Category: Israel

Some crap really does just boggle the hell out of the mind, doesn’t it? Take, for example, the recent colossal kerfuffle over yet another twit who thinks he’s found the tomb of Christ. 🙄

Here we have some dork — and James Cameron too, it turns out — burbling on like he’s some kind of authority when, in fact, he’s nothing more than just another media hack:

A Canadian filmmaker and author claims to have new scientific evidence that could have profound implications for Christianity.

Simcha Jacobovici, from Toronto, is expected to reveal at a news conference in New York on Monday that a tomb he explored under a Jerusalem apartment building once contained the bones of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

Further, he suggested that the tomb, stored in a warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquity Authority outside Jerusalem, may contain microscopic remains of the Christian saviour’s DNA.

[…]

The boxes were inscribed with the names: Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.

A quick peek around the net reveals that our little Mr. Jackoffski (pictured at right) is an Israeli-born Canadian, and received a B.A. with Honours in Philosophy and Political Science from McGill University. That’s right, two degrees: one in bullshitology political science and the other in bafflegab philosophy.

Philosophy, of course, is a Greek word that means “why do something about it when you can drone on endlessly about it with needlessly big words” that was best described by Ambrose Bierce as “a route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.” Let’s face it, kids; the only thing you can really do with a degree in philosophy is teach philosophy. And I think everybody here already knows what I think about a degree in polisci…

But enough about what he’s got. Let’s see what he hasn’t got. I wonder if he has any degrees in…

Archaeology? Nope.
Anthropology? Nope.
Theology? Nope.
Okay, how about codicology or philology? Nope.
Damn. The guy’s gotta at least have one in history, right?? Nope.

The article could just as easily — and just as accurately — be headlined: “Dude With Camcorder Says Outrageous Shit.” But you just know that the MSM and all the usual loopy Lefty suspects are going to be all over this like maggots on Saddam Hussein. Okay, tell ya what we’re gonna do…

Just for the moment, we’re going to forget that I’m Christian and therefore already know that Christ’s tomb is empty and this dolt is just yapping out of his arse. Let’s just examine his excuse for methodology for a few seconds, shall we?

University of Toronto mathematician Dr. Andrey Feuerverger calculated the odds at one in 600; while Dr. James Tabor, chair of the department of religion at the University of North Carolina, placed the odds at one in 42 million.

“If you took the entire population of Jerusalem at the time and put it in a stadium, and asked everyone named Jesus to stand up, you’d have about 2,700 men,” Tabor said. “Then you’d ask only those with a father named Joseph and a mother named Mary to remain standing. And then those with a brother named Yose and a brother named James. Statistically, you end up with one person.”

So here we are, over two thousand years later, and some twit finds a tomb with the name tags of “Jesus son of Joseph, Judah son of Jesus, Maria, Mariamne, Joseph and Matthew.” All of these were common names at the time. It’s like finding the tomb of “Jim son of John, Rob son of Jim, Linda, Jenny, John and Mike.” It means virtually nothing. The most important thing though, is that this whole theory hinges on one grasping compulsion: if this is, in fact, a tomb containing the remains of Jesus, Mary and Joseph themselves, then the mitochondrial DNA from the “Jesus” remains absolutely must be consistent with mtDNA from the “Mary” remains. There is no way around this whatsoever; NONE.

So, without further ado, allow me to throw in the monkey wrench (from the same article, no less)…

According to Jewish custom, the bones have long since been reburied in unmarked graves in Israel. But tests conducted at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., on DNA obtained from the Jesus and Mary tomb and show that the two individuals were not maternally related.

Not… Maternally… Related… How’s that for lowering the boom? Ah, but what’s a little snag like that when your head’s so far up your ass you chew your food twice? You don’t really think that you let inconvenient little things like a few piddling facts get in your way when you’re a card-carrying kook, now, do you? Hell no; you just decide to pull a Homer Simpson and pull your arms out of the tar with your face. Undaunted by having his little attention-whore balloon popped, he promptly shifted gears and fell back on the same old, tired, predictable, discredited, Gnostic bullshit…

“Perhaps Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married as the DNA results from the Talpiot ossuaries suggest and perhaps their union was kept secret to protect a potential dynasty – a secret hidden through the ages,” narrator Ron White says in the documentary.

“A secret we just may be able to uncover in the holy family tomb.”

Gimme a friggin’ break. Okay… Let’s assume for a minute that “Mary” isn’t genetically related to anybody else in the tomb; marriage would be a reasonable hypothesis to explain her presence. But married to whom? There are four sets of male remains in that tomb, folks, and nary a marriage certificate to be found. It’s an assumption perched on a presupposition built on a conceit. All in all, a pretty rickety affair.

