Posts Tagged ‘gaza’

Who Are You Going to Believe Our Narrative on Gaza Or Your Own Eyes

Posted: January 20, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas
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Sir Humphrey Appleby: A minute is a note for the record and a statement of action, if any, on what was agreed upon. Now what happened at the meeting in question?

Bernard Wooley: Well the book was discussed and the Solicitor General advised there were no legal grounds for suppressing it.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: And did the Primer Minister accept what the Solicitor General had said?

Bernard Wooley: Well he accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression but….

Sir Humphrey Appleby: [Interrupting] “He Accepted the fact that there were no legal grounds for suppression.” You see?

Bernard Wooley: [Suddenly understanding] Oh!

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Is that a lie? 

Bernard Wooley: No. 

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Can you write it in the minutes?

Bernard Wooley: Yes

Sir Humphrey Appleby: How’s your conscience?

Bernard Wooley: Much better thank you.

Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987

One of the most valuable things about doing shoe leather reporting in person is the ability to actually see what is going on and hear what is being said as opposed to the filers of the media, who, particularly by omission, create a path to the narrative they wish or if there is no path to such narrative simply omit info completely or refuse to cover a story.

This is why first hand observation is huge and while folks like Robert Stacy McCain and James O’Keefe are so valuable to those who want to know actual truth.

A great example of this came out this week. For a long time we have heard the narrative of the Yesterday there was a report that was tweeted out concerning the Israel Hamas War. 

The war has gone on long enough that troop rotations are taking place. IDF soldiers are coming home and they are telling what they’ve seen and apparently it doesn’t match either the “open air prison” or the “innocent civilians” business.

an excerpt:

There is poverty, and there are also entire areas of cities full of buildings packed with apartments and homes full of appliances, modern comforts, vehicles, and a standard of living that could rival many places in Israel, that easily surpass most of the Arab world. This is not a deprived blockaded population in concentration camps. Soldiers describe being shocked by this – GAZA is under Egyptian & Israeli blockade but you would never know it, it (was) a modern prosperous thriving territory. – The tunnels, the weapons, the preparations & infrastructure to ‘go get the Jews’ are everywhere. In the houses, under the businesses, in the mosques, the UNRWA schools, the hospitals and clinics, GAZA is not an open prison – it is a giant terror base.

and this isn’t the only source:

Earlier this month, one of the 646’s battalions began going through central Gaza’s al-Azhar neighborhood, dubbed by Israeli officials the “Towers neighborhood” for the 31 apartment buildings allegedly populated by Hamas officials.

“We discovered that every house has a shaft, and a whole underground network connects them, including the school and the mosque,” said Shushan.

We have to abandon the fiction that peace is possible between the Gazans and Israel. 

Update: Rush Limbaugh understood this years ago:

Risk and Reward Under the Fedora: Gun Crime, Electric Car Compliance Credits, China Lab Theory, Victory Speeches and Jesus and Gaza

Posted: January 18, 2024 by datechguy in business, crime, economy, elections, Israel vs Hamas, media, medicine, middle east, politics, primaries, under the fedora
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A report out of Florida tells us that despite dire warnings from the left about “constitutional carry” adopted in Florida concerning violence the opposite effect has taken place:

Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”

Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.

Apparently in Florida the increased risk of getting shot by an armed citizen is no longer low enough to justify the reward of crime to many. Fortunately for criminals NYC doesn’t have said risk.

The move by Hertz to sell of 20,000 electric cars (just to Whom they will sell them to and how much on the dollar they will get we don’t know) illustrates something that drivers who jumped on the electric car bandwagon have been discovering to their regret. The risk of not having sufficient battery to get where you are going in the time allotted does not match the reward of the “efficiency” of an electric car.

And apparently it turns out that said “efficiency” has as much science behind it as the 6′ social distancing business:

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

If you ever wondered why carmakers were willing to take the risk of making cars people didn’t want to buy without the reward of actual buyers, now you know.

The times are a changing for the government COVID crowd who forced all kinds of rules upon us while censoring those who might speak out about risks.

One of those bits of censorship were hitting or de-platforming folks who theorized that COVID came from a lab leak in China. The whole Fauci team was big on going after such folks with the help of a compliant media.

One of that team doing the insisting was Dr. Francis Collins who had no problem calling such statements a “very destructive conspiracy” for years. But apparently the reward of such a stance disappears when one is asked about it under pains of perjury when testifying under oath:

In a significant U-turn, House Republicans who led the hearing revealed that Dr Collins, 73, told them that the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory.

His answers were similar to those of Dr Fauci, who sat for a marathon 14 hours of questioning last week when he finally acknowledged that the lab leak theory — that Covid escaped from a Chinese biolab — should not have been so easily dismissed.

As we mentioned on Tuesday President Donald Trump decisively won the Iowa Caucus losing only a single county in the state (which by an odd coincidence ran out of party change forms giving democrats who had no caucus to attend a chance to influence the GOP results)

While I found the result interesting compared to 2016 given that Donald Trump now had a record as president vs speculation as to how he would govern. CNN cut away from his speech right away and MSNBC made it a point to not carry his victory speech at all.

