Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

Interesting local controversy:

One of my favorite quotes from Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers:
They're acting childish. If someone outside the school can give an added edge to education, that's great. Might be a little different if they're using them instead of teachers, that seems a little unfair to people who need work, but other than that, I've got no problem with volunteers.

But, Jetsetter, just one tip. If you try to post a title to your posts, or a summary above the quote, or below it, or something that's outside the quote identifying the story, quoting you would get a lot easier. I've pushed multiquote sometimes, just getting a couple of QUOTE-tags. :p



image-217614-panoV9free-lwyj.jpg


Caption competition time? :lol:
And the winner of the Margareth Thatcher at a European Summit Look-alike is..
 
I bet many people are afraid of Angela? I think she is lovely. ... Cleverest Politician in Europe by miles.

Oh on Newt - I have thought deeply about my views on religion and come to the conclusion that my previous belief was incorrect and changed. But I changed to something I believed, not what my wife thought, or anyone else friends or family and I have not tried to change anyone else's opinion in my family.

Newt, John Gummer (who he Ed?) and Tony Blair seem to have changed, at least in public, for the most spurious of reasons.

This makes me deeply suspicious of their motives and sincerity.
 
Last edited:
Speech

Netanyahu rejected those that call Israel a "foreign occupier", saying that no one could deny the "4,000 year old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land."
I reject the claim that Norway kills fish!

(And no one can deny the 4000 year old bond between the Palestinian people and the Jewish/Palestinian/other land.)

"Why has peace eluded us?" the prime minister posed as he began to discuss the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. "Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it."
That might be because there is about one million non-jews living there, but I take his point. That said, mr. Netanyahu, are you the same Netanyahu who brags about fucking up the peace process on purpose in the 1990s?

Reiterating a point he has made several times throughout his official trip to Washington, Netanyahu said that Israel "will not return to the indefensible borders of 1967."
Israel is so concerned with their defendable borders, or this buffer zone, that they've put about half a million civilians in the middle of it. That's like building expensive new apartment blocks at the sea side and using it as a dyke.

"Israel will be generous on the size of a Palestinian state, but will be very firm on where we put the border with it," Netanyahu said.
Israel needs to recognize that the lands they occupy on the West Bank is not Israel. It is the former state of Palestine.

I don't know.. perhaps we'll get somewhere this time, you know, it might work. But I doubt it.
 
That he is. Bibi is clever, too clever for his and his country's own good. He's like the drug addict, very good at convincing you to give him a loan, making you believe he's actually quit this time.
 
About time the Palestianians had an equivalent. They really should cut out all this terrorism crap (Its not going to work chaps just get loads of people killed and you hated through out the world by the very people you need to 'chum up' to) - its doing them no damn good at all, they are just being used themselves by some really dark 'forces'.

They need to get on the same pitch with Israel so they can start to play the game - logic dictates that they will then have a good chance of winning. They need to control their tempers.
 
Last edited:
Yeah. They do have a great leader in Salam Fayyad. However, Salam Fayyad isn't a politician, he's a statesman.

Fayyad is Gorbatchev, Bibi is Yeltzin.
 
Yeltzin actually pinched Gro Harlem Brundtland* in the butt during an official visit.

* Our PM at the time, our answer to Maggie, just from Labor.
 
That came out wrong. It is the future state of Palestine.
 
It's kind of sad when Netanyahu gets more support in the US Congress than the Israeli Knesset.
 
It's kind of sad that Netanyahu gets any support. He's a menace.
 
Sorry about the double post, just came over an opinion post on Jpost.com that annoyed me a little bit.

Norway: Purveyor of Anti-Semitism

Norway is falsely ranked among the leading countries concerning freedom of the press.

THAT THE OFFER OF FREE LECTURES ON THE MIDDLE East conflict by Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz, one of the most eloquent advocates of the Israeli case, was refused by three universities in Norway should come as no surprise. Besides being a substantial producer of oil and gas, the country is also a major purveyor of Israel hatred and anti-Semitism.

While I do agree Norway is quite pro-Palestinian, heck, we've been it since the Norwegian UN soldiers got back from Lebanon with their stories of what went on there, this is a moronic thing to write. It is like saying that "the United States is a major purveyor of anti-arab sentiment" because the United States is very pro-Israeli. It's blatantly untrue.

Several ministers of the Labor and Socialist Left governing parties have endorsed hate-inciting acts. The state TV and radio company NRK has an anti-Israel bias officially approved by the Broadcasting Council. There is a dominant anti-Israel attitude in the media and significant anti- Israelism in academia. Trade unions make periodic boycott calls. Some Lutheran bishops are major inciters. There is substantial anti- Semitism in schools.
Now, I follow political discourse in Norway better than most. I even read opinion material in many large, leading papers. I can't say I have ever seen "hate inciting acts" from Norwegian ministers. I suppose this is a continuation of the lie Jpost spread after a protest during the Gaza war, where Minister of Finance Kristin Halvorsen (Socialist Left) walked in front of a protest against the war. Among who knows how many people, there were a few people spouting "death to the jews". I've seen the video, the idiots were removed by the other protesters there. Jpost claimed Halvorsen had "walked in a protest, saying "death to jews". It is blatantly untrue.

