Trolls and comments

The New Neo Posted on by

Periodically I get an infestation of trolls here. It’s always interesting to me to note that trolls tend to proliferate any time Israel is being discussed.

Those of you who’ve been following this blog know what I’m referring to when I say “trolls,” but for others I’ll just summarize by saying that trolls are not just those who disagree with me. Trolls are people who come to a blog only to stir up trouble, move goalposts, get the commenters agitated, instult (sometimes quite viciously and/or obscenely), and ultimately ruin a blog and its comments section by causing commenters to leave or the blogger to shut down the comments function.

I ask the serious, nontroll commenters here, whom I highly value, to please bear with me as this gets corrected. It may take a while since I’m very busy and I use a friend to deal with technical matters such as these. In the meantime, please don’t respond to trolls in any way.

I instituted Haloscan comments rather than Blogger some time ago in order to have better control over trolls. This worked for a while, and it still works to a certain degree. But it’s relatively ineffective against what I will now refer to as semipro trolls–meaning trolls of a certain sophistication, who use proxies and other forms of hiding in order to avoid being banned.

I am in the process of considering another comments system that will be more effective against this type of troll as well. In the meantime, I will be deleting comments from those trolls who use proxy IP numbers and IP shields, as well as those who post under multiple identities (sock puppets). One example of the first category is “justaguy,” and an example of the second is Robert and Dave the Rabbit.

Robert/Dave the Rabbit is an interesting case, because many of his/their comments are not really trollish. But by definition, posting under multiple identities is troll behavior, unless it’s done only once in a while for reasons of humor.

The opportunities presented by the failed state

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah those helpful young men of Hezbollah! See this.

For those of you without access to the NY Times, here’s the gist of the article:

Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network ”” as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well ”” was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”

So Hezbollah starts the war, puts civilians in jeopardy, and then gets credit for cleaning up the mess. Sweet.

The most important part of the article is the quote by Saad-Ghorayeb: “the gross vacuum left by the state.” After decades of civil war and outside influence, Lebanon is now teetering on the brink of being a failed state. In fact, it may be a failed state already. And in a failed state, evil rushes in where angels fear to tread, and evil does it in the guise of good.

I’m reminded of how the Taliban got started in the yawning vacuum left by the withdrawal of the Soviets after their lengthy and destructive war there. The Taliban seemed like helpful young men at first, too, trying to create order out of chaos.

This, however, from the blog Lebanese Political Journal (via Pajamas Media), sounds a faint–very faint–note of hope.

The passive voice in the news: anything but passive

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter Tatterdemalian calls my attention to this AP news item.

Take a look. Take a good look.

It’s a well-known fact that many newspaper readers only peruse the headlines, and this one–“Rockets hit Lebanon despite cease fire”–would lead one to believe that Israel had fired rockets at Lebanon in violation of the cease fire. Wouldn’t it?

The first paragraph–“Tens of thousands of Lebanese jammed bomb-cratered roads Monday as they returned to still-smoldering scenes of destruction after a tenuous cease-fire ended 34 days of vicious combat between Israel and Hezbollah”–is devoted to the destruction the Lebanese people have suffered. It’s only in the second paragraph that the writer reveals what the headline refers to, which is the fact that the rockets fired “despite cease fire,” the ones that fell short of their targets in Israel and landed in south Lebanon, were fired by Hezbollah.

The use of the passive voice in this headline is far from an isolated instance, and is emblematic of the rot that has taken over news services such as the AP and Reuters. And don’t for a moment think that the passive voice would have been used if it had been the Israelis doing the firing.

[In case you’ve missed all the studies that show consistent MSM bias in its coverage of the Middle East, here’s one.]

[CORRECTION: Those who wrote that the headline is not in the passive voice are correct. The problem with the headline is that the rockets are considered the actor rather than those who launched them. Thus the true actor is disguised, and it’s left to the reader to fill in the blanks, which most would naturally do by assuming the actor was Israel.]

