Open Thread… this and that. 31 July 2006
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
Olmert promises wider war… and the so-called cessation of air strikes in the south … lasted a few hours. Called in to support the ground troops. (CNN/Nic Robertson reports that wider war is happening, much artillery, flights, troop movement.)
I doubt any one was surprised. The power of their weapons and the US as an unquestioning backer gives them the power to be evil. Sorry, just my take. Not going to waste time hiding it.
Scary when a child of collaborationists in an apartheid society is considered some ice floe of sanity. Very scary. That would be Condi.
I caught the BBC World News – they walked a camera thru Bint Jbeil. Devastation – as far as one could see. Jenin Rules. The reporters said the IAF pounded it for days.
Lebanon Updates Link to a map with July 12 -29 tracking.
Editorial from The Daily Star (Lebanon). Somebody has to say it.
Hezbollah (report at TDS) has claimed to have struck another Israeli ship – Israel denies it.
Bob Parry on Moral Clarity, the USA and the Mid-East.
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More to come on the Blahhggers, BlogSnots etc., til then:
Stop Me Before I Vote Again has been rumbling and ragging on that party tool and elections bleat machine, Kos.
To the pure all things are pure
While at SMBIVA I noticed a posting that Kos has banned ”PA Progressive”, whom I remember from the Casey / Pennachio threads – before I was banned. And landed on this tid bit at his/her site. And this tid bit too.
This too from Rogouski at Counterpunch … [apologies, I forget who posted the link to the preceding post…]
Have fun.
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UPDATE, 10:30 pm PT
Dahr Jamail, War Crimes and Consequences (Iraq) … and
also from Dahr Jamail, Civilians bear the brunt … (Lebanon)
UNIFIL officials expect Israelis to begin to level whole villages (Blanford to The Daily Star). NO shock, they took along the reconfigured tanks, the sort used in GAZA and Jenin.
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Update, 2 AM, PT.
These from Angry Arab gave me a laugh …
Grand (never) Ayatullah Sistani issued a statement agaisnt Israeli aggression in Lebanon. It reads: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Comments (27)
And this:
The Syrian president ordered an increase in the level of “preparedness and alertness” of the Syrian armed forces. The preparedness and alertness of the Syrian armed forces is measured on a scale from 0 to 5. So yesterday, it went up from -80 to -70. I took notice.
posted by As’ad @ 5:09 PM link
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UPDATE, 7:00 am
Israeli Amb to the UN… Gillerman is on Wash Journal. God forbid you call in with a criticism. Shakes his finger at American citizens. And at Pres Carter.
Carter opinion piece in the Wapo today. Gillerman called Jimmy Carter a “not very good president” who is now an “embarrassment”. Love how powerful men like Gillerman get with an F-16, or two, in their shorts.
Jon Lee Anderson is up in The New Yorker with The Battle for Lebanon.
– Angry Arab on the Jon Lee Anderson article.
And last, poor old Pat Buchanan has one chock full of quotes… I have to laugh, I agreed with Pat along about 1991 too, something he said about the [now] former Yugoslavia. 😉
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UPDATE, 7:30 am
Have to laugh. That finger Gillerman shakes, it snaked itself back around. WSJ editorial page shakes a very big finger at the Israeli war machine. Read a certain why, it is entertaining. The problem is, the leadership of Israel – and that of the US – are like caged, crazed animals when laughed at.
So, Iran in October? You know the tarnished war making nations wanna bring out the really big guns and blow away a big nation.
Wishes, lies and dreams, we are fully delusional.
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Marisacat 
Olmert’s comments today really do beg the question- what was Rice talking about? Rice was “convinced” that a ceasefire was on the table after her Israeli visit. Olmert, mere hours later says that there will be “no ceasefire in the coming days”. Surely Rice was privy to the Israeli intention to expand the ground offensive, and scuttle any ceasefire in the near term. Obviously, her visit was a war planning exercise, wherein the two strategized how to maximize Hezbollah loses before the pressure was so great a compromise would have to be reached. Rice knew of Olmert’s plans, otherwise she was simply lied too- anyone believe that?
I sure don’t – believe she was flat out lied to…
Norman SOlomon/FAIR (linked to back a couple posts) has reported that there has been a power point demonstraton being made by high level IDF inside America for over a year (to journos and think tanks etc), detailing a minimum 3 week offensive.
