Turkish Forum

Category: USA

Turkey could be America’s most important regional ally, above Iraq, even above Israel, if both sides manage the relationship correctly.

  • THE MAN WHO SNIFFED PARADISE

    THE MAN WHO SNIFFED PARADISE

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    Some like the perfume from Spain

    I’m sure that if,

    I took even one sniff,

    It would bore me terrifically, too,

    Yet I get a kick out of you.

    Cole Porter, I Get A Kick Out Of You

    As a boy, he used to kiss his mother’s feet and it made her nervous.

    No, no, Mama, the book says so.

    Huh? What book? You shouldn’t read such things.

    Yeah, it says heaven is under your feet.

    My feet? Stop…this tickles. Stop! It’s like what the dog does.

    Aw come on Mama, don’t be shy. I’m seeing Paradise.

    Paradise? What Paradise? You’re seeing calluses and split toenails and a hole in my stockings.

    Please, please, stop wiggling your toes, Mama. I’m having a spiritual experience. They smell like heaven.

    Not with the feet! Not with the feet! Wait until I tell your father! You’ll be seeing the back of his hand!

    Aw pleeeeze….Mamaaaaaa…..now I’m seeing a mosque in Havana. And Fidel abluting his cigar.

    Allah! Allah! Why don’t you go out and play football like the rest of the boys, my son.

    No, no, please Mama, those boys are different…

    Many are criticizing the Turkish president for his remarks at a meeting of a group called, with great irony, the Women and Democracy Association. The name is like something they made up in the lobby. At the meeting the president again shared his wide-ranging, penetrating insights from his lifelong study of Anti-Feminology, namely that women are in no way, no how, equal to men. It’s “against nature,’ he said. Although he did offer the fascinating concept that women, if they tried real hard, could be “equivalent” to men. He also declared that feminists reject motherhood, adding something about breast-feeding women should not work in communist factories. Predictably, feminists and communists, and particularly feminist-communists, were unified in an outrage equivalent to the firestorm bombing of Dresden. As a male feminist, uncertain about motherhood issues, I find the president’s ideas inspirational, perplexing and perfectly suitable to his adoring audience. And his charm and sunny disposition have won my heart, perhaps forever.

    Some people think that the Turkish president is a strident troublemaker. Not me!

    Some say he is spiteful, hateful and full of anger, particularly towards breast-feeding mothers and their communist significant others. Not me!

    Some even say that he is a complete……well……I can’t even think about this one, no less say it, no less write it.

    I stridently, but respectfully, disagree with all of his critics.

    The president of Turkey deserves our gushing respect and undivided attention.

    Here’s why.

    He said that the characters, habits and physiques of women are different from those of men. This is a brilliant insight! This is true! I hope his audience rose as one to render a standing ovation of loving applause. I immediately thought of Marilyn Monroe and Woody Allen. It would indeed be “against nature” to put these two on an “equal footing.” The president is correct in his assertion about character and habit, but especially about physique. I mean, whose feet would you rather kiss?

    And as far as breastfeeding women and non-breastfeeding communists working together in some Soviet-era tractor factory, well, again the Turkish president is perfectly correct. Breastfeeding women couldn’t even hold the wrenches properly. Think about it and you will instantly grasp the president’s wisdom. Holding a baby to one’s breast is a completely different motion and habit than the complicated, manly habit of turning a wrench. And even if men could lactate, could they handle having a baby sucking at their breasts every few hours while those tractor axles kept on coming? No, of course not. And where would they stash the babies in between feeding time? It would be so unnaturally confusing, wouldn’t it? The commissar would send them all to Siberia. Besides, if I understand the Turkish president’s deeper meaning, communist men are always looking to start revolutions. It’s their nature. Just look at history! And to make revolutions they need free hands, that is, no screaming, hungry babies interfering with their secret meetings. This is what the clever Turkish president meant. And he is absolutely correct. And that’s why he buys more and more tear gas and more and more TOMA monsters. It all makes sense, doesn’t it? Thank you Mr. President! Your applauding audience is proud of you.

