Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 25 (since 2010-04-26 13:24:40)

Setanta

Showing comments 25 - 1
Page:

  • What is Mohammed's last name?
    • Setanta March 25, 2011 at 11:36 am

      I agree. This sounds like one of the myriad of bizzaro stories flooding the media of alleged mistreatment at the hands of "Qaddafi's thugs." The idea that Qaddafi would invite Western journalists into the country just to provide the West with a propaganda victory by abusing them is absurd. Libyan soldiers are such animals. Thank God we have the NYT to set us straight on that accord, lest we allow humanitarian impulses to compel us towards sympathy for the Libyan conscript soldiers being massacred by the West right now. It is a good thing we are bombing them to bring democracy to "The Libyan People."

  • 'It's an oil grab'
    • Setanta March 22, 2011 at 7:41 pm

      Sadly, there seems to be no shortage of self-described "leftists" who are apparently incapable of learning the lessons of the past and still believe that this time, dropping bombs on people will have positive results. Any civilians that happen to get killed can be dismissed as "human shields," or perhaps worse, prefaced with the requisite "Libyan government claims..." that grace Al Jazeera's reports of civilian casualties inflicted by the West, an epithet that doesn't even allow for the possibility their deaths might be something other than propaganda.

  • Let Americans' shift on gays in the military be a lesson for Israelis
    • Setanta December 1, 2010 at 1:38 am with 10 replies

      Great. Now gays get to serve as cannon fodder too, and just as the empire needs more bodies for its next war! What a tremendous civil rights victory. Blacks were overjoyed at the opportunity to exercise this new-found right in the jungles of Vietnam, courtesy of the draft. I'm glad that the one out cowardly American teens had left to avoid righteous service for their country has finally been eliminated. Now "gay" teens can get drafted too! Hoorah! Now if we can just get them to force the disabled into the military. A lot of those jobs sitting at a desk and manning predator drone stations could be done by the disabled. This is the next "civil rights" frontier that needs to be challenged. Perhaps a TV campaign featuring Lord Nelson, Hannibal, and all the other disabled but highly proficient commanders of the ages could be made. Disabled people can kill too!

      Meanwhile, enjoy the right to die in a war while being denied the right to marry, gay people. I'm glad to see the leaders of your movement for justice have their priorities in order.

  • Khalidi and Mearsheimer offer qualified endorsements of Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions
    • Setanta November 20, 2010 at 1:48 am

      The pro forma ritual denunciation of the settlements coupled with the equally ritual slap down by the Israelis has become part of the president's job description as well. This particular kabuki play is staged to give the impression of independence on the part of the president, and the inevitable slap down allows whatever sociopath happens to be running Israel at the moment to appear to be the great leader putting the US in its place--a necessity of Zionist vanity. If any president was serious about the settlements, he would have cut off US aid until Israel ceased expanding them.

  • 'Firedoglake' is progressive-- just don't talk about Palestine
    • Setanta August 28, 2010 at 7:04 pm

      I gave up on so-called "progressive" media like FLD and Huffpo a long time ago. Most so-called "progressive" outlets have abandoned any leftist principles they may have had in exchange for uncritical, groveling support of the Democratic party and its right-wing, neoliberal and fascist agenda.

      We now have "feminists" who support the Afghan war in the name of liberating women, and "liberals" who support the oppression of the Palestinians and Israeli aggression against its neighbors in the name of "defending Israel's right to exist" and opposing anti-Semitism.

      They praise Obama for making us indentured servants to the corrupt health care industry rather than burning it to the ground with a flamethrower and pissing on the ashes. They are all for "welfare reform" and for the paternalistic soft-fascism of "liberal" "thinkers" like Cass Sunstein. End the War on Drugs? Not unless we can tax street drugs and make our corrupt and dysfunctional medical system the highly-compensated gatekeepers over who gets to access these drugs and how much that is going to cost. No, the people simply can't be trusted to control their own destinies.

      They have some marginal sympathy for Blacks and Hispanics, mainly because it allows them to feel morally superior to those who don't, but they despise the white working class with extreme passion. Progressives? Liberals? No, such people are conservatives without the courage of their convictions. Tea-partiers who are too stuck-up to party.