“At this point in the evening the projected winner of the Iowa caucuses has just started giving his victory speech,” Maddow began, oddly avoiding Trump’s name. “We will keep an eye on that as it happens. We will let you know if there is any news made in that speech, if there is anything noteworthy, something substantive and important.”

I find this the most interesting thing of all because the small MSNBC audience is about as far left as they come yet even among such an audience they find the risk of such people hearing Donald Trump speaking live so great that they dare not allow him to challenge the narrative that they’ve been sold.

That’s really something.

Finally as Israel continues to discover more and more terror infrastructure in Gaza and continues to systematic take out both Hamas and the terror infrastructure pressure continues to rise among western allies of Hamas and Joe Biden in particular to hold Israel back before the destruction of Hamas becomes complete.

Hamas apparently did not foresee this result figuring they would be able to weather an Israeli response in their incredible terror tunnel network. (Frankly they should all go to an underdeveloped nation that needs miners as they certainly know about digging) which is odd because Hamas claims Jesus as a prophet and apparently didn’t take these words of Christ on risk and reward to heart:

Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.

Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.

Luke 14 28-32

Of course if Hamas actually followed Christ they would be taking the whole “love your enemies” business seriously and stop trying to slaughter Jews, but to Hamas et/al the risk of defeat, humiliation and the devastation and death of their people does not compare to the reward of slaughtered Jews.

(At least among those who do not have billions in cash and live far from Gaza that is).

When it’s all Over I’d Put Israeli Arabs in Charge of Gaza

Posted: December 21, 2023 by datechguy in Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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Last week I pondered the problem of who to put in charge of Gaza once Hamas is exterminated. 

Given the Gazans participation in the attacks of Oct 7th and their previous support of Hamas obviously Israel can’t allow Hamas to be replaced by Islamic Jihad or whatever new permutation of the “Let’s kill the Jews” lobby rises up. Democracy is a fine thing but it’s not a suicide pact.

Further given the indifference at best or complicity at worst of the various UN and other International NGO as Hamas prepared for their grand slaughter leaves them out.

And forget Egypt, the last thing they want is the Gaza population. Getting them off their hands was the one bright side to their losses to Israel.

And it goes without saying that the Palestinian authority shouldn’t be let anywhere near Gaza, remember the reason why the Gazans voted in Hamas is they knew the PA were a bunch of corrupt bastards (they had to find out that Hamas was the same but only more murderous).

So if Israel doesn’t want the spectacle of about 2 million Arabs being governed by Jews there is a only one solution.

I would make a special sub committee of the Israeli Knesset consisting only of Arab members and put them in charge, under the supervision of am Arab member of Israel’s supreme court.

This would thread the needle. The Arab Israeli’s have an incentive prevent terror attacks as their own families and people are not immune from such attacks while the people of Gaza whose hate for Jews has been the origin of all these troubles can avoid being directly governed by them.

If it works out then Gaza could actually thrive and prosper, furthermore this is basically the only way to I can think of to DeNazify the strip. Two or three generations of Arab Israeli rule just might be enough to wean Gazans from their insane hatred of Jews while giving them a chance to actually have a better life.

And if it fails, if the Israeli Arabs are either unable to govern or if it’s impossible to convince the people of Gaza that trying to kill Jews is a bad thing, then whatever happens next, it’s on them.

The Real Conundrum In Gaza

Posted: December 14, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, Israel vs Hamas, Uncategorized
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It’s very much looking like Israel has decided that the left in the west rants are going to be ignored and that the Jewish state is going all in on destroying Hamas, damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. Hamas leaders have fled Qatar and the rats seem to be abandoning the sinking ship even to the point of floating albeit briefly recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

Granted it’s still going to take several months of mopping up but the real question is: what happens next?

The citizens of Gaza might not like the destruction that’s been wrought against them thanks to Hamas’ actions. They might even be pissed about their taking the aid sent to them to build a terror infrastructure, but this doesn’t translate into liking Israel or even not wanting Jews dead, they just doesn’t like the consequences of the various attempts to kill the Jews..

The problem is that no only do polls show that the Palestinians overwhelmingly support the attacks and atrocities of October 7th but better than two out of three want a return to the good old days of suicide bombings and buses full of Jews blowing up.

Remember these aren’t polls of Hamas members these are pols of Palestinians.

I submit and suggest that’s it’s impossible for Israel to allow Gaza to govern itself if the population is simply go back to killing Jews under their own banner rather than under the Hamas banner. Furthermore you can’t make peace with people determined to kill you, you can impose peace, you can as General Sherman put it make war so horrible that it will be decades before they consider turning to it.

So what is the solution? What should be done with Gaza when the last member of Hamas is sent to get his virgins? Feel free to put your suggestion in comments and next week I’ll give you mine.

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