    He also said that women being equal to men is “against nature.” Bravo! Brava! This is true too. I mean, what women would cultivate nature like the Turkish president, a man, does? He has leveled millions and millions of trees so that nature can breathe freely. No woman would dream of doing that. He has leveled mountains to free marble from its lifelong imprisonment so that villas and hotels and palaces can have shiny walls and slippery floors. And the president knows how women, by nature and habit, like to clean things. So women now have something to do. And marble also now has something to do, rather than just stay inside some dumb mountain. And women can clean and polish all of it, doing what comes naturally to them. No woman could even come close to thinking of such a perfectly complex idea. Only men can do that. The president of Turkey is very smart and deserves loud acclaim until the end of recorded time.

    And I completely agree with the Turkish president that women should be equal among women and men should be equal among men. Such a great social philosophy, though it seems to border on that nasty communism thing. Nevertheless, I agree with the president. For example, when we are alone, my wife and I never argue unnaturally about whether we are equal to each other, she being a woman and I a man. I am perfectly content to be a man equal to myself and, so far, she is happy to be a woman equal to herself. It proves the president’s intelligently argued point regarding the natural law that men are men and women are women. On this issue, peace prevails. The argument as applied to gay couples has yet to be addressed. Perhaps at the next meeting of the Women and Democracy Association the brilliance of the Turkish president can enlighten us further.

    The natures of men and women are different, too. Right again, Mr. President! And the following shows how true that is and how correct you are.

    Who brought us religion? Men.

    Who invented prostitution? Men.

    Who spent millennia hunting and killing animals? Men.

    Who spent millennia hunting and killing each other? Men.

    Who invented armies? Men.

    Who created historical catastrophes such as genocides? Men.

    Who invented, and continue to invent, weapons of mass destruction? Men.

    Who dropped the atomic bomb on innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Men.

    Who destroyed native populations in Africa and the Americas for profit and power? Men.

    Who finance and organize bestial mercenary hordes to murder, rape and plunder? Men.

    Who cannot produce children? Men.

    Who are condemned to extinction because of their characters, habits, physiques and natures? Men.

    Indeed, there is nothing like a man.

    James C. Ryan

    Istanbul

    November 26, 2014

  • Former Mossad chief: For the first time, I fear for the future of Zionism

    Former Mossad chief: For the first time, I fear for the future of Zionism

    The nation of Israel is galloping blindly toward Bar Kochba’s war on the Roman Empire. The result of that conflict was 2,000 years of exile.

    By Shabtai Shavit

    Menachem Begin before an image of David Ben-Gurion
    Menachem Begin before an image of David Ben-Gurion

    From the beginning of Zionism in the late 19th century, the Jewish nation in the Land of Israel has been growing stronger in terms of demography and territory, despite the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. We have succeeded in doing so because we have acted with wisdom and stratagem rather than engaging in a foolish attempt to convince our foes that we were in the right.

    Today, for the first time since I began forming my own opinions, I am truly concerned about the future of the Zionist project. I am concerned about the critical mass of the threats against us on the one hand, and the government’s blindness and political and strategic paralysis on the other. Although the State of Israel is dependent upon the United States, the relationship between the two countries has reached an unprecedented low point. Europe, our biggest market, has grown tired of us and is heading toward imposing sanctions on us. For China, Israel is an attractive high-tech project, and we are selling them our national assets for the sake of profit. Russia is gradually turning against us and supporting and assisting our enemies.

    Anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel have reached dimensions unknown since before World War II. Our public diplomacy and public relations have failed dismally, while those of the Palestinians have garnered many important accomplishments in the world. University campuses in the West, particularly in the U.S., are hothouses for the future leadership of their countries. We are losing the fight for support for Israel in the academic world. An increasing number of Jewish students are turning away from Israel. The global BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) against Israel, which works for Israel’s delegitimization, has grown, and quite a few Jews are members.

    In this age of asymmetrical warfare we are not using all our force, and this has a detrimental effect on our deterrent power. The debate over the price of Milky pudding snacks and its centrality in public discourse demonstrate an erosion of the solidarity that is a necessary condition for our continued existence here. Israelis’ rush to acquire a foreign passport, based as it is on the yearning for foreign citizenship, indicates that people’s feeling of security has begun to crack.

    I am concerned that for the first time, I am seeing haughtiness and arrogance, together with more than a bit of the messianic thinking that rushes to turn the conflict into a holy war. If this has been, so far, a local political conflict that two small nations have been waging over a small and defined piece of territory, major forces in the religious Zionist movement are foolishly doing everything they can to turn it into the most horrific of wars, in which the entire Muslim world will stand against us.

