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You can't win. Really. You can't. When executives at studios and networks move up to the highest ranks, they are given a book. The book is called How to Handle Actors. And one principle held dear in that book is that no actor is greater than the show itself when the show is a hit. And, in that regard, they are often right. Add to that the fact that the actor who is torturing their diseased egos is a drug-addled, porn star-squiring, near-Joycean Internet ranter, and they really want you to go.
Granted, it didn't get real until you insulted them. And your suit may have real grounds.
But you know what you should do? Take a nap. Get a shower. Call Chuck. Go on Letterman and make an apology. Write a huge check to the B'Nai Brith. And then beg for your job back. Your fans demand it. You will never win because when you are as big a douchebag as some of these guys are, they have no choice but to snuff you. (Do you secretly want to get snuffed? So you can go back and make movies?)
Sober up, Charlie. And get back on TV, if it's not too late. This is America. You want to really piss off Chuck and Warner Brothers and CBS? Beg for America's forgiveness. They will give it to you. And then go back. You are a great television star. And you've got the gig. As I learned from closely observing Tony Bennett so I could impersonate him on SNL, this is supposed to be fun.
P.S.... buy Cryer a really nice car.
The red carpet was not rolled out to greet 80-year-old Dries van Agt upon his arrival at Ben-Gurion International Airport. The man who was prime minister of Holland from 1977 to 1982 is known here as one of the leading delegitimizers of Israel. This visit, like ones before, is aimed at expressing his support for the Palestinians under the occupation and to give a boost to the Israeli peace camp. Van Agt is one of 26 European personages who called upon the European Union in December to declare that a Palestinian state will spread over an area equal to 100 percent of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and that its capital will be East Jerusalem. The signatories include the previous European foreign affairs and defense policy coordinator Javier Solana, and former leaders of Germany, Spain, Italy and Ireland, among others. The retired leaders urged EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton to take an active role in thawing the negotiations and freezing settlement construction. They noted key American figures have hinted to them that the best way to help U.S. President Barack Obama advance the peace process is to make Israel pay a "price tag" for policy contradicting the United States' wishes. That price would be EU recognition of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, as several South American countries have done. Last Thursday, shortly after speaking at an international Christian conference in Bethlehem and before taking off to fly back to Amsterdam, van Agt presented to me a despairing picture of the EU policy regarding the conflict. True, he says, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's telephone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows the EU has woken up from the delusion that the Israeli leader has changed. Van Agt recounts with relish British Prime Minister David Cameron's reply to a member of Parliament who inquired whether Netanyahu had also phoned London in order to chastise the prime minister for Britain's' vote in the United Nations condemning the settlements. Cameron said he had not been granted that honor but had Netanyahu complained to him, he would have received a "robust" reply similar to the one he received from Berlin ("How dare you?" ). "Most of the European leaders, headed by those of the major countries - France, Britain and Germany - are partners to the feeling that it's impossible to trust Netanyahu," van Agt said. "He squandered the credit he received from Europe in the wake of his Bar-Ilan speech and turned it into empty words." However, van Agt expects the first European country to join the South American states will be Norway, which is not a member of the EU. He says he has reasons to believe Spain will be the first EU country to follow in Oslo's footsteps. But he doesn't hold out much hope for a domino effect. The retired Dutch statesman, who believes Europe owes a special debt to the Palestinians because they are the victims of victims of the Holocaust, does not believe their salvation will come from the continent. "The EU is everything but a union," he says. He calls the members from Central Europe "slaves of the United States" and assesses they will carry out its orders to thwart a consensus - a necessary condition for a resolution by the EU to recognize a Palestinian state in the vote expected at the UN this coming September. The highest hurdle, says van Agt, is to be found in his home country of Holland. The combination of guilty feelings and Islamophobia has, he says, made Dutch politicians the bastion of the Israeli right in Europe. As evidence, he pulls out a copy of a resolution passed with a sweeping majority (including their Labor Party ) in the Dutch Parliament on the eve of the vote against the settlements in the UN, which won the support of all the European ambassadors in the Security Council. The Dutch Parliament called upon the EU to oppose recognition of a Palestinian state. It also demanded of the Palestinians that they return to the negotiating table in order to bring about a just resolution of the conflict and "explicitly" recognize a democratic and Jewish state. Not a word about the settlements. It is small wonder, then, that no less than 20 Israeli diplomats have vied of late for the position of ambassador to The Hague. The tulips are blooming and the herring - lip-smacking good. Livni-style democracy Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni of Kadima has a new project. She is proposing to the Arab world that it adopt the codes of its democratic sister. In an article published last week in The Washington Post, Livni wrote that the leaders of the free world must exert their influence in order to protect the young democracies in the Middle East from groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. According to her, Israel fears the democratic revolution in Egypt will bring about the replacement of Hosni Mubarak with a leader who has an extremist worldview and an anti-democratic bent (no doubt she is referring to the Muslim Brotherhood ). In a letter she appended to the article, Livni explained to me that the role of the leaders of the free world, and especially in Israel, is to harness the world to the future shaping of the region in accordance with those interests shared by Israel and the free world. Livni claims her initiative "correctly translates the values of democracy in a way that will be acceptable to all the pragmatic and moderate elements in our region." She proposes banning all parties that uphold violence and/or racism and/or do not respect international agreements. If Netanyahu were to propose "translating" his democratic codes for the Arabs, we would say he is arrogant, colonialist and insensitive. It is worth remembering that Livni has conducted (and quite probably will conduct ) intense coalition negotiations with an Israeli political party that wants to transfer Arabs out of Israel and incites against minorities. In fact, she too proposed in the past transferring to a Palestinian state the Israeli inhabitants of divided villages.
