Thursday - June 23, 2011

Ship Of Fools, Again

Victoria resident Kevin Neish knows the risks of breaking Israel’s blockade on the Gaza Strip. Last year as a human-rights observer on a Turkish-owned vessel, the Mavi Marmara, he witnessed a bloodbath after Israeli commandos boarded the ship. Nine passengers were killed and 54 were wounded.

“It was a free-fire zone,” Neish said during a recent interview at the Georgia Straight office. “There was blood dripping down the stairs—and I’ve got the photographs to prove it. So it was just a nightmare, a horrendous nightmare. People that I broke bread with and had tea with just the day before, I watched die in front of my eyes. It was unbelievable.”

Organizers of the ‘European campaign to lift the Gaza siege” announced that the second Gaza-bound flotilla will set sail as scheduled, next week. According to an organization activist, the sail will include “hundreds of activists form 40 countries.” The group did not specify when exactly the flotilla will set sail.

15 ships full, from what I hear. Every super-lefty who can save up some welfare checks and sell enough dope to afford the ticket price. Bill Ayers, Alice Walker, and a host of others.

The boat from the United States has been dubbed “The Audacity of Hope.” (Now where have we heard that title before?) On it are 36 passengers and four crew members, including some members of the Soros-funded Code Pink. Journalists from The Nation, CNN, NPR, CBS, The New York Times, Democracy Now, and the Palestinian News Agency Ma’an are “embedded” within the flotilla. “Embedded”? Isn’t that the word used to describe journalists who accompany troops in active battle?

For a partial list of this group of audacious activists and their bios, go here.  It reads like of Wannabe Who’s Who of Leftyville, from aging hippies to “social justice activists” to anti-war progressives to “a freelance cultural explorer” (translation: hippie free love slut). I would not want to be downwind when this ship passes by.

Around the world, only a little common sense has bubbled up: Germany has refused to allow it’s government members to take part. Right? Because having a bunch of Germans involved in a blatant act against the Jews ... might cause Mercedes Benz sales to drop amongst the doctors and lawyers on the Upper East Side. It’s a little too blatant.

BERLIN – The German Left Party earlier this month issued a resolution prohibiting its Bundestag deputies from participating in the Gaza Flotilla slated for late June and intended to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Billed as a resolution that would end the criticism that the Left Party is fundamentally anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, the resolution failed to impress the head of Germany’s Jewish community, Dr. Dieter Graumann, and media commentators who see an anti-Semitic agenda driving the Left Party’s domestic and foreign policy platforms.

But that’s about it. The crazy is in full swing everywhere else. And I mean crazy:

American Jews comprise more than 25 percent of the pro-Hamas flotilla that aims to challenge the IDF on the high seas and reach Hamas-backed Gaza, throwing cold water on the allegation of a unified pro-Israel “Jewish lobby” in the United States.

“It’s important that Jews are in this boat… The Jewish lobby in this country is so powerful,” New York Jewish labor attorney Richard Levy told media agencies.
...
Jewish activist Leslie Cogan told the French news agency AFP, the flotilla is “a cargo of friendship, a cargo of peace.”

Last week, Jewish anti-Zionists in London rallied in memory of the nine IHH members who were killed by Israeli Navy commandos last year after brutally attacking the soldiers, who reached the deck of the Mavi Mamara ship virtually unarmed except for paint guns and small revolvers.

After last year’s clash on the high seas, the leader of the German-Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East said the group actually wants to “preserve” Israel.

“Some see what we are doing as a betrayal. But the question is what do they really know about the whole thing. Some people don’t want to be educated,” Kate Katzenstein-Leiterer told the German news agency DPA.

In contrast to the American Jews’ efforts for the flotilla, pressure from French Jews prevented the departure of a ship to Gaza, according to the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman.

Meanwhile, over in Turkey ... our NATO ally Turkey ... that secular, peaceful nation ... flotilla supporters and peace activists have found a new banner to rally around:

“The protesters are not concerned about peace,” Gunaysu explained. “They are calling for more violence and more bloodshed. Because they—particularly Islamic protesters, at times backed by leftists groups as well—are not against a particular Israeli government and its particular policies, but against the existence of Israel itself.”

The best piece I’ve found written about the whole affair is Phyllis Chesler’s post, “Flotilla of Fools” at Front Page Magazine.

Spurred on by the anti-Potemkin Village images of Palestinian Arabs living in wretched refugee hovels, fenced in by an allegedly “apartheid” Israeli wall, oppressed by “Nazi” Israeli soldiers for “racist” reasons (and not because the Palestinian leadership practices both Islamic gender and religious apartheid as well as terrorism)–the Good People are sailing to the rescue.

She spends two delicious pages slicing, dicing, and pureeing this latest crop of floating idiots and their benighted quest. Read it and be wonderful.

So, what’s my opinion? Need you ask? Let me tell you ...

Do you know what a swashplate engine is? I didn’t either, but I learned today. A swashplate engine, also called a barrel engine, is an axial internal combustion engine that has no crankshaft. The pistons and cylinders are all parallel to the axle, just like the cylinders in a revolver are parallel to the central crane axle. As the pistons push away from the combustion chamber, rods and rollers on their nether end push against a wobbly plate called a swashplate in circumferential succession, which turns the axle. Think of a crowd in a stadium doing the wave, but in a circle. Give everyone in that circle an edge of a big blanket to hold, and put a ball on the blanket. Time things right and the ball will roll around and around as each step of the wave erupts behind it. Or think of a Gatling Gun in reverse: instead of the sinusoidal cam spinning the barrels and loading and firing the chambers, when reversed the recoil of the rounds going off cause the cam to rotate. Same principle. Another way to understand a swashplate is to envision a CD on an dowel axle. Position the CD at an angle and glue it in place. You now have a camshaft equivalent, that will make one sine curve motion (2Π radians) per revolution if you’re looking at a fixed spot edge on. [ shut up Drew, nobody finds this stuff interesting but you. I know, but I bet the engine is a two stroke, and I bet the first cylinder to fire on starting is the one halfway down the sine curve. That way it would not need to be cranked, and it would never start in reverse. ]

So, who cares? Well, a 500hp swashplate engine powers the Navy’s Mk-48 torpedo. The internal combustion engine runs on an evil liquid called Otto fuel 2, which is a mix of a combustable (gasoline, alcohol) with a very strong oxidizer (pure hydrogen peroxide). It’s almost like liquid gunpowder, and lets the engine run deep underwater with no bottled air. The Mk-48 carries a 650lb explosive warhead, can reach speeds of at least 63mph, and has a probable range of over 21 miles. It’s jet propulsion system, a ducted muffler, and various other silencing technologies allow to run very stealthily for very long distances.

It sure would suck if a few of those accidentally fell into the Med, wouldn’t it? Seriously: think of the environmental impact of several hundred sunken hippies dirtying up the water. I’m all for peaceful solutions, but sometimes accidents do happen.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/23/2011 at 02:53 PM   
Filed Under: • Israel • War On Terror •  
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