Soccer Dad

Catching up to democracy

This week Charles Krauthammer picks up where he left off last week, criticizing the Maliki government for failing to do its part to help stabilize Iraq. This week in Thinking beyond Maliki (or here) he writes:

The government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has had more than 15 months to try to pacify the Sunni insurgency by offering national accords on oil-sharing, provincial elections and de-Baathification. It has done none of these. Instead, Gen. David Petraeus has pacified a considerable number of Sunni tribes with grants of local autonomy, guns and U.S. support in jointly fighting al-Qaeda.

Petraeus's strategy is not very pretty. It carries risk. But it has been effective.

The Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, however, is not happy with Petraeus's actions. One top Maliki aide complained that they will leave Iraq " an armed society and militias."

What does he think Iraq is now? Except that many Sunni militias that were once shooting at Americans are now shooting at al-Qaeda.

So the United States is winning hearts and minds for now among the Sunnis. (As a commenter pointed out last week, time will tell if they'll eventually turn against the U.S. or not.) Al Sadr's ceasefire may be more of a hudna, but it seems to be a product of fear, which is a good thing. So now with the security situation improving, political gains would be nice, but Krauthammer doesn't see them happening with Maliki in charge.

Now, Maliki is no friend of Sadr or Iran. He knows that if they ultimately prevail, they will swallow him whole. But Maliki is too weak temperamentally and politically to make the decisive move in the other direction -- toward Sunni and Shiite moderates -- in order to make the necessary national compromises.

So he hedges his bets. He visits Iran and, then, while on a Syrian visit, responds to calls for the Iraqi parliament to bring his government down by saying, " Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria" and warning darkly that Iraq "can find friends elsewhere."

Maliki is not just weak but unreliable. Time is short. We should have long ago -- say, when national security adviser Stephen Hadley wrote his leaked memo last November about Maliki's failure -- begun working to have this dysfunctional government replaced.

(Yes I know there are those who see Maliki as a front for Iran, but I'm not going to address that here.)

Krauthammer argues that Maliki's biggest failing is his disconnect from the electorate. (I could argue that that's been one of the biggest problems of the "peace process" too. Arafat was voted on, sure, but his "legitimacy" derived from international recognition. Maliki, Krauthammer argues, is the product of party bosses not a grass roots movement.)

Krauthammer concludes:

New elections are not a panacea. They will take long to organize -- which is why we should have been working toward this months ago. But the reconciliation from below that is actually happening in the provinces could -- and logically should -- be making national reconciliation possible in Baghdad. We can't sit around forever waiting for Maliki.

Krauthammer's analysis confirms the analysis of the situation by Daniel Pipes prior to the January 2005 elections..

Security: The first priority, before elections, is for the central government in Baghdad, on its own and independent of American and other coalition forces, to end the Sunni insurrection in Iraq and control the whole country. From this point of view, the American government made a good appointment in Prime Minister Allawi. From the time he took office in late June 2004, he has consistently shown what the Washington Post calls a "single-minded focus on issues of security."
. . .

Democratization: Voting does not start the democratization process but culminates and ends it. Before Iraqis can benefit from meaningful elections, they need to leave behind the bad habits of Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule and replace them with the benign ways of civil society. There are many steps ahead, such as creating voluntary institutions (political parties, lobby groups, etc.), entrenching the rule of law, establishing freedom of speech, protecting minority rights, securing property rights, and developing the notion of a loyal opposition. Elections can evolve with these good habits. Voting should start at the municipal level and gradually move up to the national level. Also, they should begin with legislatures and move to the executive branch.

There have been numerous explanations for the administration's failures in Iraq. But perhaps the biggest one was focusing single-mindedly on elections. It would have been preferable to create better conditions for the people before pursuing elections.

The surge, according to Krauthammer, is giving Iraq a chance to catch up.

Nouri Al-Maliki, iraq.

Council speak 08/31/2007

The council has spoken!

The winner among the council members was Big Lizards for NYT: Analogies Are Meaningless (Unless They Favor the Left), a practical guide on the proper usage of the Iraq/Viet Nam analogy and when to do so is rank political cynicism.

In the non-council portion of the competition Dissident Frogman's Like a Suppository, Only a Bit Stronger - a reflection on the gullibility of the MSM - was the winner.

I was honored that this week my Separate But Unequal was the Council's runner-up. In that post I examined the incurious nature of the NYT when looking at the Khalil Gibran International Academy as opposed to its somewhat more rigorous look into the Ben Gamla school in Florida. (If my description of the Times's bias isn't clear, Bookworm Room does a nice job of breaking it down into nice digestible portions. Thanks! :-)

The non-council runner up was Confederate Yankee's Misfire: AP's Bogus Ammo Shortage Story about how the AP made a claim about a supposed effect of the war in Iraq, that turned out not to be true.

I was disappointed that my first choice for the non-council entry Seraphic Secret's Watching Al-Jazeera Part III didn't do better. It was my first choice for nominee, but Cheat Seeking Missiles beat me to the punch, so I nominated Part I instead. Regardless, Seraphic Secret did a great job deconstructing Christiane Amanpour's special on CNN, and if you'd like to review his complete work check out the Protocol's of Christiane Amanpour. Now, Robert, you can go fold that laundry.

