oy

man.

It’s pretty amazing that you can claim to know who of the many Palestinian civilians are good or bad. I guess you have the same power as Bush to just KNOW when someone is evil .
Though…those people without homes, who would never go anywhere near a bomb (or at least wouldn’t have when they still had a roof over their heads), might disagree with your calling the guys inside the bulldozer good.

Hey mobi, im just curious about something i read in another post of yours. what exactly is a “libertarian socialist” ( if i recall correctly, you once labeled yourself a “staunch libertarian”)? Im guessing that youre just a regular extreme leftist, who supports guns and weed.
Honestly, i have read many of your comments, and you happen to be liberal on about 90%+ of issues. If you are only a libertarian on issues in which the liberal and libertarian views agree, that makes you a liberal. Stop trying to sound so complex.
Did you know that libertarians:
1) Oppose federal income tax
2) Want to end social welfare and poverty programs.
3) want to privatize social security (in some form or another)
4) Oppose minimum wage laws
5)Oppose child workforce protection law
6)would allow non govt entities to discriminate based on gender, age, religion, race and sexual orientation.
There is nothing libertarian about your views.

also, here’s some recommended reading:
wikipedia: libertarian socialism
wikipedia: anarchism
infoshop anarchist faq
perhaps that’ll clarify things a bit for you.
and also, i wonder, if you do consider yourself a libertarian, how you can support bush, considering he only believes in tax cuts for the rich, and considering that gov’t spending under bush has skyrocketed.

I never claimed that i was a libertarian.
You wrote:
“um no, jimbo — conservatives oppose/support those things.” True, but so do libertarians. There are aspects of libertarianism that agree with the right, and parts that agree with the left. You are basically libertarian where they agree with the left (except with guns), which basically makes you a liberal.
Which one of the libertarian viewpoints i listed above is incorrect?
That website with that political test is silly. Its just trying to dispel the whole notion of “liberal” and “conservative.” Under this test, no one can simply be labeled a liberal or conservative. which may be true in theory, but who cares. Simply put, you are a liberal in the everyday/newspaper sense of the term, and your views are in line with most liberals. If youre not a liberal, then no-one is a liberal.

