By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST
The Supreme Court isn’t in the business of protecting rights. It is in the business of protecting the Left.
Last Sunday, the government passed what was billed as a major reform in Israeli broadcasting.
The cabinet voted 18-2 to eliminate the fee the public is forced to pay to finance public broadcasting, shut down the public broadcasting authority and open a new public broadcasting authority that will be unfettered by the wreckage of the old one.
The problem with the bill that was approved by the government for submission to the Knesset is that the larger problem with public broadcasting remained unaddressed. The main reason that members of the public railed against the fee is that they don’t like what they are paying for. By and large, with a few notable exceptions, public broadcasting’s offerings are unoriginal, uninteresting and poorly done.
Moreover, they either reflect the worldview of the narrow post-Zionist sliver of the population or signify nothing at all.
The decision to close the broadcast authority and reopen it under another name while canceling the fee is a net positive achievement. But it was also a missed opportunity.
At the last moment, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni inserted radical amendments in the bill to ensure that the price of reform will be maintaining public broadcasting as a subsidized platform for the radical Left.
The original bill, written by Communications Minister Gilad Erdan and co-sponsored by Finance Minister Yair Lapid, gave authority to a committee to nominate an unlimited number of candidates to serve on the new broadcast authority’s nine-member board of directors. The committee was to be chaired by an unelected, retired Supreme Court justice or district court judge, and manned by two other members appointed by the judge.
In the original draft, the judge was supposed to give the list to the minister of communications, who would be empowered to accept or veto the individual names on the list. While this system would give the retired judges enormous power to impose their political ideology on the public broadcasting system, the minister would retain some limited power to block this corruption of broadcasting independence. As new ministers are appointed every few years from different political parties, in all likelihood the minister’s power would ensure some degree of political diversity among committee members.
Livni’s amendment took the minister’s power away. Her version – which Erdan accepted and the government approved – gives the judge the power to present a closed nine-person list to the minister and the minister can either approve or reject the entire list.
So, too, the original bill gave the minister and the government ultimate power to fire the general director of the new authority. Under Livni’s amended version, only the judge has that power.
So who is this all-powerful unelected judge? Since the overwhelming majority of Supreme Court justices are radical leftists, it is fair to assume that the judge will be a radical leftist.
There is some wiggle room to be had since retired district court judges can also run the committee and there are more non-radicals among them. But the law of averages leans heavily in favor of the radical Left.
The result is that the new bill not only ensures ideological conformity in the committee, by granting a single person essentially all the power to choose the committee, it ensures that the ideological conformity will almost certainly be leftist.
This is what the Left does. It quashes independent thought while insinuating its members in every position it can to prevent an open exchange in the marketplace of ideas.
As a consequence, Israel’s news and entertainment industries are by and large closed to Zionist voices.
Consider the saga of Latma. I founded Latma, a Hebrew-language satirical media criticism website funded by private philanthropists, in February 2009. Our flagship satirical news broadcast, The Tribal Update, premiered in May 2009.
Latma’s purpose was to entertain viewers while focusing attention on the sacred cows of the Leftist elites that control the media, the legal system and academia. Until Latma’s appearance, those elites had been immune from effective criticism.
The result was immediate and overwhelming. Three months after we launched it, The Tribal Update became the most-watched Israeli Internet broadcast. Within a year of its launch, Latma had garnered international attention and tens of millions of hits.
Many in the broadcast industry were certain that if Latma’s Tribal Update were broadcast on television, it would become the most popular satirical television show in decades. And yet, neither of the commercial television stations showed any interest.
That left state television. As the station that supposedly exists to provide a platform to underserved sectors of the public, Channel 1 seemed like a reasonable fit for our show.
And indeed, in 2010, it solicited a pilot broadcast, which it immediately accepted. The station’s leadership opened negotiations toward signing a contract to produce a season of the show. But then they disappeared, only to reappear, and then disappear, again and again.
