Bill’s Blog

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Michael Jackson is still indulging in “sleep-overs“ with children, despite his multi-million-dollar, out-of-court payment to the father of a boy nine years ago following allegations of sexual abuse.

The singer was questioned about the pay-out to Jordan Chandler, 13, by Martin Bashir in a television documentary screened last night.

Michael Jackson says his third child — the baby he dangled over a Berlin hotel balcony in November — was the product of “a surrogate mother and my own sperm cells.”

Just when you thought he couldn’t get any weirder.

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla. –– A couple is suing the franchisee of a McDonald's restaurant, claiming an improperly prepared bagel damaged the husband's teeth and their marriage.

John and Cecelia O'Hare sued Friday for unspecified damages more than $15,000. They alleged the McDonald's, owned by Johnstone Foods Inc., was negligent and violated an “implied warranty that the food sold was reasonably fit for human consumption.”

WASHINGTON (The Hollywood Reporter) --- The $380 million budget that President Bush (news - web sites) has proposed for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will not be enough to keep public broadcasters on the air, the head of the federal agency fears.

Makes sense politically; PBS is biased towards Democrats.

“Universal Music Group, the world's largest music group, has canceled its expensive post-Grammy Awards gala this year -- with the reasons reportedly ranging from everything from economic woes to fears of fights between rival rappers.”

Delicious irony here. Record companies promote gansta rap and then have to drop their party for fear of violence. Perhaps they bought in to the “antisocial behavior is an authentic expression of black culture” concept.

Al Qaeda is planning a mass-casualty attack to rival September 11, but preparations have been disrupted by arrests of terrorists during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Recent intelligence reports indicate that communications among clandestine cells of al Qaeda members are being restored gradually, the intelligence officials said.

Hitchens’ Right-Wing Stuff

Hitchens was one of those “honest” Leftists. When he was forced to choose between being honest or being a Leftist he made the right choice. This is why he’s voting for Bush.

Meanwhile, Hitchens suggests that old nemesis Bill Clinton was a CIA plant at Oxford, where both were students in the late 1960s. “I think he was a double,” Hitchens says. “Somebody was giving information to [the CIA] about the anti-war draft resisters, and I think it was probably him. We had a girlfriend in common -- I didn't know then -- who's since become a very famous radical lesbian.”

Hitchens misses that Slick could have been a “triple.” In the Colonel Holmes letter Slick admits that he worked for the so-called “anti-war” movement while he was a staffer of J. William Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The leaders of the so-called “anti-war” movement coordinated the timing of the major demonstrations with the Vietnamese Communists; and, as David Horowitz reports in his autobiography Radical Son, the Soviets had an agent in England called “Lev” who tried to recruit American Leftists as spies.

The real CIA plant might have been Slick’s roommate, Strobe Talbott. Of course, if the CIA was running an operation like Grove describes there should be a record of it. Unless Slick had it destroyed.

HOOK-handed cleric Abu Hamza last night GLOATED over the shuttle disaster and rejoiced in the deaths of the seven astronauts. The Muslim fanatic called the Columbia crew “thugs of space” who deserved to die.

Bondage-and-fetish star Sarah Kozer, a George Mason University graduate whose secret soft-porn career made headlines last week, isn't the only “Joe Millionaire“ participant with a local angle and a checkered past. We hear that Paul Hogan, the very proper butler on Fox broadcasting's so-called reality show, also boasts a twisted Washington-area connection.

Phoniness seems to abound in this so-called “reality” show. The Paul Hogan is NOT the Austalian actor.

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This may be Saddam’s last chance to give in and do right. In the Gulf War he was given an additional day (January 15) of grace before hostilities started. Since the military action against him this time is likely to be a simultaneous air and land campaign, he may not get another chance.

San Francisco vs. America?

Yesterday we noted that the San Francisco Chronicle had published a letter by one Cheryl Merrill arguing that the Columbia tragedy was an act of God designed to “send a strong message . . . to the lying, two-faced hypocrites in the White House.” We were kind of surprised that a semirespectable newspaper would publish such garbage, but we assumed it wasn't really representative of San Francisco, nutty though that town may be. It seems we were wrong.

Is the U.N. Worth Saving?

The New York Times has an odd op-ed piece from Robert Wright, who hopes President Bush will prevail upon the United Nations Security Council to depose Saddam Hussein, thereby saving the U.N. as “the powerful instrument of peace it was originally meant to be.” This seems fanciful; even if the liberation of Iraq comes with full U.N. support, the U.N. will not thereby become a “powerful instrument of peace;” it will remain what it is now: a useful political instrument in support of U.S. policy. The only real question is whether France will back America in the Security Council. If it doesn't, America will act anyway, and the U.N. will be irrelevant--which means so will France. The bargain is a fairly low-stakes one: France gets to feel important in exchange for providing political cover to the U.S. The “powerful instrument of peace” is not the U.N. but America's armed forces.

It’s important to remember that the League of Nations failed because it was unable to stop the wars of aggression of the 1930s which led to World War II.