BUT: The thing was, the Israelis have pushed from the beginning. One reason I kept titling posts “hard slog, no end in sight” “Occupation” etc.
This was never to be a quick limited strike.
I linked to a Tanya Reinhardt piece that states the plan fro years has been to “clear” the land to as far inland as they could get, twoard the Litani River, echoing the old original Ben Gurion era “natural borders” of Israel.
Aerial photo of destruction of Haret Hreik, a southern Beirut neighborhood, about 2km NE of the Airport. The photo is via Ogle Earth. Here is the photo after IAF bombing.
Haret Hreik
Note that North on this map is towards the left.
To locate where this is in Beirut (and compare to its pre-war status) look at this Google map (which is oriented in the usual top-is-north fashion):
Beirut. To locate Haret Hreik on this Google map, locate the Beirut Airport first. Follow the lower runway (the one pointing NE) about 2km and then move NW 1 km. You should be able to identify the large boulevard that is on the right of the first aerial photo (which recall is south).
If you do a closeup (click on the +) you can get an idea of the destruction. This is just 1 neighborhhood.
what pressing issues is the “progressive” :::cough cough::: partAy© blog discussing this early tuesday morning on the sidebar?
:::snip:::
:::snip:::
oh for god’s sake. What utter bullshit.
I really don’t worry about the pocket linings of party lackays.
Question…
it’s our something.
Or is the US just giving Israel room to strengthen their defenses before the US attacks Syria and/or Iran….there seems to be a logical (albeit insane) plan… first get the Syrians out of Lebanon… then attack and destroy Lebanon… it is all leading up to something…
well, there is America in a nutshell:
“YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO HELP A BUSINESS MAXIMIZE THEIR BUSINESS PLAN.”
Jeez … un-fucking-believable.
It’s not much to ask.
Just keep those ad-blockers off until his music career takes off.
Or until Jerome and he get the Cathdral of the Star of Bethlehem up and running.
After all, as he explained to the Swedes, a Senate career would make insufficient use of his talents.
CSTAR,
thanks for the links. Ogle Earth looks interesting.
amazing photo.
As I was making coffee in the kitchen, one of the worst (they are all awful) of the “studio generals” (MSNBC/ Francona) as giving a blow by blow of the shelling from land and sea plus aerial bombardment of Eit al Shaab (or close sp to that).
Lots of euphemisms in use. Soon to move to “mopping up”, or so they indicated.
Pretty open that they plan to “clear to the Litani River”.
pyrrho – since you seem to be in the know, then how many dedicated servers is kos running or do you think it would take to run? Or is Kos running out of his own office space?
Lets say he is paying a web-hosting company, how much is it costing to run them? Because it seems that it is cheaper to run off of a Linux server and it would make sense considering the software of scoop.
CrystalTech – charges $79 month to run a Windows dedicated server, but it charges $49 month to run a Linux dedicated server. That is base price, so lets say $150 – 200 for full on either one and we go to the extreme, $450 – 500.
But the way you put it, it is the ads that are paying for the servers, however, a person has the option to subscribe From the site itself.
So lets go with this example:
Based on a safe estimate say – $3,000 monthly to cover salaries, server cost, advertising and other miscellaneous items. If they were able to signup 200 customers during the first eight months, they would need to charge $15 per customer to cover the $3000 monthly overhead. If they charged only $2 per customer, they would need to signup an estimate of 2,000 customers to do the same.
The way kos talks, I think he has covered this base by having people subscribe. He is not charging a large fee therefore, it is easy to assume, he has enough sympathy from folks out who are willing to spend the $40 a whole $8 savings. I don’t think Kos is worried at all, not when you will pimp for him.
Re: “Our Cambodia” or our “Something”
It really is somekind of reverse “Rhineland”. It has been planned for a long time, its consequences well understood, and its just the part of the opening moves for wider conflict.
Or so I think, but then I have a really hard time not believing that the Bush Junta is really trying to “Immanetize the Eschaton” or at least trying to push up oil prices. Maybe its my “meds” or something…
I’ve lost the link but Sy Hersh had an article (2003 post invasion, iirc) about the training of Pesh Merga “elite” squads by Mossad. For those who may not know Syria and Iran (effing Hizbullah lovers) have their own restive Kurdish populations…
BTW Turkey is asking Washington why they can’t do to the PKK what the IDF is dong to Hizbullah: Turkish Daily News
Fuck KOS and all of his enablers,pimps, and dupes. I’d be just completely amused by their shenanigans if they didn’t co-op “progressive” and “liberal” for their shitty coporate “centrism”
They are fucking clumsy coporate political operatives giving blowjobs to those above their paygrade, and recieving fellatio from those “under” them.