Former Dutch PM tells Haaretz: European leaders can't trust Netanyahu
Dries van Agt wants the EU to make Israel pay for its policies, but says his own country is one of the main obstacles to recognition for Palestine.
By Akiva Eldar This story is by:
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Israel May Ask US For $20 Billion More in Security Aid, Barak Says Haaretz (Israel) http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-may-ask-u-s-for-20-billion-more-in-security-aid-barak-says-1.347866 Israel may request an addition $20 billion in military aid from the United States in light of the unrest sweeping the Arab world, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday .. .. With the popular protests shaking up the Mideast, Netanyahu is under fierce international pressure to prove he is serious about getting peacemaking moving again, especially after the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's West Bank settlement construction last month. |
'Humanitarian Imperialism' in Libya Could End the Whiteman's Burden!
http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/03/humanitarian-imperialism-in-libya-could.html
"Using force to stop slaughter is lawful. The duty to stop the mass murder of innocents, as best we can, has crystallised to make the use of force by Nato not merely 'legitimate' but lawful." Geoffrey Robertson QC ,a member of the UN's justice council
David Cameron, now heading a coalition government of a bankrupt United Kingdom , along with some elements in France and elsewhere in Europe is raring to go to war on Libya in the 21 century version of Whiteman's burden .Still drunk with the colonial power hangover ,Cameron is an apt successor of Tony Blair , who told lies before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and joined George Bush in spite of the original legal advice that it was illegal .Though accused of various crimes he is still roaming around relatively free.
Josh Gerstein wrote in 'Politico' on 22 February ,2011 that the US Justice Department has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and administration officials - including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aide Paul Wolfowitz - in a lawsuit by Jose Padilla, who spent years behind bars without charges in conditions his lawyers compare to torture.
Ray McGovern , former CIA officer and now a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) wrote in Information Clearing House on19 February 2011 that former president George Bush abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance that week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture charge.
(At New Delhi's National Defence College Seminar last year on the-'Role of Force in Strategic Affairs , Lawrence Freedman ,a member of the Chilcot Enquiry , while presiding at a session claimed that the Iraq invasion was to quickly make a regime change and come out. He even contested my claim, based on my over 50 articles ( 2002 to 2010) on the Iraq war that both former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former Fed reserve chief Alan Greenspan had proclaimed that the invasion was for Iraq's oil .Wikileaks has confirmed that the Chiclot Enquiry is but a whitewash to help save Tony Blair's skin !)
Likely ramifications of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya
Mike Lind writes in Salon ,"The implication [of McCain, Lieberman, Kerry et al.] is that the enforcement of "no-fly zones," by the U.S. alone or with NATO allies, would be a moderate, reasonable measure short of war, like a trade embargo. In reality, declaring and enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya would be a radical act of war. It would require the U.S. not only to shoot down Libyan military aircraft but also to bomb Libya in order to destroy anti-aircraft defenses. Under any legal theory, bombing a foreign government's territory and blasting its air force out of the sky is war.
"Could America's war in Libya remain limited? The hawks glibly promise that the U.S. could limit its participation in the Libyan civil war to airstrikes, leaving the fighting to Libyan rebels.
"These assurances by the hawks are ominously familiar."
Lind then traces us back through the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that each of these turned into wars of larger scale than intended (Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to be quick and easy, remember?).
"Stay the Course ' He concludes ; "The lesson of these three wars is that the rhetoric of lift-and-strike is a gateway drug that leads to all-out American military invasion and occupation. Once the U.S. has committed itself to using limited military force to depose a foreign regime, the pressure to "stay the course" becomes irresistible. If lift-and-strike were to fail in Libya, the same neo-con hawks who promised that it would succeed would not apologize for their mistake. Instead, they would up the ante. They would call for escalating American involvement further, because America's prestige would now be on the line. They would denounce any alternative as a cowardly policy of "cut and run." And as soon as any American soldiers died in Libya, the hawks would claim that we would be betraying their memory, unless we conquered Libya and occupied it for years or decades until it became a functioning, pro-American democracy.
"Those who are promoting an American war against Gadhafi must answer the question: "You and whose army?" The term "jingoism" comes from a Victorian British music-hall ditty: "We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do,/ We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Unfortunately for 21st-century America's jingoes, we haven't got the ships, the men or the money."(As for the men, late decorated US Marine Col Murtha had said in 2006 that the US army was broken in Iraq.)
'No-fly zone' is a euphemism for war
Similar views are expressed by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian of 9 March ;" We'd be mad to try it.
"Cameron's urge to dust himself in military glory may be strong, but he should not interfere in the Libyan rebels' cause. The craving of politicians to dust themselves in military glory is as old as the hills, embedded in leadership psychosis. However daft a war may be, however illegal, however unwinnable, politicians seem helpless before the sound of trumpets and drums. Considerations of prudence, economy or overstretch are nothing. That Britain has been fighting and not winning two wars already in Muslim countries seems to teach nothing in Libya. Jingoism never dies.