  • Blaming the victim
    • Setanta August 23, 2010 at 2:20 pm

      A friend of mine had an incident nearly identical in every detail to yours a few years back. The difference was the culprit was a truck driver, and when they finally pulled over to let the truck get ahead of them, the trucker pulled over further up the road and waited a full half hour for them to catch up, as which point he then commenced trying to run them off the road again and finally blocked traffic as your man did. This was on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Wonder if it's the same guy?

      I would have a little word or two with Mrs. Weiss about the finger thing. It may have been an understandable gesture considering, but antagonizing an armed psychopath is not a good idea. My former karate instructor, who was a 10th Dan black belt in Goju Ryu karate, told us he wouldn't take a chance trying to fight someone armed with a knife. He'd run if he could. Having a weapon gives the other guy a huge advantage. You'd have to be a damned good fighter or pretty lucky not to get injured if not beaten to death in an unarmed fight against a psycho with a tire iron. Your man was also armed with a bus, which could swat your car off the road like a fly.

      Unless the missus feels she can take on a man with a tire iron, she should be careful not to antagonize guys like this. She would have been next after he was done with you.

  • A: Because they differ on the only issue he cares about, Israel
    • Setanta June 26, 2010 at 4:22 pm

      I see nothing stupid about what Ezra Klein wrote. Let's stop pretending that media propagandists like Russert are sacrosanct and don't deserve all the verbal abuse a barracks full of drunken Marines could heap on him. We live in an era of lies, cruelty, thievery and extreme state violence and it is the job of people like Russert to coat these crimes with sugar and sell them to the public. If there's a hell, I'm sure they've found a job for him there.

  • 'Renowned philosopher' says Jews invented democracy (OK, but what about hummus?)
    • Setanta June 21, 2010 at 7:34 pm

      "I've covered many wars, and I've never seen an army that asks itself so many questions related to morals."

      When you consider how much more damaging it is to the precious Jewish soul to explode a kid's head with a high-powered sniper rifle than it is to us soulless goyim, is it any wonder the Israelis are so morality obsessed? The shoulder pain is pretty dreadful as well. "We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children!"

      Kind of like how American politicians who vote for wars and murder hundreds of thousands seem to be so terribly obsessed about internet porn or teens sexting. What higher moral duty is there, than to protect the children!

      BHL is a highbrow, pretentious version of Dershowitz and about as much of an "intellectual."

  • Schumer on Gazans: 'Strangle them economically'
  • Israel’s cult of victimhood: ‘Barefoot’ soldiers on the high seas
    • Setanta June 9, 2010 at 11:45 am with 1 replies

      I couldn't agree more. It is wishful thinking to imagine that our governments are on the verge of moving in a different direction concerning Israel. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise. It will remain business as usual for the forseeable future unless a strong and sustained campaign is taken to form a third party movement in the US and repudiate political leaders worldwide who support Israel. Zionist money speaks louder than angry e-mails, protests and wishful thinking.

      It is also somewhat naive to imagine that the public is waking up to Israel and the destructiveness of our special relationship with Israel. A Rasmussen poll quoted in Haaretz showed only 19 percent of like American voters blamed Israel for their attack on the flotilla, while 49 percent believed pro-Palestinian activists were to blame. The views of the public are still heavily determined by Zionist propaganda in the mainstream media, and even an event as appallingly and obviously criminal as this pirate attack can be successfully spun as just another example of evil anti-Semites victimizing Israel.

  • We aren't the world
    • Setanta June 4, 2010 at 9:42 am

      In most cases, these comments are by hasbarachiks, designed to associate legitimate anger and grief at Israel's atrocities with deranged and psychopathic anti-Semitism. A rational but uninformed person reading these comments will be appalled that the anti-Semitic remarks are being tolerated and will either be turned off to the forum altogether or tend to see more reasoned criticisms of Israel in the same light.

      Simple question: would the spontaneous outpouring of rage by people whose anger at Israel had just reached the point where it boiled over into anti-Semitism manifest itself as a desire to see all the Jews killed or "sent to the ovens?" A real anti-Semitic comment would more likely simply express hatred in a generic way, rather than some sort of specific mass death wish. How many "liberals to the death camps!" comments do you see, even though hatred of liberals (and in reverse, teabaggers) is obviously quite intense?