And of course we’ve all recieved our wet noodle lashings for daring to speak truth.
Anyhoo, and completely OT, but while driving through northern Mexico yesterday I briefly got heard ARAbic music on the radio. Arabic vocals and drums. I don’t know what station it was comming from (88.7MHz) and it was full of static, but it definetely stood out against the Nirteno and Corridos that are on the other two stations. It quickly faded, but I know I heard it…
I sure hope that fence the NG is building down here works…
It sure is hot for December.
He’s indispensable.
Deepest Troat, I’m not up to date, but I’m pretty sure kos owns the servers. If I remember right, he used to pay someone to (physically) host them and to plug them into the internet, and I imagine that’s still how it works. My guess is that his biggest expense would be bandwidth, which must be enormous.
“Gillerman called Jimmy Carter a “not very good president” who is now an “embarrassment”.”
One hell of statesman, with an actual record to prove it. Carter’s op-ed articulates what is meant by “honest broker”. Interesting that despite all the cries from the Israeli’s about Hezbollah not adhering to UN requirements, Carter falls back on Israel’s “illegalities” as the underpinning for the current crisis. People can knock Carter all they want, but he would have excelled during this crisis.
Hey Tuston!
apologies that your comments were delayed, Word Press mis routed your comments to ”Spam”. And I took the liberty to the delete the dupe.
BTW, I just read this am in The Daily Star (lebanon) that the incoming chief of military, replacing Ozbek, in Turkey is a real hardliner.
Oh kos. LOL. Party and campaign operatives. Messy!
Of course Carter would have excelled. He actually has a record of accomplishment in this arena/region to prove it. I saw, on Cspan, the former brokers and players from his Egypt/Israel peace treaty gathered at an event for them, Carter included, perhaps as the guest of honor, and the Arab members had nothing but respect for him. It was sad, in a way, surrounded as it was with full blown neoconned BushTimes. But what tells us even more that he is the best man we have on tap for the job is the fact that he was knocked off Kerry’s list by AIPAC for the crime of being too e-word, ie, evenhanded. Nothing better to recommend him, in my book.
They read a bit of Carter’s op-ed on WJ, which I caught, and doncha just know, some idiot called in to give us – we the ignorant – a history lesson on why Carter was the worst person to solve the ME conflict, because he had so terribly “undermined” the shah by “pushing to westernize his govt too much.” It kills me how so many Americans sense of our history with Iran begins and ends with the hostages, too: Good Us v Evil Them.
Um, not quite. As for the shah, if Ike hadnt toppled Mossadegh in 1953, this doltish caller wouldnt have had to worry about what Carter did or didnt do with the shah at all, as the shah would never have been installed by Ike. And, therefore, the US and Israel wouldnt have had to shriek and cry at all over the dastardly religious bullies/mullahs/ayatollahs who followed, because they wouldnt have followed… with an attitude understandably hostile to the US, to boot. (Mossadegh used to like the US a lot… when Truman was in power and exercised the wisdom not to bite the Brit bait). Unfortunately, Ike went along with the Brits’ nagging push to overthrow the only SECULAR democracy in the ME, ever, led by the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh. Brits were greedy to hold onto their sweetheart oil deal that MM wanted to redo to make it a bit fairer to the impoverished Iranians (what else -western oil, eastern sand) and Ike bit to do the coup, cause nationalism looked too bad for capitalism, and too good for communism (under every bed, those commies! Guatemala, too… Coup #2 for Ike)…
Good ole Ike. Nice military industrial finale, but not without his wormy legacy, leaving us all those unintended consequences that latter day Bushites are attending to quite stupidly, with a fullblown military industrial complex at hand. (I think Ike left some Castro coup plans in the queue for Kennedy, too. Truman, however, left us the ‘honor’ of being the only power so far to have attacked with nukes. Ugh.)
And how bout those Brits. Ever the willing partners for ME empire by another more euphemistic name. Just love that crappy mid east cartography they dumped off during Empire, final chapter, too.