Over the past four years, Latma passed through every committee charged with approving new broadcasts multiple times. But we never received a contract.
Last fall, the Knesset’s Education Committee intervened. MK Ayelet Shaked from Bayit Yehudi demanded that Channel 1 account for its treatment of Latma.
Committee chairman Amram Mitzna, from Livni’s far-left Hatnua party, ordered the station to immediately sign a contract with us.
Three months later, when nothing happened, another meeting was called, and despite his ideological affinity with Latma’s opponents, Mitzna again gallantly ordered Channel 1 to sign a contract with Latma.
It may still happen. Our producer recently met with the station’s executives and had a productive negotiations session.
But even if there is a happy end to the story, the saga Latma has undergone as an avowedly Zionist content producer has no precedent.
At a minimum, Livni’s intervention in the new broadcast law will ensure that if and when shows like Latma’s Tribal Update appear on public television, their appearances will be rare.
The only way to remedy the situation in the media business as a whole is to deregulate it. The only way that all voices can be heard is if there is no one regulating any voices.
But rather than strip away the power of the ideologically uniform regulators, rightist politicians give them more power. And so they collaborate with the Left to perpetuate a system that is inherently discriminatory against them, and against their ideological camps, which comprise the majority of the population.
Consider the Internet. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal ran an article describing the changes that online video content is fomenting in the advertising industry. US advertising industry leaders project that by 2018, the majority of US advertising dollars will be spent on online platforms rather than traditional television networks.
As in the US, so in Israel. Online content producers – such as Latma – are taking away an ever-expanding segment of viewership from television stations.
And this is altogether reasonable. Unrestrained by “objective” regulators, online content producers can put out anything they want. Unlike traditional broadcasters, Internet content creators stand or fall on the quality of their output rather than the strength of their political connections and the nature of their politics.
Rather than protect the only free, accessible marketplace of ideas in Israel, in February Erdan formed a new committee, composed largely of regulators. It is tasked with determining how to regulate the media market in the era of Internet in order to protect the commercial viability of the commercial broadcast stations – which are run by members of the closed club of post-Zionist broadcasters.
In other words, the new committee is to find ways to limit Internet speech in order to ensure that consumers have limited choices.
The situation in print media is similarly discouraging.
In March, lawmakers from coalition parties co-sponsored a bill whose clear purpose is to shut down the free nationwide daily Yisrael Hayom, owned by American Jewish casino magnate and conservative philanthropist Sheldon Adelson.
The bill would require all nationally circulated dailies to charge consumers a fee, thus rendering Yisrael Hayom’s business model illegal.
Until Yisrael Hayom appeared on the scene seven years ago, all mass circulation Hebrew-language daily newspapers in Israel – together with television and radio news shows – were uniformly antagonistic toward Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Yisrael Hayom is not a right-wing newspaper. According to reporters who work for Yisrael Hayom, all of its editors and reporters, aside from a few sports reporters, are leftists. And their views are reflected in the paper’s coverage of events, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree than in competing papers.
And yet, from the moment it appeared on the market, Yediot Aharonot, its main competitor, and Ma’ariv, Yediot’s chronically bankrupt clone and competitor, tried to get it outlawed. The current bill is Yediot’s friendly legislators’ sixth attempt to pass a law to close down the competition.
The most distressing thing about the current bill is that it is co-sponsored by Shaked and supported by the Habayit Hayehudi party leader, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett.
While it is absolutely true that Yisrael Hayom favors Netanyahu over Bennett and Shaked, it is also true that Yediot and Haaretz favor the post-Zionist Meretz party over them.
Closing Yisrael Hayom won’t ensure them fair media coverage. The only way to get fair coverage is to strip all media outlets of government protection – and of government regulation.
Yisrael Hayom published an article the other day arguing – rightly – that the Knesset bill is unconstitutional because it breaches Israel’s Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, and infringes on freedom of expression. The subtext of the article was that if the law is passed, the paper will petition the Supreme Court.
