Catching Fireballs

The U.N. press pool includes reporters from papers that don't even bother pretending to be sources of objective news, which results in some interesting questions at the daily press briefing at Turtle Bay. When the subject turns to Israel, the questions can be quite enlightening, as seen during today’s UN press daily briefing:

Question: Does the Secretary-General subscribe to the point of view of Mr. ElBaradei that any threat by Israel to Iran could really bring about a fireball in the whole region?

Spokesperson: I don’t have any information about that. The Secretary-General is certainly aware of what Mr. ElBaradei has been saying, but I don’t have any specific statement to make at this point.

The spokesperson might want to consider this alternative response:

Fantasy Spokesperson: Please explain what you mean by “a fireball.” My understanding is that Iran has threatened to place nuclear fireballs throughout Israel so as to, in Mr. Ahmedinejad’s own words, wipe Israel off the map. Are you talking about those threatened fireballs or some other fireballs?

We continue with the Q&A from the briefing:

Question: Why is the Secretary-General always slow to react to any threats by Israel?

Spokesperson: Well, we don’t react to threats; there are so many of them all around the world and all over the planet. If we reacted to threats and not to actual, physical, proven danger, I think the Secretary-General would be busy 24 hours a day issuing statements.

You know, I think ol' Spokesperson could have done better. How about:

Fantasy Spokesperson: It could be because then, in all fairness, he would have to respond to threats to Israel. Do you really want him to get into all the surrounding nations and entities that have called for the elimination of Israel’s right to exist? Would you like him to discuss the threat of the proposed genocide of the Israeli people?

OK now, last question! Let's see if Spokesperson learned from the valued free coaching:

Question: But here you have a situation that is really escalating, especially on the vocal level. And the Middle East is not just any area. It is a very inflammable area, as we all know. Does that not concern Mr. Ban Ki-moon?

Spokesperson: It concerns him, definitely. It does concern him. Several times he has appealed for calm and for people to refrain from threats.

Will the need for coaching ever end?

Fantasy Spokesperson: It concerns him, definitely. It does concern him. He would particularly like to see the day when the inflammatory anti-Israel media decide to cool down the rhetoric, stop running every trumped-up Palestinian charge verbatim, and also stop ignoring Israel’s position in its entirety. But Mr. Ki-moon is a realist and he understand there’s about as much a chance of that as there is a free and fair election under Robert Mugabe or the free practice of religion in China.

I remain, as always, available to the U.N. staff to help them with their messaging and media training.

Dughmush Now Dog Mush

I'm not sure exactly what dog mush is, but it's definitely nothing nice, so I couldn't resist the headline.

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel Air Force struck terrorist groups in Gaza in three separate attacks Tuesday afternoon, killing at least six operatives, including Army of Islam second-in-command Muataz Dughmush.

The head of the terrorist group, Mumtaz, is Muataz' half-brother.

Two of the strikes were carried out in the central Gaza town of Dir el-Balah, where IAF pilots successfully targeted the gunmen involved in the 2006 kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

One of the missiles struck a vehicle carrying the Army of Islam terrorist cell, which included Muataz Dughmush. Five terrorists were killed, including Dughmush, and three others were wounded, one critically. The vehicle was completely destroyed.

Two other Army of Islam terrorists were wounded in the second strike, which occurred in the same area a short time later.

Of course, the news report I heard said merely that six Palestinians had been killed. Are we to assume that all Palestinians are terrorists? Of course not (at last report, there were 17 who didn't support terrorism). Are we to assume that every Palestinian killed by Israelis is an innocent? Of course not (go ahead and use that 17 number again).

The media could do a better job of reporting Israel/Palestinian issues. That said, please register me in the "Understatement of the Year" contest.

hat-tip: Jim

Sunday Scan

Who You Gonna Mourn To?

China, an atheist regime that forces "religion" into a state-run box and prosecutes practitioners of serious religion, has called for three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake.

Who will the country mourn to? A vacuum? The spirit of Mao, who, decomposed as he is, does not offer much eternal hope?

The answer is in the heart of those that suffer, as this AP story reveals:

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?"

Oh God, give them comfort. The state certainly can't.

Moral Relativism Alert!

Before straying too far from AP, let's turn our attention to a story filed by Terence Hunt earlier this morning about Prez Bush's address to assembled Arab leaders in Egypt. Hunt tells us:

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

Gosh. I wonder why the tone would be different.

One of the rules of thumb I teach my employees is that when your opposition is lying, distorting or just being ignorant, use their own words against them. That would apply with Hunt's story. Let's look at Hunt's reporting on what Bush said to the Arab leaders and see if there's a reason for the contrasting tones, shall we?

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said ...

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and are represented in government. On the other side, there's Mubarik, Assad and a host of other power-barons who have jailed or suppressed their opposition, and not one functioning democracy save the nascent one in Iraq and the crumbling one in Lebanon. Point Bush.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled ..."

Israel's' "political prisoners" are people who have carried out or planned violent attacks with real weapons against Israel. In the rest of the region, jails are full of people whose only weapon is the pen or the tongue. Freedom of speech in Israel, repression in all the Arab lands leads to point Bush.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future ..."

Israel has no prisoners of conscience, just prisoners of action. It has an open political debate, and it trusts its future to its people. Anyone want to speak from the Arab side? Anyone? Anyone?

Point, game and match Bush.

On The Wrong Foot

The EU asked Interpol to look into the state of Islamist terror in Europe. Interpol found that it's bad and getting worse ... and it blamed England.

Britain's controversial foreign and military policy has made UK the hub of Islamic terrorism across Europe, and turned the country into a fertile ground for jihadist recruiters, a report by the EU warned.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report revealed that British foreign policy presented critical dangers for all Europe: "The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have a large impact on the security environment of the EU." (Source)

So the problem isn't the EU's policy of appeasing radical Islamists who promote race hatred under the protection of the EU's tolerance laws? And it's not Islam itself and its long history of violent jihad, sharpened in recent years by the phenomena of international migration, the Internet and Saudi-funded radical education?

The EU study may be worlds off in its finger-pointing, but it's probably right about this: It predicts more terror attacks in Europe from a "rejuvenated" al-Qaeda.

Where are we fighting al-Qaeda? Well, we and the Brits are fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where aren't we fighting them? Europe.

Big News From The Nanosphere

Advances in nanotechnology appear poised to dramatically increase the efficiency of thin film solar cells. As in from a theoretical cap of 31% efficiency all the way up to 45% efficiency.

Put on your techie hat and read about it here.

