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janisian
08-06-2006, 09:02 PM
For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who has a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. He is not Jewish.
He recently said the following about the Mideast situation:

"A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need.

Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country.
There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians.
It's a made up word.
Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years.
Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention
Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians."
As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."
So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" anymore to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths, until someone points out they're being taped.

Instead, let's call them what they are
"Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death."
I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country.
Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't.<BR>They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David but if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.
That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel.
They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course -- that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel.
Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth . . . you know that's really saying something.
It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Midleast.
Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one.
Chew this around & spit it out: 500 million Arabs; 5 million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israelas a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it.
And now these same folks swear that, if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals..
Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to
obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea?
Oh, that? We were just kidding.
My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the Numbers.
Imagine 500 million Jews and 5 million Arabs.
I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it .
Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not.
Or marshaling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense.
Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible.
Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting.
No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.
Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that, with vital operations in Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of super models who've just had their drugs taken away.
However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some.
After September 11th, our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful.
Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day), start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.
If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan.
Please feel free to pass this along to your friends Walk in peace! Be Happy! Have a wonderful life

paularoid
08-06-2006, 11:45 PM
Cutting through Israel's
propaganda war in the US

Four short clips of things
Americans never see on TV

http://brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5.html

lucille
08-07-2006, 02:43 AM
How spooky - Dennis Miller was on the cable comedy channel last night, and I watched most of it. I must say it was an old show, probably done in about 2002, because he was talking about the pending war in Iraq and of course, the weapons of mass destruction. I have to say I was not impressed with anything he said, and he definitely was NOT funny. He had a lot to say about gay marriage - in the negative. I got the impression that he was very much right of centre.

ponytail
08-07-2006, 11:44 AM
Dennis used to have a show on HBO, which ran for several years, but it was cancelled a couple of years ago (he hosted Monday Night Football for a while, too --don't know if he's still doing that). He also used to be a liberal, but since his HBO show got dumped he's taken a disturbing swerve to the right. I'm not sure who's carrying the show he has now (maybe MSNBC?) , but I saw the first episode and was appalled at how much he'd changed his tune. He used to be a brilliant comedy writer -- I bought all three print volumes of the "rant" monologues he used to start the HBO show. But now he's actually buddies with Bush.

I'm sorry, and surprised, though, to hear he had negative things to say about gay marriage. On the first episode of the new show, he said he was still a liberal about social issues but a conservative about political ones; he added, "if two gay guys want to get married, I'm happy for them, I really am."

The routine above is more like his old rants than anything recent I've heard from him.

DaveM
08-07-2006, 01:29 PM
I was wondering somewhat why the quote harped solely on the question of the nationality of Palestinian Arabs and completely ignored the citizens of Lebanon who are being slaughtered by the hundreds at present.

RedjackRyan
08-07-2006, 02:08 PM
Before everyone starts boycotting Dennis Miller, it wasn't him. that little essay comes from Larry Miller in 2002. The text is accurate just the wrong person attributed to writing the essay.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/overview.asp

david uk
08-07-2006, 03:59 PM
I really hope Mr Miller's text is ironic......

don't like it

ponytail
08-07-2006, 05:32 PM
I can see why people thought it was Dennis Miller. It sounds exactly like one of his old rants -- the voice is virtually the same. Apparently Larry not only borrowed Miller's last name, but his style.

Robert the Bard
08-07-2006, 11:13 PM
Cutting through Israel's
propaganda war in the US

Four short clips of things
Americans never see on TV

http://brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5.html

I made it through the first one, but didn't need to watch the rest. What would be the worldly accepted solution to the daily bombings? Should the Jewish people in Israel go back to Egypt and slavery? I can remember stories about attacks on Israel by other Middle Eastern countries since I was a little kid, and that was a couple of days ago...As has been pointed out in another thread, when 9/11 happened, we went to war. Now Israel is being bombed every day, having 500 pound bombs blowing stuff up, and the retaliation is appalling to people. They are fighting the same war we are, against an "unorganized" enemy. They have no uniforms, and claim all these civilian deaths...yet how many of the suicide bombers are civilian? The Geneva Convention means nothing to these people, as can be evidenced by the taped mutilation and beheading of journalists in the Middle East. This is the enemy that Israel is fighting, the same one that we are. While I do believe this has drawn out, and I don't agree with all the administration policies, this war had to be fought. If anything, I think we are being far to nice to these people. Perhaps what they would really understand is warfare on their terms, instead of the structured rules our soldiers are limited to. I don't condone the killing of women and children, nor do I think it's acceptable to just kill indiscriminately. My question is, how are we, or Israel, supposed to know who's a combatant, and who isn't? When children are driving car bombs into barricades, how is anyone supposed to know who the innocents are.

I digress, however. I support any sovereign nations right to defend it's borders, and if they have to break a few eggs to do it, then maybe the owner of the eggs should consider the fact that attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war, and people get killed in war. Property is destroyed. This crap of "We can blow you up, but you shouldn't be allowed to shoot back" needs to go back to whatever cesspool it crawled out of. If somebody burst into my house tonight, determined to do me harm, I'll do what I have to do. I don't think it should be any different for a country. :offrant:

paularoid
08-08-2006, 01:07 AM
RTB (if I may address you as such), the whole point to my posting that, is that there are always two sides to every story. To make any kind of judgement about one side, you should also always get at least a small part of the other side as well. For the most part, the American public only gets the side that's presented and usually only one side is presented.

Although it could never happen, I like my mother's idea about the whole situation in the middle east. Build a big a$$ wall around the whole of the middle east, take away all their modern weapons, and then come back in 20 years to see what's left. They've all been bound and determined to kill each other for thousands of years and we're not going to be able to stop them no matter what we do I'm afraid.