    I also see, to the same extent, detachment and lack of understanding of international processes and their significance for us. This right wing, in its blindness and stupidity, is pushing the nation of Israel into the dishonorable position of “the nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

    I am concerned because I see history repeating itself. The nation of Israel is galloping blindly in a time tunnel to the age of Bar Kochba and his war on the Roman Empire. The result of that conflict was several centuries of national existence in the Land of Israel followed by 2,000 years of exile.

    I am concerned because as I understand matters, exile is truly frightening only to the state’s secular sector, whose world view is located on the political center and left. That is the sane and liberal sector that knows that for it, exile symbolizes the destruction of the Jewish people. The Haredi sector lives in Israel only for reasons of convenience. In terms of territory, Israel and Brooklyn are the same to them; they will continue living as Jews in exile, and wait patiently for the arrival of the Messiah.

    The religious Zionist movement, by comparison, believes the Jews are “God’s chosen.” This movement, which sanctifies territory beyond any other value, is prepared to sacrifice everything, even at the price of failure and danger to the Third Commonwealth. If destruction should take place, they will explain it in terms of faith, saying that we failed because “We sinned against God.” Therefore, they will say, it is not the end of the world. We will go into exile, preserve our Judaism and wait patiently for the next opportunity.

    I recall Menachem Begin, one of the fathers of the vision of Greater Israel. He fought all his life for the fulfillment of that dream. And then, when the gate opened for peace with Egypt, the greatest of our enemies, he gave up Sinai – Egyptian territory three times larger than Israel’s territory inside the Green Line – for the sake of peace. In other words, some values are more sacred than land. Peace, which is the life and soul of true democracy, is more important than land.

    I am concerned that large segments of the nation of Israel have forgotten, or put aside, the original vision of Zionism: to establish a Jewish and democratic state for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. No borders were defined in that vision, and the current defiant policy is working against it.

    What can and ought to be done? We need to create an Archimedean lever that will stop the current deterioration and reverse today’s reality at once. I propose creating that lever by using the Arab League’s proposal from 2002, which was partly created by Saudi Arabia. The government must make a decision that the proposal will be the basis of talks with the moderate Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

    The government should do three things as preparation for this announcement:

    1) It should define a future negotiating strategy for itself, together with its position on each of the topics included in the Arab League’s proposal.

    2) It should open a secret channel of dialogue with the United States to examine the idea, and agree in advance concerning our red lines and about the input that the U.S. will be willing to invest in such a process.

    3) It should open a secret American-Israeli channel of dialogue with Saudi Arabia in order to reach agreements with it in advance on the boundaries of the topics that will be raised in the talks and coordinate expectations. Once the secret processes are completed, Israel will announce publicly that it is willing to begin talks on the basis of the Arab League’s document.

    I have no doubt that the United States and Saudi Arabia, each for its own reasons, will respond positively to the Israeli initiative, and the initiative will be the lever that leads to a dramatic change in the situation. With all the criticism I have for the Oslo process, it cannot be denied that for the first time in the conflict’s history, immediately after the Oslo Accords were signed, almost every Arab country started talking with us, opened its gates to us and began engaging in unprecedented cooperative ventures in economic and other fields.

    Although I am not so naïve as to think that such a process will bring the longed-for peace, I am certain that this kind of process, long and fatiguing as it will be, could yield confidence-building measures at first and, later on, security agreements that both sides in the conflict will be willing to live with. The progress of the talks will, of course, be conditional upon calm in the security sphere, which both sides will be committed to maintaining. It may happen that as things progress, both sides will agree to look into mutual compromises that will promote the idea of coexisting alongside one another. If mutual trust should develop – and the chances of that happening under American and Saudi Arabian auspices are fairly high – it will be possible to begin talks for the conflict’s full resolution as well.

    An initiative of this kind requires true and courageous leadership, which is hard to identify at the moment. But if the prime minister should internalize the severity of the mass of threats against us at this time, the folly of the current policy, the fact that this policy’s creators are significant elements in the religious Zionist movement and on the far right, and its devastating results – up to the destruction of the Zionist vision – then perhaps he will find the courage and determination to carry out the proposed action.