Just a word on the Watcher of Weasels. Axis of Weasels was how former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred to France and Germany in a satirical news item in ScrappleFace. The phrase caught on and was the cause of much merriment including an absolutely brilliant front page for the New York Post. The Watcher no doubt took his name from the phrase and created a rotatiing council to judge the actions of weasels all around the world.

If you're a blogger and you'd like to be considered for the non-council portion of the competition next week, follow the instructions here.

watcher's council.

Perceptions of war

Kyle Teamey

Yet as at least some citizens -- and lawmakers and members of the media -- anticipate Gen. David Petraeus's report to Congress next month on Iraq, it's important to remember that the war is as much a battle of perceptions as it is a physical battle against and among armed groups. In this fight, the appearance of strength or weakness is often much more important than actual strength or weakness.

If ... you must 08/30/3007

If you haven't read What do you think? at Done with Mirrors; you must.
Are the anti-war people really anti-imperialist?
If you haven't read Great moments in Maryland's priorities at Maryland Conservatarian; you must.
In this story the Governor's office mocks Del. McDonough's efforts by saying that if he wants a health related station, he ought to get Comcast to support it. Wouldn't the same logic apply the Spanish station? If that's a valid option, why should the state sponsor the Spanish Station? Why not get Comcast? Is diversity so important that only the government ought to have a hand in such ventures?
If you haven't read ads of the past at Israelly Cool; you must.
Or is that Israelly Kool?
If you haven't read the Academic Industrial Complex at Brain Terminal; you must.
I'd add in "journalistic-legal" to the complex.
If you haven't read Murderer demands compensation from state... at Secular Blasphemy; you must.
Not the only recent example of Chutzpah.
If you haven't read Forced Installation at the Glittering Eye; you must.
So is forcing someone to use Windows cruel and unusual punishment?
If you haven't read Junk journalism at the Spine; you must.
What's remarkable here is that the situation is like it is and that's with plenty of competition.
If you haven't read Of the Lawyers ... at Outside the Beltway; you must.
If you haven't read Poverty Scam at Q and O; you must.
How you count the unfortunate, says a lot about what you're trying to accomplish.
If you haven't read Silly Putty at I remember JFK; you must.

Suing for war

HRW recently released a report condemning Hezbollah for violations of international law during last year's war.

Funny thing, Hezbollah's not happy about this turn of events. Not surprisingly HRW found that it couldn't promote its report in Lebanon. Imagine that.

Human Rights Watch accused Hezbollah of trying to silence it on Wednesday as the U.S.-based watchdog faced heavy criticism in Lebanon over a report critical of the guerrilla group's rocket attacks on Israel last year.

Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government slammed Human Rights Watch (HRW) over the report, which states that the rocket attacks targeted Israeli civilians in violation of the laws of war during a 34-day-long conflict with Israel.

HRW had planned to launch the report in Beirut on Thursday. But a hotel had revoked permission for the organisation's news conference following a furore in Lebanese media over plans for the Beirut launch.

Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV led its news broadcasts with reports containing scathing criticism of HRW.

LGF notes Hezbollah's pain and points out that now the shoes on the other foot.

Note to Hussein Rahal: Human Rights Watch “started” criticizing Israel a long, long time ago. How does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?

(Just in case you thought that HRW was no longer making false charges against Israel, Kenneth Roth, last month wrote that Israel was guilty of targeting civilians too.

We found that for the vast majority of Lebanese civilian deaths that we investigated, including Qana, there was no Hezbollah military presence anywhere near the site at the time of the IDF attack. Hezbollah mainly fired its rockets from dug-in positions in the hills outside of villages. Its fighters were not present where most civilians were killed. That conclusion is firmly demonstrated by our extensive interviews with eyewitnesses, our physical surveys of attack sites, and our review of graveyards where civilian victims are obvious because any fighter is proudly honored as a "martyr."

Do you imagine that during those "extensive interviews" that eyewitnesses may have found speaking freely as easy as HRW found it to publicize its report in Beirut? Cemeteries, too, prove nothing. People were not necessarily buried where they were killed. After Garlasco doesn't HRW realize that its objectivity concerning Israel is suspect?

But I digress.)

Perhaps the reason that Hezbollah's so upset about the HRW report is that it will hinder its credibility in court.

Hezbollah is organizing lawsuits against Israel seeking reparations for damage caused during the summer 2006 Lebanon conflict.

Hezbollah legal affairs director Ibrahim Awada told Syrian media last week that Hezbollah will pay legal fees to facilitate lawsuits filed by Lebanese citizens with multiple-citizenships in third-party states. Hezbollah says the move was necessary because Lebanese officials were reluctant to pursue claims against Israel .

Israel Matzav notes an interesting item in Ha'aretz about the proposed Hezbollah lawsuits.

The Lebanese government began mulling lawsuits against Israel immediately after the war ended last summer, but was stymied by the fact that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war, blamed Hezbollah, rather than Israel, for its outbreak. The government therefore set up a legal committee to explore more limited options, such as suits specifically over Israel's use of cluster bombs and destruction of infrastructure.

Meryl Yourish on the Hezbollah/Lebanon lawsuit.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Israel isn’t going to bother responding to this one. It’s almost as stupid as the Egyptians threatening to sue Israel for the property the Hebrew slaves took from Egypt. (That one was ended when Jewish lawyers threatened to countersue for 400 years of slavery.)

hezbollah, israel.