Two important letters concerning Jeffrey Goldberg’s article:
Among the Settlers in New Yorker Magazine
To:
The Editor
The New Yorker
Email: [email protected]
Fax: 212-286-5047
As a Public Relations professional involved both personally and
professionally with the “Jewish settlement movement”, and one who agrees
with the rights of Jews to live anywhere in the world they choose, including
Judea and Samaria (The West Bank), I was pleased when Jeffrey Goldberg
contacted me to help him arrange interviews amongst supporters of the
tight-knit “settlement” community with the assurances that he would write a
fair and balanced article. In my humble opinion, media coverage of the
Arab-Israeli conflict is very skewed, and I am always hesitant to assist
reporters seeking to write major feature stories.
I informed Goldberg that I, as do many “right-wing” Jews view the media as a
major danger for Israel, and Goldberg agreed with me and informed me as one
who served in The Israeli Defense Forces, speaks a decent Hebrew and
considers himself a Zionist that he would write a fair and balanced article.
I arranged for him to meet Minister Benny Elon, one of the foremost
“Pro-settler” politicians on three separate occasions, arranged for him to
be hosted for dinner by Minister Effi Eitam, arranged for him to have an
extensive sit-down interview with Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert…. He met
with each of these individuals, and again assured a fair and balanced
article.
I introduced him to leaders of the Jewish communities of Hebron, Efrat and
elsewhere. Suffice it to say, Goldberg deceived me and I view him as very
unethical, dishonest and quite frankly, a liar.
The article was the typical biased Anti-settlement coverage, which is
regularly written. In fact, Jewish residents of these communities just want
the right to live as Jews – To pray, live, work and enjoy life in the land
of our forefathers. Why do residents of these communities carry arms? Could
it be because every day Muslim terrorists who want to visit “Allah” try to
kill them? Would it be because very regularly their discos, pizzerias, and
schools are targeted by Islamic terrorists?
These Jews live in these areas not to manipulate Arabs, but to live a Jewish
life. To defend Jewish rights and be strong, proud Jews. Why not talk
about the fact that Jewish settlers all have bulletproof cars to protect
themselves? (BTW, the Arabs do not).
The New Yorker must understand that the days of Jewish weakness are over –
We were killed en masse in Auschwitz, but survived… and for that the world
loved us. In 1967, we were attacked by a much larger Arab world, and we
won… For that, the world condemns us. Better to be alive and hated in
Hebron, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that dead and hated in Auschwitz, bus
bombings and elsewhere. Perhaps Goldberg would feel better if the Jews of
Judea, Samaria and Gaza moved to Warsaw, Kiev, and Paris – All cities where
Jews have been killed en masse.
Goldberg should be ashamed of himself for allowing his biases and
pre-conceived notion to shape his story. The brave Jews of Judea, Samaria
and Gaza allow Israel to continue to survive, as they are the front line
against Arab terror. They just want the right to live in peace – no
different than Jews anywhere else in the world.
Having just returned from a week trip to Israel, which included a day visit
to Hebron, I saw nothing but Jewish families, who are proud to be Jewish,
want to play, work, pray and live. The “West Bank” settlers arent placing
suicide bombs, endangering Western civilization or killing babies – They
have the right to live anywhere they choose, and while Goldberg and the
Western media may condemn them, I, for one will continue to stand by them,
despite lying and unethical journalists and media with pre-conceived
notions.
Sincerely,
Ronn D. Torossian
President
5W Public Relations
http://www.5wpr.com
======================================================
The Goldberg Manipulations
by Andrea Levin
June 6, 2004
The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg is not known for dishonesty; he’s
recently won awards for daring stories on Hezbollah and Iraq. But a May
31 piece entitled “Among the Settlers: Will They Destroy Israel?” is so
distorted, included being sloppy with facts, as to raise questions about
his other writing.
The title signals the thrust of the piece and rightly indicates there
will be little interest in balanced or thorough consideration of the
genesis, purpose and legality of the settlement enterprise. Instead
readers find a 24-page spread, rich in stereotypes and heavily devoted
to lurid portraiture of Jewish residents of the West Bank and Gaza. A
number appear emotionally unstable and many are physically repellent —
one has “fingernails [that] were chewed and dirty,” others are “sallow”
and “sour-faced.” The opening “Zealots” section has one after another
spewing vile language and fierce anti-Arab sentiment.
Moshe Levinger, with “bulbous eyes” and “outsized teeth,” is said to be
the unfortunate “face” of the settler movement, a man who calls for
expelling any Arab “who hurts Jews.” Yet Goldberg contradicts himself,
writing, for example, that “three-quarters of the Jews in the West Bank
and Gaza could be considered economic settlers” – that is, not motivated
by religious fervor – and the remaining 25% of the “national religious
camp can be divided into two main groups.” One part will “respect the
authority of the elected government in Jerusalem” as compared to what he
terms the “more unremitting settlers” of Hebron. So, then, Levinger the
Hebron firebrand is a fraction of a small minority.
Another indicator of his tangential role can be seen in a Nexis search
of major world publications for the last three years. Goldberg’s “face”
of the settler movement was mentioned in fewer than a score of media
stories and these mainly in passing references to his activity in the
late sixties in Hebron. In contrast, Ron Nachman, mayor of Ariel, turns
up in four times as many news citations. But perhaps the writer
preferred readers not to see this “face” or to know that in Ariel at the
College of Judea and Samaria hundreds of Arab men and women earn degrees
along with Jews.
Goldberg sticks to his dominant message that religious fanatics
disconnected from Israel’s daunting, real-life political challenges
embody and define the entire settlement question.
Thus too he skates over or ignores completely essential information
about the history of settlements. In the entire piece, there is not a
mention of the Labor party’s embrace of the Allon Plan, first enunciated
in July 1967. That peace proposal defined Israel’s defensive territorial
needs in the wake of the Six Day War, consistent with UN Security
Council resolution 242, whose framers believed that it would not be in
the interests of peace for Israel to return to its pre-1967 armistice
lines. The Allon Plan projected ambitious settlement construction to
secure strategically critical areas, including in the Jordan Valley,
areas in general sparsely populated by Palestinians. In the next decade,
under Labor prime ministers seventy-six settlements were built.
Goldberg alludes to Labor’s founding role only in a brief, misleading
observation that “such men as Shimon Peres and Yitzhak
Rabin”…”discerned a strategic value to settlement; these kipa-wearing
pioneers would keep watch over the newly-conquered Arabs…” In fact,
Israelis who established the twenty-one Jordan Valley settlements, for
example, were primarily not “kipa-wearing” religious settlers, but
secular men and women who founded kibbutzim and moshavim for security
motives. There were no residents of Jordan Valley or Gush Etzion or
other, similar, Allon Plan communities interviewed for the piece.
Goldberg is equally deceptive in his single, dismissive reference to the
legal status of settlements. He declares simply: “Most international
legal authorities believe that all settlements, including those built
with the permission of the Israeli government, are illegal.” That’s it.
Case closed. None of the “international legal authorities” are named and
none of the contentious issues involved are described.
The writer fails to mention that the United States does not characterize
the settlements as “illegal.” And many experts on international law have
disputed their illegality on multiple grounds. Professor Julius Stone, a
leading scholar on the subject, has maintained that the effort to
designate Israeli settlements as illegal is a “subversion. . . of basic
international law principles.”
Likewise, suggestive of both the casual incendiary tone of the piece and
Goldberg’s shoddy approach to accuracy is his repeated charge that
Israel is practicing “apartheid” in areas “across the Green Line.” He
explains the system is “apartheid, because two different ethnic groups
living in the same territory are judged by two separate sets of laws.”
One wonders whatever happened to the touted fact-checkers at the New
Yorker. In the West Bank, there are different laws not on the basis of
ethnicity but of nationality. The Palestinian Autonomous areas have
their own legal system, mainly inherited Jordanian law and new law
introduced by the Palestinians themselves. Moreover, if Israel moved to
extend its own legal system to the territories, that would constitute
annexation, which both Palestinians and Israelis oppose, and would be
universally condemned. The areas under emergency Israeli military
control are, as Goldberg notes, “temporary.” To bring the charge of
“apartheid” in circumstances involving the Israeli military’s recent
counter-attack against a terrorist onslaught unprecedented in the
nation’s history is, yet again, highly distorted.
“Among the Settlers” is one of those accounts that says much more about
its author than its subject. It is a gaudy display of twisted Jewish
assault on caricatured “other” Jews and intellectually dishonest
generalizations about the representative significance of those “others.”
In occasional moments of professional integrity, Goldberg introduces
facts – such as the very small percentage of settlers represented by his
featured “representatives” – and those facts demonstrate less the
strength of a zealot threat to Israel than the weakness of Goldberg’s
zealot journalism.

Sheesh mobi, when did you get so hostile?