Addiction

It was interesting to hear President Bush talk about America's oil "addiction." In reality, addictions are unhealthy dependencies on substances. So... addicted to Middle Eastern oil would be about being addicted to oil, regardless of location.

News flash, George: addicts don't care about the source of their drug. So to redirect them to Arctic or Cuban drilling to reduce dependency (currently 20% of oil imports), would be akin to switching from Afghan heroin to Columbian smack.

Mr. President, please don't insult the American people. If you are talking about weaning Americans from cheap oil, you have a partner in me and the Ameican Left. Conservation, mandatory minimum MPGs that make sense, tax breaks for using biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen fuel cells, or other alternative fuels, documented reduction in yearly vehicular travel, proof of use of mass transit are all great ways to reduce our use of oil. That and the promotion of non-petroleum substitutes for things like laundry detergent and soap would save Americans in real dollars and barrels of crude petrocarbons.

Cold turkey may not work for America, but changing dealers or drug sources does not count as breaking an addiction. You, as a former alcohol addict, shoud know that. Be ashamed. Be very ashamed, Mr. President.

A Service Announcement

As 2005 draws to a close, I will be changing formats around a little. Instead of a catch-all blog, there will be three:

• The Pulse, discussions regarding politics and personal life,
  
• HaDofeq, Middle Eastern-related political and personal posts, and
  
• The Ping, technical and technological posts
  

These three will provide readers with topics more germane to their searches. It's been great hearing from commenters, and I look forward to more posts in the coming year.

Ending the Year: Hamas into the Brink

I was hoping to end the year on some kind of upbeat note. But on the Israeli Broadcast Authority's Friday's Yoman program Hamas announced that they would be entering the Palestinian government, with the intent to "liberate all occupied Palestinian terrorities, including Yafo and Haifa."

The great experiment started by Faisal Husseini and the Christian Palestinian moderates in the mid-80's is now officially a failure. The "last great hope" on which a number of Israeli governments have risen -- and fallen -- has been hijacked, like the Achille Lauro or American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175, to the advantage of terrorists that would rather see the entire world erupt in flames than find common ground and peace.

Israel's radical right has advocated a fascist solution to Arab terror: transfer. This is no longer an even discussable solution, with rockets landing at Israel's doorstep in the south and north, and the great underbelly of the east probably the next front, from which almost no major city is out of range.

On a more organized front, Hizballah's puppet masters in Iran and Syria, under increasing pressure to reform and conform the the norms of behavior of world countries, are stoking the fires of terror against Israel, just as the Bush administration distracts the American public from its felonious conduct with faux warnings illegal immigation as a terror tool and investigations about the exposure of its failures.

My fear is that the next vocalized step by the far right, the economically disaffected, the displaced Gazans and the zealot "hilltop youth" cynically deployed by their parents and "rabbies" will be Kahane's jackals despicable cant: "Death to the Arabs." And, given Israeli military capability and 'Arik, King of Israel's impending ascent to the throne, is no longer just the dream of fascists.

Coming Soon to a Border Near You...

Americans beware: the fate of Gaza can become your fate as well. With Gazans "securely" bottled up in their little sliver of a ghetto, the PLO's putative control has faded. Sure, they got the pretty uniforms, but that's about it. For effectiveness, Hamas owns the streets, the adrenal glands, livers and guts of the people. (Note to G.W. Bush: Hearts and minds are entirely unnecessary to own in this part of the world; fear requires no thinking!)