Setting an example

Our friends and neighbors just made Aliyah.

Here's what Andrea writes.

Grand total for tuition for all three girls including transportation............................$3428.25. This is considered an excellent school with lots of choices of "majors" to choose including film making, graphic design, eretz yisroel (where they tour and do tiyulim all over the country and learn about the Land) and physics just to name a few.

COME HOME NOW!!!!!!

I haven't even talked about the Carlebach minyan EVERY Friday nite with so much kavanah that I need no other reason to know why I am here but this. Oh, did I mention that the land that belonged to Menashe and Ephraim is practically in my back yard????? But you'll have to wait a little longer to hear about all that. We'll just keep it to tachlis now and let you digest the tuition information.

The tuition bill. One more reason to make Aliyah.

We've been getting together for Sukkos and Shavuos forever it seems. Now they will be olei regel.

israel, aliyah

Spins a web, any size

Don Surber writes about a Real Spiderman He quotes from the BBC,

"If we are able to make a surface a little bit stronger, so that the size effect vanishes, we might be able to make a suit with the same adhesion as a gecko."

The Turin-based researcher proposes that carbon nanotubes could be used as an artificial alternative to the gecko's hairs.

Carbon nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon that measure just a few billionths of a metre across. They are ultra-strong and can be organised into larger fibres.

Don credits Spiderman with being the inspiration for this research.

The question is not so much how this will be done, but why?

A comic book. I doubt that anyone would have thought about using gekkos and spiders to help people adhere to walls. Stan Lee’s “Spider-man” inspired this.

An adhesive suit is in the offing but there's another of Spiderman's abilities that has been mimicked. His webbing. (Previously blogged abut here.) I have no idea if Spiderman inspired this development but Israel 21c reported

A remarkable Israeli achievement may have far-reaching implications in future development of products ranging from micro-conductors and optical fibers to fishing rods, surgical thread and even clothing.

For the first time anywhere, scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from Germany, have succeeded in producing self-assembled spider web fibers under laboratory conditions, outside of the bodies of spiders. This fiber is significantly stronger than the silk fiber made by silkworms.

In addition to strong adhesive properties, spiders also produce webs that are extremely strong. What uses could a spider web like fiber have?

"From a practical viewpoint, mass production of fibers whose diameter is one-thousandth of a millimeter is likely to be useful in the future for the manufacture of bulletproof vests, surgical thread, micro-conductors, optical fibers and fishing rods," said Gat.

So scientists have figured out how to make webbing. They are figuring out how to make someone adhere to surfaces. What else will science develop? A spidey-sense?

spiderman, adhesive, spider webbing.

Capitalism and Circumcision

A current pro-Finkelstein diary at Daily Kos offers a long excerpt of a piece from a site called the Dissident Voice. Whoa! Where has this site been all my blog-life? It's the bomb, the mother-lode, or maybe it's the mother-ship. Anyway, here's an article called "How Capitalism Turns Intimate Relationships into a Battleground":

Relationship conflicts are a universal source of pain and confusion. I frequently counsel couples in distress where the woman is angry and the man is depressed. The woman cannot understand why the man won’t fix the problems in the relationship. The man feels inadequate. Nothing he does is good enough. The woman cannot understand how any man could feel inadequate, because men are supposed to be superior beings. In her mind, he has simply stopped caring about her.

The vulnerability of men is one of society’s best-kept secrets. Men are expected to provide and protect and solve all problems. They aren’t supposed to feel needy, vulnerable or inadequate like women. Yet, in some ways, men are more vulnerable than women.

As early as five years of age, males are more likely than females to kill themselves. This difference increases through life. By age 22, men are six times more likely and by age 85 fifteen times more likely to kill themselves. When a relationship breaks up, the man is 11 times more likely than the woman to commit suicide.

Capitalism demands that men be tough to compete and endure hardship, while denying them the emotional support necessary for genuine inner strength.

To “toughen” males, society directs an astonishing level of violence against them. The most sensitive parts of their bodies are singled out for attack. Parents are pressured to circumcise infant sons in the first week of life, a traumatic procedure that is commonly performed without anesthetic . . .

Crossposted on Judeopundit

(North) Korean News: "Rodong Sinmun Calls for Intensifying Cultural and Emotional Cultivation"

I can't manage any more revolutionary zeal and pulsating spirit--just leave me alone already!!!!

Rodong Sinmun in a by-lined article today says it is an important principle consistently maintained by the Workers' Party of Korea in its ideological work to steadily intensify cultural and emotional cultivation.

It goes on:

When it is intensified so that everyone may work with a high cultural standard, full of hope and optimism for the future, the advantages of Korean-style socialism centered on the popular masses will be given full play.

Intensifying cultural and emotional cultivation is an important undertaking to vigorously speed up the building of a great prosperous powerful nation by giving full scope to the revolutionary zeal and optimistic fighting spirit of the Korean people. And it is an important demand in strictly curbing the reactionary ideological and cultural infiltration of the imperialists and firmly defending socialist ideology and culture in the DPRK.

The revolution victoriously advances where songs reverberate far and wide and miracles are wrought and feats performed in a place overflowing with rich emotion and optimism. When cultural and emotional cultivation is decisively intensified in all fields and at all units, the whole country will brim over with pulsating spirit and constant leaps be made in building a great prosperous powerful nation.