Iraq, al Qaeda, and Those Darn Weasels

The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg, following up on his blockbuster report from Northern Iraq last year, has a good summation of the intelligence community's current state of knowledge about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. CIA chief George Tenet tells Goldberg that “Iraq has ‘provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.’ Tenet added, ‘Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression,’ and he suggested that, even without an American attack on Iraq, ‘Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase.’ ”

Thus a compliant press let Slick get away with another prevarication.

NOTE: Slick was impeached for the crime of lying under oath, not for the sex.

The Adversity of Diversity

“Diversity is strength.” Whatever one might say in favor of diversity (and whatever diversity may mean), we never liked the sound of that slogan; it’s too “1984” for our taste. Now the Washington Post reports it isn't even true; diversity, it turns out, is actually weakness:

…

Here's a fascinating take on the subject: In a Times of London essay titled “A Dove's Guide: How to Be an Honest Critic of the War,” Matthew Parris demolishes a series of “antiwar” arguments (example: “Don't assume that moderate Arab opinion will be outraged. Moderate Arab opinion likes winners. America may be the winner”). But after he gets done shooting down the arguments against liberating Iraq, he explains why he's still opposed:

• I am not afraid that this war will fail. I am afraid that it will succeed.

• I am afraid that it will prove to be the first in an indefinite series of American interventions. I am afraid that it is the beginning of a new empire: an empire that I am afraid Britain may have little choice but to join.

The honest case against war, in other words, comes down to anti-Americanism for its own sake.

One reason for the failure of the antiwar crowd to make a more formidable political impact, say analysts, is its diversity. Critics range from the far right to the far left, encompassing politicians as different as former Republican vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. Some administration foes are opposed to war at any time; others belong to what former national security adviser Anthony Lake calls “the not-yet camp.”

Parris, Matthew. “A dove's guide: how to be an honest critic of the war.” The Times (UK). February 1, 2003. (Saturday)

Other doves, however, are being disingenuous. In their hearts they think that invasion is simply wrong, but as they doubt that the UN will authorise it anyway, they find it convenient to rest the argument on the supremacy of the Security Council. If, however, the UN is finally persuaded to legitimise an attack, these doves will not become hawks: they will change tack and complain that the Security Council has been “bullied” into war by Washington’s ultimatum. They will continue to oppose the war.

…

This will not do. It is not honest. As an avowed dove, let me warn of seven deadly pitfalls for fellow doves:

1) Don’t kid yourself that Saddam might really have nothing to hide. Of course he does. He’s a mass-murderer and an international gangster: a bad man running a wicked Goverment; the British Prime Minister and the US President are good men running good Governments.

2) Don’t hide behind the UN. The organisation may in the end be browbeaten into “authorising” an attack. If it really is your judgment that an attack would be morally wrong or practically hazardous, how could UN endorsement make it wise?

3) Don’t count on France, Germany or Russia to maintain their opposition to war. They may just be holding out for improved offers.

4) Don’t attach yourself to predictions about the military outcome. If the Pentagon thinks an invasion could easily succeed, the Pentagon may be right.

5) Don’t become an instant pundit on internal Iraqi politics, and how Shias, Kurds and Sunnis will be at each other’s throats when Saddam falls. You do not know that.

6) Don’t assume that moderate Arab opinion will be outraged. Moderate Arab opinion likes winners. America may be the winner.

7) Don’t get tangled up in conspiracy theories about oil. It is insulting to many principled and intelligent people in the British and US administrations to say that this can be understood as an oil-grabbing plot. Besides, you drive a car, don’t you? Is the security of our oil supplies not a consideration in foreign policy?

Those Peace-Loving Palestinians

“Force 17, Yasser Arafat's Presidential Guard, has forced 55 Palestinian families out of their homes in the Gaza Strip under the pretext that they are sitting on land whose ownership is at the center of a legal dispute between two wealthy businessmen,” the Jerusalem Post reports. When Israel destroyed the homes of terrorists, “human rights” advocates everywhere shrieked in horror. Here's what they've said so far about the Force 17 action:

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reports that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says he has evidence directly linking Yasser Arafat to terror organizations. “Mofaz charged that Arafat had instructed the heads of the organizations to kill more Israelis.”

Dear Editor, What's Wrong With Those Jews?

Suppose you wrote a letter to the editor of a major newspaper expressing your dismay at Africa's political and social backwardness--the lack of democracy, poor economic development, prevalence of disease, and so forth. These are all legitimate issues. But if you concluded your letter by asking a racist question like “Why can't black people govern themselves?,” the editor would throw out your letter, and rightly so.

So how come the Los Angeles Times published this letter, by one Boots Mertens of Thousand Oaks, Calif.?

Re “Sharon Wins Easily in Israel,” Jan. 29: I cannot believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reelected. Didn’t they learn anything from World War II? Sharon is trying to exterminate Palestinians just like Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews. You would think the Jewish people would see the similarities.

Is Boots Mertens so deluded that he thinks that the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinian Arabs? It’s hard to believe. The truth is that the Palestinians, along with the rest of the Arabs and other Islamic ethnicities, want to destroy the state of Israel. This would make a Twenty-First Century Holocaust possible.

This raises the question of whether Palestinians are a distinct ethnic group.

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