Comment Trail for Monday:

Solomonia:

Brave anti-Zionist Activists Heckle Genocide Survivors

Jew-baiting Commenter Gustavo said the following:

" I believe that American neocons in the Bush admin, Mossad, and certain prominent New York Zionists conspired to carry out the 9/11 false flag operation in order to villify arabs and muslims for various reasons, including geoploitical concerns and traditional plain-old money. This is in fact the growing consensus among those who have spent a great deal of time studying the relevant facts.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery from your shock and apoplexy. :)"

Here are my 2 comments:

* Actually, Gustavo, you don't even know half of it. Muhammad was a Mossad agent, sent by the Zionists to force the people of Hijaz into accepting a religion that serves Zionist purposes and Jewish global domination. He may have murdered an entire tribe of Jews in the process but that was in order to establish an alibi and to MAKE it appear as though he were hostile to Jews among the Arab tribes. He then created and trained sleeper-cells, thousands of them, who remained dormant across the generations but nonetheless absolutely loyal to their leader, until the word came, from their secret Jewish masters to get going... Thus a conspiracy hatched and executed with the usual Jewish brilliance for long-term scheming, came to full fruition on September 11, 2001.

** Joanne: I make a point of visiting some rather outlandish Leftist sites, by way of immunizing myself to the most scurrilous, defamatory facts and arguments about Israel and Jews, etc. It is quite possible that Gustavo is a sham but nothing he says is remotely uncommon or outlandish in that universe. Here is, for example, something recently encountered on Counterpunch (in which Chomsky and ilk, and even Avinery, write regularly):

"The Zionists. . .have been plotting virtually since the creation of Israel to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuild a replica of Solomon's temple there. . . . the logical culmination of the Zionist project, eagerly fuelled by the official Israeli archaeological establishment. . .
Then there's the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which sets out just such a programme in albeit an overtly grotesque form and is solemnly disowned by Zionists as a forgery, though a forgery of what is never made clear."

Please note that the "Protocols" are treated as a bona-fide document.
It is the age of Irrationality. The more irrational the theory, the more credible it becomes. Anyone with some historical sense would be reminded instantly of other periods when this kind of irrationality was mainstream orthodoxy.

How Do We Get Carter to Answer the Question?

That would explain, further, why Carter keeps insisting that he knows better than Clinton what Clinton's proposals were. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer he was asked plainly why his version of Camp David II is so different from Bill Clinton's. Clinton puts the onus of the failure directly on Arafat. He was there. He quotes a conversation with Arafat in which he makes his judgment clear. But Clinton's word is not good enough for Carter. He just smiled and shrugged off the quote from Clinton's book. What was he suggesting, with that smile and that shrug? That Clinton is lying? That he, Carter, surely knows better? Too bad the pusillanimous Blitzer did not press the point.

"BLITZER: But Barak, Ehud Barak, they offered,under the last days of the Bill Clinton administration, a deal which would give up most of the West Bank, including parts of Jerusalemitself. And Clinton said Arafat missed a major opportunity to resolve this crisis right then.

CARTER: That is not quite an accurate description of it, which the...

BLITZER: Well, let me read to you what

CARTER: ... the accurate description...

BLITZER: Let me read to you what Jim -- what Bill Clinton wrote in his book, "My Life." He was the president who as negotiating at Camp David...

CARTER: OK.

BLITZER: ... and then at Taba, trying to resolve this. And Barak,the prime minister...

CARTER: Right, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) yes.

BLITZER: ... who made some major...

CARTER: OK. Go ahead.

BLITZER: ... major concessions. He said: "Right before I left office, Yasser Arafat thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a great man I was. 'Mr. Chairman,' I replied, 'I am not a great man, I am a failure and you have made me one.' Arafat's rejection of my proposal after Ehud Barak accepted it was an error of historic proportions."

CARTER: OK, well...

BLITZER: That's what the former president wrote in his book.

CARTER: All right. Well, in my book, which I think is accurate --I hate to dispute Bill Clinton on your program because he did a great and heroic effort there. He never made a proposal that was accepted by Barak or Arafat.

BLITZER: Why would he write that in his book if...

CARTER: I don't know.

BLITZER: ... if he said Barak accepted it?

CARTER: I don't know...

BLITZER: And Arafat rejected it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/28/jimmy-carter-iraq-invas_n_35097.html

He may not have been there physically but he was there, hovering over Arafat's shoulder. How is it possible that a former president would be working in this clandestine way to frustrate the efforts of a sitting president to broker a peace agreement? If he had any real influence on Arafat's rejection then he has a lot to answer from, including the blood that has flown since on both Israel's and Palestinians' sides.

Manolo the Shoeblogger:

To the post: The Real Manolo Blahnik Shoes For Men

I expostulated thusly:

I am looking to buy a pair of nice boots for my son who is 17 years old and likes army style things. So I thought the Ary was just right. I went to check it based on Manolo’s reassurance that the boots were not “unreasonably priced”. And I found they cost $1,275.00!
All of a sudden I had an epiphany! I understood the reason for the understated friction that is evident between me and other commenters at this blog. We seem to come from very different economic backgrounds! I belong to that stratum of society that really cannot afford to give more than 200-250$ for a pair of shoes and even that would take some effort. Most others that I have seen around here seem to take these prices with such nonchallance that it seems obvious they are quite habituated to fork out these sums.

It is actually very depressing. It’s a look but don’t touch experience. Nothing wrong with delaying satisfactions and foregoing coveted boots. It builds character. It puts one in one’s proper place. It is actually very educational…

(The response that this comment elicited is very illuminating)