Anthropomorphic Hucksterism

More indications that the global warming debate is anything but over:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce [Monday] that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. (source, via ICECAP)

The OISM list doesn't focus on climatologists, so the Warmies will discount the announcement. But all have university degrees in science and over 9,000 of them have PhD's so we can postulate that they know the difference between good and bad research methods, and the difference between evidence and proof.

Meanwhile, as we look at ten years of global cooling having no effect whatsoever on the prognostications and pontifications of our electeds, Richard Rahn writes in WashTimes that global warming constitutes the greatest intelligence failure of our era, concluding:

You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the "science" is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)

The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the "truth" of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an "intelligence" failure.

Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world's poor who are paying more for food. This is not an "intelligence" but an "integrity" failure.

This One's A Stand-Alone


SF Readies For Big Gay Bucks

While the 60-plus percent of us in CA who voted that marriage in our state is between a man and a woman are unhappy with this week's CA supreme court decision overturning our will, tourism officials in San Francisco are decidedly ... uh, gayer.

San Francisco's tourist industry is betting that gay marriage will lead to a boon in same-sex wedding and honeymoon packages.

Nationally, gay tourism amounts to a $60 billion-a-year industry. Thanks to Thursday's ruling by the state Supreme Court striking down the ban on same-sex marriage, California stands to become a destination spot for gay and lesbian couples from around the world who want to get hitched.

And San Francisco is hoping for the biggest slice of the wedding cake.

No sooner did the court decision come down than the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau fired off a release to the gay press, inviting couples to get married in the city where "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made." (source)

If the ruling stands, gays from any state will be able to wed in California, unlike Massachusetts, which only lets its own gays marry.

Cue up quickly, my friends. A constitutional amendment is likely to cut your fun short soon enough. Had gays gone the legislative route, they very well might have secured the right to marry in California, but as long as they rely on courts stripping the majority of the sanctity of their vote, the majority will stand together against gay marriage -- because they support the sanctity of a democratic, free vote, not necessarily because they support the sanctity of marriage.

Time To Remember The "Global" In The War On Terror

Mark Steyn does it again, summarizing all I've thought about Obama's snitty response to Bush's Knesset (not Parliament) speech, and getting it just right:

Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here] concept is an original idea.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

And those well-crafted words brings me to what I feel, increasingly, is wrong with our position in Iraq.

I read of the Druze "300" valiantly standing between the ambitions of Syria and Iran to overwhelm Lebanon in order to assume a power position over Israel and give Syria a port for transshipment of weapons from Iran and NoKo, and I think, why aren't we fighting alongside the Druze?

Why don't we have an adequate force on the ground with air support, to stop the advance of the Hezbollah - Syria - Iran front? Why aren't we using our military assets to give Lebanon breathing room?

We're not fighting this short war because we are tied up with the long war. There are similar opportunities in Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Gulf -- like precise attacks on Iran Revolutionary Guard facilities near the Iranian border -- but the long war is limiting our options.

I'm reading Doug Fieth's War and Decision, and going back to the first days after 9/11, we see these bursts of short wars to very much be in the initial response planning. Remember, we are supposed to be fighting terror and those who support terror, not just al-Qaeda. The Pentagon planners envisioned military actions in Africa, Asia and even South America to take out terrorists and their support network.

Then Iraq and Afghanistan turned into long wars.

The fact that they did turn into long wars maybe shows that the short war option may not be viable. Can we strike here and there and change things? If we support the Druze, can we save Lebanon, or will saving Lebanon require another long war?

A good question, for sure, but perhaps the best way to answer it is to try the short war option. Seize the ship with the weapons. Knock out the training camp. Close the bank account. Stop the next Janjaweed attack in Darfur. Capture the terror-king and his henchmen and transport them to some unknown prison for a friendly debriefing.

Do. Do. Do. We are doing a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are converting whole societies bit by bit, allowing them to taste freedom from extremism and tyranny. It's time to do more elsewhere. I don't hear any presidential candidates talking about this, but as we draw down our troops in Iraq over the next few years, transferring authority to a more stable Iraqi government and a better trained Iraqi army and police force, we need to consider "where next?" for our hegemonic military.

We can go anywhere and do just about anything, so let's do hurry up with getting a few tens of thousands of troops available to support freedom and trounce terror in theaters around the globe.

This is not going to be the Global War on Terror until we take it to the terrorists globally.

Obama Countinues To Pout Over Bush

Barack the Appeaser continued to play the outraged candidate today, saying in North Dakota:

On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, [Bush] accused me and other democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers, no different from people who appeased Adolph Hitler. That’s what George Bush said in front of the Israeli parliament [sic].

Knesset, Barack. Let's just say for the record that the statement is true. Obama has said that he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to try to talk out the differences, which is why I loved Bush's comments so much:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before.

I also used to think there were magic words. I even wrote them down and presented them to clients older and wiser than me, who basically said, "Nice writing, Laer, but words don't change heartfelt beliefs." And what are the beliefs of Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs if not heartfelt?

Obama carries on:

Now that’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world, and that’s why we need change in Washington – that’s part of the reason why I’m running for president of the United States of America. …

It is now an appalling attack to say someone said what they said? Sorry, but if you're the big harmonizer, Barack, you're just going to have to learn to take criticism a bit better than that. Besides, I don't think the world thinks the less of us for saying that words won't sway terrorists.

Actually, the world is more critical of those who say words can work -- like England, Germany and France, who insisted that their superior diplomatic skills could work where America's position wouldn't. The result: Iran has had three years to advance its nuclear program and the Europeans have accomplished absolutely nothing with all their talk.

The world no doubt also sees Obama's belief that he is so God-given to us that he will be able to do what England, German and France couldn't do as incredibly naive and arrogant. (Funny how those two adjectives so often go together with politicians.) If you've got the magic words, Barack, why not share them with us now? Why wait until after the election? Let's hear 'em!

Of course they're going to have to be a lot better than your magic words on Lebanon, Mr. O.

Yet Obama continues his pout:

I want to be perfectly clear to George Bush and John McCain and the people of South Dakota. If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I’m happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. …

Obama is doing a fine job of tying McCain to Bush, which is the big new Dem strategy, so much so that MSNBC (aka Obama Central) referred to yesterday's Bush speech as "a giant gift to the Illinois senator and his campaign." But most Americans understand what the words "Neville Chamberlain" mean, and see that all Jimmy Carter does when he talks to Hamas is lend a mantle of legitimacy to killers who just keep on killing.

Now Obama wraps it up with the Big Lie:

Now I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy [pause for hysterical guffaws], but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain the last couple of days.

A bipartisan foreign policy? We all know what that means to the Dem frontrunner: A liberal, soft, dangerous foreign policy. The only thing "bi" about Barack's "bipartisan" is that it's going to be as bad for us abroad as it is at home.