Robert the Bard
08-08-2006, 05:00 AM
Only too true, I'm afraid. The sad part is that between some of the not so brilliant, if not down right stupid, stuff we've done over there, and the fact that they decided that we should be involved, 9/11, we're between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If we counter attack, we're villains, if we do nothing, then we are soft, and will open ourselves to further actions. I think that what we have done, while protracted, is the lesser of two evils, and I really see Israel as being in the same boat. To do nothing accomplishes nothing, and yet they are condemned for defending themselves. In this kind of "catch 22", I think I'd err to the side of defending myself, and hoping I could disable them enough to avoid as many deaths as possible. The "reporter" in the first clip has already tried and convicted Israel of war crimes, and yet, basic strategy says, turn out their lights, and interrupt their supply chains. It's how Russia beat back Germany in WW2, they simply outlasted them.

snakegrl
08-08-2006, 11:09 AM
I like the solution the alien gave in The Day The Earth Stood Still. He told the Earthlings that he came to their planet because they had been watched for a while and the nasty things they did to one another had an effect on other planets. He gave them a choice: join the planetary organization so robots can monitor Earthling behavior. The first one to act with unprovoked aggresion will be wiped out. Period.
I thought the alternative was a bit too harsh though- Don't join and at the first sign of war, the entire planet would be wiped out.
You cannot reason with a drunk or someone out of their mind. You can only act. Someone show me the sanity of unprovoked warfare.
Just my 2 cents.

DaveM
08-09-2006, 12:17 AM
From time to time, I am reminded of a 1950s movie, "The 27th Day" (based on a far superior Cold War allegory novel of the same title but worth seeing apart from a rather silly ending). Aliens abduct five (I think) people from different parts of the planet, all very average people.

Each is given a small box, and told: "the boxes will only open at the sound of your voice. Inside each is a set of three capsules. If you die, they will become useless. They will, in any case, become useless after 27 days. However, if any one of you opens any one of the boxes and removes the safety pins on the capsules, they will destroy all human life instantly."

"Our planet is dying," their host continues, "and your planet is on the verge of destroying itself. If this happens, we will be unable to live on whatever is left of your planet, and so both of our races will die. If, however, you use these capsules, we will be able to live on your planet after you are gone. Our morality will not permit us to destroy you. So the decision is in your hands: will your race survive, will ours, or will neither?"

The five are then returned to their day to day lives without further ado. The remainder of the story details what they do during the 27 days, and pulls an intriguing ending out of it all. Some of which is a bit dated, but could easily apply to the present world solution.

Well worth reading if you can find a copy--the movie shows up now and then on late-night TV, sometimes under another title which eludes me.

paularoid
08-09-2006, 05:14 AM
I just read on a blog somewhere tonight that Dennis Miller is going to start as a "contributor" to the Hannity & Colmes show here in the very near future.

snakegrl
08-09-2006, 09:06 AM
That sounds really interesting DaveM. I'll have to check that out. With the glut of bad remakes infecting Hollywood these days, your suggestion sounds worthwhile for a remake, especially for the times we live in.

DaveM
08-09-2006, 01:50 PM
It would be a good one. The original, since it was made in 1957, turned in a U.S. vs. "The Russians" story, with each respective government kidnapping one of the people with the capsules and trying to force them to turn one loose over the other country. But the theme as treated in the novel (written by John Mantley, in case anyone is curious) could apply to any time. Just now it would be quite relevant.

Dee
08-09-2006, 02:21 PM
Ooops! Deleted for posting in the wrong thread.

Just ignore me.

david uk
08-09-2006, 02:51 PM
Ooops! Deleted for posting in the wrong thread.

Just ignore me.


LOL!!! :p :p :p

janisian
08-09-2006, 08:41 PM
Good points, Paularoid.
My personal feeling is, they're all nuts...
Wish I could say I saw a solution.

DaveM
08-09-2006, 11:34 PM
Janis--I think we could do worse than to broadcast your music heavily throughout the region. It might not cool anyone's head, but it just might make a few people think. And people who are thinking, generally aren't fighting at the same time.

snakegrl
08-10-2006, 10:19 AM
Good points, Paularoid.
My personal feeling is, they're all nuts...
Wish I could say I saw a solution.

Yes, they are all nuts. Peanut butter anyone?

ponytail
08-10-2006, 11:52 AM
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone turned this into a food thread.

snakegrl
08-10-2006, 06:07 PM
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone turned this into a food thread.
LOL Ponytail Seemed like the logical thing to do.

DaveM
08-11-2006, 12:54 AM
Makes sense to me--invite everybody to a barbecue (chicken and beef only, mind) and by the time the evening's out, provided some idiot doesn't drive a car bomb into the crowd, everybody will be sharing family pictures, hugging, and making plans for "next time". You just can't stay mad at anyone for long during a barbecue.

ponytail
08-11-2006, 12:15 PM
Can you whip up something Middle Eastern, Redjack?:D

snakegrl
08-11-2006, 02:34 PM
Makes sense to me--invite everybody to a barbecue (chicken and beef only, mind) and by the time the evening's out, provided some idiot doesn't drive a car bomb into the crowd, everybody will be sharing family pictures, hugging, and making plans for "next time". You just can't stay mad at anyone for long during a barbecue.
Sounds good to me. And if anyone does act like a poop, we will just pitch 'em onto the BBQ grill. No point in waisting protein.:D

hoops
08-11-2006, 07:45 PM
Holy land , oh holy land why can you not be holy to all who find you thus? What have we done to you?