The Sanity Squad: we’re baaack!

The New Neo Posted on by

The second podcast of the illustrious Sanity Squad is now up at the new and redesigned Pajamas Media site.

My “s” and “f” sounds aren’t really as hissy as they sound; I’m still trying to find a good mic position that doesn’t distort my voice. I’m also trying to rid myself of my new and inexplicable love affair with the word “um” (is it a word? Well, at least I sound contemplative).

Guess the origins of Siggy’s accent, and you may be the one to win our prize.

Israel’s broken heart

The New Neo Posted on by

A piece by Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi entitled “Israel’s Broken Heart,” in the current New Republic (subscription only), places the blame squarely on the Olmert administration for mishandling the opportunities of the last month.

Israeli public opinion was united as never before; only the furthest reaches of the far left failed to see this war as an existential one–and that’s “existential,” not in the sense of some arcane Satrean philosophy, but in the original sense of “a battle for its very existence.”

In such struggles, it’s useless to pretend that one can fight halfheartedly, or with one hand tied behind one’s back because of PC considerations. Halevi describes a political cartoon that appeared in Maariv showing Olmert as a boy playing with a yo-yo inscribed “Israel Defense Forces.” Halevi writes:

None of Israel’s wars was ever fought with greater micromanagement by a government, and no government was ever less qualified to manage a war as this one.

But it wasn’t just Olmert. In recent years, Israel experienced cutbacks in its defense forces much like the US did in the Clinton years. Lulled by Oslo and Camp David and a vision of its own strength, as well as the dream of peace that seemed close at hand, the state of military readiness that Israel had maintained for so many years seems to have softened.

And who can blame them, really (oh, I know; many people can blame Israel for just about anything and everything)? As others have stated before, Israel was tired, bone-tired and weary, of being Sparta all the time.

The immediate post-World War II generation in Israel had no such illusions. They were used to the idea that they would have to struggle against the world merely to be allowed to exist. Subsequent generations lost some of that edge. But events are conspiring to force them to resharpen the swords they were so eager to beat into plowshares.

Halevi ends his article on a note of hope; he believes that this is only one round in a lengthy battle, and that Israel will ultimately be victorious.

But what does “victory” mean in this context, I wonder? How bad will it get before this is over? Will it go nuclear on Iran’s part? And how much time is left before it does? If so, what sort of preemption is necessary, what sort is effective, and what sort is possible?

The ultimate in piercings

The New Neo Posted on by

This is beyond description. So I won’t bother to describe it.

I’ll just add this commentary: what hath the Sixties wrought?

And this caveat: please, readers, DO NOT try this in your home! Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Tet Two, Brute?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s what Powerline has to say about the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon so far, and the present ceasefire:

So Hezbollah goes out on top. My guess is that the IDF has had quite a bit of success in killing terrorists, but that will go largely for naught as no one knows about it, and Hezbollah’s claims of victory will be deemed credible.

Tet, anyone?

There was a famous comment by an NVA Colonel in Vietnam during the final negotiations of that long ago but still hugely influential war, which I wrote about in this segment of my “A Mind is a Difficult Thing to Change” piece. I offer the quote once again:

“You know you never beat us on the battlefield,” I [Harry G. Summers Jr., American negotiator] said to Colonel Tu, my NVA counterpart.

“That may be so,” he said, “but it is also irrelevant.”

My observation:

Lessons learned from Vietnam: all that is necessary to win a war against the US is to turn domestic public opinion against it, even if you are militarily outclassed, even if you are defeated in every battle. It’s a lesson that was not lost on our current opponents.

Nor on Israel’s current opponents, as well. Although in the present case I would emphasize “international public opinion” rather than domestic.

Lebanese army receives its marching orders: from Hezbollah

The New Neo Posted on by

The Lebanese army received its marching orders today.

Actually, it received two sets of marching orders: one from its own commanders, and then another from Hezbollah, superceding the original command.