On the bright side though, for a change, the gobsmacking of this idiocy isn’t confined to just folks like me. For example…

“It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave,” Kloner said. “The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time.”

Archaeologists also balk at the filmmaker’s claim that the James Ossuary – the center of a famous antiquities fraud in Israel – might have originated from the same cave. In 2005, Israel charged five suspects with forgery in connection with the infamous bone box.

“I don’t think the James Ossuary came from the same cave,” said Dan Bahat, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University. “If it were found there, the man who made the forgery would have taken something better. He would have taken Jesus.”

Nice to see scientists being scientists for a change.

Maybe I’m flogging this a bit, but I really don’t care. The MSM, along with all the other usual hand-wringing suspects, has been howling to the rafters about the “slaughter” that Israel is committing in Lebanon. Give me a break. LGF already put the smack to this bullshit but the critter don’t seem dead yet so I guess I’m just going to have to beat this horse a little more myself.

Anybody remember Jenin? Anybody? You can be excused if you don’t because I didn’t remember it either until I read a reference to in the the Calgary Sun recently.

Jenin was supposed to be, as WAFA (the official Palestinian news agency) dubbed it, “the massacre of the 21st century.” Supposedly, more than 500 “defenceless Palestinians” (if there is such a thing) were slaughtered by those mean, nasty, bloodthirsty Israeli soldiers in the spring of 2002. WAFA had themselves a happy little meltdown, declaring that there were “hundreds of martyrs.” The world media (supposedly “controlled by the Jews,” as any paranoiac will tell you) promptly went “HYUK!” and gladly pranced along with the parade.

One little problem: Once the fighting stopped and the dust settled, the UN had themselves a speedy investigation headed by oh-so-pro-Israel (sarcasm? me??) Kofi Anan, that found only 52 Palestinians had been killed “of whom up to half may have been civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers were dead.” Oops. Came up a little short on the martyr count, did ya boys? It gets better. Human Rights Watch (not exactly known for taking sides) did its own investigation and found only 22 Palestinians were killed in Jenin.

And Israel gets condemned for this, even though Anan’s own report said that “From the beginning of March until 7 May (2002), Israel endured approximately 16 bombings, the large majority of which were suicide attacks. More than 100 persons were killed and scores more wounded.” Doesn’t sound like a “measured response” to me. It sounds like restraint.

So there it is. The Israelis lose 100 people (plus 23 soldiers), the Arabs lose maybe 52 (but probably 22), and Israel gets bitched at? Give me a God damned break.

Sure, the truth came out but it’s the lie that’s still shambling around like some damned in-law that showed up at the cottage and won’t leave. Some like to bleat that Israel should only make “proportionate responses.” Well, now, a “proportionate response” would have been killing 123 Arabs, not 22, right?? But hey, what are numbers when you’re bashing the victim, eh?

The lies don’t stop there, though. Arabs have become masters of flinging the bullshit fast and hard so it sticks, even after the truth comes out.

This past Monday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora howled that 40 people were killed in an Israeli air strike in Marjayoun. He was later forced to admit that the body count was… get ready for it… one.

Remember Qana? Where 54 people from two families (mostly kids) were supposed to have been killed in an airstrike? It was front page news everywhere. Human Rights Watch put the death toll at 28 (if that), almost all adults.

The Lebanese government is now bleating (and news agencies parroting) that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in this war that Hezbullshit started. Yeah, right.

Everybody knows about the Reuters propaganda fiasco by now but that’s not all of it. More can be found here, here and here.

So the next time you hear a body count about some “Israeli aggression,” take the number and divide it by about 10. Then you might at least be in the same area code as the truth. Because believe me, you can’t trust these buggers.

The burbling from the flower-power fluteheads is like that God damned pink rabbit, it just keeps going, and going, and going, and… well, you get the idea. And it’s (you guessed it) gettin’ on my nerves.

Criticism after criticism after criticism is heaped on Israel for anything and everything that they do in the current war with Hezbullshit and yet, nobody seems to get around to badmouthing the gutless pricks who started it in the first place. Don’t fool yourselves, boys and girls; this is a war, no doubt about it. And whether you like it or not, Israel is fighting it exactly the way that it should. So why the hell is it that nobody seems to get it??

I have a theory. I think that part of the problem is that people in the West in general, and North America in particular, have no idea whatsoever what it’s like to live with the threat of attack hanging over their heads. Americans may say that they do, after the 9/11 attacks but seriously, how many Americans spend their days watching the sky wondering when (not if) something is going to come screaming over the horizon and kill a bunch of people they know? None that I’ve ever met. No war has been fought on our soil since 1812 and the last enemy the US fought on American soil was itself (1861-65).