Only when cultural and emotional cultivation is intensified, the people can clearly understand that socialist cultural and emotional life in the DPRK is the most superior cultural and emotional one conforming to the independent nature of man and can actively turn out in the struggle against bourgeois ideology and culture and mode of life with full knowledge of their reactionary and harmful nature.

In the DPRK today there is no room for any alien and decadent culture with nothing in common with the most superior Korean-style socialist culture to set foot. The people in the DPRK are most sound and pure not only in ideology and spirit but also in culture and morality. There lies in intensifying cultural and emotional cultivation a sure guarantee for firmly defending Korean-style ideology and culture by frustrating the reactionary physiological smear campaign and ideological and cultural infiltration of the imperialists.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

IRIB: "Zionists behind published blasphemy"

Plots 'R' Us:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday castigated a Swedish daily for publishing blasphemy against the noblest Messenger of Allah Hazrate Mohammad (PBUH) and said that the Zionists, who do not believe in religion, are behind such a dirty job.

"Religions call for friendship, equality, justice, peace and respect for divine prophets (Peace Be Upon Them). The Zionists only pretend to believe in religion. They are telling lies. They are perpetrating oppression against the Europeans and putting at risk the prestige of Europe," the President said.

He said that the Zionists are the minority whose population is very small, but, they are doing things in an organized manner. They are suffering from psychological complex since blasphemy against one prophet accounts for blasphemy against all of them."

The President said that the UN nuclear agency has closed Iranian case of Plutonium adding that the agency is doing its job free from political objectives.

He reaffirmed Iran's commitment to international conventions and said that the Islamic Republic of Iran supports the IAEA in its professional job.

"It is a dirty act to settle your scores with Iran by misusing the name of an international organization," the President added.

(Fars News Agency) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed his approval of acclaimed director Oliver Stone's plans to make a film about him.

"I have no objection, generally speaking, but they have to let me know what are the frameworks. They should talk to my colleagues. Principally speaking, I have no objection," President Ahmadinejad told reporters during a press conference here in Tehran on Tuesday.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Sick health care?

John Stossel debunks Another Bogus Report Card for U.S. Medical Care

In May, the Commonwealth Fund issued its latest comparison of the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations' systems: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain.

Predictably, the study begins: "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms."

I was immediately suspicious, considering the loaded study by the World Health Organization seven years ago. (I wrote about it last week.)

My suspicion was justified. It turns out the new study is almost as biased as the WHO's. The authors write, "The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes."

I see. America "underperforms" because we don't have enough government intervention.

However more government intervention is not what American health care needs because the quality is actually pretty good, as Stossel writes:

The Commonwealth Fund study divides "quality" into right (effective) care, safe care, coordinated care and patient-centered care. The U.S. placed fifth or sixth in the last three.

But where did the U.S. place in "right care"?

First.

"Right care" is the most important criterion because it includes things like how often women have mammograms and whether diabetics get proper treatment.

The Commonwealth Fund ranked the U.S. last in "equity": "Americans with below-average incomes were much more likely than their counterparts in other countries to report not visiting a physician when sick, not getting a recommended test, treatment or follow-up care ... because of costs."

Dr Helen notes that American health care is good if someone has cancer.

All the media does is tout universal healthcare like that in the UK as something for the US to aspire to--but given the lower rates of cancer survival there, maybe that is not such wise advice. Take a look at this study on the poor cancer survival rates in the UK and the high ones in the US Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe, according to the most comprehensive analysis of the issue yet produced....

England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care.

Similarly Yuval Levin writes in Contentions

Meanwhile, in the real world of cancer research, serious progress is being made, in no small part because of the work of those evil pharmaceutical companies. Cancer death rates have declined by about 1.5 percent per year for the last fifteen years, and cancer is slowly becoming more like a chronic disease than a swift killer. Much work remains, but, as yesterday’s forum made clear, it’s not the work of politicians.

And what about the high level of uninsured that the NY Times is so concerned about?

Stossel writes

As I've noted previously, the problem of the 45 million uninsured is exaggerated. The statistics represent a snapshot, and many uninsured people are reinsured in less than a year. The same people are not uninsured year in and year out.

To be sure, there are problems with health care, but the correct way to address them is almost certainly not more government intervention.

health care.

Dribs and drabs about the drubbing

So a week's gone by since the disastrous 30 - 3 drubbing the Orioles suffered at the hands of the Rangers. What's happened? The Orioles have lost every single game since then including last night's 15 - 8 drubbing at the hands of Tampa Bay. And not only did Tampa Bay set a franchise record for runs scored in an inning, they also set a season record for most runs scored in a game. Nice to know.

So that Orioles fans needn't suffer alone, ESPN gathered sports 20 greatest beatdowns.

Baseball Musings presents some post-mortem material. As does O by the way. Roch around the Clock is still finding something to laugh about. Oriole Post has more on the not-so-lovely totals.

Ken Rosenthal calls it another embarrassment for the Orioles. I was going to argue that it was just one game and not something to draw larger conclusions from. However, it's starting to look like it was just The Start of the Fall for the Orioles this year. Dan Connolly and Roch Kubato write about how poorly the Orioles have been doing in August and September during the past decade.