Though we hardly needed any more clarity on the impotence of the Lebanese government, we’ve gotten it. Hezbollah has pulled rank on the Lebanese.

The Lebanese army was ready to head south to form a large force in a buffer zone south of the Litani River, but the two Hezbollah Cabinet ministers took control of a Cabinet meeting and made it clear to the de jure (but not de facto) Lebanese government that the troop movement just wasn’t going to be happening.

The result? Humiliation of the Lebanese government and its armed forces. Its lack of power cannot be denied in any sort of face-saving move. And humiliation is an especially negative and intolerable emotion in the Arab world’s shame-based culture.

Captain Ed believes this dynamic will work to force a civil war in Lebanon (another one; the country has had more than its share of civil wars, I’m afraid):

The humiliation traveled from the generals to the troops, as everyone understood exactly why their orders to move out got countermanded. Government officials finally gave voice to the conundrum that all of us knew existed during this entire conflict, complaining that the Hezbollah “political party” would not abide by government decisions.

Hezbollah is a shadow ruler in control of Lebanon, and it’s coming out of the shadows, emboldened. Heretofore it had a great deal of support among many Lebanese, but has that changed? I’ve written about this possibility before, here, based on Michael Totten’s predictions that the Hezbollah/Israeli war would be followed by a Lebanese civil war against Hezbollah.

I question whether this ceasefire will hold and, if it does hold, whether it will further the cause of a probably illusory “peace process,” or merely serve to give Hezbollah more cover to burrow ever deeper into Lebanon.

If one studies the rise to power of Hitler in Germany, it becomes clear that his ascendance was far from inevitable. There were many forces arrayed against him; unfortunately, they were all incompetent, miscalculating, double-dealing, or just plain unlucky.

But it’s clear that when Hitler came to power he did not have the support of the majority of Germans. Nevertheless, come to power he did–and the rest, as they say, is history. And if you read the linked article, please note the role of paramilitary groups such as the Storm Troopers in his rise, as well as the fatal flaw of an extremely weak central government in Germany.

The combination of the paramilitary Hezbollah troops taking the ascendance in Lebanon and the weakness of the Lebanese government bodes ill for the future of Lebanon and the world. Like our parents and grandparents before us, who watched the events of the 1930’s unfold, we do indeed live in “interesting times.”

[More:

The [Lebanese] army’s equipment is poor, and no match for the Israelis. Lebanon has no air force or navy. One soldier said Hezbollah was better armed and organised, and that he was reluctant to confront “the resistance fighters”. Another soldier said his brother and a cousin were fighting for Hezbollah. “I can’t turn a gun on the resistance, because they are family,” he said.]

Crafts, mountains, friends

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I made one of favorite my annual treks to get away from it all, driving a few hours to the western part of New Hampshire to the Sunapee Crafts Fair.

That website doesn’t even begin to do it justice, nor do the words “Crafts Fair,” which conjure up macrame planters viewed by granola-chumping strollers in Birkenstocks.

No, not this one. The crafts are as sophisticated as they come, and as beautiful (also, alas, as expensive–I spent part of the day trying on the most spectacular suede coat in the world, priced at $1450, and then sadly bidding it adieu. A person can dream, right?).

The setting is a state park in the mountains near a lake. The weather was unusually glorious–and, just as unusual, somewhat chilly. The exhibitors (all 200+ of them) are set up in a series of huge tents: fiber artists and jewelers and printmakers and iron forgers and furniture artisans of indescribable flair and grace. One picture is worth a thousand words, but the photos at the website don’t express how stupendously and splendiferously beautiful these wares are.

There are also the usual overpriced sausage sandwiches and pizza slices, not all that lovely–I had one of the former. And I managed to purchase three gifts for others (wedding and two birthdays), all wonderful, all unique.