So let’s try something, shall we? Close your eyes and try to imagine something like this:

Some bunch of paramilitary types in the US (let’s say the Michigan Militia) arms themselves to the teeth, gets a bunch of their members elected to the state legislature, and starts lobbing rockets into southwestern Ontario on a regular basis. Whenever anyone asks, they loudly proclaim that the only thing that they want is for all Canadians to die. That’s it, nothing else. It even says in their charter that they only exist to destroy Canada. What they intend to do with themselves afterwards, if they succeed, never seems to have occurred to them.

[And, before the flaming even starts: Yes, I know the Michigan Militia isn’t really as whacked as most of the media would have people believe. The few of them that I’ve met have actually been rather nice people, even if a little brash for my liking. But hey, I’ve got to use somebody for this scenario, and the MM’s as good as any. Next time I’ll use the NDP. I promise. -Admin]

So, the MM’s gotten their paws on a bunch of old Soviet-era BM-21 Grads and are lobbing 122mm rockets on our heads at an absolutely annoying rate. Canadians are getting killed and maimed on a daily basis whilst they do nothing other than go about their normal business. Maybe you’ve even lost some family or friends to one of these nasty little things. Maybe your mother spent her last years as a shattered woman because what was left of your little sister died in her arms.

So, what would we do? We ask the Michigan authorities to interviene, but the MM mouthpieces in the legislature block anything that might interfere with their agenda and the MM is too well armed for the Michigan State Police to deal with (assume, for the sake of this example, that there is no US federal government with a bigass army to deal with this mess). The international community has had observers on the Canada/Michigan border for years, but those damn rockets are still coming, so the smurfs don’t seem to be getting much done.

The rockets keep coming and Canadians keep dying.

We appeal to the international community for help, but all they ever do is talk while our people die. Meanwhile, Alberta (which has become increasingly more militant ever since separating from Canada after NDP PM Andre Abruti passed the Screwalbertaagain Act) has been funneling more and more of its oil money into the MM and using all its influence to keep the UN too flimflammed to do anything.

The rockets keep coming and Canadians keep dying. Maybe it was your house that got hit today. The MM will never negotiate a real peace, all they want is for us to die. The international community won’t do jack shit to help us. Canadians are getting killed each and every day. This has been going on for years. So what do we do? Come on, you leftist smartasses (you know who you are), WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO? I’ll tell you what we do. We take the only reasonable action that we have left available to us:

We invade.

We mass our forces along the Micigan border and move in to destroy every MM asset that we can find. Air strikes, armour, infantry, we use everything we’ve got. The purpose is not just to stop the current attacks, but also to deter such behaviour in the future.

The problem is that the MM has a habit of positioning its military assets in the middle of local populations. So what? We hit them anyway, because Michigan civilian casualties are better than the Canadian civilian casualties we’ll be getting if we don’t take the MM out of comission.

Finally, finally, the international community starts to stand up and condemn the slaughter in the region. The problem is, they’re condemning us! They’re complaining that our actions are inflicting civilian casualties! Where the hell was their indignation when it was Canadian civilians who were dying?

Screw the UN, screw the EU, and screw anybody else, for that matter. We’ll do what we have to to survive.

THAT‘s what we’d do. And that’s what Israel is doing right now.

Okay, maybe check isn’t the right word here. Some dunderheads lately seem more to be in dire need of a reality enema. That’s right, a good, cold blast of can’t-deny-this right up where the sun don’t shine. They wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit, either. The rest of us would then be spared their harebrained hyperbole and assorted other incongruous ignis fatuus clattering about in their cavernous craniums.

Damn. There goes my fancy word apportionment for the day. Oh, well. Pull up a chair, this is gonna take a while.

The latest honkings from the usual goofy gaggle of disagreeable geese is, as you can likely guess, all about Lebanon, Israel, Hezbollah and Harper. It seems that they all want to shove their two cents into the juke box and expect the whole damn world to hop into their little conga line of conceit. Well, guess what, birdbrains? I ain’t dancing.