    I wrote the above statements because I feel that I owe them to my parents, who devoted their lives to the fulfillment of Zionism; to my children, my grandchildren and to the nation of Israel, which I served for decades.

    Haaretz, 24.11.14

  • AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003
    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America
    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Istanbul: 13 November 2014

    Yesterday, three sailors from the uncontrollably violent neighborhood called America met the true face of Turkey. Poor boys, they don’t even know what they represent. They don’t even know that their so-called leaders have made them punching bags for its criminal enterprise called American imperialism. They don’t even know how America and its treasonous internal agents, in particular the Turkish government, are attempting to destroy the future of the Turkish youth.

    Perhaps these American boys got a quick lesson in the true nature of Turkish-American relations yesterday? But, sadly, probably not. The American boys ran back to the false safety of their warship, re-entering their “safe” world of imperialist propaganda, economic excess and hypocrisy. But there is no safety anywhere any longer. That is the gift of America to Turkey, and to the world. As usual, America authorities and its treacherous collaborating Turkish puppets screamed in outrage. And, as usual, the youth of Turkey, the true defenders of the Republic of Turkey, went to jail for exercising their patriotic duty. Nothing has changed, except one thing. Turkish young people, the nation’s true patriotic voice, will not take American crap anymore. And America should understand that. Listen and learn, America. You owe it to your own youth. Think of it this way, think of it as a symbol.

    That’s the way the resident American-imposed agent of destruction, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thought about his hooding of Turkish women into a grotesque series of Middle Age costumes that squeeze feminine brains into numb submission. So what, declared the then prime minister, if the head scarf is a political symbol? So what, indeed! Erdoğan used his compliant covered women to destroy democracy in his own country. He and his collaborators hid behind their women’s headscarves to do America’s dirty work. And now they cannot safely visit any neighborhood in their own land. No “hood” is safe for the hoodlums. And now the new president hides in a billion-dollar illegal palace, his inadvertent monument to treason. So what if he and his ilk cannot appear in public! So what!

    So what if in 1980 the American president celebrated the success of his CIA-engineered military coup by proclaiming “Our boys did it!” Yes, then his gangster BOYZ did it. And yesterday, today’s Turkish youth remembered. And yesterday, our Turkish boys did it to America, symbolically, of course, because Turkish youth is civilized. They can be no other way; they are the current-day “soldiers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” This is something that the treacherous opposition political polities can neither say nor understand. Yes, Turkish young people are civilized and enlightened by the patriotic principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That’s why, yesterday, no one, neither American boy nor Turkish boy was hurt. No one was tortured. No one was hung. No one was shot, exploded, beaten, gassed, or otherwise maimed. And that’s a lot more than America can ever say about their overt and covert interventions in Turkey’s affairs.

    So what if America and its craven ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, aided and abetted the Turkish government in its beating, gassing, maiming and murdering of democratically assembled Gezi Park protestors. “The Turkish government is having a conversation with its people,” said the deceitful ambassador, as he arranged to have more poisonous gas sold to Erdoğan and his hoodlum police. A “conversation?” So what!

    So what if the same ambassador conspired with the main opposition party leader to assure the election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency!

    So what if yesterday the American boys’ heads momentarily felt the experience of being symbolically hooded! Symbolically hooded, not actually hung like so many patriotic Turkish young people have been. And by their own government! The Turkish people have been strangled and hooded by America, by its CIA meddlers and by its corrupt politicians for decades. And in the past decade of Erdoğan’s treacherous rule, America’s CIA “boys” have done it again. Or tried to.

    So what if America has used its youth to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in its deceitful, illegal war of aggression!

    So what if America has humiliated the Turkish military by hooding its soldiers in Iraq in July 2003!

    So what if America has conspired with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan to kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians in its deceitful pretext of bringing democracy!

    So what if America has supported the treasonous, under-educated, Islamic zealot, CIA-asset, Fethullah Gulen for decades in the Pennsylvania countryside!

