Ever wonder why so many bloggers -- especially cutting-edge, ground-breaking, paradigm-smashing news blog web site Net thingies like Pajamas Media -- are so fond of podcasts?
It's quite simply this: audio and video, unlike text, cannot easily easily be "fisked" as the Kool Kids like to say, although video is susceptible to being annotated through the judicious use of subtitles. Nor, it follows, can such "documents" be easily text-searched -- unless, of course, someone takes the trouble to transcribe them.
Which, we're pleased to say, we have.
Of late, Pamela "Fuck Lebanon" Atlas Shrugs has been podcasting her way across Israel. Last week, she interviewed Caroline Glick, a U.S.-born Israeli commentator and think-tanker, whom she (Pammy) describes as "Israel's national treasure."
Said Caroline:
So you're looking at a situation where you have this whole -- you have this fiction we've created about the Lebanese government, pretending that somehow or another it's not colluding with Hezbollah, that we can separate it out from Hezbollah, but really the Lebanese government is Hezbollah.
Cut to
this week's Pam-o-gram, starring her
very special friend John Bolton. He remarks,
So, one of the things that I think we should take advantage of, if, if this resolution in fact is implemented, is thinking about how to strengthen the government of Lebanon, and the democratic forces in Lebanon, because, uh, in, in, in that sense, ultimately, the Lebanese -- some Lebanese are gonna govern in Lebanon. They're either gonna be as they were for many years, a puppet rƩgime under Syria, which cannot be in Israel's interest or in the United States, or it's gonna be a free and democratic Lebanon.
Hm. So does Lebanon currently have a "Hezbollah government," or doesn't it?
He continues:
Which may well take positions different from ours, or different from Israel's, or different from others; that's what you get in democracy...
Pam: But that's horse-racing. That's okay.
Bolton: That's what we oughta be working toward, and, uh, it, it, it will be hard. It has been hard for the success that they've had to date. Uh, a lotta people didn't think Syria's military would pull out, but combined international pressure -- I mean, this is a case where France and the United States have worked very, uh, intensively together...
Pam: Uh... Lemme just tell you--
Bolton: Uh...
Pam: [gasps]
Bolton: And this is something we've gotta, we've gotta be persistent in. It will be long and difficult, but we have got to persist in it.
This isn't the only time Bolton managed to side-step one of Pam's questions, either:
Pam: Another thing. I wanna know the U.N. body yesterday could, um, sit with a straight face, what Kofi Annan** had the audacity, if I may be so bold, to "je accuse" how long it took for this ceasefire, uh, weeks that it took, when it's catastrophic now in the Sudan. I'm sure you know the latest host-- the latest killings, murders. And this is year-- this is decades.
Bolton: Well, the, the, the, the point for us in the Security Council this past month in the Lebanon situation has been, uh, uh, to preserve Israel's legitimate right of self-defense. And, uh, what you heard from the Secretary-General and a lot of other delegations around that table was a testament, indirect, to the effectiveness of the, uh, of the efforts we made to make sure that, uh, that Israel's right to self-defense was preserved. Um, you know, I think a lot of the concern that many of the, uh, many of the countries raised was, was humanitarian, and I think we're concerned about it. I think Israel's concerned about it. But we wanted to be sure that whatever the motives, that the situation didn't simply revert to the status quo ante. And, you know, all I can say is, in the Security Council, in the U.N., you listen to a lot of things you know are untrue, and if I spent all of my time simply refuting those, I couldn't get anything else done.
Early in the interview, Bolton refers to "
innocent Lebanese" and "
innocent civilian life [...] on all sides" -- but in the world according to Pammy, there's no such thing as a Lebanese civilian, much less an innocent one.
Well, we could go on and on, but that, of course, would be a copyright violation.
Oh, what the heck. Just one more Fair Use excerpt for your reading pleasure:
Bolton: The next critical point is that the resolution seeks to protect Israel in two major respects. First, it says that there has to be created in southern Lebanon a security zone which is free of Hezbollah. Now, that security zone has to be, uh, protected by the Lebanese armed forces, assisted by the international force that will go in there. And, it'll be called UNIFIL, as Secretary Rice*** said yesterday, it won't be the same UNIFIL. At least, if it works.
Pam: [heavy sigh, spluttering] yeah. I understand.
Bolton: Um, the, uh, the concept which was brought to us by the Israeli government within days after the outbreak of hostilities was that when the hostilities stopped, the Israeli forces did not want to withdraw and leave a vacuum in southern Lebanon that would simply be refilled by Hezbollah. So the concept is that there will not be such a vacuum, and that Israel will withdraw as a competent new force comes in to fill that, to prevent that vacuum from occurring. Um, the resolution makes it clear that the deployment of the Lebanese armed forces and the enhanced UNIFIL, and the withdrawal of the Israeli forces, are to be in parallel and in coordination, which means that that the Israeli Defense Forces have to agree. Uh, they don't have to withdraw by a set timetable; there's a lot of pressure to set a specific date, there is a lot of pressure to, uh, have an immediate withdrawal, or a withdrawal within a short period, and we've rejected that.
Pammy has promised to post "money quotes" from this interview at some point. But now we've saved her the trouble!
* Miss Shrugs and Mr. Bolton were in Israel at the time
** to whom Miss Shrugs enjoys referring as "Coffee Enema" or some similarly hilarious scatological term
*** about whom Miss Shrugs
inquired, just the other day: "
has she lost her mind?"
[UPDATE:
Heh. For the record, the entire "interview" (which was more or less a Bolton monologue, interspersed with occasional semi-coherent comments from Pammy)
has been transcribed already.
By us.
And we'll use it as we see fit.]