Burning Bush Rhetoric In Israel

President Bush said some of those words today in Jerusalem that drive the appeasers crazy. Marking Israel's 60th anniversary, he said:

"Israel's population may be only 7 million, but when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States stands with you."

There it is, the "evil"' word; not "'terror and insurrection," but "terror and evil." Not that the AP story would let such stuff stand, mind you:

Bush made no acknowledgment of the hardship Palestinians suffered when the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 displaced hundreds of thousands, a fact that serves as a counterpoint to Israel's two weeks of jubilant celebrations.

Just as AP makes no mention of the UN charter behind Israel's formation, or the cash payments received by happy Palestinians, glad to sell their worthless land, or the Palestinian terror attacks, or how the Palestinian screwed up of myriad Israeli peace initiatives because they're more interested in war than peace.

Bush also reconfirmed his commitment to trying to create a new Middle East, a commitment so many today find naive ... but few can propose a better alternative.

"From Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy, tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. And al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause."

It is easy to laugh that off after five years in Iraq. It's easy to give up, vote for Obama, and pretend the world is a nice place. But leadership isn't easy, and as much as Bush has screwed things up, I still love him for the braveness of this vision.

If we can make it happen, Israel will be here to celebrate its 100th birthday. If not, I fear for these wonderful people and their inspirational nation.

Carter's Little Heart Attack Pills

If your heart's a bit sluggish this morning, I recommend a cardio workout and point you to The Progressive, and Amitabh Pal's interview with Jimmy Carter.

After a fawning introduction that irritatingly reminds us that a great number of people think of Carter's last couple decades as "perhaps the best post-Presidency ever in U.S. history," Pal sits down for a heart-to-heart.

Right off the bat, Carter shows that he is incapable of differentiating between terrorists captured on the field of battle and everyday American citizens:

What’s been done in the last seven years is embarrassing to an American. What we have done through our own government is to torture prisoners, to deprive them of their basic rights to legal counsel, even the right of prisoners to be acquainted with the charges against them. Those kinds of things have been cherished as basic principles of American law and American policy for more than 200 years. To have them subverted and abandoned and condemned is just a travesty of justice and a very serious embarrassment to those of us who—as Americans and non-Americans—are committed to human rights.

It's not embarrassing to me; I don't agree with his definition of torture; and I don't think al-Qaeda operatives who defy the Geneva Conventions in every act they do should be offered anything approaching the rights of Americans.

Is there a great commitment to human rights on the part of those of us who think people who blow up babies and crash planes into skyscrapers -- infringements of human rights, if you will -- be kept apart from the rest of us?

Turning to the Middle East, Carter leads off his answer to a question about the Annapolis conference -- the question goes something like this, "Bush's Annapolis ploy doesn't hold a candle to your magnificent Camp David Accords, does it?" -- Carter says:

The Palestinian community has been deliberately divided, one part from another, with support from both the United States and Israel.

That's one incredibly ignorant and biased way to look at it. As I recall, Hamas and Fatah had a shooting war. Each side was armed and funded not by the US or Israel, but by the various Arab nations. They ripped Palestine apart and spilled a lot of Palestinian blood all by themselves doing it, and there was nothing the US or Israel could have done to bring the sides together; that was the work of the Arab nations, and none of them could do a thing about it, either.

Besides, what's wrong with Palestine going crazy and making a fool of itself again? If they do it enough, all the world except for Jimmy Carter and foolish people like writers for The Progressive will see their leadership for what they are: Human scum incapable of running a gas station, let alone a nation.

I wish I could go on; I'm barely touching the surface here, but I must be off for another all-day meeting to prep for my client's Coastal Commission hearing. Feel free to read the piece yourself and add comments below.

hat-tip: RCP

Big Hugs At Carter-Hamas Meet

Check out Scarface in the foreground. How many Israeli women and children do you think he's killed in his career as a "Palestinian militant?" How do you think he felt, witnessing a former US president hugging a leader of his political party terror group?

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter's freelance Mideast peace mission.

Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed.

The recipient of the Carter hug was Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, who told reporters:

"He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception. Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel ... and I told him the possibility for peace is high."

How can the possibility for peace be high? Is Hamas going to stop firing rockets into Israel? Is it going to recognize Israel's right to exist? Of course not.

The media is referring to Shaer as a Hamas moderate, which is sort of like talking about a chaste whore. As Hamas' education minister, he is responsible for a system that indoctrinates young Palestinians with hatred, hopelessness and victimization, or put another way, he does all he can to ensure that the possibility of peace will be low for at least another generation.

Scrappleface got it right:

As former President Jimmy Carter meets this week with Hamas leaders in the West Bank and Syria, sources at the State Department say President George Bush will soon honor Mr. Carter’s decades of freelance diplomacy by appointing him as the first U.S. Ambassador to Hell.

“Bush just wants Carter to go there,” said an unnamed State Department source, “and to set up an embassy, and try to be a good listener, open a communication channel, find common ground.”

Quote Of The Day: Simple Enough Even For Carter Edition

"I find it hard to understand what is to be gained by having discussions with Hamas about peace when Hamas is in fact the impediment to peace."
-- Condi Rice

I guess you have to make it pretty simple if you want the worst president in US history to understand it. But I doubt that Jimmy Carter will get it at all.

After all, why shouldn't Carter talk to Hamas if his long history of actions against Israel (here, here, here, ad infinitum) has resulted in such a lucrative "friendship" with the Arabs (here, here, here, ad infinitum)?

The Reuters article from which the quote above comes from is also host to one of the most bizarre, fawning sentences I've ever read. Get ready; gird up those loins! Here it is:

Carter, 83, served one term as president from 1977 to 1981, and has a long history in Middle East peacemaking.

"Peacemaking?!" Let's say it the right way:

Carter, 83, drummed out of office by the American people at their first opportunity, has a long history of miserable failures at trying to broker a Middle Eastern peace, but in a personification of a famous saying about insanity, he keeps trying anyway.

Former presidents should not engage in foreign policy initiatives without the current president's support, it's that simple -- no matter how much money Carter stands to make from this round of personal diplomacy money-grubbing.

Sunday Scan

Survival

I didn't know there was a publication called Survival until my friend Jim forward a link to it. No, it's not about eating grubs and avoiding grizzlies -- it's about geopolitical survival, the tectonic plates of foreign policy, and what we must do, as humans, to avoid the alternative to the publication's name.

In the winter 2007–08 issue, which I haven't seen, Philip Gordon, a Clintonista from the Brookings Institution, published an article that argued that America’s strategy against terror is failing ‘because the Bush administration chose to wage the wrong war.'