Since the end of the 1997 season, the Orioles have compiled a 227-309 record - a .424 winning percentage - from Aug. 1 until the end of the baseball year. That includes an 8-16 run this month, highlighted by a six-game losing streak heading into tonight's series opener against baseball's worst team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Incredibly, the terrible late-season numbers aren't skewed by one or two bad seasons, such as 2002 when they lost 32 of their final 36.

Of the Orioles' 19 Augusts and Septembers dating to 1998 (including this August), the team has managed just two winning months: a 20-8 September in 1999 and an 18-10 September in 2004.

The don't mention 1986 when the Orioles went from 59 - 47 in second place on August 5, to finish 73 - 89 finishing last for the first time in franchise history, by going 14 - 42 in the last third of the season.

Pillage Idiot shares his sentiments with ouch and expresses his sympathy for Peter Angelos.

A couple of Texas bloggers chimed in. Hey guys haven't you heard of piling it on? Rhymes with Right observes that it looked like a football score. And the Fireant Gazette is happy that the Rangers have given the Cowboys something to shoot for offensively.

Thomas Boswell looks at it through the lens of the hiring of Dave Trembley as manager.

Still, Trembley knows the score. When you've been hit in the head with tomatoes in Navajoa and escaped the banditos in Magallanes, realism and baseball are bound together by second nature. Almost as a reminder, in his first game as next year's manager, the Orioles lost the opening game of a doubleheader to Texas, 30-3, the most runs scored in a big league game since 1897. Then, after coming back to lead in the second game, they lost that one, too. It's never a fairy tale, not even for a day.

Interestingly this is how Trembley described himself

No one doubted his words on Wednesday when he said: "This is above anything I ever could hope, wish or dream for. . . . It's like being a little kid. Finally, what you worked your whole life for. . . . I want to thank my wife [Patti]. This is a tough business. I can say I've made it because of what she's done for me."

"little kid"

This is how Boswell described Sam Perlozzo, when, two years ago, Dave Trembley's predecessor got the coveted job of Orioles manager

Long ago in Little League, Sam Perlozzo would be in his uniform at 9 a.m. for a 1 p.m. game. "Then I'd go to the candy store so everybody could see me," Perlozzo said. "I'd take a nickel and spend an hour in that store in my uniform deciding what to buy."

In a sense, Perlozzo has stood in uniform, face pressed to the candy store window, ever since. Now, at 54, in one of those moments of pure baseball justice, Perlozzo is being allowed inside. The candy's all his now. He's manager of the Baltimore Orioles, at least for the last 55 games of this season. Nobody ever deserved a turn at the wheel more than Sam.

A little kid too. At least implicitly.

The Loss Column, somehow, found some good - Orioles magic, no less - in the disastrous loss.

baltimore orioles.

Pieces of process

Coming on the heels of Gen Moshe Yaalon's op-ed in the LA Times describing the threats that Israel cannot ignore, Noah Pollak of the Shalem Center describes the peace process that Israel cannot trust, in The Imaginary Peace Process.

What is relevant are three interrelated questions: 1) Does Hamas, or any Palestinian terrorist group, intend to perpetrate terrorism against Israel? 2) Is there a significant climate of public opinion in the West Bank that approves of such attacks? 3) Is Mahmoud Abbas powerful enough to stop terrorism, despite its popularity and the eagerness of groups like Hamas to attack? Unfortunately, the answer to the first two questions is yes, and the answer to the last is no.

There were a few news items this week that underscored Pollak's observations.

The Associated Press reported on a protest held by Islamic Jihad youth in Gaza.

Israel holds more than 9,200 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were arrested during the past seven years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Note that most have been arrested since the outbreak of the "Aqsa Intifada" Israel had freed a great number of Palestinian prisoners for political activity in accordance with the Oslo Accords. However the issue of those arrested for violence against Israel since then remains important. But those arrested during the past seven years demonstrated that they didn't believe in the peace process.

An Israeli soldier accidentally wandered into Jenin but was saved.

An Israeli soldier who took a wrong turn into Jenin on Monday was returned unharmed by Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas in a new sign of cooperation with Israel. A crowd in the city overturned and torched the soldier's abandoned car.

I suppose one could read this as James Taranto did yesterday

This latest incident is only an anecdote, not yet a trend; but it may signify that the rise of Hamas is actually forcing "moderate" Palestinians to behave moderately, because accommodating Israel is their only hope for survival.

My feeling is the same as Meryl Yourish's less optimistic view

You see, my thought is more along the lines of: If the Palestinians truly want peace, Israelis would not need to be saved from them by the PA police. Those are not the actions of a people who want to live in peace, side-by-side with Israel.

Meanwhile, Israeli Public Security Minister Avi Dichter accuses Egypt - which has had a peace treaty with Israel for nearly 30 years - of helping Hamas.

And a reporter for the Telegraph showed that Palestinians are increasingly seeking neither peace nor democracy but a return to the Caliphate.

Taken separately any of these items might be dismissed, but taken together they complete a picture that shows fourteen years after Oslo, the Palestinians are no more committed to peace than they were then. Any concessions Israel makes at this time will be extremely risky. Peace will not follow from ill conceived retreats at this time.

israel, peace process.

Submitted 08/29/2007

The following are the posts submitted for consideration of the Watcher's Council this week.

In They Don't Understand the Incentives (Updated), The Glittering Eye argues that the Maliki government doesn't serve the interests of regular Iraqi citizens or the United States. What it does serve are the militias and thus it won't take the steps necessary to bring a stable, democratic government to Iraq. It's not in their interests.