But that would be futile. The Supreme Court isn’t in the business of protecting rights. It is in the business of protecting the Left. For its sin of supporting Netanyahu, Yisrael Hayom can expect the court to trample its rights just as it trampled Arutz 7’s rights in 2002 when it absurdly ruled that it was unconstitutional to allow Arutz 7 a broadcast license.
And so the vicious circle will continue. Leftist judges will appoint leftist regulators. The regulators will act in concert with leftist broadcasters to block Zionist voices and to destroy non-leftist competition. Shortsighted right-wing politicians will collaborate with this corruption to win tactical victories against their opponents, while accepting strategic defeat in the war of ideas.
This is our system. And until our leaders open the marketplace of ideas to competition, our system it shall remain.
Caroline B. Glick is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.
http://carolineglick.com
@ honeybee:
Why should I do that?
I show you to yourself, HB.
What you do with it BEYOND that point is your affair, not mine.
dweller Said:
So bite me!!!!!!!!!!!! Sweetie
@ honeybee:
Nobody is. However, his unreconstructed egocentricity allows evil a foothold to make inroads.
But what I find more interesting is the fact that his original comment was directed at ME. He had taken Mark Rosenblit’s take on moral equivalency which had tried (unsuccessfully) to apply it to a passage from Isaiah. Yet you made no move to call YAMIT on his implicit characterization of ME as ‘evil.’
It was only when I noted that in referencing the excerpt he was really speaking unconsciously of HIMSELF (as ‘evil’ masquerading as good) that you finally got around to protesting. . . .
@ honeybee:
Sorry, Twinkie, no sale.
The ladies that ‘love’ him are no more aware than he, and just as threatened BY it as he.
dweller Said:
That’s why the Ladies love Yamit82, it burgeoning awareness!!!!! Sweetie
@ yamit82:
Now that’s rich: If I draw attention to a malady, that must mean I’m hung up on its effects; ROFLMFAO. Truth is, you are playing a game of hide-&-seek with your own burgeoning awareness; I’m just a symbol for it, and must be brushed away or somehow discredited.
A misogynist would have no problem with using women, because he unconsciously regards them as existing for him, not for themselves. There IS indeed a true misogynist here, but it isn’t YoursTruly.
dweller Said:
I ‘m coffee flavor with chocolate bits!!!!!!!!!!Sweetie
@ yamit82:
No user ever DOES think that.
As I’ve said, use is NEVER strictly one way.
Whether she would or wouldn’t “verify” it is utterly irrelevant. Again, as I’ve noted, it would’ve been impossible for only one of you to use the other.
That’s quite beside the point, even if true. Use isn’t dependent on
generosity OR giving.
Often, in fact, Giving AND Generosity are actually compensations for using — viz., an end-run around one’s conscience.
Rest my case.
The way I ‘love’ ice cream.
The way the lion ‘loves’ its prey.
dweller Said:
Yamit82 may be a bit of a rascal with Ladies, but evil, hardly. Hey nony nony nony!!!!!!!!!!!
dweller Said:
Calvinist!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
Quite so.
But the person it APPLIES to
— is YOU.
@ honeybee:
I understand it all too well.
That’s WHY I stand foursquare behind what I said.
@ yamit82:
You obviously have either not seen many of his pictures, or not much sensibility in judging the craft. Some of his stuff is quite good, while other work of his leaves a bit to be desired. The fact is that the quality of his work (as a performer) is a mixed bag.
That being said, it’s important to note that RR’s work was often much hampered by the studio system, which often resulted in his being both typecast and miscast. As I’ve said on a number of occasions, casting directors are notoriously unimaginative — and where the celluloid media (in particular) are concerned, that failing of casting directors can be quite noticeable.
One of the two or three best presidents of the 20th century.