The current issue gives former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner an opportunity to rebut, and he does it quite well, without the arrogant rhetoric Gordon accuses the Bush administration of suffering from. Gordon presented six reasons why Bush has failed, and Wehner rebuts each quite neatly, while admitting our shortcomings along the way.

Each of the six rebuttals is a gem to file away for safekeeping until the next time you have to debate a rhetoric-spewing anti-Bushite, but I particularly liked this little bit in response to Gordon's claim that Bush has squandered the goodwill of the world:

For Gordon’s thesis to have merit, then, he would have to rewrite most of the history of the past six years. He would have to erase virtually all of the day-to-day activity of the war on terror, which as a practical matter consists of unprecedented levels of cooperation and integrated planning across scores of countries, both long-time allies and new partners.

All of this calls to mind the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which the Judean ‘guerrillas’ debate whether the Roman Empire has brought any good to the Holy Land. John Cleese’s character asks rhetorically what good the Romans have done. After his men point out one benefit after another, the Cleese character is obliged to say: ‘All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?’

Apart from the vast number of multilateral anti-terrorism initiatives from 2001 to the present, when has the Bush administration ever worked in partnership with other countries?

The magazine offers the opportunity for counterpoint to Kishore Mahbubani, Dean and Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, and the tired, recycled rhetoric of his piece underscores the effectiveness of Wehrner's piece. Here's an example, part of his argument that America's support for Israel makes friendship with the Islamic world difficult:

The threat Israel faces was illustrated very well by Deng Xiaoping, who once used a simple comparison to describe the folly of Vietnam taking on China after defeating America in 1975. When he was asked how long China could fight Vietnam, Deng replied that when a large rock and a small stone are continuously rubbed together, over time the small stone disappears. Vietnam soon realised the wisdom of Deng’s comments. Despite the confidence the nation felt after America’s retreat, it sued for peace with China. Vietnam’s population is 84 million, while China’s is 1.3 billion, meaning there are 15 Chinese for every Vietnamese. The ratio of Israel’s population (7m) to that of the Islamic world (1.5bn) is even worse – 1:200. Wisdom dictates that Israel should work for peace.

What a concept! Israel should work for peace! Why hasn't this occurred to us before? Mahbubani, in one paragraph, has succeeded in exquisitely illustrating for us the blind, hate-filled, anti-Semitic mind of Islam -- even the highly educated, moderate Islamic mind he says is different from our perception of Islam.

Unlucky Seven

Lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride, look out. You've got company.

After 1,500 years of committee meetings and prayer, the Catholic church has added to the list of mortal sins for the first time since Pope Gregory. And I have to say, the new Bad Biggies lack the simple message impact of the first Big Seven.

Lust? Got it. Gluttony, yup. Sloth ... I could go on through the seven but I'm sooo tired, and you get the point: They're all one-worders that get their point across well and easily. But some of the new ones? "'Manipulative' genetic scientists?" What does mean? That they play nasty little tricks to get more than their fair share of Petri dishes?

Fortunately, we have Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences, to explain it to us. Manipulative genetic scientists are those who "carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos.”

I see. But I bet these scientists are already loaded up with avarice and pride and therefore are in for a Dante-esque afterlife.

Abortion is also new to the list, and let's give it a warm welcome -- as long as we're talking about abortionists, not women who have abortions. It's the abortionists, who live high on the hog by murdering the unborn with full recognition of what they're doing, who deserve to move up to Majors in the Sin League.

Unfortunately, it appears the Catholic Church is including those that have abortions on the list as well, just as it is including those who take drugs with the deserving new mortal sin bunch, drug dealers. People who have abortions and people who do drugs have much wrong with them and are guilty of many sins, but I don't understand how the Vatican can group them with the profiteers who exploit their weakness. Given that the Catholic Church had 1,500 years to make the list, couldn't it have done a better job?

Rounding out the seven are environmental polluters (which includes all of us, of course, so I hope some quantification is provided), pedophiles (including those in priest's robes), the "obscenely wealthy" (how does that differ from gluttony?), and social injustice that causes poverty (which is sometimes the scapegoat for sloth and avarice).

All in all, we've been presented with a complicated and confusing bunch of new sins, lacking the simplicity and clarity of the first seven. Come the year 3,508 -- 1,500 years hence -- the Church may stretch the list to 21. Let's hope they do a better job than they did with this bunch.

Wombs For Rent

Best be careful here ... this seems to be a dangerously narrow loophole between the genetic manipulation and social injustice mortal sins we just talked about. Let's let the NYT (which is surely some sort of mortal sin all by itself) explain:

An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby).

Because few if any well-healed women will offer to be a surrogate womb for a stranger, surrogacy is a business of giving poor women enough money ($7,500, according to the NYT) to make an all-business pregnancy worthwhile, for the benefit of a wealthier couple.

While I like the free trade aspects of it -- that these desperately poor Indian women are quite literally lifted out of grinding poverty for the price of one or two pregnancies -- it's hard not to be struck by this paragraph from the NYT story:

In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.

Is the fact that the surrogate's own children will never have to sign a contract with a thumbprint, thanks to the education they received because their mother rented out her womb, enough to make this entire enterprise cheery and bright? Not quite.

Shocking Headline of the Day

And the winner is ... BBC!

Conservatives win Iran election

Meanwhile ...

Those Iranian conservatives have been busy protecting their slaves citizens from things the poor oppressed masses happy participants in the Islamic Revolution don't know to protect themselves from:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's Culture Ministry on Sunday announced the closure of nine cinema and lifestyle magazines for publishing pictures and stories about the life of "corrupt" foreign film stars and promoting "superstitions."

The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hard-liners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on "observing the provisions of the press law," the ministry said on its website.

It was not clear why the nine magazines were targeted for closure. They do not deal with politics, focusing on light lifestyle features, family advice, and news of celebrities.

They regularly publish photos of Iranian actresses in loose headscarves and stylish clothes, as well as foreign female film stars without head coverings — but nothing more revealing than what is tolerated on some state media.

The ministry said it shut them down for "using photos of artists, especially foreign corrupt film stars, as instruments (to arouse desire), publishing details about their decadent private lives, propagating medicines without authorization, promoting superstitions."

You know, sick as I am of 24/7 Brittany and Paris news, I sometimes wish we could have a little media repression here ... but then the thought passes.

Had the Iranian election been fair (a BIG "had"), chances are the government would have paid the price for this sort of unwelcomed, heavy-handed control over peoples' lives. But it wasn't fair, so the conservatives won big.

The reference to "propagating medications without authorization" is apparently a reference to ads the shuttered publications ran for male enhancement formulas. Apparently the Islamic state has no room for enhanced males.