I also have to say that I fail to see how in God's name one can relate support for a boycott as anti-semittism. When we were dealing with the EU over fishing rights, we didn't hold back because we hate the bloody Belgians, we did it because we're a little dependant on fishing.

As for media bias, yes it's true. We're just as biased as US media, or for that matter, the Jerusalem Post. That we're biased in the other direction is no defence, but I fail to see how it makes us anti-semites. We do devote a lot of coverage to the conflict, which is a bias in itself, but you know what? We report Palestinian acts of terrorism as often as we report Israeli violence or settlement activity, despite our bias.

Now, I won't deny anti-semitism in the Norwegian society. And I am sure no one will deny anti-arab sentiments in Israel, not to mention anti-romani sentiments in French society, and so on and so forth. It's unacceptable, it's sad, but it is reality. But that is not really his big point. His big point is that Norway as a nation is anti-semitic.



In 2008, comedian Otto Jespersen urged his nationwide TV audience to remember ?all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in the German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background.? There are also a number of true friends mainly among opposition politicians and parties, as well as pro-Zionist Christians.

Yeah, Otto Jespersen. Otto Jespersen is a genius of comedy. His black humor has been enjoyed by a couple of generations now, he's masterful at satire. Got that? Satire. He's a satirist. He's ironic. During the 1990s, his shows spouted supposed racism, ridicule of muslims, blacks, arabs, pretty much everyone. It was all irony, as was his (tasteless) joke about the bloody fleas. It never hurts to bring in context.

But they do not come close to balancing the bias propagated by the cultural elites.

For a long time this Norwegian reality went almost unnoticed abroad. It surfaced with a vengeance in the ?Wall Street Journal? in late March when Dershowitz attacked the heads of the universities who refused his offer. ?Only once before have I been prevented from lecturing at universities in a country. The other country was apartheid South Africa,? he observed. Then, turning to Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr St?re, who claims that Norway?s philosophy is ?dialogue,? Dershowitz wrote that ?Hamas and its supporters are invited into the dialogue, but supporters of Israel are excluded by an implicit, yet very real, boycott against pro-Israel views.?

Not accepting his offer to speak was dumb. I agree on that. But it has nothing to do with antisemitism, nothing at all. It has to do with anti-Israeli sentiment. We are talking about some very well educated academics who run these University departments that have anti-Israeli sentiments, not antisemitic sentiments. So stop calling it antisemitism. Another point worth noting is that the Norwegian government doesn't concern itself with who speaks at a University, that's something the government simply don't care about. Why are you bringing in Gahr St?re? Norway's recognition of the Hamas government in 2006 didn't happen because we're antisemitic or because we're Hamas-lovin', it happened because we're bloody pedantic. And because they DID win a democratic election, so it was the right thing to do. Not to mention it was a good opertunity wasted, but I've touched that point to tiresome levels before, so I'll leave it.

Jay Nordlinger of the ?National Review,? the only foreign journalist who occasionally writes about the Nordic country, usually does so sympathetically. Yet a few days after Dershowitz? article, Nordlinger remarked: ?Norway is a splendid country, and its citizens are right to be proud of it. But it has a problem, one common to many countries: anti-Semitism. Not just opposition to Israel [which is problematic enough], but plain, old-fashioned anti-Semitism.?

That's just plainly untrue. Norway is not antisemitic, it isn't even anti-Israeli. It's pro-Israel, every Norwegian prime minister and foreign minister in the last six decades have been, but during the last thirty years, we've added pro-Palestinian sentiments. And Norwegian governments show more sympathy for the Palestinian cause than Israel. You can disagree with it, but it's a far cry from anti-semitism.

Why, exactly, is it "problematic enough" to be in oposition to Israel? Have I missed the memo where we decided that we can't be critical of an illegal occupation and illegal settlements?


This rare foreign criticism of Norway was followed by an interview in ?The Jerusalem Post? with American author Bruce Bawer, who argued that Norway?s cultural elite has replaced its affinity ?to the Soviet Union with sympathy for the great totalitarian ideology of our time: Islamism. Thus they romanticize Palestinians and despise Israel.?

This isn't really true either. While stalinism had its followers in the 50s and 60s, it was largely replaced by affinity to Mao's China in the 70s. Norway's last stalinist party is NKP, and it has never been even close to attaining a one percent vote in a general election since the bloody 1930s. And while they got some seats in our parliament in the 1945 election (remember, Northern Norway wasn't freed by Britain or the US, but by Stalin's Russia. And they behaved themselves when they got there too. And left. To say there was a cultural elite affinity to the Soviet Union isn't just innacurate, it's untrue. And it's also untrue to say there's an affinity with islamism. It's a moronic claim.

