Maxine At Her Best. Virtue Of Historian. Wurmser-Hamas War Different. Israel's Palestinian Issue.

 

 

THIS IS THE BEST MAXINE EVER, EVER, EVER!                                       RIGHT ON MAXINE!!!  This is the best analogy yet!   Leave it to Maxine to come up with a solution for the mess that America/Canada/UK/Germany/ Australia/NZ is now in economically.     I bought a bird feeder.  I hung it On my back porch and filled it With seed. What a beauty of A bird feeder it was, as I filled it Lovingly with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds Taking advantage of the Continuous flow of free and Easily accessible food.   But then the birds started Building nests in the boards Of the patio, above the table, And next to the barbecue.    Then came the shit. It was Everywhere: on the patio tile, The chairs, the table... Everywhere!   Then some of the birds Turned mean. They would Dive bomb me and try to Peck me even though I had Fed them out of my own Pocket.   And others birds were Boisterous and loud. They Sat on the feeder and Squawked and screamed at All hours of the day and night And demanded that I fill it When it got low on food.   After a while, I couldn't even Sit on my own back porch Anymore. So I took down the Bird feeder and in three days The birds were gone. I cleaned Up their mess and took down The many nests they had built All over the patio.   Soon, the back yard was like It used to be ..... Quiet, serene.... And no one demanding their Rights to a free meal.   Now let's see...... Our government gives out Free food, subsidized housing, Free medical care and free Education, and allows anyone Born here to be an automatic Citizen.   Then the illegal’s came by the Tens of thousands. Suddenly Our taxes went up to pay for Free services; small apartments Are housing 5 families; you Have to wait 6 hours to be seen By an emergency room doctor; Your child's second grade class is Behind other schools because Over half the class doesn't speak English.   Corn Flakes now come in a Bilingual box; I have to 'press one ' to hear my bank Talk to me in English, and People waving flags other Than ”ours” are Squawking and screaming In the streets, demanding More rights and free liberties.   Just my opinion, but maybe it's time for the government To take down the bird feeder.    If you agree, pass it on; if not, Just continue cleaning up the shit!

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Robert S. Rush, PhD

Command Sergeant Major, USA (ret)

The cardinal virtue of the historian is objectivity, or freedom from bias or special interest.  The historian’s responsibility is to discover the truth and to put it on record.  To this, he has to keep a constant watch on his prejudices and assumptions. 

The military historian in theater works under conditions that make it difficult to maintain an impartial attitude toward persons and events, and will deal, not with remote times and places, which can be approached without heat but with living persons and current events that directly affect the historian.  The historian will be on intimate terms with many of the key figures in the story, and may participate in many of its events

Although the historian must be impartial and objective, he or she must not be neutral unless the evidence forces it.  Usually the balance of the best evidence will favor one conclusion or judgment over its alternatives.  It is the historian’s duty, when the evidence is found so distributed, to pronounce in favor of the conclusion supported by most of the best evidence.  The historian should not end the inquiry in a weak refusal to take a stand or make a judgment.

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When negotiating with Islamist terrorists there is more than one kind.  Some will manipulate  but stick to what they agree if you are tough like Trump.. Then there are terrorists, like Hamas, that are totally unreliable, nor worth their blood you hope the IDF spills.  The Palestinians are no different.

Wurmser believes a Palestinian State would also be a comparable  disaster because they are equally unreliable. Israelis get it and will do what must be done.  Wurmser was in Israel when Hamas attacked and was very impressed with the clear-headedness of the IDF. 

Letting a threat masticate is foolhardy and that is Biden's problem and this is why the divergence  between Israel and the U.S.

This is why I was always opposed to the "Oslo Accord" and Rabin was a dangerous dreamer. 

See attached by: Aaron David Miller

Why the Oslo Peace Process Failed

Sitting on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 13, 1993, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Under a brilliant, cloudless sky, an uncomfortable Israeli prime minister and a beaming Palestinian leader clasped hands in pursuit of peace as an exuberant U.S. president embraced the duo, smiling like a proud parent.

The occasion was the signing of the first agreement of what came to be known as the Oslo Accords, which established an interim framework that, if implemented successfully, might actually lead to final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Even with all the challenges that lay ahead, I was convinced that the Arab-Israeli peace process was now irreversible.

