A Middle Earth Fable

How To Negotiate With Terrorists

This brief blog entry takes you through a series of negotiations over time between peacemakers and terrorists:

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of a line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line.

The peacemaker introduces himself. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker asks, "why did you kill my friend?" The terrorist kills him and rapes his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "Stop that!" The terrorist kills him, rapes his daughter and kills his wife.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker says, "I'll pay you $1000 if you stop attacking us." The terrorist agrees to the deal, takes the $1000, and kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker appeals to the United Nations. The United Nations says the peacemaker is at fault. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker now has a gun, and threatens to use it. Other peacemakers start chanting the old 60's whine, "Can't we all just get along?" The peacemaker hesitates. The terrorist kills him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker tries to convince his peacemaker friends that the terrorists aren't going to respond to negotiations, but they insist that if he kills the terrorist it'll just make the other terrorists mad. The peacemaker reluctantly agrees to try negotiating again. The terrorist kills him., his entire family, and his neighbor's family.

A heated debate now ensues between the peacemakers who want to be nice to the terrorists and the peacemakers who believe that there can never be peace until the terrorists are all dead. While they are debating, the terrorists kill 15 more peacemakers.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker asks himself, "Which is more important: being liked by everyone, or protecting my family?" The terrorist pulls a knife to kill the peacemaker, but the peacemaker pulls a gun and kills the terrorist first. The United Nations condemns the peacemaker's use of unproportional force.

Many of his peacemaker friends turn against him.

A peacemaker walks up to the left side of the line. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line. The peacemaker apologizes for what his friend did to the other terrorist. The terrorist kills him, his entire family and his neighbors, and threatens to destroy the city as soon as they develop a bigger weapon.

A peacemaker refuses to meet at the line because every time a peacemaker goes to the line the terrorist kills him. A terrorist walks up to the right side of the line and fires rockets into the peacemaker's town. The United Nations condemns the way the peacemaker provoked the terrorist by refusing to come to the line and meet with him.

Generations pass and not much changes until one day when the son of a peacemaker decides that the old strategy simply won't work. He walks up to the left side of the line a little early. As the terrorist approaches the right side of the line the peacemaker shoots him. Another terrorist approaches to replace the first, and the peacemaker shoots him too. This scene plays out several more times. Then a terrorist approaches carrying a white flag, but he also has weapons. The peacemaker shoots him. A terrorist next approaches with a ceasefire resolution from the U.N. The peacemaker shoots him also. A large group of terrorists approach and the peacemaker shoots them all and drops a nuclear bomb on the city they came from. The peacemaker continues killing the terrorists until the terrorists are all dead.

There is finally peace on earth and the United Nations takes the credit.

(No peacemakers or terrorists were harmed during the writing of this blog.)

posted by Hurricane Harry

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Found at Atlas Shrugs.

Gleanings 8

It is hard to account for the behaviour of some Western journalists without a fairly robust theory of demonic possession.

David Warren

Meanwhile, back at the front...

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The official IDF website reports the following:

News

IDF special force operates to thwart weaponry smuggling in Lebanon

Saturday 19/08/2006 11:00


A special IDF force operated overnight inside Lebanon. The goal of the operation was to disrupt and prevent smuggling of weaponry from Iran or Syria to Hezbollah. The goals of the operation were achieved in full.

The IDF stresses that until proper monitoring bodies are established on the Lebanese borders, operations meant to disrupt and prevent weaponry smuggling into Lebanon will continue.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

While at Drudge, a top of page bulletin: "Annan: Israeli Raid Violates Cease-Fire..."

The AP article leads with Annan's statement, and then describes the Israeli claims of arms smuggling to rearm the "militant Shiite fighters" [shouldn't we be calling them Hezbollah?] and Fuad Saniora's counter-claim that the operation was a "flagrant violation" of the U.N. truce. I notice Saniora doesn't dispute the Israeli claims. He just spouts "flagrant violation" rhetoric. Is he getting his cues from Coffee, or is Coffee getting his cues from Sanoria, or, more likely, are both Coffee and Sanoria getting their cues from Nazrallah? Or the French?

