Saturday, February 21, 2009
Netanyahu Determined to Stop Iran
Foreign Confidential....
Sources close to Israel's prospective Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, say he is firmly committed to stopping Iran's nuclear arms program--by any means necessary.
Netanyahu sees Iran--rather, the elimination or neutralization of the Iranian clerical fascist regime--as the key to Middle East peace, sources say. He believes that once Iran is taken out of the mix, its Islamist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, and secular ally, Syria, will fall into line or fold.On the Normalization of Evil
Perhaps the most serious and most dangerous problem we face is the normalization of evil. That’s the title of an essay published on Feb. 3, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal by Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by Islamofascist terrorists in Pakistan.
Click here to read the entire essay.
The title of the article, “The Normalization of Terror,” and its theme carry a devastating message, showing how the mainstream media, many of our leading universities, and people like Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers have succeeded in transforming the most despicable, immoral, genocidal degenerates into a respectable category — freedom fighters, part of a resistance movement — even though they are using the most illegitimate, immoral, and illegal ends to achieve their political goals.
These are the real moral degenerates of our time, with the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Moyers leading the parade of evil, followed by many in our elite universities and the mainstream media. They speak in Orwellian language, turning evil into good, murder and genocide into resistance, and blowing the brains out of young children into acts of heroism. What is most disturbing about this terrible trend is that barbarism seems to be going mainstream even in America.
This is the story that Judea Pearl tells so well and so powerfully that it is a classic of the English language and a message that should be engraved on the mind and soul of every civilized person.
At the end of his powerful message to establish moral clarity in a world gone mad, Mr. Pearl writes, “Danny’s picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.”
Mr. Pearl says it is now seven years after the murder of his son, and then asks, “Would Danny have believed that today’s world emerged after his tragedy?
“The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.
“Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South American reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheiky Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of the sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of ‘the resistance.’ Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnapers deserve international recognition.”
Judea Pearl would have thought that the murder of his son, Danny, would actually be a turning point in man’s inhumanity to man, and that the slaughter of innocents to communicate political messages would once and for all be universally condemned by civilized people and sent to the ashcan of history, where such gross barbarism is no longer tolerated, the place reserved for such atrocities as slavery, human sacrifice, and other shocking and totally discredited practices of an era long gone.
But the moral degenerates mentioned above have given these icons of evil, these most degenerate of moral degenerates, moral standing in our society and acceptance in elite circles of universities, of the media, and of political leadership. Mr. Pearl says we have reached the point where we are no longer disgusted by evil: “Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.”Indian Innovation Alive and Well
In spite of the global economic meltdown and terrorism, Indian innovation has not slowed down.
Edward Iwata reports from Mumbai:A grueling 20-hour flight from Silicon Valley, India’s megacity of Slumdog Millionaire fame seems far removed from the U.S. economic meltdown. Shoppers and diners fill stores and restaurants in the upscale Phoenix Mills shopping center and the trendy SoMo (South of Bombay) neighborhood.
Continue here.
Ritzy hotels are filled with business people and investors betting on the economic future of India. And nearly three months after the terrorists’ attack that led to 188 deaths here, locals and tourists still flock to the imposing Gateway of India monument and the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, which is open but surrounded by heavy, armed security who eye every visitor – especially a foreign journalist shouldering a heavy black laptop bag.Book Review: Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
From bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman comes a must-read travel book--of sorts-- in the tradition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Her riveting new memoir is a hilarious and haunting true adventure, filled with the memorable characters, psychological insights, and dazzling humor. Yet it also displays an accomplished literary eloquence and grandeur of scale that will entertain and enthrall old and new fans alike.
In 1986, fresh out of college, Susan Jane Gilman and her friend Chloe dreamed of hitting the road as modern-day female Kerouacs. Inspired by a placemat at the International House of Pancakes, they mapped out a trip circling the globe, then headed west--to China. At that point in time, the People's Republic had been open to backpackers for barely ten minutes. But Susan and Chloe relished the challenge. Having been told throughout their Ivy League schooling that they were "the future leaders of America," they were eager to boldly take on the world. Unfortunately, the world had other ideas.
Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche, an astrology book, and more chutzpah than sense, the two quickly found themselves on an epic misadventure. As they trekked off the map into the dusty, alien streets of Communist China, they were quickly stripped of everything familiar. At turns funny, erotic, and harrowing, their journey became a string of poignant encounters with Chinese and Westerners alike. Butit soon grew sinister. The two young women found themselves trapped in their own peculiar Heart of Darkness in the middle of rural China, and what began as a giddy expedition became a real-life international thriller that transformed their lives for forever.
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven is an astonishing, real-life story of hubris--and redemption--told with tremendous heart. Publishers Weekly says:Youthfully upbeat, Gilman (Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress) delivers an entertaining memoir of her ill-starred attempt to circumnavigate the globe after college graduation in 1986. Eager to embark on life but unsure exactly how to do it, the author, a New Yorker, and her fair-haired Connecticut trust-fund friend, Claire, both graduates from Brown, resolved to backpack around the world for a year and become heroines in their own epic stories. Starting in Hong Kong, the two naïve 21-year-olds, armed with Linda Goodman's Love Signs, volumes of Nietzsche and a year's supply of tampons, ran into shoals fairly immediately, freaked out by fleabag hotels, vermin, importunate fellow travelers and the debilitating effects of illness, homesickness and the sole company of each other. As they roughed it through Communist China, Claire grew increasingly paranoid and delusional, eventually bolting on a bizarre bus trip that got her picked up by the police. Gilman's amusing journey focuses tightly on these first shaky seven weeks, offering the full wallop of disorienting, in-the-moment, transformative travel adventures.
Sunday 22 February 2009
Herb Denenberg's opinion piece in The Bulletin should be required reading in Washington ... and in divinity schools and newsrooms across America. He writes:
They were young, brilliant, and ambitious. They set out to conquer the world. Instead, the world conquered them.
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