Efraim Halevy, who in just a few years would become the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, would later write to me questioning my faith in that irreversibility and fearing the confrontation that could follow. Halevy’s analysis proved all too prescient. Today, 30 years after that historic day, what remains of the spirit and much of the substance of the Oslo agreement lies bloodied, buried, and betrayed across an Israeli-Palestinian landscape that seems to leave little room for hope and none for illusions.

The most right-wing and fundamentalist government in Israel’s history sits in Jerusalem, committed to the annexation of the West Bank in everything but name only, as well as expanding settlements and enabling settler terror and violence against Palestinians. The Palestinian national movement is deeply divided, resembling a kind of Noah’s Ark where there are two of everything—constitutions, governments, security services, patrons, and even visions of Palestine. In Gaza, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad plan and encourage terror attacks against Israelis, while in Ramallah, a weak and discredited Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is unable or unwilling to control terror emanating from the northern West Bank.

Yet the lessons of Oslo still have some relevance, whatever the future holds for Israelis and Palestinians. Having had a ringside seat during those fateful years, four key takeaways stand out for me personally.

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The attached is a must listen to video. One of the very best.

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Why Calls for an Immediate Ceasefire in the Gaza War Becomes a Strategic Liability for the US

While many in the international community view the Hamas war on Israel strictly in narrow terms, as just another Israeli-Palestinian war, this war is different. This war is all about the Iranian axis of terror, and its threat to the entire free world. For an immediate ceasefire of the war that Hamas launched on Israel with their barbaric attacks of October 7th, Iranian-backed Houthis are attacking shipping lanes in the Red Sea, cutting off a great deal of international commerce, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah has stepped up the launching missiles onto Israeli towns. Yet, calls from the international community for an immediate ceasefire are increasing. Renowned scholar, David Wurmser will be discussing the wider regional and geo-strategic ramifications of this war, and why calls for an immediate ceasefire will actually backfire against the United States, Europe, and the entire free, Western world.

About the Speaker: David Wurmser is the Director of Middle East Studies and a Senior Scholar at the Center for Security Policy, as well as a Fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy. David has served as Middle East Advisor to Former Vice President Dick Cheney, and as Special Assistant to Former National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador John Bolton. He also served in the US Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. David is also the Founder of the Delphi Global Analysis Group.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Wurmser consulted until January 2002 for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the U.S. Department of Defense on a war‐related classified project on understanding the nature and strategic significance of terrorist group networks and their interactions with states. Before entering government, Dr. Wurmser founded the Middle East studies program at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 1996. While at AEI Dr. Wurmser published the book, “ Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein.”

David received his Bachelor’s degree, his M.A., as well as his Ph.D from the Johns Hopkins University. In addition to his book, he has also been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and Commentary Magazine.

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Biden Administration Gender Policies Demand Submission To Woke Ideology