Going Green, China Style

Perhaps, being better read than I, you've read kudo-laden accounts of an emerging solar panel industry in China, and perhaps you've thought, "Ah, the corner is begining to be turned. China may be changing from its polluted ways."

Well, that just proves that being better-read doesn't mean having better sense. ENN explains why:

As people worldwide increasingly feel the heat of climate change, many are applauding the skyrocketing growth China’s fledging solar-cell industry. ...

A recent Washington Post article, however, has revealed that China’s booming solar industry is not as green as one might expect. [Really?!] Many of the solar panels that now adorn European and American rooftops have left behind a legacy of toxic pollution in Chinese villages and farmlands.

The Post article describes how Luoyang Zhonggui, a major Chinese polysilicon manufacturer, is dumping toxic factory waste directly on to the lands of neighboring villages, killing crops and poisoning residents. Other polysilicon factories in the country have similar problems, either because they have not installed effective pollution control equipment or they are not operating these systems to full capacity. Polysilicon is a key component of the sunlight-capturing wafers used in solar photovoltaic (PV) cells.

Uh-oh. That's a mortal sin, fer sure.

So now when you put those PV units on your rooftop, you can rest easy knowing that not only are you greener than the Jones, you're significantly less poisoned by Chinese industrial pollution than the Pengs, whose picture (above) ran with the WaPo story.

Feeling A Little Cocky

Let's see if the Euros, the ex-Soviets, the Chinese or the Caliphate can do this:

NASA's Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wed., March 12, flying about 15 kilometers per second (32,000 mph) through icy water geyser-like jets. The spacecraft snatched up precious samples that might point to a water ocean or organics inside the little moon.

A Euro-Terrorist

On the heals of a study proving that al-Qaeda cynically recruits social outcasts for suicide bombings, we read this, from Spiegel:

His last mission began at exactly 4.04 p.m. on March 3. The driver pulled up his blue Toyota Dyna truck in front of the Sabari district center in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. The motor was still running when he hit the detonator. The force of the blast shook the earth and caused the guard post to collapse, trapping dozens of US soldiers under the rumble. The explosion was so forceful that eye witnesses assumed there had been a rocket attack on the building that the US army had built just two months previously.

Of course, as a suicide bomber, his "last mission" was also his first mission. This punk who killed two of our men has been identified by the Islamic Jihad Union as 28-year-old "Cüneyt C." from Bavaria, a scrawny, pimply-faced loser of a German-born Turk. Spiegel provides more detail:

Cüneyt C., a 28-year-old German-born Turk, is known to be an Islamist and to have had links with the so-called "Sauerland Cell" led by Fritz Gelowicz and Adem Yilmaz. He had been regarded as dangerous since their arrest last year on suspicion of planning a terror attack (more...) in Germany. "Ismail from Ansbach," as C. was called by his friends had already left Germany by then. He left Ansbach with his wife and two children on April 2, giving up his apartment, quitting his job and even going to the local registration office to inform them he was leaving the area.

The investigators have since regarded C. as belonging to a group who have traveled from Germany to Pakistan in order to receive training as Jihadists. In the eyes of the German authorities this makes them extremely dangerous.

This is why we can't treat terrorism as a problem to be handled by the legal system, as the Libs and Dems would have it. German intelligence was well aware of the risk posed by C. and his scummy friends, but because no crime had been committed by them, Germany couldn't stop them. By exploiting the system, the Islamic Jihad carried out a successful operation ... leaving behind at least two orphans and sending a sick young man to Hell.

Accepting Help, Palestinian Style

Of course, the Arab world benefits from Palestine's misery because they can blame it all on Israel. But often enough, news comes out of Palestine that reveals that the Arab world also dislikes Palestine for no other reason than that they're a people who are so easy to dislike.

Here's the latest from the Egypt/Palestine border, where chaos has prevailed ever since Hamas blew up a section of the border fence. (Apparently it's OK for Egyptians to put up fences to keep out Palestinians, but not for Israelis to do the same ....)

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) - Egyptian riot police and armored vehicles restricted Gaza motorists to a small border area of Egypt on Saturday, in the second attempt in two days to restore control over the chaotic frontier breached by Hamas militants.

At least 38 members of the Egyptian security forces have been hospitalized, some in critical condition, because of cross-border confrontations, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said. The minister complained of "provocations" at the border, a thinly veiled reprimand of Hamas, and said that while Egypt is ready to ease the suffering of Gazans, this should not endanger Egyptian lives.

Biting the hands that feed them truly has become an art in Palestine.

This is just the sort of nation we can expect when rule is given to terrorists and education is nothing more than indoctrination into hatred and victimization. It will take a generation or more to flush this out of Palestine if the process started tomorrow -- but it's not going to start any time soon.

If, then, Palestine becomes a state, it's going to become a very nasty state -- making me wonder why "solution" is always added to the phrase "two-state solution."

Quote Of The Day: You Had It Coming Edition

"We are being killed, we are starving!"
-- Palestinian TV announcer

Day two of the electrical shut-off in Palestine and the World Champion Victims are already dying?

Can we say, "Emergency preparation?"

Even the UN, which has become quite adept at leveraging the Palestinian cause for more power and money, says it can feed the 1.3 million Gaza residents dependent on charity food through Thursday or the end of this week.

The Israelis cut off some of Gaza's power and fuel in response to a wave of rocket attacks; 53 rockets fell into Israel from Gaza on the two days preceding the shutoff. Here's a typical Gaza response, from the AP story that's the source of our lead-off quote:

Health Ministry official Moaiya Hassanain warned the fuel cutoff would cause a health catastrophe. "We have the choice to either cut electricity on babies in the maternity ward or heart surgery patients or stop operating rooms," he said.

Hamas has claimed five people have already died in hospitals as a result of the cut-offs -- and that allegation has already been called untrue by unnamed sources in the AP story.

Nowhere in the AP story is there a hint that the Palestinians will respond by stopping the rockets. No Palestinian official is quoted calling for that obvious solution and one pro-Palestinian Israeli whack job group is quoted saying that, "punishing Gaza's 1.5 million civilians does not stop the rocket fire; it only creates an impossible 'balance' of human suffering on both sides of the border."

How do they know so soon that it won't stop the rockets? Are they convinced that the Palestinians are so bent on destroying Israel and killing Jews that it will take starvation to stop them? If so, why is the group, Gisha, supporting Hamas?

Will the tactic work? Of course not. Nothing works with the Palestinians.

"If we open the crossings [and turn on the power] again tomorrow there will be rockets that fall again on Israel," [Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo] Dror said. "They don't want to recognize Israel and want to destroy Israel, that's their problem. They shouldn't expect that we will help them destroy us."