Anyway, Carter op-ed looked good. I will read it all to see all he says. I have the feeling he was angry when he wrote it. I hope so. It will make it all the better.
I thought I might watch the Gillerman, but only for the satisfaction of seeing him get called out by some callers a la Rep Ackerman with his bill to sanction the Palestinians. (Yes, let’s make them suffer more, why dont we?) But if Gillerman is the one doing the finger wagging, I dont think I can stomach it.
Ugh… now there is a horrid cretin from AEI on Cspan, Danielle Pletka, dissing Carter for his incredible “antipathy toward Israel,” as “shown in his writings.” Havent seen those writings but I might find them laudible, going by her ‘recommendation.’ Ah, satisfaction is mine … now caller confronting her with: If we ever found ourselves at war with Israel, on which side would she fight? Nice one, caller. Not too big on war “what ifs” but this one was satisfying.
NYCee the Gillerman from thsi am is very very irritating. pro Israel callers, but for a woman at the end and may be only two others. Gillerman sets my teeth on edge. Almost as much as Pletka. What a bitch. I caught her recently on a panel (Iraq panel to compliment al Maliki visit), and an audience member raised what I thought was a legitimate issue… forget some of it now but it was a ? related to Shi’ites. She flat out called the audience member a racist. He had a look of pure shock on his face at her response.
I mean it is just hard to make that ASSESSMENT off one question. So indicative of what is going on to shut all manner of dissent and just trying to ASK things.
Even if you think there may be a racist undertone, deal with the question, at the least.
Marisa, nice links today. (Btw, that was me with the Rogouski, but no need for apologies. I forgive! lol.)
Buchanan. Let me just say re Buchanan, that, amazingly, we have taken to saying, round my humble abode, that if it were a choice, say, btw Hillary or Schumer and Buchanan for prez, we would go for Buchanan. I am 180 from his abortion stance, his immigration stance, etc, but foreign policy has gotten to such a crisis point with this country, so nightmarish, growing to such a blowbackable crescendo, that I prioritize around it, and feel much better with his far saner view of how we should conduct ourselves in the Mid East.
Maybe they got the PRO Israel robo website attackers to queue up on the phone lines…? Sometimes its just the luck of the draw, of course. However, the PRO Israel callers have been angrily reacting to what they see as an overabundance of antiIsrael/USA callers, so someone may have been clued in and may very well have lined up the troops to counter the… sanity. (Maybe Ackerman! 🙂
Do you have that link re the website attackers, btw?
gong – he doesn’t own his servers. His site is hosted by Voxel Dot Net
From Voxel He could go with a couple of plans.
Voxel dedicated servers – Monthly Cost – lost price $299 – $699
Voxel Managed Cluster (RAILs) – Monthly Cost – $488
I place my bet that it is the Managed Cluster, why? This from there site: RAILs in the Real World
We all know who Kuro5hin is right? If not, just a refresher – the creator of the Scoop software. Kos’ partner and crime Rusty Foster.
It gets even better … this is from a 2004 SF Gate article – Bloggers find ways to profit
$1,000 a month for ads at $375 a week. Kos charges double. He is not hurting and I doubt the there is a bandwidth issue either.
NYCee… which ”website attackers”? I am fuzzy on the reference… help!
Shimon Peres on Lehrer. Again, can hear the anger from Israelis that Lebanon went from majority Christian to majority Shi’ite.
Well whoop. Things change.
Goodness, what is it people love so much about Armando’s diaries?
“Heh” … (Ugh)
I was on the Mash diary about Qana massacre, the sequel, btw, when he made his comment about the Israel critical diaries not making it to “rescued,” unlike his other diaries. That was a good diary. Yucatanman was quite good. Marcy Winograd also showed up to post a diary, along the “I am a Jew” lines of another diary, but very unlike that diary, in that she urged action to change the AIPACed view, to call for a ceasefire, and to change the imbalance in the I/P conflict. More of a call for liberal Jews to stand on principle (Rather than beat the drum for Lamont 24/7 while the ME is burning under our bunker busters? Lamont, on the other hand, doesnt stand up for a ceasefire, but rather, falls in line with all the other “Israel’s right to defend” Dems.)
Wasnt there an article linked here, and discussed, about PRO Israel infiltrators being rounded up to counter posters on websites who are critical of Israel’s actions in Lebanon? I recall seeing that here… Maybe it was elsewhere.
