GOP Vixen

Cut the spin on the Mideast war

Israel accidentally kills civilians while targeting a Hezbollah stronghold, and suspends airstrikes while an investigation is conducted and giving people extra time to get out.

If Hezbollah killed 56 people in a house, they'd dance in the street with joy. They'd consider it a great victory. They'd rejoice that they spilled all that Jewish blood.

And Kofi Annan wouldn't be quite so horrified.

These are Hezbollah fighters, as photographed by an Australian paper. They are in civilian clothing, they are launching rockets from a dense suburban area. Who cannot say that these fools use women and children as human shields? How many IDF soldiers aren't wearing their uniforms and are hiding in residential neighborhoods in an effort to draw strikes to those locations and score a P.R. coup?

It's a military strategy that would make Napoleon faint, but Israel warns these areas in advance with leaflet drops, giving civilians (and, who are we kidding, militants) time to escape. Yet they still do it, because they're trying to decrease civilian casualties.

Hezbollah says, the more little old Jewish ladies and kiddies laying in pools of blood, the better.

The Lebanese have made themselves pawns of a terrorist organization. Latest polling shows:

• 87% support Hezbollah
• 70% agree with the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers
• 63% believe Israel will never defeat Hezbollah

It's not just a matter of opening your country up to radicalism and destruction, but it's no less than taking the moral low road.

Least favorite people on the right!

I was asked to participate in a poll of right-of-center bloggers over at Right Wing News in which we listed our 12 least favorite people on the right. Here are the results from the 45 bloggers who responded:

16) Debbie Schlussel (5)
16) Michelle Malkin (5)
16) Dennis Hastert (5)
15) James Dobson (6)
12) Ted Stevens (7)
12) Olympia Snowe (7)
12) Bill Frist (7)
11) Andrew Sullivan (9)
9) Bill O'Reilly (10)
9) Chuck Hagel (10)
8) Jerry Falwell (14)
7) Lincoln Chafee (15)
6) Ann Coulter (17)
5) Arlen Specter (19)
3) Michael Savage (22)
3) Pat Robertson (22)
1) John McCain (26)
1) Pat Buchanan (26)

I won't reveal all of my picks for least favorite person on the right, but about half a dozen are above (like the two Pats). I will reveal my No. 1 pick: Phyllis Schlafly.

Be sure to click over to Right Wing News to take a gander at the honorable mentions as well!

Caption this!

Iran re-arrests student leader

Iran Press News reported Saturday that student opposition leader Ahmad Batebi, famously targeted by the Iranian government after The Economist featured this photo of him on a 1999 cover, has been grabbed again by the government:

"Ahmad Batebi was arrested in front of his home in Tehran by plain clothes secret service agents of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

At 5 pm on Saturday evening, as Batebi and his wife Somaya, exited their apartment building they were accosted by several agents, forcing Batebi and Somaya back inside for interrogation and inspection of their home.

Somaya Batebi said that the agents spent 3 hours inspecting their apartment and finally gathered and confiscated Batebi’s personal property, including his computer, cellular phone, CD’s, several files and family photo albums.

In a phone call, Ahmad Batebi’s father expressed fear and concern for his son’s safety and wellbeing; Batebi’s father said that if his son’s situation is not clarified by tomorrow, Sunday, July 30th, he and other members of the Batebi will start a hunger strike.

Batebi’s father also stated that Ahmad himself had communicated that should he be illegally re-arrested, he would go on hunger strike during the initial hours of his detention.

It appears that after interrogation that Ahmad Batebi would have been transferred to detention center 209  of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security."

Learn more about Batebi here.

And while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps taking Iran down the path of insanity, read some of a letter penned by Batebi and other student prisoners in 2003:

"... Our demands are minute. Iranians are gentle people without greed. We wish to be embraced, once again, by the global human family. We want to enjoy life with the rest of humanity and share in their sorrows. We wish to openly and overtly express our dedication to all universal covenants. We want to show our respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Universal Peace, Nonviolence, Environmental Protection, Permanent Progress, and all the other noble covenants sanctioned by the mankind.

 

We hope to alleviate despotism and totalitarianism, setting the vote of the people as the gauge for governance. We aspire to redeem the rights of our sisters which have been ignored for so long, and establish an all encompassing equality between men and women. We want to rid our nation from hypocritical rulers and promote the re-established the age old Persian creed of 'good deeds,' 'good speech' and 'good thoughts.' We want everything that is good for our ancient homeland and for this earth and its inhabitants and we strive, as humanly as possible, to rid mankind of all that is evil. All this, for a people who have paid a grave price in self-sacrifice and a nation which has been victimized, is very little to ask for.

... We have bore the burden of endless tortures. We actually witnessed executions of our friends. Others have plunged to their death after being thrown off dormitory buildings. Many have been shot and then tortured for months. Some have been in solitary confinement for years, at the hands of the regime.

 

We have faced these perils without fear hoping to lessen the pain of our tired people in struggle and as a price for freedom. In return, we expect nothing. Just that our people do not lose hope. ..."

 

Kinder, gentler journalists

The Pakistani government journalist is out to "soften up" 33 "negative" journalists (as if all journalists aren't negative), hoping to get some better press coverage by buttering up critics. More:

"In a major PR exercise, the government of Shaukat Aziz has prepared a list of 33 columnists, writers and reporters in the English and Urdu print media of Pakistan and assigned its top 'spin doctors' to neutralise the 'negativism' of these writers by making them 'soft and friendly'.          

Understandably, no editor or owner-editor has been so targeted, suggesting that the government thinks it best to directly deal with the troublesome writers than indirectly through their prickly bosses.

