COMMENTARY / OPINION
Op-ed: Why isn’t this question being asked? David Hersch
What is it about human beings that they long for a king? Former Chief Justice Aharon Barak obviously wanted to be one.
Apr 7, 2023, 11:01 AM (GMT+3) – What has been abundantly clear and obvious throughout the judiciary reform issue is, where are Aharon Barak and the Supreme Court judges? Not a word of suggestion or compromise or acknowledgement of going too far. Not a word about the court’s political and obvious bias. Merely a push to keep the status quo and the judicial coup.
I understand that in the beginning Aharon Barak and Esther Hayut spoke out against the proposed judicial reforms. Barak criticised and belittled the proposed reforms, whilst not mentioning a word about how he manipulated a judicial coup. Using a legal sounding discussion, he obfuscated trying to justify the Supreme Court whilst avoiding the real issue of hijacking and abusing the law specifically to make law and what as a result developed into judicial tyranny. Strictly speaking, politics should have no part in law and what judges decide or rule.
There are umpteen examples of the Supreme Court crossing these red lines and being inventive or agendised to suit their personal politics or aims. A simple example is how Aharon Barak manipulated a case to allow non-interested and non-involved parties who have no standing in a case to be able to take a case to court. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was a victim of Barak’s manipulation of the law when he was nominated to become the military Chief of Staff, but was in a later-settled private issue with the moshav he lives in. It was alleged he infringed on certain parts of the moshav’s property having a 350 square meter access road. A non-interested NGO, actually the Green Party, with no standing in the case threatened to take the matter to court and as a result Gallant’s nomination was withdrawn and Benny Gantz got the position by default.
Biden’s Israel Coup Covered Another Iran Deal Scheme by Daniel Greenfield
“Dangerous territory that could trigger an Israeli military strike”
April 6, 2023 – When lefty administrations go after conservative Israeli governments, it’s often because they’re carrying out a preemptive strike on policy that the Israelis would otherwise oppose. The ‘New Middle East’ and the Iran Deal were class examples.
Now the Iran Deal that refuses to die, no matter how discredited it may be, is making a comeback in an even worse form.
The Iran Lobby did not spend all of that time trying to elect Biden, nor did Iranian hackers try to intimidate Florida voters just to get the same old deal as under Obama. That deal was bad, but about a no-deal deal?
Axios reported today that the Biden administration has been discussing the contours of a new nuclear deal with Tehran since January. The prospective agreement would lift some U.S. sanctions on Iran in exchange for the regime freezing some parts of its nuclear program. Tehran thus far has reportedly rejected the U.S. offer. The potential accord comes despite public U.S. assurances as recently as last month that a return to the Iran nuclear deal “hasn’t been on the agenda for months now.”
So they’re lying, but that’s a given.
No Worse Friend: The West’s Treatment of Israel by Bruce Thornton
Meanwhile the enemies who have sworn to wipe Israel off the map are courted and indulged.
April 6, 2023 – The Romans said of 1st century B.C. general Sulla that there was no better friend, and no worse enemy. Epitomized in this saying is the ancient ideas of what comprises the just treatment of the gods and other people, expressed by the phrase do ut des, “I give so that you give.” “Friends” are those, humans or gods, from whom you have received, and to whom you owe benefits. “Enemies” are those who seek to injure you, and whom you may justly injure in return. In antiquity this principle of reciprocity defined all relationships.
And it applied to foreign policy. What we would call national interests were served by being predictable and reliable. If you were named a “Friend of Rome,” you could rely on Rome’s backing you against your enemies––as long as you reciprocated by paying taxes, obeying the laws, and providing auxiliaries for the Roman legions. Betray the principle of reciprocity, and you could depend on Rome to ruthlessly punish you, for as Homer shows in the Iliad, there is no greater injury than betrayal by a “friend” whom you have benefited, and from whom you are owed benefits in turn.
We moderns, of course, find such an ethic primitive, if not savage. Our notions of interstate relations are steeped in idealism, particularly “moralizing internationalism,” as British historian Correlli Barnett called the post-Versailles foreign policy of democracy promotion, and the non-lethal adjudication of conflict through diplomacy, foreign aid, and multinational institutions.
“The No Asshole Rule” Robert W Malone MD, MS
One of my favorite sayings – which still this holds true.
In 2007, Dr. Robert Sutton wrote the classic book titled “The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t”. It can all be summed up in a few simple statements. Basically, avoid assholes at all costs, no matter how rich or powerful they might be. That being around an asshole is contagious. That chronic exposure to such nastiness will eventually rub off.
Because such behavior is an “emotional contagion” – the odds are that if a company hires assholes, the corporate culture will become toxic. If a corporate culture becomes toxic due to assholes, it can be very difficult if not impossible to change.
The back part of the book is about how to survive having to work for or with assholes without becoming one yourself. In Dr. Sutton’s opinion, assholes are bullies, creeps, jerks, tyrants, tormentors, despots, backstabbers and egomaniacs.
I need to tell you something about me… Tierney’s Real News
April 6, 2023 – I was raised a conservative in Minneapolis and always voted Republican even when I didn’t know much about the candidate.
In 2015, for the first time, I considered voting for a Democrat – Hillary Clinton. Why? Because my parents were dead and all of my friends in Minneapolis were liberals and I considered them my family. Many of them I had known for 20 plus years.
Most of the women told me that if I didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton I was a traitor to my gender.
Most of the women told me that if I did not vote for Hillary Clinton that I was a racist and a misogynist and homophobe and downright evil.
When I asked them why I should vote for Hillary, they didn’t know. They just liked her white pantsuits and they wanted a liberal woman for President.