The bulk of all this blathering can pretty much be summed up like this:

1. Canada should not get involved in this fracas (unless the UN wants us to send in peacekeepers) and should stay as neutral as possible and not side with anyone. That’s our tradition.
2. Israel may have been provoked but they’ve totally gone off the deep end and their reaction is completely overboard and out of proportion.
3. Whatever Hezbollah has done, there must be some logical reason for it. They’re victims.
4. Israel should back down because “violence only breeds more violence,” and their current course of action will only further provoke islamic nutjobs everywhere, not just in the Middle East.
5. The whole “war against islamofascism” thing is doomed from the get-go anyway because you can’t fight ideas with bullets or bombs.
6. There is no moral difference between the two sides and what they’re doing; Israel is just as wrong as Hezbollah.
7. The PM is just plain nuts and embarrassing the entire country by making no bones about where he and his government stand on this issue and saying exactly who he thinks is responsible for this latest Mideastern turd typhoon.

And just where the hell am I to start kicking over this little sandcastle of sanctimony?? Well, I guess the beginning’s as nice a place as any this time of year…

1: Don’t go mistaking years of Grit antimilitary neglect and spineless foreign policy for tradition. We weren’t neutral in the World Wars, Korea, the Cold War or the Gulf War and we’re not neutral now. When we’re led by a government with its head clear of its colon, we decide who is right and who is wrong and take sides appropriately. That’s a Canadian tradition. And as far as sending peacekeepers goes, all I can say is, were you born that stupid or did you have to take a course? You don’t send in peacekeepers when there is no peace to keep! The results of that kind of thinking became plain earlier this week. Southern Lebanon is an all-out war zone right now and any peacekeepers, UN or otherwise, are just going to get caught in the crossfire.

2: Just what the hell do these extra-foam-latte-snorters expect Israel to do? Doing nothing when a bully slaps you only encourages him to slap you again. He does it because you showed him that he can. Groups like Hammas, Hezbollah the PLO and too many others to mention have been murdering Israeli civillians for decades with nowhere near the outcry that the international community regurgitates every time that Israel pushes back. A sovereign nation surrounded by implacably hostile enemies does not secure the safety of its citizens by engaging in mere tit-for-tat responses. Israel must, through sheer necessity, heed the observations of Brigadier James Wolfe and see the enemy for what they are. Whenever they “are in a scrape they are ready to cry out in behalf of the human species; when fortune favours them, none more bloody, more inhuman,” but that islamofascism “has changed the very nature of war, and has forced us, in some measure, to a deterring and dreadful vengeance.”

3: Bullshit. The eggheads would have you think that there’s a reason for everything. Well, guess what? Blind hatred doesn’t need a reason for jack shit; all it needs is a handy target to vent on (preferrably one that won’t hit back). Hezbollah was created by Iran so that it could wage a little proxy war with Israel without having to risk doing any of the actual fighting anywhere near Iran. And if you think that there can ever be any peace so long as these lunatic organisations exist, consider this little nugget from their charter: “The necessity for the destruction of Israel … It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve … Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.” You cannot reason with someone, say to them “what do you want?” when the only thing they want is for you to be dead.

4: This is one of the dumbest Goddamned things I’ve ever heard. They’re even dumber than Bubbles looks if they think this is going to save their butts. Backing down in the face of aggression does not get you peace (see 2, above), it just tells the other side that they can screw with you and get away with it. A more honest statement would be that “inadequate violence breeds more violence.” The only way to hold homicidal screwballs like these in check is to give them the same treatment that we gave the Soviet Union: make the consequences of aggression utterly unthinkable. And as for provoking these looney toons in other parts of the world, just what kind of provocation do you think they need? Even if there was no Israel, they’d still find an excuse because a society like that desperately needs an external enemy to distract from its own failings.

5: Like hell we can’t. Nazism was an idea, remember? DUH!

6: Moral relativism like this makes me want to take a long lean over the port side. I mean, where the hell do you even start with this kind of idiocy?? Islamic nutjobs target civilians deliberately; Israelis target militants. Hezbolla “fighters” hide amongst dense populations of civilians to use as human shields and propaganda tools when they inevitably get hurt; Israeli soldiers gather togeather in large groups that you would think enemies would find tempting but never seem to go after (they’re called military bases, in case you’re wondering). Islamic screwheads want nothing short of the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews; Israel wants to be left alone. If I keep this up, I’ll never finish this rant…

7: No, he isn’t. Have all those years of gutless waffling and fence sitting by the Grits really left us so utterly unprepared for a leader who actually takes a stand on something? I like to think not. The only ones being embarrassed by the PM’s uncompromising stand are the Liberals. Where they fiddly-farted about for decades, bleating about “soft diplomacy,” often while Canadians like Bill Samson were tortured by despotic regimes, Harper has been clear and decisive and made it plain that Canada isn’t going to sit down and shut up for that kind of crap as long as he’s in charge.

Which should be for quite a while, from the look of things.