    So what if Gulen and Erdoğan have collaborated for decades in treacherous union to do America’s bidding in the subversion of the Turkish Republic! So what if the Turkish Army has been destroyed! So what if the independence of the Turkish judiciary has collapsed! So what if rivers have been stopped, farmers’ fields uprooted, forests felled, eternal olive trees murdered, lakes polluted, mountains plundered, the air made poisonous, all in pursuit of private profit, all indicative of massive governmental corruption! So what if the government has looted public funds! So what if the Turkish mass media slithers like a reptile on its overstuffed belly doing the bidding of its governmental master! So what if Turkey stinks from America’s subversion like a rotting corpse in the noonday sun!

    Yes, SO WHAT?

    Yesterday, clearly, directly, in a street-theater performance, Turkish “boyz” encountered American “boyz” in the Turkish “hood.” The US embassy in Turkey called the incident “appalling.” What is appalling is the embassy’s ignorance and arrogance. What is appalling is the criminal behavior of its criminal boss, the president of the United States. It is he and Erdoğan and all their co-conspirators, all the ones who need protection by regiments of armed-to-the-teeth goons, who deserve to be hooded. And now they can never step foot in our hood, ever again. Not ever! That’s the message from yesterday. Take your warships and your political puppets and go!

    James C. Ryan

    Istanbul

    13 November 2014

  • Takeaways from the GOP romp

    Takeaways from the GOP romp

    The Democratic field program did not live up to the hype. | AP Photo

    By JAMES HOHMANN | 11/5/14 4:21 AM EST

    Even optimistic Republican operatives didn’t anticipate this.

    The GOP seized control of the Senate, won House seats no one saw coming and expanded its footprint in governors’ mansions.

     

    GUNEY ABD EYALETLERINDE REPUBLICANS (CUMHURIYETCI PARTY) TAM KONTROLU ELE ALDI BUTUN SENATO VE MILLET MECLISI UYELERI HALK TARAFINDAN OBAMANIN PARTISI OLAN DEMOKRATLARDAN ALINDI VE CUMHURIYETCI PARTIYE VERILDI.. AMERIKAN HALKI OBAMADAN MEMNUN DEGIL.. BU ARADA TURKIYENIN BUYUK DOSTU ARKANSASDAN SENATOR ADAYI ESKI BELEDIYE BASKANI PAT HAYES DE DEMOKRAT SAFINDA YER ALDIGI ICIN KAYBETTI.. BUNA UZULMEKLE BERABER CUMHURIYETCILERIN TURKIYE DOSTU (TAYYIP ONCESI TURKIYE) OLARAK UNVANLARI VAR.. BAKALIM TAYYIB IN YANLIS POLITIKALARINIn SONUCU NE OLACAK.

    Here are our takeaways from the night:

    The Republican takeover of the South is finally complete.

    Arkansas was a last Democratic stronghold in the South. Native son Bill Clinton went several times for days at a time to try holding the governorship and a Senate seat. Democrats hoped the enduring popularity of Sen. Mark Pryor’s father, David, a former governor and senator, would generate goodwill and insulate him from anti-Barack Obama sentiment.

    (PHOTOS: Election Day 2014)

    Not only did Republican Tom Cotton trounce Pryor by 16 points, but the outgoing Democratic governor, Mike Beebe, will be replaced by former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a member of the House team that led impeachment proceedings against Clinton in 1998. National Democrats believed that the moderate former mayor of North Little Rock, Patrick Henry Hays, would pick up an open House seat — but he fell to a banker named French Hill.

    “Battleground Texas,” the much ballyhooed effort to turn the state blue, was a bust. Democratic star recruit Wendy Davis was crushed by 21 points, and even lost among female voters.

    Hundreds of stories were written about how Georgia is trending purple because of a growing minority population, and nonprofit executive Michelle Nunn was a top Democratic recruit. But Republican David Perdue easily topped the 50 percent threshold to win outright. So did Gov. Nathan Deal, who beat Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason by 8 points.

    Democrats failed at distancing themselves from the president.

    Democrats knew Barack Obama was unpopular, and he avoided campaigning anywhere but solidly blue states. It didn’t work.

    (Also on POLITICO: Tom Cotton defeats Mark Pryor in Arkansas)

    More than 300,000 advertisements aired across 28 Senate races linking the Democrat with Obama, according to Kantar Media. The races where he came up most often were Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina.

    In Kentucky, Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes was mocked for refusing to say whether she had voted for Obama — even though she was a delegate at her party’s national convention. McConnell wound up winning by just under 16 points — a much bigger margin than even GOP internal polls showed.