(Quite possibly the VERY best of the century, but it’s always a mistake to make such judgments until a president has been out of office for at least 40 years — so I reserve judgment, for the time being.)
You say that over & over again, but your ‘evidence’ always turns out to be a pile of slanderous pig plop.
Whenever you upchuck this vomit, you only reduce your OWN credibility as a judge of character.
Anyone who genuinely cannot see a qualitative difference between the two hasn’t got the sense God gave a gerbil, and probably shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision — as s/he isn’t safe in traffic.
dweller Said:
You do not seem to understand the manner of men with women.
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/muchado/page_80.html
@ yamit82:
Yes.
Big problems never arrive full blown. They always begin as small ones, allowed to fester. Granada was a problem nipped in the bud.
A “chicken hawk” is a pedophile. Is that what you mean to say about RR?
No comparison (more like a contrast); 180 degrees different. Reagan was man who had made his living as an actor, but who knew that when he was off the stage, or off-camera, the actor’s work was done.
Obama is, in fact, an actor (and a pretty good one, actually, IMABHO). He’s not a president, but he is an actor playing the role of one.
Will finish this in another post.
@ honeybee:
Well, of course. I’ve said that many times. But your comment [above] wasn’t about the women, so I made no mention of them; it was about Y specifically, so I addressed that specifically.
Truth is, you CAN’T use somebody without being used yourself.
Use is in its ESSENCE mutual. “He” uses her; “she” uses his use of her. And vice versa.
No way around it; if you use, you will inevitably BE used.
But if you think the guilt of using somebody is somehow ‘lessened’ by virtue of its being mutual, then you’re flat-out wrong. It’s not like a zero-sum game, e.g., that the more one party is guilty, the less the other is — or that the more parties that are in on it, the less each of them shares, etc.
Quite the contrary, each party’s guilt compounds that of the other parties; actually MULTIPLIES it, because each is thus guilty NOT ONLY for his/her own use of the other, BUT ALSO for allowing him/herself to be an accomplice, as it were, in the perpetrating of the others’ use.
yamit82 Said:
A future or younger Yamit82 or TX ??: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/18/in-18-seconds-you-will-understand-why-this-young-baseball-fan-is-being-hailed-online-as-a-genius/
@ yamit82:
great day yesterday at the flea market. Found another carving by the late Santero Ben Ortega. I was missing you invectives, are you OK and celebrating Lag B’Omert and the Israeli basketball championship.
dweller Said:
Will you send it to my address or deliver it to my door?
honeybee Said:
Don’t think I used women and in fact it’s me who has been used. My late ex wife Z’L would verify that if she could.
I have always been giving and generous with women I have been associated with and there have been more than a few.
I LOVE WOMEN…. G-d’s Gift to Men. I don’t like you very much though!!!!
Some may have had negative opinions of me but not because any believed they were being used by me, if anything I was the one being used in many cases but then only because I was willing. There is always some form of quid pro quo in every interpersonal relationship even platonic ones… Seems you are hung up on using or being used by women. Your mom, yeshu and Paul seem to have done a number on you…Explains your misogamy… 😛
@ dweller:
I agree with your assessment of Vietnam and I do commend you for not taking an easy way out of the draft. However I honor Yamit82’s service greatly. I cannot imagine what courage it takes to face combat. I will never disparage that service.
dweller Said:
I take that for horrific back and muscle pain. It is debilitating. I enjoy Rush he keeps my company while I do my chores. Do I agree with him, yes & no. I never really agree consistently with anyone but myself.
dweller Said:
NOPE!!! Idiot!!!! Try again…. Which makes your whole analysis and rant incorrect and irrelevant.
Right!!! The great conqueror of…..GRANADA??? 🙂 What I call a CHICKEN HAWK!!!!!
He was much like Obama, a scripted TURD both playing roles others wrote for them. He was a shitty actor, a worse president, a Jew hating Nazi lover and he really loved his Diaper Heads especially those who wanted to Kill Jews.