Does that mean Israel is wrong to try something new to stop the rockets? Of course not. Call it a non-violent protest. Call them the new Gandhi. Israel-haters will hate them, but they will hate them no matter what. The rest of us will see once again how unreasonable and insane the Palestinian "government" is.

Sunday Scan

Cloverfield, Nevada Style

The film Cloverfield has used viral internet marketing to become quite a sensation -- but at its heart, it's just a Godzilla movie, with a big mean monster wreaking havoc in New York.

And yesterday, a little, pale monster wreaked havoc in the glitter gulches and dusty desert towns of Nevada. And today, just as I predicted, we are suffering through the media coverage of it:

Boy, oh, boy! Hidden behind all the hoopla, headlines and the Nevada caucus victories of Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton is one little-noticed but stunning political development and number:

Ron Paul, the one-time Libertarian candidate and 10-term Republican congressman from Texas, was in second place. That's right, Second Place. The 72-year-old ob-gyn who's always on the end of the line at GOP debates or barred altogether, was running ahead of John McCain, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, in fact, ahead of....

all other Republicans except Romney, who easily captured his second state in a week after Michigan.

Uh-huh. But let's keep our heads on straight. It was Romney with 51% of the votes (all 22,659 of them!) followed by the pale imp with 14%, attracting a whopping 6,087 to his cause -- a full 436 more people than John McCain attracted.

Photo clipped from: Dino's Forum

Marking History

They laid an historical marker outside a house in Port Arthur, Texas today. Here's the story.

In that house there once lived a little four-year-old girl who grew up to live far too short a life as Summer of Love diva Janis Joplin. There was another house she lived in earlier, but it's gone now, so this is her official childhood home.

The marker was placed today as opposed to any other day you might think of because it marks what would have been Joplin's 65th birthday.

Whoa, am I feeling old.

I was 17, I think, when I first put Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills on my little stereo and heard her gravely voice. And I'm still 17 in my head when I think about her ... how could she have been born 65 years ago?

New Euro-Islamist Threat

This is not something I'm quite prepared to think about:

The source implied that the [Spanish intelligence agency] CNI had specific information on itinerant terrorists heading for the UK, France and Portugal.

The squib, from a London Times article, troubles me not just because Incredible Daughter #1 is in Paris, but because I've never seen the words "itinerant terrorists" before. We have in America a tradition of itinerant preachers and judges; from sick Islam, we get itinerant terrorists, travelling from place to place, killing innocents in the name of Allah.

Terrorists Get 72 Raisins?

Amidst a lengthy and interesting story at Act! For America covering the suppression of ancient Islamic texts in Germany, so anyone interested in a revisionist view of the Koran cannot get access to them, was this interesting tidbit:

According to an Islam tradition, Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins. But some Koran scholars point to a less sexy paradise. While beautifully written, Islamic texts are often obscure. The Arabic language was born as a written language with the Koran, and growing evidence suggests that many of the words were Syriac or Aramaic.

Specifically, the Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins," hence those 72 concubines. But in Aramaic, hur actually meant "white" and was commonly used to specifically mean "white grapes."

It's easy to crack a joke over this, but if there's any question at all about the nature of so critical a text -- a text that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents a year -- why does the keeper of the archive, Angelika Neuwirth, protect them from anyone other than pro-Islamist researchers?

For more on this fascinating story, see Andrew Higgins' WSJ article, The Lost Archives.

hat-tip: What Bubba Knows

Pulling The Plug On Terrorists

Just wait 'til some Palestinians start crying about having to eat cold falafels in the dark -- oh, how the anti-Israeli press will rain an ink-storm on Israel. Here's the story, from Sky News:

Large parts of the Gaza Strip have been plunged into darkness after its main power plant shut down.

It comes after Israel blocked fuel supplies to the Hamas-run territory and closed its borders.

Israel says the blocklade is a response to rocket attacks by militants.

It claims 230 rockets have been fired at border towns in a new wave of aggression.

"It claims?" I don't suppose we can expect the media to actually report that rockets are falling like locusts on Israel.

Already, the Palestinian PR machine is busy maximizing the impact:

"The catastrophe will affect hospitals, medical clinics, water wells, houses, factories, all aspects of life."

Oh, boo hoo. First, stop sending rockets into civilian neighborhoods, especially when there's no war going on. And second, get your act together, Palestine. You've had 60 years to provide for yourself, but here you are, dependent on Israel for your power ... with fuel purchased by Europe.

How these people garner so much sympathy and so little criticism amazes me.

Human-Animal Embryo Research

Two research companies in England have been granted licenses to mix up human and animal embryos, reports Science Daily.

One is going to take the genetic matter out of cow embryos and mix 'em up with human embryos, in a quest for better human stem cells.

The scientists would attempt to extract stem cells from the blastocyst after six days. Stem cells are building blocks that can grow into any type of tissue such as liver, heart and muscle cells. The quality and the viability of stem cells would then be checked to see if nuclear transfer technique has worked. The scientists would also be observing the way that the cells are reprogrammed after fusion to see if there are useful processes they could replicate in the laboratory. The embryo would have to be destroyed at 14 days old in accordance with the licence.

I have to admit, this all goes way, way over my head. I understand that there's nothing about this license that will allow any intermingled animal/human embryonic material to (1) live or (2) get into humans, but the research is taking the science to another new level, and after that will be another new level.

At some time, a mistake will occur or a license will be granted that shouldn't have been. That's just the way it goes with us inquisitive humans. All this going too far will make a great novel ... and it's one work of nonfiction I hope I never read.

George Clooney, Messenger Of Peace

Position to fill: International shell game operator needs good looking individual with real swoon-power, a hard-left orientation and a history of supporting the wrong side in global causes to cover up organization's myriad global failures.

Position filled! The Rosett Report reports:

As Hollywood buffs and UN money-raisers already know, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just named actor George Clooney as the UN’s newest Messenger of Peace, with a “special focus on UN peacekeeping.” Clooney, currently visiting Sudan, is expected to “receive his designation” Jan. 31st at UN headquarters in New York.

Oh, great. We get to see even more of Clooney opening his mouth and letting his politics spew out. Rosett's not expecting much good of it to come, either:

This would all be great if UN peacekeeping actually produced peace. But the illusion that the UN is a grand force for good in this world deserves to be catalogued somewhere between World’s Most Amazing Scams and Believe It-Or-Not Best-in-Special-Effects. The reality of today’s UN is more like a cross between “Animal House” (the movie, with John Belushi) and “Animal Farm” (the book, by George Orwell).