    Everywhere else, incumbent Democrats tried to localize the races. In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan tried to make her race about larger class sizes and education spending cuts by the GOP state Legislature. That frame didn’t stick.

    (Senate results by state)

    The national exit polling put Obama’s overall approval rating at 41 percent. But the bigger story is that voters are really down about the status quo: two-thirds said the country is on the wrong track, just 22 percent believe their children will be better off than them and 72 percent worry about a terrorist attack on American soil.

    Voters crave authenticity and hate phonies.

    Scott Brown was one of the few dark spots for Senate Republicans on Tuesday, losing his challenge to New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen by about 4 points — even though Obama’s popularity in the state is in the 30s.

    The fact that Brown just became a New Hampshire resident last December was never a centerpiece of the campaign, but it was always the undertone of Democratic ads. And it helped explain why Brown was viewed more unfavorably than favorably.

    (Also on POLITICO: Jeanne Shaheen vanquishes Scott Brown in New Hampshire)

    Network exit polls asked voters whether they thought Brown had lived in the state long enough to effectively represent it. Among the 45 percent who said yes, Brown won 93 percent. Among the 52 percent who said no, Brown won just 10 percent.

    Likewise, in Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott has never been popular but he spent tens of millions successfully hitting Charlie Crist as a political opportunist. Many of his ads showed Crist flip-flopping: calling for Clinton to resign in the 1990s then calling him one of the greatest Americans to ever live.

    And in New York, Sean Eldridge — the husband of Facebook early employee Chris Hughes — lost by 30 points. Eldridge, a Canadian native who has worn his political ambitions on his sleeve, bought a house in the district so that he could challenge Republican Chris Gibson.

    Republican governors thrived in blue states.

    Only one of the nine GOP governors up for reelection in states Obama carried twice went down: Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett, which has been expected for years.

    (Also on POLITICO: Tom Wolf ousts Gov. Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania)

    Against the odds, not only did Maine Gov. Paul LePage survive despite being somewhat polarizing in a blue state, he got 10 percent more of the vote than he did four years ago during the 2010 GOP wave.

    Despite spirited, well-funded challenges, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder both won with a couple points to spare.

    Ohio Gov. John Kasich won reelection by 31 points after his opponent imploded. Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval coasted to a second term with 70 percent. New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez beat a former state attorney general by 16 points.

    Several of those will take a serious look at 2016 presidential campaigns.

    Mary Landrieu is vulnerable, but her chances of winning might have just gone up.

    The Louisiana Senate race, as expected, will be decided by a Dec. 6 runoff since no one got to 50 percent. The third-term Democratic senator pulled only 42 percent of the vote, a very dangerous place for an incumbent. Republican Bill Cassidy, who had to fend off tea party challenger Rob Maness, got 41 percent.

    The centerpiece of Landrieu’s campaign was that she has clout for the state as chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The senator has now lost her chairmanship.

    But Landrieu would have almost certainly been toast if control of the Senate came down to Louisiana. Tens of millions in national money would have poured in, and she wouldn’t have been able to distance herself from Harry Reid.

    The fact that the race won’t determine Senate control could allow Landrieu to frame the runoff as a personality contest about who is more likeable. She can also promise to be a check on the GOP Senate. Landrieu did this successfully in 2002, unexpectedly winning a runoff after Republicans took control of the Senate a month before.

  • Israel’s Netanyahu Fumes At Reportedly Being Called ‘Chickensh*t’ By U.S. Official

    Israel’s Netanyahu Fumes At Reportedly Being Called ‘Chickensh*t’ By U.S. Official

    Posted: Updated:

    By Jeffrey Heller

    JERUSALEM, Oct 29 (Reuters) – An anonymous U.S. official’s reported description of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “chickenshit,” or worthless coward, drew a sharp response on Wednesday from the Israeli leader – no stranger to acrimony with the Obama administration.

    The American broadside, in an interview in The Atlantic magazine, followed a month of heated exchanges between the Netanyahu government and Washington over settlement building in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, which Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” the unidentified official was quoted as saying, using Netanyahu’s nickname and a slang insult certain to redden the ears of the U.S.-educated former commando.

    “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, in apparent reference to past hints of possible Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear program. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states.”