Anyone who believes Obama is anti-Israel cannot Claim RR was better, unless they lie and fabricate the historical record while rationalizing his perfidious deeds.
About you and RR:
dweller Said:
Not without their willing and eager compliance.
@ honeybee:
Yeah; wins the booby prize.
@ yamit82:
Not unless there’s cheap & easy political headway to be made by doing so.
Clearly, anyone who HAS listened to Limbaugh’s program can tell that that writer has NOT.
And that’s your proof (or even ‘evidence’???) of his ‘draft-dodging’?
If you accept that as evidence of anything, then you’re as dumb as the dummies those rumors were intended for.
Rush Limbaugh was disqualified for military service because of a hereditary pilonidal cyst. (I’ve known several guys who had them and they were largely inoperable at the time.) He eventually did have back surgery, which left part of the nerve exposed & subject to enormous pain — resulting in his OxyContin and hydrocodone addictions. What he said to “Greg” [above] was the truth.
Yup, that sums it up pretty well. . . .
But you still haven’t told us whether you’ve (ever) listened to as much as 45 minutes of Rush, even one time. It’s always a dead giveaway — when people come up with these hatchet-job stories about him — that they’ve never actually listened to him, only to what others say ABOUT him. The stories are legion, and they are always turn out to be the sheerest bullshit — often planted by other media types ferociously envious of his success.
The fact is that Limbaugh is not only an extraordinary entertainer and engaging communicator, but also — and quiet as it’s kept — a brilliant COMMENTATOR.
@ yamit82:
Further evidence (if one still needed it) that you’ve never listened to him. If you had, you’d know that his bluster & bombast are strictly tongue-in-cheek.
The man never talks about his generosity & genuine humility himself, but they are well-known & easy enough to see.
@ yamit82:
A user of women is in his nature cheap.
Using the public library is not ‘sponging’ — a library isn’t a charity institution, any more than a fire department or municipal engineering dept is.
Never suggested that anybody (in or out of govt) ‘owes’ me anything other than common courtesy. I am neither parasite, nor leech, nor sponge, nor thug, NOR cheap. But keep trying; your strenuous smear attempts are always good for comic relief on a slow news day.
@ yamit82:
Lebanon, 83.
Of course, it came from the left, and was ill-conceived & wrong-headed but it was quite effective. In any case — and as I already stated — demonstrations are not the action itself; they only provide the groundwork for it. hey have o happen BEFORE anything else can.
That’s largely the same situation in Europe & America. Israel isn’t unique in that regard. If the people don’t followup but instead lie back, assuming their work is done after election day, this is bound to happen.
No difference there either.
Easy: America no longer has Reagan.
Anybody can assert ANYTHING. Proving it is another matter.
@ honeybee:
Only if demonstrations are an end in themselves. But I never said or suggested that. They are a first step — but a necessary one. The left has discovered that. The right is simply slow on the uptake in that dept — partly because their style is different & less suited to it.
@ honeybee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5wth6xrwbo
@ yamit82:
you win again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiISrw2GTXE : maybe
honeybee Said:
[Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Asked by a caller about his draft dodging: (Transcript)
Here is a transcript of the incredible conversation:
honeybee Said:
[Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Asked by a caller about his draft dodging: (Transcript)
Here is a transcript of the incredible conversation:
LIMBAUGH: Here’s Greg in Orlando Florida. Nice to have you on the program, sir. Welcome.
GREG: Hello.
LIMBAUGH: Yes sir.
GREG: Yes, about John Kerry. I’m not as sure that he’s going to be as easy to write off as a garden-variety liberal. Did you see the New Yorker piece on him a couple weeks ago?
LIMBAUGH: Yeah, You mean the one with molasses dripping off of it.