He recommended that Norwegian Jews leave for Israel.

You have got to be kidding me.. Listen, I know our official position is the 67 borders, that we frown on illegal building, illegal occupations and illegal blockades, but we're not building camps. And if we start building camps, it will be if the Progress Party wins the next general election. And they won't put jews in them, they will put Somalians and arabs in them, before sending them back to "Africa".

Norway?s authorities, however, need the small organized Jewish community with 800 members in Oslo and Trondheim to help whitewash its anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism.

The community?s leaders believe that to survive as a collective, they should never fully expose what they and their children are confronted with.

The attitude of the ruling cultural elite toward Israel can best be described as a national mutation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As Dr.

Jekyll, it presents itself as a great supporter of human rights and major contributor of development aid; as Mr. Hyde it rarely misses an opportunity for Israel-bashing.

For crying out loud.. This is a consignment of geriatric shoe makers..

Where do the Israel hatred and anti- Semitism originate? The Lutheran creed, which dominated the country in the past explains much. In the 19th century, Norway was the last European country to let Jews in.

Yeah, it was a piece of our constitution. We didn't let in Jesuites either. We were very anti-semitic in 1814, in 1855, we repealed that part of our constitution. That means it was repealed three times by three parliaments, in effect meaning it was voted through in 1849, 1852 AND 1855. Pointing to this is like comparing Switzerland with Saudi Arabia because they didn't give women the vote before 1971

During World War II, it also behaved like Jekyll and Hyde. While a significant number of the Jews were helped by the resistance to flee to Sweden, more than 750 others were arrested by the Norwegian authorities, who, after confiscating their possessions, delivered the captive Jews to the German occupiers. Almost all were killed in Auschwitz. Norway is also one of a handful of countries in which kosher slaughter is outlawed.

Listen mate.. during WW2, we had a bloke called Quisling. He was a traitor, and the police forces his men led carried it out. My GRANDFATHER was one of the many Norwegians who payed during the war, spending four years in a concentration camp in Germany. Do not talk like that to us, it makes you look like an arse.

It preceded Nazi Germany in passing a bill to this effect by a large parliamentary majority in 1929. However, to this day Norway has not seen fit to outlaw whaling and the brutal slaying of large numbers of seals.

Kosher slaughter is something which I am not competent to speak on. I believe it is to a large extent equal to Halal slaughter? And why bring up seals and whales?

Norway is falsely ranked among the leading countries concerning freedom of the press. That is because in this democracy, censorship is executed by the editors of the papers rather than by the state. The end result, though, makes for far less than a free market of ideas, especially when it comes to issues like anti-Semitism and Israel hatred.

A typical example is a letter of complaint last August by then-US senator Sam Brownback to the Norwegian ambassador in Washington about the hatred against Jews and Israel. To back up his claims, Brownback attached a 10-point document from the Simon Wiesenthal Center with serious allegations of hate-supporting acts by the Norwegian king and several ministers, including Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister St?re. Only the small Christian ?Norge Idag? newspaper mentioned Brownback?s letter. All other media ignored it, even though it is unlikely that an American senator had ever written anything as critical of Norway and its leaders. But serious public debate, as is often the case there, was stifled.

Yeah, I remember it. I also remember it was about this time that Israeli embassy's around the world tried to brand Norwegian critisism as anti-semitism. We don't have gagging orders in Norway. You do in Israel. We don't let the army destroy photographers memory cards in Norway. We don't shoot photographers in the back of the head with .223 rounds in Norway, we don't beat up lapland journalists who's been abroad to get a journalistic prize when they come to our border crossings, we do not give anyone the right to deny someone a press pass because they're being uncooperative. You know who has all these characteristics in their treatment of members of the press? I'll let you guess.

That said, I agree there's a bias. But the press is still free, you can print pretty much anything in Norway. Norwegian media is in no way more slanted than US media or the Jerusalem Post. It's just slanted the other way.


 
Last edited:
Oh we just have had Obama on the BBC saying 'US and Ukania' have a special and essential relationship - that is bollocks. We are the US's lick spittal and all Americans know it - we are just fooling ourselves - well Ukanian Politicians do.
 
Sorry about the double post, just came over an opinion post on Jpost.com that annoyed me a little bit.
Just face it; They'll never be able to see that criticizing Israeli politics and settlements on the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank != anti-Semitism.
 
Oh we just have had Obama on the BBC saying 'US and Ukania' have a special and essential relationship - that is bollocks. We are the US's lick spittal and all Americans know it - we are just fooling ourselves - well Ukanian Politicians do.

Personally I have never thought of the UK like that. Although I do have relatives in the London area and I really enjoyed my vacation there.
 
Top