    • Setanta June 4, 2010 at 2:36 am

      Would you describe a Hamas missile attack that wiped out a group of Israelis as a "mistake" or "un-needed" and "un-warranted?" Would you complain about how Hamas played into the hands of Israeli propaganda?

      Your comments come off as being insincere, like the boilerplate "deep regret" Israel expresses after every fresh atrocity.

  • MV Rachel Corrie heading for Gaza — with the full support of the Irish government
    • Setanta June 2, 2010 at 1:28 am with 8 replies

      What's with all the ethnic chest-thumping here guys? Let's keep this about the Palestinians. My father was a sociopath and he wasn't as bad as your stereotype of the Irish. You certainly didn't want to get on his bad side but he would hardly do a drive by on your whole family if you did, and neither would even the worst of the Irish I knew growing up. If I thought the Irish were that bad I certainly wouldn't be proud of it.

      You might be interested to know there was quite a bit of cooperation and sympathy between the early Irish Republicans and the Zionists. Two Irish Jews fought in the Easter Uprising and later became leaders in the Zionist movement, though their names escape me. The Irgun was said to have borrowed its tactics from those of Michael Collins and even named their campaign against the Brits "Operation Michael Collins" in honor of him. Yitzhak Shamir took the codename "Michael" for a similar reasons.

      Robert Briscoe was an Irish Jew who was active in the IRA and Sinn Fein and helped to run guns to the movement. He later served as a parliamentarian.

      link to en.wikipedia.org
      link to shalomireland.com

      There is little sympathy among the Irish for the Zionists of today but at one point the Irish and Jews heavily identified with each other as fellow oppressed peoples.

  • What leaders will decry Henochowicz's 'devastating injury'?
    • Setanta June 1, 2010 at 8:25 pm

      I feel so terrible for this heroic and passionate young woman. It seems an especially cruel irony that she uses an eye as her icon with the words, "A Visual Adventure!" To lose her eye in such a horrible tragedy was anything but. How truly sad and disturbing. I am so very sorry she had to pay so high a price in her stand for justice. Words fail me.

  • American Jewish Committee rushes to justify attack
    • Setanta May 31, 2010 at 1:15 pm

      "Manageable" in this context means more likely to pass the bullshit test. Unfortunately for Israel, that number is zero.

  • Reports - 19 people killed, 30-60 injured in Israeli attack on freedom flotilla
    • Setanta May 31, 2010 at 11:14 am with 2 replies

      Gotta love that word. Lynch. I bet it's the same in Hebrew, as it's based on a real person. Lot's of connotation there: mob, vigilantes, innocent victims, frontier justice, images of Israeli soldiers dangling from ropes.

      I bet they seriously considered calling it a pogrom, but thought that might be over the top even for Israel. "Our soldiers were defending themselves from a lynch mob" sounds like an easier sell than "our soldiers were defending against a pogrom."

      The set up for this was obvious, with Israel claiming they needed to inspect if there were weapons on board. They were making their excuse in advance. Lo and behold, weapons magically appeared in the hands of the victims--iron bars and knives. No doubt they shouted "Allahu Akhbar!" before launching their banzai charge and the poor soldiers had no choice but to gun down dozens of people, which Israel deeply, deeply regrets.

    • Setanta May 31, 2010 at 4:40 am

      You're damned right I hate Israel, you motherless Nazi fuckworm. Your einsatzkommandos just murdered civilians on a peaceful mission, and you're just another despicable Ziocreep here to justify it. That's the only cynical recurring theme here. Cheerlead all you want for your renegade pirate homeland, then go die in a fire. Take your Zionist bullshit with you.

  • 'Amnesty International' contradicts Benny Morris
    • Setanta May 29, 2010 at 2:49 am

      You mean, like when hasbarites invariably describe Hamas' rockets as "aimed at kindergartens" despite the fact they are so inaccurate they can't hit a target the size of a city with any degree of regularity?

      The initial Israeli attacks were timed to occur just as kids were leaving school, and over 17 percent of the victims of the Gaza massacre were schoolkids and their teachers. Pretty damned hard to make the case that results like these can be achieved through random mishap.