I noticed once again, as I’ve noticed many times before, that craftspeople at this level tend to look quite striking. Visually and artistically inclined, of course, as well as individualistic, they pay attention to colors and textures and uniqueness. Many of them have a calm and centered quality that must come from the Zen-like concentration required to work this way, day after day.

This is in contrast to what I’ve noticed when groups of writers get together (bloggers, of course, are in a different category altogether). About 20% of writers seem to be visual people, as well, and pay some attention to how they look (I count myself among their number). The other 80% appear to have emerged from their garrets resembling nothing more than a bunch of moles blinking from the unaccustomed light of day. Their clothes are thrown together from a ragtag grab bag–styleless and formless and shapeless; their bodies something only tentatively inhabited, poorly tended housing for their vast and overworked brains.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it’s not really all that far off; I’ve been to a bunch of writers’ workshops in my time. And a more colorless-looking lot of people you’d be hard pressed to find.

But I digress; back to the Crafts Fair. Best of all, I always meet my old college roommate there (we always joke about that word “old,” too, especially as the years go by and we edge closer to being just that). She lives in western New Hampshire, and I don’t get to see her all that often, so the Fair is a good venue for a get-together.

There’s nothing, nothing, nothing like a friend for life, a best friend, a true friend. We’ve been there for each other through all the considerable ups and considerable downs of the last–well, who’s counting?–years, through sickness and health and through not-all-that-rich and poorer and through love and marriage and kids and even changes of politics.

Afterwards we ate in a dreadful restaurant with a beautiful view on the shores of Lake Sunapee, until the sun set and we went our respective ways, she to the northwest and me to the northeast. But the friendship remains.

Insider tip, eavesdropped phone call

The New Neo Posted on by

As some of the details of the airplane attack case are revealed, it seems clear that the investigation proceeded slowly and painstakingly over a period of months. But several interesting facts stand out so far.

The first is that breaking the case involved a strong degree of international cooperation, especially between the UK and Pakistan, as well as the US. Although for some this may conjure up thoughts of James Bond, the work no doubt was decidedly unglamorous. It started on a tip from someone in the Moslem community in Britain following last year’s London bombings, the informant being an example of one of those “good Moslems” many people search for, Diogenes-like (it’s my contention that they are not so very hard to find).

The investigation seems to have picked up steam as a result of a phone call from Pakistan to a plotter in the UK, intercepted by the police, on the arrest of his brother in Pakistan. Both were British citizens, as were all the conspirators arrested in Britain so far. I’m curious to know whether this phone call was monitored as the result of a search warrant. At any rate:

This telephone call intercept in Karachi and the arrest of Rashid Rauf helped a lot to foil the terror plan,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

No need to imagine: these terror attacks were deja vu all over again

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote that the word “unimaginable” makes no sense in terms of the thwarted terror attacks. After 9/11, they were not only imaginable, but eminently so.

But it turns out it’s even worse than that. Not only were they imaginable, there was even something vaguely familiar about them. It didn’t take long to realize that the plot resembled what is known as Oplan Bojinka, an aborted 1994-95 al Qaeda plan to blow up a group of airliners in flight.

On further study, it turns out that the details of the most recent plot were not just vaguely similar to Bojinka. The resemblance was far greater than that: take a look.

Oplan Bojinka was conceived by our old friends Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, both now in custody and the designers, respectively, of WTC attacks #1 and #2. The details? Blow up eleven airliners using nitroglycerine packed into contact lens solution bottles. It is estimated that, had the plan gone into operation, about 4,000 people would have died and air travel would have been disrupted for weeks.

The similarities to the current plot are profound, but the apparent differences are interesting, as well–the main one being that the Bojinka operation was to be carried out by the higher-up planners themselves rather than by underlings, and that they would not be committing suicide–although there’s evidence that at least one part of the plot involved suicide: a terrorist pilot would commander a plane and crash it into the headquarters of the CIA (sound familiar?)

