Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

[A] Christian who hates Jews today for what he believes some Jews did 2,000 years ago only reflects on the low moral, intellectual and religious state of that Christian. Imagine what Jews would think of a Jew who hated Egyptians after watching "The Ten Commandments," and you get an idea of how most Christians would regard a Christian who hated Jews after watching "The Passion."

Here's David Frum, who uses the occasion to suggest Gibson's anti-Semitism qualifies him to become head of the U.N. Can you imagine him taking such a jocular approach if, say, Louis Farakhan had been ranting similar things about Jews?

"We've had Hezbollah agents that came across the border with Mexico," Jerome Corsi, co-author of "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders", told Sean Hannity during an appearance Wednesday night on Fox News Hannity & Colmes.

Appearing with co-author and Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist, Corsi agreed with Hannity that border security is important for national security because Hezbollah terrorists could be coming across the border with weapons of mass destruction...

Citing the arrest and conviction of Hezbollah agents who had already infiltrated the U.S. across the border, Corsi said: "They are in federal prison. They were convicted for sending money back from Detroit to Hezbollah agents in Lebanon. So we have definitive proof that we have Hezbollah - [the terrorist group] that Israel is fighting today - sleeper cells that we know are here."

Asked by Hannity if he thought we could be hit by Hezbollah agents here in the United States, Gilchrist said: "I would not be surprised if we took another attack. Everyone feels that way. It's just that no one knows where it's going to be."

Today's Commie Commentary. Today's excerpt from Challenge: Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of Progressive Labor Party is headlined, "Chinese Workers Suffer Under Capitalism." It says of the AFT leadership:

"Although it cries crocodile tears for the workers of China, it refuses to condemn the capitalist system that is exploiting workers and pushing us towards a potential war with China. The AFT leadership continues to mislead workers by falsely portraying the problems in China as stemming from communism, when in fact they stem from capitalism."

"The American government is not the only source of evil in this world. American corporations are not the only source of evil in this world." – United Federation of Teachers special representative Leo Casey, speaking against inclusion of an anti-U.S. amendment into Resolution 38, dealing with worker abuses in China. My apologies to Casey for compromising him by quoting him in the newsletter of evil.

Delegates Pass "Boycott Wal-Mart" Resolution. Resolution 40 called for AFT to "urge members to patronize union stores and to protest Wal-Mart's presence across the country," as well as to seek legislation "which requires that all covered employers spend a minimum level of funding on healthcare for employees based on the number of hours worked in the year." The union's Organizing and Collective Bargaining Committee had recommended the resolution be referred to the Executive Council, but the vote to adopt the resolution was overwhelmingly in favor.

AFT Calls Higher Education Teaching the Wal-Mart of the Professions." That was the headline one delegate wanted to avoid when he offered an amendment to Resolution 29 Â? Addressing the Academic Staffing Crisis. The resolution asserted that more than 70 percent of all college and university instructors are part-time or temporary. The resolution then stated that "this trend makes higher education one of the most extreme examples nationwide of the trend toward decreasing job security and benefits Â? the Wal-Mart of the professions."

A delegate moved to strike that last phrase because he was worried that headlines would compare academe to Wal-Mart. Since I was the only reporter on the floor at the time, I decided to fulfill his prediction.

The deletion was defeated and the original wording was approved by the delegates.

Today's Commie Commentary. Today's excerpt from Challenge: Revolutionary Communist Newspaper of Progressive Labor Party discusses the international conspiracy masterminded by the Council on Foreign Relations and accuses the AFT leadership of complicity with CFR schemes.

"Our previous AFT president was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is a highly significant think tank that hammers out analysis and strategy for the U.S. ruling class. It's such an important think tank that Â? when it decides, for example, that war should be waged against a particular country Â? then most of the key members of the State Department and the President's National Security Council, who are already CFR members, simply follow the plan."

Here we must congratulate the revolutionary communists of the PLP, for they have succeeded where others have failed Â? they have gone so far left they have met the far right. Their views of the CFR mirror those of the John Birch Society.

Though the term nihilism was first popularized by Ivan Turgenev (see below), it was first introduced into philosophical discourse by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), who used the term to characterize rationalism, and in particular Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy in order to carry out a reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to nihilism, and thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some type of faith and revelation.

AFT Passes Strong Pro-Israel Resolution. Delegates heatedly debated, then passed, a special resolution on state-sponsored terrorism and the crisis in the Middle East that strongly supports Israel in its actions against Hamas and Hezbollah.

The resolution states that AFT "condemn the bombings, killings and kidnappings by Hezbollah and Hamas that precipitated this current crisis," and that the union recognizes "Israel's right and responsibility to defend its borders and citizens from terrorist attacks and other threats to its sovereignty." The resolution also seeks implementation of U.N. Resolution 1559 and support for the elected government of Lebanon.

The resolution passed by a good margin, but not easily. An attempt was made to substitute language that would have condemned both sides and called for a ceasefire and peace talks, but this was rejected on a close vote.

Herb Magidson of New York, who introduced the resolution on behalf of the AFT Executive Council, noted that Israel's enemies have consistently refused to use nonviolent means to achieve their goals. "Rosa Parks didn't blow up a bus," he said.