    Netanyahu, the official was reported to have said, is interested only in “protecting himself from political defeat … He’s got no guts.”

    Israeli leaders usually do not respond to comments by unidentified officials. But Netanyahu addressed those remarks directly in opening a memorial ceremony in parliament for an Israeli cabinet minister assassinated by a Palestinian in 2001.

    “Our supreme interests, chiefly the security and unity of Jerusalem, are not the main concern of those anonymous officials who attack us and me personally, as the assault on me comes only because I defend the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

    “…Despite all of the attacks I suffer, I will continue to defend our country. I will continue to defend the citizens of Israel,” he said.

    Such pledges by Netanyahu have resonated among Israeli voters, even amid fears his strained relations with U.S. President Barack Obama could ultimately weaken support from Israel’s main diplomatic ally and arms provider.

    Some pundits predict an Israeli election in 2015, two years early, speculation seemingly supported by the absence of any strong challenger to the Likud party leader and increasingly vocal challenges to his policies from senior ministers to the left and right of him within the coalition government.

    Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, whose ultranationalist Jewish Home party belongs to the coalition but who has had testy relations with Netanyahu, defended him on Facebook.

    “The prime minister of Israel is not a private person. He is the leader of the Jewish state and the entire Jewish people. Cursing the prime minister and calling him names is an insult not just to him but to the millions of Israeli citizens and Jews across the globe,” he wrote.

    Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog sounded a more critical note, telling Channel Two television: “Netanyahu is acting like a political pyromaniac, and he has brought our relations with the United States to an unprecedented low.”

    FRICTION

    In a series of recent speeches widely seen in Israel as setting the stage for a possible poll, Netanyahu has highlighted growing security concerns in the wake of the July-August war with Hamas in Gaza and regional unrest that has brought Islamist militants to Israel’s northern border with Syria.

    Israel also worries that U.S.-led world powers will agree to what it deems insufficient curbs on the nuclear program of its arch-foe, Iran, in talks with a looming Nov 24 deadline.

    Fears of a possible new Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, have been stoked in Israel by now-daily rock-throwing by Palestinians in Jerusalem amid Muslim fears of an end to an Israeli de facto ban on Jewish worship at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the holy city where Biblical temples once stood.

    Netanyahu has pledged to preserve the “status quo” at the site, a commitment Palestinian leaders view with suspicion.

    But drawing Palestinian outrage and a State Department accusation that Israel was distancing peace, Netanyahu pledged on Monday to fast-track plans for 1,000 new settler homes in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

    Netanyahu described such criticism as being “detached from reality,” saying Jews had a right to live anywhere in Jerusalem, regarded by Israel as its united capital – a claim not internationally recognized.

    Most countries and the World Court deem the settlements Israel has built in areas captured in a 1967 war to be illegal. Israel disputes this, and has settled 500,000 Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, among 2.4 million Palestinians. (Editing by Dan Williams and Dominic Evans)

  • U.S. Air Dropped Weapons To ISIS By Accident Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/10/u-s-air-dropped-weapons-isis-accident/

    U.S. Air Dropped Weapons To ISIS By Accident Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/10/u-s-air-dropped-weapons-isis-accident/

    Posted on October 21, 2014

    How do you be this completely incompetent? This is unbelievable. Obama has more blood on his hands.
    Check it out:

    In a new video, ISIS shows American-made weapons it says were intended for the Kurds but actually were air dropped into territory they control.
    At least one bundle of U.S. weapons airdropped in Syria appears to have fallen into the hands of ISIS, a dangerous misfire in the American mission to speed aid to Kurdish forces making their stand in Kobani.An ISIS-associated YouTube account posted a new video online Tuesday entitled, “Weapons and munitions dropped by American planes and landed in the areas controlled by the Islamic State in Kobani.” The video was also posted on the Twitter account of “a3maq news,” which acts as an unofficial media arm of ISIS. The outfit has previously posted videos of ISIS fighters firing American made Howitzer cannons and seizing marijuana fields in Syria.ISIS had broadly advertised its acquisition of a broad range of U.S.-made weaponsduring its rampage across Iraq. ISIS videos have showed its fighters driving U.S. tanks, MRAPs, Humvees. There are unconfirmed reports ISIS has stolen three fighter planes from Iraqi bases it conquered.