do we think al-qada stopped planning an attack? did we think that they were on vacation, some kind of peace holiday? my point is that everyone wants their headline to be read, everyone wants their quote to be noticed, and everyone is merely a public relations smuck looking to sell more popcorn, get a fatter paycheck, and hope that we will show up for the next round of reality series entertainment.