The Biden administration’s U.S. Department of the Interior and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)... Read More » ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Why Elon Musk Won’t Stop Talking About a ‘Woke Mind Virus’ The billionaire’s attacks against Disney are just the latest in a battle with what he sees as political correctness and overzealous progressive ideals By Tim Higgins The question to Elon Musk was a long time coming: What is the “woke mind virus,” anyway?  For months and months, the world’s richest man has been talking about the “woke mind virus”—let’s call it WMV for short. He describes it as a threat to “modern civilization” and says those concerns motivated his decision more than a year ago to buy the social-media platform now known as X. When it comes to how he defines that threat, however, he has been vague in public—painting a picture of something akin to hysterical groupthink by liberals against merit-based achievement and free speech, a catchall for what he expresses disagreement with.  Musk has lately expounded more on what worries him, including earlier this month, when he was asked directly what he means by WMV and continued to attack  “The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.” A few weeks earlier, during an appearance on a podcast, Musk summed it up simply as “communism rebranded.”  Understanding what Musk means when he talks about WMV takes on greater importance as his stated concerns increasingly hang over any number of his actions—from how he manages X and positions the platform against the likes of Disney, to how his views might affect policies and customers at the other companies he runs.  In apparent expansion of his anti-WMV views, Musk is now taking aim at a management effort known as diversity, equity and inclusion, or, DEI. “DEI must DIE,” he said in a tweet this month. “The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination.” Musk’s WMV fixation aligns with many of his supporters but has left even some of them frustrated. They say he has lost focus on other ambitions—such as transitioning the world to renewable energy with the EV maker  —while some of his more provocative comments have fueled criticism suggesting that his actions are themselves divisive and hurtful.  During the past two years, he has tweeted about the “mind virus” at least 27 times, and that doesn’t include interviews in which he has referenced WMV, such as on a recent Joe Rogan podcast, when he called it “a death cult.”  Among the mentions in spring 2022, he tweeted that WMV was making Netflix  “unwatchable” and later pointed at Yale University as the “epicenter of the woke mind virus attempting to destroy civilization.” Subsequently, Musk said the WMV was to blame for San Francisco’s social problems and warned that unless it is stopped, “humanity will never reach Mars.” Yale and Netflix didn’t respond to requests for comment. During an April appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” however, Musk appeared to struggle with a clear definition when asked its meaning.  “I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is antimeritocratic and anything that…results in the suppression of free speech—so you know those are two other aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous,” Musk said.  Musk identified colleges and high schools as a breeding ground, recounting a story he said he heard from a friend in San Francisco who claimed his school-age daughter only knew that the nation’s first president, George Washington, was a slave owner and nothing else.  “Parents are just generally not aware of what their kids are being taught or what they’re not being taught,” Musk said. “Slavery is obviously a horrific institution, but we should still know more about George Washington than that.”  Given all of the attention on Musk’s WMV warnings, MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan thought Musk’s definition was a little vague. “Maybe, just maybe, if you cannot coherently define the woke mind virus that you’ve been obsessing over for a year or more, perhaps you were the one who’s got it,” Hasan concluded of Musk during a broadcast in May.   A book by the biographer Walter Isaacson released this year suggested that Musk’s antagonism toward progressives was triggered in part by one of his children’s transition to female and her embrace of Marxist politics—which the billionaire partly blamed on her high school in Los Angeles.  Earlier this month in Italy, Musk added, “You want to have people succeed based on how hard they work and their talents, not who they are, whether they’re man or woman, what race or gender, that stuff is all…artificial, mental civil war.”  His stance against what he deems political correctness has won him new fans in conservative circles. The term “woke” is one thrown around a lot on the campaign trail by GOP candidates these days to negatively paint liberal beliefs. Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis adopted Musk’s WMV parlance when launching his bid for president.  “The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism. At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth,” the Republican governor said on Fox News.  Adoption of the “woke mind virus” was a natural step for DeSantis. He had already been lobbing attacks at Disney, accusing the company of advancing “the woke political agenda,” after the large Florida employer was critical of an education bill signed into law in 2022 by the governor that opponents dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. Increasingly, the Mouse House is looked at through a political lens, with certain groups critical of diverse casting picks in its productions and programming choices seen as leaning liberal. In late October, those decisions were highlighted in the bawdy, animated show “South Park,” which took a satirical look at the cultural war around Disney. The episode, titled “Joining the Panderverse,” dealt with recasting the show’s white male characters with women of color. Asked at a conference last month about claims that Disney has gone “woke,” Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger defended its positions on issues including immigration and the environment as good for business and said DeSantis was trying to impinge on Disney’s free speech.  Iger, who returned to Disney as CEO last year, also suggested that the company’s content had gotten away from its entertainment focus. “Creators lost sight of what their No. 1 objective needed to be,” he said. “If you can infuse it with positive messages and have a good impact on the world, fantastic. But that should not be the objective.” A self-described “South Park” fan, Musk quickly touted the Panderverse episode in several tweets, including one calling the episode a bellwether.   “The great wakening from woke has happened,” Musk said. “This is good for civilization.” Several weeks after the episode aired, Disney was in Musk’s crosshairs when the company joined several big-name brands in cutting ad spending on X following a tweet by Musk that promoted antisemitic vitriol and a report that some ads were running next to Nazi content.  While Musk might have been angry at them all, he got personal with Disney, calling for Iger to be fired. And he continued the attacks against Disney earlier this month in Italy.  “Disney is deeply infected with the woke mind virus,” Musk said.  Disney didn’t respond to requests for comment on Musk’s Italy remarks. On the Italy stage, as he talked about the WMV, Musk hit on perhaps the most offensive part in his view: “Woke mind virus and fun are incompatible.”  “Who wants to be scolded?” he added. “It’s no fun.” +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++