Bojinka was meticulously planned: the bombers would plant the explosives in life vests and then disembark from the planes at scheduled stops, before nearly simultaneous detonation over the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The timers for the bombs were in Casio watches.

To give you an idea of Bojinka’s scope, here are the airports that were to be affected:

* Kai Tak International Airport, Hong Kong
* New Tokyo International Airport (Now Narita International Airport), Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo
* Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Pasay City/Paraé±aque City, National Capital Region, Philippines, near Manila
* Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Republic of China near Taipei
* Singapore Changi Airport, Singapore
* Gimpo Airport, Gimpo City, South Korea (Now a part of Seoul)
* Bangkok International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand
* Honolulu International Airport, Honolulu, Hawaii
* JFK, New York, New York
* LAX, Los Angeles, California
* Portland International Airport, Portland, Oregon
* San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, California

The plot was foiled through what might be called a “work accident.” The bombers’ experimentations started a fire in their apartment and they fled while authorities were on the way, leaving behind a precious laptop with all the information about the plot. A confederate who was later sent to retrieve it was caught, and his cell phone led to the capture of some of the others.

The entire story reads like a movie. But if it does, it seems to be a movie that wasn’t viewed very often or with much attention. Because the question remains: how, with all of this history, could the present-day attacks have been called “unimaginable” by the British police? And, semantics and hyperbole aside, why weren’t bans on carry-on liquids in airplanes instituted long ago?

Oh, I know; it’s a risk-benefit ratio. Passengers don’t like being inconvenienced; I don’t like it myself.

One reason all of this may have been ignored is that the way the perpetrators of Oplan Bojinka were caught made them seem like a pack of bumblers. The same was true of the first WTC bombings in 1993. The result? No one took them seriously.

But after 9/11, Bojinka needed careful attention and thoughtful revisiting. All of the previous modi operandi used by al Qaeda should have been studied in great detail, and policies instituted to circumvent them in the future.

It’s a well known fact that Al Qaeda has a marked propensity for recycling its ideas, and it appears that the present-day plot was tantamount to deja vu all over again. It wouldn’t have taken a particle of imagination for authorities to have known that. All it would have taken was the study of history–which, like al Qaeda, has a tendency to repeat itself.

“Unimaginable” terror attack foiled: denial

The New Neo Posted on by

A planned terrorist attack to destroy airliners in flight through explosives hidden in carry-on luggage has been thwarted in Great Britain.

The police described the plot as involving “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” My reaction: unimaginable to whom? Folks, where’ve you been for the past five years?

Of course, you might say it shouldn’t have been “unimaginable” even before 9/11. But for most of us, it was. At the time, it was easier to be in denial of the intent and the capability of the jihadis because they’d never managed to pull it off before.

But at this point, the use of the word “unimaginable” is either a case of rhetorical hyperbole, or the reflection of an attitude of unfortunate denial in the face of clear and uncontrovertible evidence and statements of intent. Nothing of this sort should be unimaginable these days, and one doesn’t even need a very active imagination to envision it.

It’s also true that some still find it almost impossible to do so. One of my first thoughts on hearing the news–after I’d heard some of the details of what, where, how, who (I didn’t need the “why” since we’re all-too-familiar with that)–was to wonder how long it would take for someone to imagine the whole thing a conspiracy by the authorities to scare the public.

Preliminary reports aren’t saying all that much about the perpetrators, except that they are “home-grown” and part of the Pakistani community. This is the trend in terror attacks lately–not foreign nationals but locals, which is especially worrisome to authorities and, I would imagine, to the local communities as well, who could experience a backlash against them by the public at large. Not that the perpetrators care; it’s not “unimaginable” to me that generating such a backlash might even be desirable to them. After all, if their own community feels more oppressed, it could gain them more dissatisfied and disgruntled potential jihadis to martyr themselves in the cause of blowing up innocents.

[ADDENDUM: Dean Bartlett wonders about that word “unimaginable” as well.

And Alexandra has a nice list of reactions from the Left that are about as predicted.]