Her post is a gem. Do read the whole thing.

Joisey Flips Off Iran

Kudos to New Jersey for joining the small group of states (California and Florida) that prevent any state money from being invested in firms doing business with Iran.

New Jersey on Friday became one of the few states to prohibit state pension money from being invested in companies doing business in Iran.

Most American companies are already barred from doing business in the country, but Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed a measure restricting the state from buying stock in international companies that do business with Iran.

The move is designed to protest the country's links to terrorism and its nuclear ambitions. (New Jersey.com)

One of the bill's sponsors, Neil Cohen, said he did it for Israel:

"Divesting our finances from entities associated with Iran will send a clear message in the universal language of money that New Jersey will have no part in Iran's pursuit of actions that would lead to Holocaust-like genocide and the complete destruction of a sovereign nation."

Couldn't agree more, but would like more opportunities to agree. Three down; 47 to go.

Has Hamas Finally Gone Crazy?

What was Hamas thinking?

Palestinian security forces in the West Bank recently arrested a Hamas cell that planned a suicide attack in Israel, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said Monday. A videotape showing a suicide bomber detailing his intentions to blow up an Israeli target was also seized, Malki said at a news conference.

The announcement came a week before U.S. President George W. Bush visits the region to promote peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The Palestinians are eager to prove they are cracking down on militants which is a central demand of the negotiations.

"We confiscated huge amounts of mercury in Nablus," Malki told reporters. "This mercury is used for explosives and especially in preparing detonators," he said.

Malki refused to elaborate or answer reporters' questions about the incident. He did not show the videotape to reporters or release the name of the alleged bomber. The Israeli military said it had no knowledge of the case. (International Herald Tribune)

Given the number of suicide attacks Hamas has planned and carried out against Israel, to say that the announcement is insincere is too kind. Hamas is not in the business of busting paradise-seekers intent on blowing themselves up and taking some Jews with them.

They are, however, into periodically sucking up in order to keep the money train rolling -- or in Hamas' case with US funding, to get it rolling again. That they suddenly found and busted a suicide bombing cell just before a visit to the region by President Bush is just a wee tad transparent.

Malki, show us the tape, then prosecute and jail the would-be bombers. Then do it all again, and again. Then maybe we'll believe you.

Israel Challenges NIE Report On Iran

The Israelis are going to give NIE a run for its money.

Disappointed after failing to make their case on Iran and influence the outcome of the United States's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released this week, [Israel's] Military Intelligence will present its hard core evidence on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program on Sunday to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff during a rare visit he will be making to Israel. ...

[Admiral Michael] Mullen's visit to Israel will be exactly a week after the publication of the NIE report that claimed Iran had frozen its nuclear military program in 2003 and has yet to restart it. During his visit, Military Intelligence plans to present him with Israel's evidence that Iran is in fact developing nuclear weapons.

"The report clearly shows that we did not succeed in making our case over the past year in the run-up to this report," a defense official said Thursday. "Mullen's visit is an opportunity to try and fix that." (JPost)

They've got a challenge ahead of them because Mullen is dovish on military action against Iran, according to Time:

[The NIE] meshes with the views of the operational types at the Pentagon, who have steadfastly resisted the march to war led by some Administration hawks. The anti-war group was composed of Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Admiral William Fallon, who oversees the U.S. forces that would have had to wage that war.

On the Israelis' side is a superior network of intelligence sources and their recent victorious declassification by bombs of Syria's supposedly nonexistent nuclear program.

Going against them is the perception that Israel will go to any length to defuse the Iranian threat against them annunciated by Mah- I'm in the -moud for Jew blood Ahmadinejad (rhymes with "Mosad swells my glands").

We won't know what intelligence the Israelis share with Mullen, since the Israel military is not leak-prone like our CIA and State Department. But if they've got good dope, we'll know it soon enough from the tenor of the Pentagon's and White House's positions on Iran's nuclear program.

Those Whacky Palestinians!

Israel may be a "vile little state" in the eyes of the Islamic world, but it doesn't generate news like this:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas security forces opened fire Monday at a rally commemorating Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, killing five at the largest show of support for the rival Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized control in June.

At least 31 people were wounded, three critically, including a Hamas policeman who was shot in the head, medical officials and Fatah said.

The violence erupted after tens of thousands of Fatah supporters carrying pictures of Arafat, yellow Fatah flags and wearing trademark black-and-white Arab headdresses, gathered in a courtyard in downtown Gaza City.

Or to recap: The terrorist government of the Gaza Strip got mad that the terrorist citizens were celebrating the wrong terrorist, so they terrorized them.

It's as if Ehud Olmert sent troops out to "bullet-quell" supporters commemorating Yitzak Rabin. Unthinkable ... anywhere but in the wonderful world of Islamist despotism.

FARS-out News

More "FARS-out" news from the media mouthpiece of Iran's mullahocracy:

Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers leader Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani dismissed West's allegations about Iran's nuclear drives, stressing that Tehran seeks to help establish security and peace in the world and region.

Addressing a fervent congregation of the worshippers on Tehran University Campus here on Friday, Emami Kashani said West has targeted Iran's security and economy through levying accusations and adopting restrictive measures, and said, "Westerners accuse Iran of seeking atomic bombs while the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and other Muslim clerics have all deplored and banned shedding the blood of nations, meaning that use of atomic bombs is forbidden."

First, you gotta hand it to Iran; any country that can cough up the title "provisional Friday Prayers leader" has a thing or two to teach us about theocracy.

Second, you gotta hand it to theocracies, the only type of government that lets leaders tell baldface lies with the cover of their god (or God).

Even if we ignore the baldface lies about Iran's nuclear ambitions, doesn't "shedding the blood of nations" also include the blood of the nation of Israel? Ahmandinejad's habit of calling for the death of Israel makes the mullahs into liars.

As does shipping explosive devises to Iraq and Afghanistan, the funding of thugs who attack Lebanon and Israel, the development of offensive missiles, and on and on.

Sunday Scan

The OCRegister editorial page leads off today's scan with its editorial giving a cool reception to Al Gore's ignoble Nobel:

"Nearly every significant statement that Vice President Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one-sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative or wrong," says CEI environmental policy expert Marlo Lewis. Otherwise, nice job Mr. Gore.

Global warming alarmism serves those opposing free-market economics and its fossil-fuel reliance and those seeking power and profit by gaming the system once they force rule changes. Neither motive is in most peoples' interests. The Kyoto Protocol, which would force nations to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, if enforced would reduce projected temperatures about one degree over 100 years while – and this is not exaggeration – dampening and devastating economies worldwide.