These feelings will certainly arise again before the convention is over, during the debate over Resolution 31. The AFT International Relations Committee examined all the submitted resolutions on Iraq, and chose to present Resolution 31, slightly amended, as the one with which they concur. It calls on U.S. leaders to "withdraw all troops, bases and military operations in a rapid and timely manner."

The first thing the terrorists did, they had guns, they started firing pistols in the air. But the forces of good, the good guys beat them back, and they call for a ceasefire, PLO and everybody else and they had just little pistols and, you know, penny ante little weapons. They called for a ceasefire, and during the ceasefire they loaded up with rifles and then they attacked again. Forces of good beat 'em back with their rifles, and so they called for another ceasefire -- and then they loaded up with hand grenades, and we beat 'em back with their hand grenades. Their hand grenades weren't enough for the forces of good. They called for a ceasefire. Then they loaded up with suicide bombers. They started sending their kids out there with bombs strapped to them and blowing up innocent people all throughout parts of Israel -- and then we beat them back with that, and they called for a ceasefire. During the ceasefire they ratchet up again, and they load up with Katyushas, Katyusha missiles. But the forces of good beat 'em back, and so they called for a ceasefire!

They're always calling for a ceasefire!

Do you note it's always the bad guys that are really leading the call for a ceasefire? In this case you've got some of the world, "There needs to be a ceasefire and so forth, and the Israelis need to do this," but the bottom line in most instances it's the bad guys after they've got their clocks cleaned start waving the white flag saying, "We need a ceasefire." After the Katyushas now they've come back with rockets and when the forces of good, beat them back, what will they come back with next after their next demand for a ceasefire? The bottom line is this. The moral, my friends, is that ceasefire does not mean end of hostility. Ceasefire simply means, "Time-out! Time-out! We Hezbollah guys need to find a more powerful weapon and we'll be back at you when we get it." There is no such thing as a ceasefire in their lexicon; there's no such thing as a ceasefire in their dictionary. It's nothing more than a ruse. So when they demand ceasefires or when they have their allies around the world demanding cease-fires, it's simply to buy some time to amp up, to load up and to increase their own armaments -- and Bolton is exactly right.

The notion that you just declare a ceasefire and act as if that's going to solve the problem, I think, is simplistic. Among other things, I want somebody to address the problem of how you get a cease-fire with a terrorist organization. I'd like to know when there's been an effective ceasefire between a terrorist organization and a state in the past. This is a different kind of situation, and I'm not sure that that sort of old thinking, conventional thinking works in a case like this.

Not letting me change lanes is irritant number one. And Dallas motorists are jedi shaolin masters of that driving technique.

There are 38 religious symbols approved for placement on government-issued grave markers and memorials for military veterans, but the pentacle isn't one of them.

The five-pointed star within a circle that represents the Wiccan religion, a neo-pagan, earth-based belief system, is not on the list.

As a result, the space reserved for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart's memorial plaque at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, Nev., remains empty. Stewart, 34, was killed in September 2005 when his Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. He was a follower of the Wiccan tradition, and his wife is fighting to have the fact engraved in stone.

...

Earlier applications by Wiccan groups and families have not been approved because they were incomplete or because of a prior requirement that a centralized organization be listed on the application, according to Josephine Schuda, a V.A. spokeswoman. The Wiccan religion has no centralized body. That requirement has since been eliminated.

Every atheist can get a symbol on their markers or headstones; humanists can; Presbyterians can, but not Wiccans.

According to federal guidelines, only approved religious symbols—of which there are 30—can be placed on government headstones or memorial plaques. Included among the 30 approved symbols are those that represent such mainstream religions as Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. The list also includes more obscure religions like Konko-Kyo Faith and Seicho-No-Ie. And while the list does not include a symbol for the Wiccan faith, incredibly enough, it does include symbols for atheism and humanism.

Whatever one's opinion might be about the Wiccan faith, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution provides for religious freedom for all individuals of all faiths—whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Wiccans and others.

The United States Supreme Court has routinely held that viewpoint discrimination by the government against particular expressions of religion is unconstitutional. In the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Sherbert v. Vernor, Justice William J. Brennan observed, "The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any governmental regulation of religious beliefs." In that same opinion, Justice Brennan wrote that "Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities."

Thanks mostly to U.S. President Harry S. Truman and his “susceptibility to Zionist influence,” Israel came into existence in 1948. [1] Humanity, and in particular, the Palestinians, have paid dearly for his decision. The land on which the Palestinians had been living for centuries, in peace, with a minority Jewish population, has been gradually transformed into an Apartheid state by the machinations of the Zionist Movement. That Apartheid state, in turn, is today dominated by Israel’s Death-Mayhem-and- Occupation Machine. [2]

One wonders: What would the world look like today, if the state of Israel had not been created in 1948? Its improvident formation seems to have set in motion a chain of events, mostly negative, in the affairs of Mankind. In the movie, “Click,” the lead character finds a “universal remote” that allows him to rewind to different parts of his life and to change what had happened. If I possessed such a “universal remote” and could stop President Truman from aiding and abetting the establishment of an Israeli state, then, it is my speculation, (a theory), that the following 25 propositions would probably be our present day reality. They are:

1. The U.S. would not have any enemies in the Islamic World.

2. There would be no Al-Qaeda Terrorist Network.

3. Gasoline would be selling for less than $1 a gallon.

4. There would have been no 9/11.

5. There would be no USA Patriot Law.

6. There would be no Homeland Security Agency.

7. The Israeli Lobby's "unmatched power" over the U.S.' foreign policy, for over four decades, would not had existed. (Its support for the Iraqi War was deemed by the experts to be "critical.")