Shimon Peres … I recall a major Palestinian player saying of him and Sharon “those wiley old foxes …” in the context of Israeli machinations, not so evenhanded, for two states. Peres is not helpful. Witness how he melded so seamlessly with Sharon into Kadima. Kinda similar to our melded two parties. Not having an opposition is so not healthy. And these two unhealthy countries are melded in collusion.
Billmon:
wow break thru for Billmon. A month or so ago he lashed out at Stop Me Before I vote Again (and yes they had been cheeky about him…;) but included in his slam in a comment at their site was a slur at their thesis, voting for Dems can be very self defeating. hey, it is a political stance.
At least as legitimate as this ”Vote for whatever chump we put up” crap.
Democrats have wasted majorities. HEALTH CARE, we will NEVER have it. It will fall to the states and cities.
NYCee…
yes I had a link … maybe last week… about cyber workers, charged with challenging anti Israeli war on Lebanon sites and posts. And they work to jam online polls (what a bore they are) and cable polls.
Evangelicals are invovled… and, despite “hands off” the Isreali government as well.
Deepest Troat, Voxel Dot Net appears to offer server colocation services, which means you can pay them to keep your server hooked up to the internet. That part of the Voxel website is incomplete, though, so I can’t tell how much it would cost.
Here is a post in which kos mentions buying servers (somehow I remembered this being an issue around the time of the Herseth win).
I like the Billmon.
The excerpt I like. Ditto. The ending line, ah yes, that is what I have felt.
A Bad Sign
gong – Voxel is certainly a host of something, because in Oct of the same year, he mentions
He could be talking in the rhetorical sense when he says “we” but it is Voxel who maintains the physical machine or the literal sense.
Anyways … since political Blogs are not required to provide financial info, we will never really know and can only speculate.
welcome to the sad but clear-eyed observers Billmon.
Deepest Troat…
I don’t know anything about servers etc… but
the cost to advertise on Dkos is (last I looked) $4,200 for a wk for the top ad.
700/wk was the price LONG AGO for the revolving strip of 8 or so ads. Think they now run close to or more than 2K/wk.
Click on his link at his site for the current rates. In the list of the 75 or 80 blogs (what you get when you clock on an “Advertise Liberally” button) Kos only lists his strip ad prices, not the prices for the Top Ad and second spot ad.
Not everyone at dKos is a fan of Kos and Harry:
bingo. Oh that Reid, such a fancy fighter. Nobody listens to him… but kos does I guess. And Reid listens when the R give him his orders.
Democratic aprty is post collapse.
And the Bloggers and Blahhhgers who ran to the front to defend Kos in June were being good little party apparatchiks. All of them.
Then there’s this diary about Billmon’s piece. Part of the thread:
billmon is now on that thread, observer. I wonder if he’ll get himself banned. 😉
oooo I always liked *kaleidoscope!* Good comment.
Thanks *observer* and thanks *gong*. I will go read. LOL they cannot stop me reading!
NYCee I just noticed – but did not open it – that “Londonbear” has a diary at BMT on the ISraeli cyber workers.
Also in the diary that I use in “Death” from Soto at TLC, sounds like they were hit by the blaster bot comments over the past weeks…
That [londonbear’s diary] should have the link. I think I linked to it back last week. A YnetNews piece iirc.
And from scorponic:
Diary link is here.
new thread if anyone wants it… I put up the Billmon post, Mimi diary and a transom delivery on Blahhger ads/BlogPAC/BlogADs etc. In addition to starting a few links on the Wars.
observer
agree with Scorponic. There is a train of thought that Dkos prospered numbers wise from how whack Armando was/is. And all the purges flame wars etc that Kos and others “feed”.
And that is all they care about, flames feed eyeballs, numbers of eyeballs… I think sometimes they resolve things if a site is allowed to organically grow… and change… but Dkos/satellites are on a merry-to-round. Endless revolving. Never gettting off the damned “round”.
(one reason I cut off a possible flame war here a few weeks ago, not interested, I said what I wanted and shut it down.)
It works as long as people don’t employ those damn ad-blockers.
Must pay for all that bandwidth.
And the new piano.
And the new TV.
And, according to Kos, a nice pension plan.
All that’s fine, but his fans really do need to cut the pretense about paying for the servers.