Gore got a much warmer reception in Palo Alto, where young and old alike believe his hype, says an also hyped up Merc News:

Mackenzie Pope, 12, ... was one of several kids who had the day off from school [what?!] and showed up with signs saying [to Gore] "Welcome to Palo Alto."

"I was walking my dog when I saw all the people here and so I went home to get them," she said, motioning to her mom, little sisters Bailey and Rylie, and a couple of friends. [Mackenzie, Bailey and Rylie -- how cloyingly No. Cal.]

The girls, like typical Palo Alto kids, were well-versed on the climate-change issue.

"They say in 20 years New York City is going to be half gone," said Mackenzie's friend, Charlotte Barry.

The alliance is a small organization Gore founded last year as a fundraising arm for his media campaign. Its office, at Hawthorne Avenue and High Street, once housed the Foundation for a Global Community, a descendant of Beyond War. And it's next door to POST, the Peninsula Open Space Trust.

"This spot has good karma," said POST Executive Director Audrey Rust. "We're sort of at ground zero, right here on High Street."

The Merc News, which is after all a news paper, somehow didn't feel compelled to correct little Charlotte's gorism.

Babs At The Money Trough

Wrapping up news from the Golden State, the LATimes reports that Bay Area Greenie Babs Boxer is swimming in dough from the very hooligans against The Sacred Earth Mother she has worked so hard to harm:

For years Barbara Boxer has campaigned, first for Congress, then for the U.S. Senate, as a progressive Democrat strong on ... the environment. ...

But now that she's chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she's finding some new people who want to be her friend. And not in the MySpace kind of way.

Roll Call reports (sorry, it's a subscriber-access page) that Boxer, who assumed the committee chair with the 2006 Democratic takeover of the Senate, received through Aug. 30 about $41,000 from political action committees representing "energy, natural resources, construction and transportation industries."

But in the 2004 cycle, when she was last up for re-election, Boxer "reported $18,500 in total receipts from the energy and natural resources sector in all of 2003 and 2004, according to CQ MoneyLine ....

Politicians. Love 'em or hate 'em, you gotta pay 'em off.

Don't Worry About Islam

There's a complicated piece by Simon Jenkins in the Times of London spurred by the 29-page letter to the Pope from 138 imams and other Muslim high and mighty. Jenkins doesn't see Islam as the biggest threat to the West, rather:

The chief threat to world security at present lies in the capacity of tiny groups of political Islamists to goad the West into a rolling military retaliation. Extremists on each side feed off the others’ frenzied scenarios so as to garner money and political support for their respective armies of the night. Each sees the other as a cosmic menace and abandons communal tolerance and peaceful diplomacy to counter it.

It's easy to discount this out of hand because Jenkins slices too thin. Our fear isn't of the tiny groups of jihadists ... it's the consequences of even five or ten percent of Islam picking up the jihadist terror tool kit. Still, the piece isn't just liberal pap and multi-culti over-optimism. There's a lot of food for thought there, like:

It is ironic that defeat in the cold war should have led Russia to the exuberant self-confidence of Vladimir Putin’s Moscow, while victory has plunged the West into a loss of nerve. In both Washington and London are leaders who have so little confidence in democracy as to regard it as vulnerable to a few madmen, and who have so little respect for democracy’s freedoms as to suspend them at the bang of a bomb.

I believe the liberties that have been suspended have been carefully defined and limited so as to protect Americans and subject suspicious foreigners and battlefield enemies to the treatment that is needed and deserved. But how about this for a Sunday pondering: What if we fought the war on terror the way the Libs would have us fight it? Would we not still win?

Of course, to answer that, you also have to answer this: Would the extra American dead that might result from the Lib approach be worth the rigorous, hard-line protection of each letter of the Constitution, as applied by Lib judges?

Watch It, Canadians!

Canadian readers, watch out! Science Daily tells us that according to the journal Environmental Research, you might be one of the 25,000 Canadians pollution will kill this year! I love these studies that pore over medical records and death certificates and attempt to lay the blame at pollution, or global warming, or fast food, or whatever else the Lib media have their eyepieces focused on.

Here's the picture that accompanies the story. I kid you not. Look at that awful, life-nipping gunk! The caption reads:

Photo taken near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Industry in the foreground, pristine mountains in the background -- Canada is not immune to environmental problems. (Credit: Michele Hogan)

Help me find the industries in the photo that are cavalierly ignoring Canada's environmental laws and spewing toxins into drinking water and mother's milk. More easily, help me find manipulated statistics that look at cancer deaths and low birth-weight babies (as this one did) and attribute them to pollution instead of, oh, the luck of the draw or genetics or moms who smoke and booze.

Corn Fission?

Earlier in the week, Syrian flacks toured media hacks around an ag field and ag lab that they say were targeted by Israeli fighters ... why the Zionists would do that, who knows? After reporting the tour with almost a completely straight face, today the NYT joins those who understand what really was going on there:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel's air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.

Central mystery? Not to everyone.

Who Defines 'Dying Well?'

Charlotte Allen, faced with minor breast cancer surgery -- seemingly an oxymoron, but not really -- was asked on three separate occasions whether she had a living will. A complicated form was stuffed into her mitt, asking her to ponder "a range of conditions under which I might like to have a Do Not Resuscitate order hung over my hospital bed, whether I would want to be denied "artificial" food and water under some circumstances, what I thought about being taken off a ventilator, and so forth."

Her conclusion, as very well relayed in her WaPo piece today:

In fact, when I contemplate the concept of "dying well," I can't avoid the uneasy feeling that it actually means "dying when we, the intellectual elite, think it is appropriate for you to die." Consider what's happened in recent years: The classic Hippocratic Oath and its prohibition against physicians giving people a "deadly drug" has collapsed with the growing acceptance of such notions as physician-assisted suicide, the "right to die," and even giving some very sick, disabled or demented people a little push over the edge, as seems to be the case in the Netherlands. People facing end-of-life decisions may well feel subtle pressure from the medical and bioethical establishments to make the choice that will save the most money, as well as spare their relatives and society at large the burden of their continued existence.

As the SCHIP plan catches the news and the Dems vow to override a prez veto, do you recall ever seeing someone raise the question of whether parents would be pressured to quickly dispatch sick babies once the feds start paying for their costly health care? Neither did I.

Start thinking about it.

Road to Rangoon

No, it's not a long-lost Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie; it's the UN's continuing dismal performance in its attempts to stop the Burmese junta from killing off every monk and protester in that poor country.

In this case, the road will lead UN chief Burma dude Ibrahim Gambari to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China and Japan, before "hoping" to return to Burma. Condi's response? Knock it off! Get back to Burma pronto and do something.

Good advice.