8. There would also not have been any Neocon ideologues; like Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Richard Perle, et al, to help, (along with other "Special Interests"), to push the U.S. into an illegal war with Iraq. [4]

9. Iran would not be the next target for U.S. aggression. (No Israel. No "A Clean Break" document. No Israeli Lobby. No Neocons. No need for the U.S. to attack Iran.) [5]

10. The Zionist fink, Jonathan Pollard, wouldn't be in prison for stealing U.S. military secrets and hawking them to Israel.

The Kossack is forgetting another important episode of history - the Cold War. Saudi Arabia and Iran under the Shah were our Cold War allies. All things being equal, the Iranian theocracy would have still happened, as would the hostage crisis and Iranian involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing. There would still have been an al-Qaeda, since support for the Saudi government was/is one of Osama bin Laden's grievances with the US.

Also, if there had been no Israel, there would have been no Jordan. Historic Palestine would have been made into one nation, not two, and King Abdullah would have been the reigning monarch. Since there would have been no 1967 war, there would have been no flood of Pali refugees in Jordan in its wake. Instead, the Palestinian Arab would have been subjects of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine all along. And the Palis would still have mounted insurrections against Hashemite rule. Any guesses as to which side of that conflict the US would have picked?

They see that when we try to make nice and compromise we get terror attacks. And when we're tough and aggressive we get terror attacks. Nothing we do seems to lower the motivation to slaughter Israeli civilians -- men, women, or children -- and in the case of Hamas, to see the state of Israel destroyed.

[T]he art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Liberals are sounding a sour note over U2 rocker Bono's backing of a video game that depicts Venezuela as a banana republic led by a power-hungry tyrant.

The "Venezuela" in the game is a fictitious country, but lefties are distressed that it demonizes Venezuela's real leader Hugo Chavez, known for his Marxist domestic policies and virulent anti-Americanism.

A player assumes the role of a mercenary sent to Venezuela, where a dictator has seized control of the nation's oil.

David Lindorff, co-author of the new book "The Case for Impeachment," said: "This kind of right-wing war game plays to the propaganda message that the Bush White House has been pushing for years: that Chavez is a dictator oppressing his people . . . Bono should use his financial interest in the company to kill it, or better, he should pull out entirely as an investor."

[S]ince taking office in 1998, Chavez has, among other things, seized control of the nation's broadcast media, rewritten Venezuela's constitution to enhance his powers, purged critics in the military and sent thousands of young Venezuelans to Castro's Cuba for indoctrination.

Why is everybody in such a fuss over what to do about The New York Times’s exposure of the government’s secret anti-terrorist-financing program? Isn’t there a perfectly good precedent for how it should be handled, currently on display in the form of Patrick Fitzgerald’s CIA leak investigation?

Torture is a loaded word that has come to mean in newspaper accounts the inflicting of pain or even discomfort for no legitimate reason. Thomas Bock, national commander of The American Legion, says the term "torture" has been very loosely defined and has "disoriented" the American people to what exactly is happening down there. He said a U.N. report on Guantanamo seemed to regard "leaving the lights on" for a detainee a form of torture. Bock says he has talked to many veterans, including former Prisoners of War, and the "treatment comparison level is just night and day" between what the U.S. does to its enemies and what our enemies do to our soldiers.

There is no evidence that U.S. forces torture anyone. If misconduct occurs during interrogations, which are designed to produce intelligence information to save American lives, it is found and punished. Accuracy in Media has devoted countless commentaries to the fact that it was the Department of Defense, not the media, which uncovered the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Nile Gardiner and James Carafano concluded, in a Heritage Foundation report on U.N. allegations of torture at Guantanamo, that it is "based largely upon recycled allegations, without legal foundation, from well-coached former detainees."

That I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.

And I won't forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.

And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.

Springsteen's song (which I was surprised to hear at a July 4th event) is tinged with sarcasm...'Born in the USA' doesn't celebrate the best spirits of America; instead, it speaks of soldiers who are forgotten when they come home and of the hard knocks that the average American has to endure...it speaks about real problems in America, not simply looking back at our past and glorifying what has occurred. The seminal contrast, though, is that after the past five years, no longer do patriotic songs like Lee Greenwood's ring true for me. They now remind me of the need to burnish your pro-American-ness that seems so prevalent in politics today. Springsteen's song isn't outwardly patriotic, but, like the left wing, it doesn't need to. Deep down, we know that we are patriotic; we don't need to show it off at every possible moment.