GREG: It started out telling the story of how when Vietnam happened, he went down to the recruiting station and signed up with his two best friends, John J. Pershing III and Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express. Now that’s the kind of gravitas that gave me a chill up my spine. And I’m wondering if in the debates with Bush, he might ask Bush just off-the-cuff “Where were you when you were supposed to have shown up for duty in Mississippi and you didn’t show up for that year?”–in the national guard when he dodged the Vietnam draft.
This business of Bush is a bunch of BS, too. And if John Kerry tries to bring up Vietnam in a debate with George W. Bush, and asks that question, all Bush has got to do is bring up Bill Clinton—and all he’s got to do is give a couple quotes about John Kerry. There’s just a story in the paper today, Greg, and I’m sorry, you missed this. I forget who wrote it—it might have been Tony Blankley’s column today. John Kerry said something, “You know, I’ve learned a lot with my military experience and if you’re leading the way and you turn around and the troops aren’t behind you, you got a real problem.” Now what he was trying to say is: Bush is trying to take us into areas nobody wants to go, but the answer to the question—or the question that is: “Oh, Senator, you were commanding officer in Vietnam and you actually turned around and troops weren’t there? What kind of commanding officer were you?” We can play this any number of ways you want, Greg, baby. But until you can get your facts straight and stop believing a bunch of internet B.S. and hyperbole, you guys are—You see, this is exactly what they have been doing for fourteen years, my friends. And we haven’t been complaining about it–we haven’t been whining about it. And not one thing he said has anything to do with the ideas that are important to the American people today. It isn’t about personalities, Greg. Although if it were, you’d definitely be climbing out of a hole that you’ve just dug for yourself. Judy in Chicago, you’re next. Welcome…
yamit82 Said:
For you Darlin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESNCWrks6vQ
honeybee Said:
I bought my own computers and never spunged of of some public library. Never took charity from anyone, never even collected unemployment insurance although I could have.
I am a thug though and thank him for the compliment . Rather be a thug than a cheap parasite who thinks he is owed something by the State and others. Sponge comes to mind or leech.
honeybee Said:
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll consider it.
honeybee Said:
I had a small 7/11 shop that also sold sandwiches over the counter in the storefront. It was about 50 meters from the square Rabin was put out of his misery and ours. I made so much money off of that shop in the month following the incident I bought a new van. I did a land-office business selling memorial candles that I bought for $0.50 and sold them for as much as 2 bucks. I must have sold about 30,000 although I gave group discounts. Those were the days 🙂
Imagine if a national icon was assassinated every month or so in that square I could have retired 20 years ago.. 🙁
yamit82 Said:
EAT PRUNES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dweller Said:
Take that back,,,,,, Yamit82 is not cheap!!!!!!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
As usual, you’re off-point & irrelevant. I mentioned Rush to illustrate a point about the people’s self-awareness, and you promptly went off on a jag utterly unrelated to the point. As to whether or not he’s a hypocrite (of populist or any other sort), you’ve not shown that; only made you usual blustering accusations.
I was nothing of the sort. I could have evaded the draft, and easily gotten away with it — like lots of guys did. But I chose not to.
I didn’t take deferments — to which I was entitled.
I didn’t fake ill health, to get an exemption.
I didn’t flee to Canada
— Or overseas
— or underground
— or Officer Candidate School, to avoid being a grunt.
I evaded nothing.
I was a draft RESISTER — I stood & fought it.
Never was a Dead Head.
Never seen any evidence of his ‘cowardice.’ Nor have you. (When’s the last time you listened to as much as 45 minutes of his broadcast?)
He reminds me of a big mouth Elmer Gantry or Billy Sunday.
@ honeybee:
xxx&ooo
Check out his bio!!! I ain’t shittin!!! 😛
dweller Said:
The only ones who benefit from political demonstrations are the vendors selling fast food.!!!!!!!!!!
Btw except once demonstrations in Israel have not moved the government to alter their policies or positions an iota. We are not Europe or America. Our politicians do not answer to the people except on election days, and then one day after they do what they please until the next elections.