Money Lines in AP article:

"But with Europe moving slowly to provide more troops, Israel warned it would continue to act on its own to enforce an arms embargo on the Lebanese guerrilla group until the Lebanese army and an expanded U.N. peacekeeping force are in place." [Notice that the militant Shiite fighters noted above have now morphed into the Lebanese guerrilla group. Can't we all just agree to call them terrorists and/or Hezbollah?]

and

"If the Syrians and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah in violation of the resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "Once the Lebanese army and the international forces are active ... then such Israeli activity will become superfluous."

Way to go, Mark!

So, where does the Coffee Enema get his information [or his instructions]? What did his UNIFIL troops, over 2000 strong, do for the last 6 years while Hezbollah stockpiled over 10,000 rockets, constructed bunkers over 10 stories deep in the ground in southern Lebanon, and refused to disarm under the provisions of UN Resolution 1559. The feckless UNIFIL even allowed Hezbollah field units to co-locate with them in the same bunkers, to their everlasting shame when two of theirs were killed when the IAF targeted the site that was firing missiles into Israel.

And Coffee today tells the world the Israeli raid "violates the ceasefire agreement."

What gall! What a corrupt, lying, Muslim appeasing, spineless, sorry excuse for a human being.

Get us out of the UN.

A poem for our time

From Russ Vaughn at AmericanThinker:


The Words of Santayana (a poem)


Words of Santayana will be with us sure mañana,

When we face a fascist menace once again.

What we term a win today, we will learn to our dismay,

Is perceived as lack of will by evil men.



A lord of Britain led us, to a place where Nazis bled us,

Believing he’d found peace within his time.

At cost of untold billions and deaths of unknown millions,

We paid high price for this lord’s crumbling crime.



New fascist fires are burning, anti-Semitism churning,

Low priests of paparazzi pile the pyres;

With photos of destruction doctored with their foul corruption,

Our world’s again at mercy of bold liars.



Freedom’s slowly burning as new Fascists now are learning

Santayana knew his history, knew of men.

Events we face today have through history been in play,

Ignoring them we face chaos again.



The crime of man’s existence is his unexplained resistance

To take to heart hard lessons fathers learned;

To play again the fool, turn his back upon the cruel,

Till everything he loves lies dead and burned.



Wake up you fools and hear, Santayana’s voice is near,

For your children’s sake please take his words as truth.

Desire to just appease is a deadly vile disease,

Which will seal a deadly fate for your own youth.



Don’t listen but to me, just look back at history,

Never once has weakness ever been prevailing;

The only way to meet these new fascists is with heat,

The heat of war that dooms their dreams to failing.


Russ Vaughn 8 19 06

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santanya, 1905

Car Henge

My kids and I were returning home by way of a very random traverse in late summer of 1994, when we found this roadside attraction just outside Alliance, Nebraska, up in the sand hills on the way to Rapid City and Mt Rushmore.






My favorite. "...When it comes, the landscape listens, Shadows hold their breath..."



From a poem called "A Certain Slant of Light", or something like that.

The photographer captured the grim desolation of the druidic ruins at a winter's dusk. Or dawn?

You have to have grown up in the great plains to appreciate this shot. Brrrr.

And just think, this magnificent art was created by some Nebraska farmboys with too much beer and nothing else to do. Go Nebraska! Go Big Red!

*****

As we were leaving, I found a roll of baler twine. It’s waxed, triple stranded, stout hard-cotton string, and the best damned household twine you can lay your hands on. Buy it if you can find it at a farm supply outfit in your neighborhood. I’ve still got half that roll. Gotta save the good stuff, ya know.

(Photos via Google Images.)

Red Neck Photoshopping

A friend recently suggested I get my own blog, probably to save bandwidth at his.

Well, since I have my own blog, I decided to visit it for a change, instead of littering others' sites with my venting.

Last post was some time ago, so I decided to further muddle world affairs with a current contribution of intellectual fraud...but what? A sidebar ad at Belmont Club caught my attention. I decided to try a little image theft and crafty revision...but I'm too poor to own photoshop, so had to resort to innovation.

Here's my contribution to the GOP. Hope this helps, guys, since I'm too tight to send in cash to your fund raisers. Thanks for the nice photos from the ranch, though.




4 Reasons to Vote Republican
(In Spite of Your Disappointments)







Damn. The typed-in legend was supposed to reside in the little rectangle...wasting too much time here.

I need to go outside and get some work done. Hasta la vista!