The glib new information minister, Mohammad Ali Durrani, will lead his team of spin doctors along with the affable information secretary, Shahid Rafi, to work on the targeted columnists and reporters and 'soften' them up so that their criticism of the Aziz government’s policies and decisions is muted.          

The top Urdu columnist, Irshad Haqqani of Jang, is to be 'softened' up by two top government stalwarts – Information Minister Durrani and the principal information officer   (PIO) of the federal government, Ashfaq Gondal.

Mr Rafi is also tasked with buttering up Khalid Hasan, the Washington-based correspondent of Daily Times and The Friday Times.                    

The others from Daily Times on the government’s 'soft' hit list are Kamran Shafi (columnist) and Irfan Ghauri (reporter). Khaled Ahmad, the contributing editor of TFT, figures prominently in the line-up.

The military’s chief media manager, Major General Shaukat Sultan, has been asked to chasten Kamla Hyat, a human rights activist and columnist of The News. ..."

The Daily Times muses that now that the program is exposed, the government may abandon it. Of course, they may have found the task of creating warm and fuzzy journalists next to impossible. Unless "softening" these troublesome journalists really meant taking them in a dank basement with a lead pipe.

GOP Vixen: No Pakistani government can ever make us "soft and friendly"!

Isn't there a statute of limitations on being offended?

From the Sunday Telegraph:

"A woman has been told by police that she must remove a sign on her garden gate that reads 'Our dogs are fed on Jehovah's Witnesses' because it is 'distressing, offensive and inappropriate'.

Jean Grove, a pensioner, has displayed the sign for 32 years. Her late husband, Gordon, put it up after members of the Church banged on their door on Christmas Day 1974.

Mrs Grove, from Bursledon, Hants, said that police officers had taken her details and insisted that she remove the sign. Once they had left, she put it back.

She said the sign was not intended to cause offence and that no one had complained to her about it, not even Jehovah's Witnesses. It was merely a way of showing that she did not welcome their calls.

'It was just a bit of a lark,' she said, pointing out that the only dog she had now was a Jack Russell pup called Rabbit, which was too small to savage callers of any religion.

Mrs Grove, 77, said: 'If someone had told me they were offended, I would have taken it down. Why should it suddenly be a problem?' She said she kept the sign as a memorial to her husband, who died two years ago after 52 years of marriage.

'I couldn't believe it,' she said. 'The police put my name and address in their little black book and everything.'"

32 years after they put the sign up?

Baby talk

A hearty congratulations to my good friend Jill, who, with hubby Ben, just welcomed their first baby into the world, Malcolm Seamus! Jill and Ben decided not to find out the baby's gender before birth, so we all were faced with the challenge of finding gender-neutral baby shower gifts. (And since he weighed in at 9 pounds, she gonna have to return a lot of newborn sizes.) Though many of us predicted it would be a boy, even random nosy strangers who came up to her on the street and even on the beach during their last-gasp vacation. (And her baby doesn't look disturbing like the cartoon here...)

Everybody's a Middle East pundit, ho!

I like Neil Cavuto. He's one of my favorite Fox hosts. But what is happening with his guests? Like I love George Foreman, but I want to hear him talking about boxing, God or lean mean grilling machines -- recently, Cavuto had him on to get deep opinions on the Middle East war, which Foreman didn't even seem that into talking about. But at least George could give his general opinions on war as a preacher man.

Yesterday, though, Cavuto had Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame on to opine that the U.S. had no business in the Middle East. The man is a rapper and a record-label owner. 2 Live Crew, for those of you who aren't fly, was the late '80s group that released "As Nasty As They Wanna Be" and were arrested on obscenity charges for performing album tracks in Florida. So essentially, cutting the hit single "Me So Horny" makes one qualified to disseminate the finer points of Hezbollah ties to Syria and the Israeli right to self-defense. Actually, Campbell's reason for opposing U.S. involvement in the Mideast seemed to be it's-all-about-peace-and-love-man. The only reason Cavuto gave for him being on was "he's a businessman." Does that mean the hot dog vendor on the corner is also qualified to give a thorough conflict assessment?

Since when did everybody become a Mideast pundit? Will Paris Hilton be on O'Reilly tomorrow, discussing multilateral negotiations or Arab League response? Did they actually run out of pundits this quickly? Aren't the think-tanks still pretty full?

Iran parliament: Tie a yellow flag 'round the old oak desk

Yesterday Iran Press News had these pics of Iran's parliament -- going crazy with their Hezbollah flags:

Surely your work would be seriously distracted with Nasrallah's ugly mug staring at you (or, let's face it, even the guy leaning over the desk...)

Blow out the candles on your yellowcake, Hugo!

Today is Hugo Chavez's 52nd birthday, and guess who's the party host? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! Yep, while jetting around on his world tour to drum up support among dictators, authoritarians, theocrats and goobers for his goofy world order, Chavez scheduled his happy day to be spent in Tehran. Officially:

"Spokesman Ehsan Jahandide told AFP the two leaders would focus on 'bilateral relations and a review of previous agreements, and before he leaves Tehran a number of agreements will be signed.'

Chavez is also due to open a new Venezuelan embassy in Tehran, meet Iranian business leaders and receive an honorary medal from Tehran University. No further details were given.

The two-day visit will be Chavez's fourth to the Islamic republic since 2000."

Surely Mahmoud will arrange to have a political prisoner jump out of a cake for his good buddy Hugo...

So Happy Birthday, Hugo! Don't let those candles blow up in your face or anything...