Done With Mirrors asks What, Do You Think? and answers that he thinks that folks like Glenn Greenwald are not really anti-imperialists as much as they are anti-militarists.

The Colossus of Rhodey criticizes "Sanctuary" Cities
where federal law is willingly violated by public officials. At the end, though, he sees a ray of light.

Last week one of the non-council entries was The Peace Racket. This week ‘Okie’ on the Lam looks at a companion piece, Victor Davis Hanson -- Why We Must Study War. He uses Hanson's piece as a guide surveying how ignorance of war has led our opinion making elites to oppose the war effort.

In a similar vein Cheat Seeking Missiles considers Lotsa Dead Terrorists! He looks at how opponents of the war have effectively undermined the political support for the war.

Bookworm Room looks fondly back on her high school day in The New Conspiracy Theorists. She compares Naomi Wolf then with Naomi Wolf (and Robert Fisk) now and finds them to be more paranoid than thoughtful, despite what they think of themselves.

Rhymes With Right exposes a Local Blogger, Democrat Leader, Urges Jasper-Style Truck-Drag of Jewish Republican. The tastelessness of many on the left defies belief. I wonder how the NJDC will react. (My guess is silence.)

Joshuapundit's trenchant Iraq As Vietnam... Or Vice Versa reminds us that there's a greater similarity between than just the potential disaster awaiting Iraq if we abandon it as we abandoned South Viet Nam. There are also similarities in the conduct of the war. JoshuaPundit hopes tha the President is aware of both - and plans to fix the prosecution of the war from his end.

In Washington Watch: Another Hypocrite Exposed, The Education Wonks reject Sen Craig's claim that he did nothing illegal.

Covering similar territory to JoshuaPundit, Big Lizards observes NYT: Analogies Are Meaningless (Unless They Favor the Left) Specifically he writes that the NYT wants only liberals to be able to use the analogy between Viet Nam and Iraq.

Right Wing Nut House wonders Jesus, Lord! Are They All Hypocritical Bastards?. While he doesn't doubt that most Christians are not hypocrites, he wonders why such a high percentage of the hypocrites make it to public office.

I wrote about the comparative treatment of the Khalil Gibran school and the Ben Gamla school in the pages of the NYT in Separate but Unequeal . For some reason or the other the former escapes scrutiny that the latter is subject to.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

watcher's council.

Some Ahmadinejad pronouncements

Two brief articles from IRNA feature Ahmadinejad revealing the latest vague blather that Iranians have to pretend is very meaningful and profound or else risk getting beaten up by an Islamic revolutionary guidance committee. What do we have to do to establish "security, peace, equality and justice"? Appoint "right individuals," bring about a "change in attitudes of those leading the world," and also encourage "managers and politicians" to "revise their way of thinking" so that their "attitude, behavior and way of thinking" will "become more humane." And this has something to do with "all prophets," as we can see from the "Jewish school of thought," "Christianity," and, of course, "the holy religion of Islam," where all this stuff is "obvious and clear."

"President says managerial reforms key to solving world problems":

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Tuesday that the reforms in the world's managerial system and appointing right individuals to run state of affairs are the keys to solving world problems.

President Ahmadinejad told a press conference that change in attitudes of those ruling the world would guarantee establishment of security, peace, equality and justice worldwide.

"If managers and politicians revise their way of thinking and if their attitude, behavior and way of thinking become more humane, the international community will have the pleasure of security, peace, equality and justice," said President Ahmadinejad.

He said that all prophets have been assigned to lead mankind to the point of perfection.

He added that a look at the Jewish school of thought reveals Jews' hope for coming of an individual who will lead human beings.

The same is true with Christianity which gives the good tiding of appearance of a man who will lead human being, said President Ahmadinejad, adding that in the holy religion of Islam that's something obvious and clear.

"President: World order is inappropriate for humanity":

President mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that the current situation in the world is inappropriate for the dignity of humanity and does not guarantee prosperous life for the nations.

He told a press conference that all the intellectuals and well wishers of mankind are anxious about the current world order.

"Wars, threats, insecurity, arms race and massacre of nations, spread of lies and rumors have drawn a gloomy prospects for the humanity."

He said that all the problems prevailing in the world concerns the system governing the world.

The president said that nations want to live together in peace and friendship enjoying equality, but, the ruling system has always been responsible for escalating tension.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Spitting in the face of freedom

Clark Hoyt, public editor of the NY Times:

The most recent column was by Ahmed Yousef, a spokesman for Hamas, the party elected to lead the Palestinian government and a group dedicated to the destruction of Israel. He wrote Wednesday about “What Hamas Wants.”

Many readers were outraged, complaining that The Times had provided a platform for a terrorist. One, Jon Pensak of Sherborn, Mass., said that allowing Yousef space in The Times “isn’t balanced journalism, it is more the dissemination of propaganda in the spirit of advocacy journalism.”

Well, yes. The point of the op-ed page is advocacy. And, Rosenthal said, “we do not feel the obligation to provide the kind of balance you find in news coverage, because it is opinion.”

David Shipley, one of Rosenthal’s deputies and the man in charge of the op-ed page, said: “The news of the Hamas takeover of Gaza was one of the most important stories of the week. ... This was our opportunity to hear what Hamas had to say.”