I have said many times if any politician here or in America would speak the truth they would never be elected.
Now tell me why after all these years America can’t deal with N Korea, China, Russia or Pakistan and only went after Gaddafi after he gave up his Nuke program?
You are as in most of your BS rants, wrong about power equilibrium as well.
yamit82 Said:
yamit82 Darlin, I put up with lot from you but now you have gone to far!!!!!!! You better send xxx&ooo to get in my good graces again.
@ dweller:
Limbaugh is a populist hypocrite and a draft evader just like you. He can wave Old Glory for you Dead Heads but is in fact a cowardly little cretin just like you.
He reminds me of a big mouth Elmer Gantry or Billy Sunday.
Get a new computer yet? If not maybe we can take up a collection. That’s real power Americans are not only stupid but they are a generous people. They will support anybody. Must be their yeshu teachings.
@ honeybee:
It wasn’t ‘uncalled for’; it was right on the money. It was from the comments relating to the “Why Rand Paul is wrong” article.
Here’s the pertinent exchange:
He finds every opportunity to knock America (and when he can’t find one, he’ll fabricate one).
He sees the fight against communist tyranny in America’s own back-40 as evil, yet communist tyranny is supposedly what he was fighting in SE Asia.
Most of them certainly were self-indulgent. (I’ve acknowledged that plenty of times.) What’s that got to do with me? — I’ve told you: we were vastly outnumbered by the SDS types. You think THEY’D have had the stones to court prison? Get a clue, HB!
Am not a participant in any way or degree. I’m simply setting the record straight. (Got a problem with that?) You can take it or leave it.
I did serve. I served where my service could do the most good; in this case, federal prison.
Depends on the man. I knew I was going to prison YEARS before I went. I knew I was going to prison three years before I was even indicted. If that sounds like ‘retreat’ to you, I suggest you invest in a good dictionary (if only to be sure we’re still on the same page).
I also knew lots of guys who entered military ‘service’ as escape. Yeah, that was THEIR retreat — from wives, girlfriends, the pressures of life, etc.
I knew guys who went in because they were afraid of being thought ‘cowards’ if they DIDN’T go in.
— That’s the HEIGHT of cowardice.
@ honeybee:
Irrelevant here.
Also incorrect on Mao’s part: power comes down ULTIMATELY to the muzzle of a gun — enormous difference in one word. The IRS has immense power, and the gun is at the back of it — but their agents don’t come to your door demanding money with firearms in hand. (That is implicit, not direct.)
But power is irrelevant because power is not at issue here. What’s at issue here is the people’s awareness of itself. Without self-awareness, there is no basis for applying power (of any sort).
Before Limbaugh went national with the first-ever syndicated conservative radio talk show [1988], there were millions of Americans who had no idea that there were actually vast numbers of other citizens who felt much the way he did about all sorts of issues — and who had until then simply assumed that apart from themselves, their neighbors, and other locals, they were alone in their perspective. (The mainstream media had seen to that misperception for decades until then.) For many, it was only then that they realized what power was in fact available to them.
Putting large numbers of people in the street (esp in a small country like Israel) shows them not only to the govt (and the world) but also to themselves. That’s the first step.
He thinks like Mao. And he understands power the way Mao did
— which is to say, scarcely at all. Mao was a cheap thug.
Erdan and Lapid sing to the tune of the IL far-left!!!BB is playing game and undermining those in his party who do not agree with his positions.
@ dweller:
“All power comes from the muzzle of a gun” Mao Tse Tung I thought you knew that, Yamit82 does.
BB put Livni in charge of Justice for a reason: sabotage the right using her as a fig leaf
@ Bert:
Pt them in the street. Demonstrations of presence show everybody who’s who.
It is clear that Israel is NOT a democracy. How can the majority of Israelis be mobilized to remove the dictatorial power from the left?