  • Benny Morris suggests Israel had a military aim in destruction of 31,000 Gaza chickens
    • Setanta May 24, 2010 at 1:05 pm

      What I love about watching debates with Zionists and neocons is how often they adopt the standard issue Fox News debate tactics which consist of maintaining a smug, smarmy grin throughout the debate, cackling whenever the opponent utters an uncomfortable truth, and shouting down and interrupting the opposing speaker. Not to mention lying...gratuitously.
      As soon as I saw the opening picture showing Morris with that smarmy look on his mug I knew exactly what to expect from the video. I wasn't disappointed. One imagines Bill O'Reilly must give a teleconference course on these techniques. Here's a debate with Irshad Manji demonstrating the same shtick:

      link to youtube.com

  • If it was all about oil, we'd have boots on the ground in Venezuela...
    • Setanta May 14, 2010 at 7:02 pm

      Predictably, Zionist apologists offer nothing but ad hominems and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in rebuttal to the facts.

  • Dog wags tail (against the Israel lobby theory)
    • Setanta May 9, 2010 at 10:42 am with 9 replies

      Sheer nonsense. What could the US have to gain by demanding Israel oppress the Palestinians, particularly when every American president has at least paid lip service to the idea they do otherwise? The best thing for the empire would be to tell Israel to go fuck itself, build a bunch of maquiladoras on the West Bank to take advantage of the most desperate labor force on the planet, and continue to operate its bases in countries like Qatar and Saudi without all the headache and ill will caused by its support of Israel.

      This view that Israel is just some poor little kapo being pressed into service as a condition of its survival by the evil anti-Semitic US is just standard Zionist victimology mongering. By definition, Jews are always the victims, never the vicitimizers, no matter what. You can't be Jewish and guilty at the same time, it would seem .

    • Setanta May 9, 2010 at 1:02 am with 1 replies

      I have yet to see any compelling evidence that Israel itself is of any particular use to the empire, yet the empire consistently rubberstamps Israel's agenda. Why is that? What could be gained by pissing off 1.5 billion Muslims, closing off entire markets because Israel doesn't like this country or that, or looking the other way while Israel steals military and civilian technology from the US and exploits it for its own use or sells it to "our" enemies? Israel doesn't keep America's enemies in line, it creates America's enemies in the Mideast. Our alliance with Israel has created an unprecedented degree of hostility and rage in the Arab and Muslim world against the US, and it is only the corruption and self-serving greed of Arab and Muslim leaders that keeps the Muslim world from seizing the opportunity we have created for them to unite against Western aggression.

      A recent Pew Research study on the The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) found that less than 4 percent of its members agreed that Israel will be "more important as America's allies and partners" in the future. Pretty hard to make the case the empire supports Israel out of mutual interests when the CFR can't find any use for Israel. Without the powerful Zionist lobby pulling for it, the empire would have fuck all to do with Israel.

      link to muslimmedianetwork.com

      Another question I'd like to see someone answer is where exactly Israel, with a military budget of just $13 billion a year and a GDP of $180 billion a year, gets the money to afford the fourth or fifth most powerful military force on the planet, equipped with state-of-the-art Western military equipment to a degree that would cost Western nations hundred of billions if not trillions of dollars to acquire. They are either magicians or they have the ability to coax this must largess out of Western nations without a word being said about how much it truly costs, and it ain't $3 billion a year by a long shot.

    • Setanta May 9, 2010 at 12:30 am

      Pastor Hagee preaches that God created America to protect Israel.
      Pastor Chomsky preaches that America created Israel to protect America.

      The degree of blind faith it takes to believe either of these credos is staggering.

      Both views would be absurdly comical, if they weren't so tragically wrong.

  • Report: Junior Israel lobbyist eavesdropped on Massad's class at Columbia
    • Setanta May 1, 2010 at 4:20 pm

      I would be critical if I saw objective evidence, rather than a typical Zionist smear campaign associated with a McCarthyite organization Like Campus Watch.

    • Setanta May 1, 2010 at 4:17 pm

      Zionism is not an ideology that can survive in the marketplace of ideas without monopoly protection. It's as simple as that. Everything Zionists do to stifle debate is based on this reality.

Showing comments 25 - 1
Page:

Comments are closed.