Though it may sound holier than thou, journalists feel they have a high calling to challenge the status quo through reporting and opinion; it is an important part of shaping debates and the social agenda, as well as defining popular culture. Commentaries are not meant to tell readers what to believe, though readers often take them that way -- and many readers don't appreciate commentary unless they agree with it.

Hamas, the beneficiary of American's press freedom:

Hamas said on Monday it planned to enforce a 12-year-old Palestinian press law designed to silence dissident journalists, amid a crackdown that has raised fierce protests from the local media.

Howell and Hoyt and all the other members of the MSM can use all the elevated rhetoric they wish, but what they can't get around is that by publishing material by Hamas they have given a benefit to an organization that holds the very freedom they champion in contempt.

Related posts here and here.

hamas, press freedom, clark hoyt, deborah howell.

Separate but unequal

I'm not sure that anyone would have ever associated Khalil Gibran with Ben Gamla. But in recent news stories these two symbols have been brought together. Each has a school named after him that is now in the news.

Khalil Gibran was a Christian-Lebanese poet whose name is used to demonstrate the non-sectarian nature of the Arab language charter school that bears his name and Ben Gamla was a historical figure who advocated for Jewish education for all Jewish children.

There isn't a whole lot of a difference between the competing concepts of a charter school in New York with an Arabic curriculum and a charter school in Florida featuring a Hebrew curriculum. On the surface the problem facing either school should be the same.

On one hand since both schools received public funding, does each avoid the problem of advocating for a religion? On the other hand, for its advocates, is either capable of fulfilling its mission given the government guidelines for what it may or may not teach.

The better known of the two schools, the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) in Brooklyn has been the subject of quite a bit of controversy. Back in May the NY Times reported Plan for Arabic School in Brookly Spurs Protests. The Times in its article outlines two objections to the school.

One was that it was planned to share space with an existing school.

The first sign of discontent came from the parents of P.S. 282, where the school was supposed to share space. They staged protests and besieged Mr. Klein’s office with e-mail messages this winter and spring.

Their litany of complaints was long: They objected to sharing space with another school, particularly with middle and high school students who they said could put their elementary school children in danger. They predicted that class sizes at P.S. 282, now comfortably small, would increase close to capacity. And they were indignant when told that they would have to sacrifice space they used for activities like computer instruction and chess.

The other group opposing the school, opposed it on ideological grounds.

A Web site called Militant Islam Monitor recently posted side-by-side photographs of Ms. Almontaser wearing different types of headscarves, suggesting that she had changed her appearance to disguise her “Islamist agenda.”

In The New York Sun, a column by Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum, a conservative research center that says its goal is to promote American interests in the region, declared that “A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn,” contending that the school would generate problems and promote an “Islamic outlook.”

Mr. Pipes, who lives in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview, “What you find is that the materials that are included in an Arabic curriculum have a natural tendency to promote Islam.”

Notice, of course, that the opposition comes from a "conservative." Pipes's column is more involved than the news article can convey.

Come September, an Arabic-language public secondary school is slated to open its doors in Brooklyn. The New York City Department of Education says the Khalil Gibran International Academy, serving grades six through 12, will boast a "multicultural curriculum and intensive Arabic language instruction."

This appears to be a marvelous idea, for New York and the country need native-born Arabic speakers. They have a role in the military, diplomacy, intelligence, the courts, the press, the academy, and many other institutions — and teaching languages to the young is the ideal route to polyglotism. As someone who spent years learning Arabic, I am enthusiastic in principle about the idea of this school, one of the first of its kind in America.

In practice, however, I strongly oppose the KGIA and predict that its establishment will generate serious problems. I say this because Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.

Pipes goes on to list specific examples of what Arab instruction generally involves and, citing other sources, shows that the principal-designate, despite the Times's description of her as a "moderate," held rather radical views.

If there's a weakness to Pipes's objection to the Khalil Gibran academy, it's that he doesn't show that the indoctrination that is often a part of Arabic instruction, would necessarily be a part of of the curriculum at KGIA. He does suggest very strongly that the indoctrination is a regular part of Arabic instruction and that one wouldn't be surprised to see it at KGIA.

The principal designate, Debbie Almontaser, has since resigned under pressure, when she defended T-shirts that had the word intifada on them.

More recently the Times started reporting on the Ben Gamla school in Florida. In Hebrew Charter School Spurs Debate in Florida the Times reports

The new public school at 2620 Hollywood Boulevard stands out despite its plain gray facade. Called the Ben Gamla Charter School, it is run by an Orthodox rabbi, serves kosher lunches and concentrates on teaching Hebrew.

About 400 students started classes at Ben Gamla this week amid caustic debate over whether a public school can teach Hebrew without touching Judaism and the unconstitutional side of the church-state divide. The conflict intensified Wednesday, when the Broward County School Board ordered Ben Gamla to suspend Hebrew lessons because its curriculum — the third proposed by the school — referred to a Web site that mentioned religion.

Opponents say that it is impossible to teach Hebrew — and aspects of Jewish culture — outside a religious context, and that Ben Gamla, billed as the nation’s first Hebrew-English charter school, violates one of its paramount legal and political boundaries.

Note that there is now adjective modifying "opponents." Thus the opponents of the Ben Gamla school are presented as untouched by any ideological biases. This is an presumption that is not extended to opponents of KGIA.