When Israel ruled Southern Lebanon, hundreds of Lebanese crossed the borders every day, picked up at the border by Israeli busses, and ferried off to Israel to work at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, in the industrial zone all up and down the coast, and even down to the orchards near Hadera. The money they brought in bought the Lebanese security, the Israelis a cheap labor force, and generally speaking, good relations with the locals. A win-win for both sides. Of course, that's all in the past now. Those thousands of Christian families are now living under the shadow of poverty and terror, families that didn't move to Israel after Israel's cowardly withdrawal "purged" by the terrorists that moved into the power vacuum.
Americans need to worry about a Hamastan in the Western Hemisphere. Don't laugh before you think about it for a minute. There are lots of poor people with little reason to stay where they are in South and Central America, and a big, rich country up north. If Bush and his Congress deliver on their GOP-inspired promise of closing the borders to illegal immigration (usually with some references to Al Queida and terrorists), Mexico is left holding the bag. With almost one in three Latin Americans under age 15 and one in four making under $2 a day (according to the PRB's latest stats), dealing with the millions on young Mexicans, Guatemalans, Peruvians, Columbians, Venezuelans, etc. already illegally within Mexico's borders.

That makes President Fox the oppressor, puts lots of disgruntled, poorly educated and lively folks with plenty of excess energy and time on their hands on US borders. This has the very real ability to destabilize Mexico, since the Mexican economy already depends on the funds Mexican immigrants wire down from America to their families back home.

If Bush is worried about immigration helping terrorists, then he'd first better think about how many, not how few, immigrants he can afford to let into the United States. Besides, how are we supposed to open a Home Depot every 43 hours and at a Wal-Mart almost every day without all that cheap labor, let alone the McMansions being thrown up en masse?

Start taking notes, folks. The delusional worries about the Southern US border today may become the reality because of, not in spite of, our current government's policies towards immigrant or migrant labor.

Oh, despite all that: Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Kwanza Greetings, a belated Eid ul-Adha, an orgiastic Saturnalia, and a Festivus for the Rest of Us!

Arafat is Dead, Long Live Chaos!

Well, you heard it here first, folks. Hamas soundly trounced the rational parties, the parties of logic and corruption, in all but their home territory: Ramallah. And now that terrorism has won, the Palestinian counterparts to the Israeli rats are leaving the sinking ship, to founder independently or join whichever horse seems to be winning. (Sounds like the Democrat defections in the late '90s.)

Now the proof is in the eating of the pudding: will Hamas do what no other terrorist group since the Israeli pre-state cells have done, and 'go legit?' Begin and Shamir were proof that terrorists can become legitimate statespeople, better than either professional politicians or mainstream military leaders.

Sadly, I don't think it's that balanced a question. The pre-Israel Jewish cells were founded on the idea that killing civilians was abhorent with notable exceptions, unfortunately, in the King David Hotel bombing, Deir Yassin, and assassination of Count Bernadotte. carried out by the Haganah (the IDF's predecessor) Etzel and Lehi, and Lehi respectedly. The mere fact that I can name those exceptions, and Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad have taken random killings of civilians into the realm of blase reportage points up the gulf between these groups. I trust only that terrorists who target, and peoples that celebrate, the killings of civilians en masse cannot be trusted with running their own affairs, let alone conducting themselves as a Nation of the World.

Skin-deep Civilization

Another quick post. Yesterday there was a blackout in my neighborhood. Nice day out, a little brisk. Sunny, pleasant. The local utility got the lights back on in under a couple of hours.

Bush has more to worry about than the angst in Iraq, or whether stuffing the Supreme Court with "his kind of people" is a good thing. See, I live in an okay neighborhood. No high density housing, definitely low-crime. The county doesn't truck with hoodlums (an ominous phrase), and there's a sense of "law and order" about the place.

So the good neighbors eschewed the outside air and descended to the local grocery store. You know the type: big box, no windows, one about every mile? The staff was average for a Sunday, and it took several minutes before the staff realized that (a) they were getting massively ripped off, and (b) they were outnumbered.

When the lights came on everyone carried on as if nothing happened. Police weren't called because there were too many of them, and there was no proof that those that had slipped outside hadn't purchased their goods. No power means no cameras. No power means the gloves are off.

This is a sentinel for the economic rebounding Bush trumpets. Give the rich their cake, and let the poor steal bread.

You Can't Step out of the Pond...

...without taking the pond scum with you.