The Ben Gamla school now has had two curricula rejected by the Broward County school board, despite the efforts of its staff.

Rabbi Siegel said the school was proceeding with such extreme caution that even a neutral mention of religion was unlikely. The sign outside Ben Gamla was going to include a Hebrew phrase for “welcome,” Rabbi Siegel said, but because the literal translation is “blessed are those who come,” he decided against it.

“Even basic things, like if there was a page that had a picture of a shofar, I pulled it out,” Rabbi Siegel said, referring to the ram’s horn used in High Holy Day services. “We went so far overboard, it’s crazy.”

The school board rejected Ben Gamla’s first two Hebrew curriculum proposals after finding they included religious references. The second, which relied on a textbook titled “Ha-Yesod,” asked students to translate phrases like “Our Holy Torah is dear to us” and “Man is redeemed from his sins through repentance.”

Until a new curriculum is approved the school may not teach any Hebrew.

I suspect that however difficult it is to find Hebrew instruction that doesn't, in some way, reference Judaism, it's probably even more difficult to separate Islam from an Arabic curriculum.

It seems unlikely that either school will be able to divorce itself from the religious underpinnings of the language being featured. And yet the NY Times goes out of its way to promote the Khalil Gibran International Academy and takes a more disinterested approach towards the Ben Gamla school.

1) As mentioned above the critics of the Ben Gamla are not described in any way.

2) The ACLU is reported interested in possibly bringing a lawsuit against the Ben Gamla school but not against KGIA. Why not? The Times doesn't explain.

3) The article about Ben Gamla shows that the administrator is making an effort to remove religious meaning from his school's curriculum. However Ms. Almontaser apparently has an interest in promoting an agenda in her school. I didn't read that at all in the NY Times article. It was Daniel Pipes who quoted an AP article that she had a an agenda.

An Associated Press report paraphrases her saying that "the school won't shy away from sensitive topics such as colonialism and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis," and she notes that the school will "incorporate the Arabic language and Islamic culture." Islamic culture? Not what was advertised — but imbuing pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism, proselytizing for Islam, and promoting Islamist sympathies will predictably make up the school's true curriculum.

While the New York Times reports on the difficulties facing each school, it seems to be advocating for the Khalil Gibran International Academy and simply reporting the controversy over the Ben Gamla school. It's hard not to get the feeling that in the former case the Times feels the need to balance out bad impressions but not in the latter case. It's reporting like that, that makes me feel that the KGIA does have something to hide and that we won't get the full story from the NY Times.

In the end both schools have similar challenges and from what we've seen, the Ben Gamla school will get more oversight from official sources (government, media) and the Khlalil Gibran school will get its oversight from the citizenry and get a free pass from officialdom. It shouldn't be that way.

khalil gibran, ben gamla.

Finkelstein threatens "nonviolent civil disobedience"

I must say that this has been one of the more enjoyable Elders operations:

When DePaul University rejected Norman Finkelstein’s bid for tenure in June, all the documents in the very divided review of his record suggested no dispute over the high quality of his teaching. The tenure denial also said that Finkelstein would receive a contract for this coming academic year — the "terminal year" contract that is standard for colleges to offer those who have been denied tenure.

But DePaul is having second thoughts on letting Finkelstein have a terminal year. It has canceled his classes, even though students were registered and excited about them, and the university told him that he cannot have an office. The latest actions by DePaul — which already is being criticized by faculty groups for the initial tenure denial — have added to the anger about the situation. And Finkelstein is vowing to show up, teach and use his old office.

In an e-mail interview, he said: "If the university attempts to impede my movements I intend to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and go to jail. If incarcerated I intend to go on a protracted hunger strike until DePaul comes to its senses.

It is regrettable that I have been driven to such drastic actions to defend basic principles of academic freedom and my contractual rights, upon which DePaul has been riding roughshod for so long."

"This just seems so unjust and ridiculous," said Daniel Klimek, a rising senior in political science and one of the students recently informed by the university that Finkelstein’s course "Equality and Social Justice" was among those called off. Klimek said that he had felt honored to be in one of Finkelstein’s final courses at DePaul, and that the cancellation reinforced his view that "this is all about politics." Klimek is among the organizers of the DePaul Academic Freedom Committee, which has been organizing protests against the tenure denial.

John K. Wilson, on his blog College Freedom, wrote: "If anyone doubted whether DePaul was violating Finkelstein’s rights, that doubt must end with this decision.... Even if DePaul pays off Finkelstein, it is violating his academic freedom (and the freedom of its students) by refusing to let him teach and effectively silencing his voice in its classrooms."

DePaul is in fact paying Finkelstein his full pay and benefits, but has placed him on administrative leave for the academic year, which means he is relieved of teaching responsibilities. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Musical monday 9

Like Musical Monday 5 this one is from Malibu Stacy who brings the lyrics and theme from the soundtrack of her life.

1. Thoughts meander like a restless wind
2. But on the midnight watch I realized why twice you ran away
3. Swirling clouds in violet haze
4. And I'm trying to please to the calling
5. Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy
6. And none of you stand so tall
7. You're half-naked ambition and you're half out of your wits
8. Just like children sleeping, we could dream the night away
9. Red lights, green lights, strawberry wine
10. The sound surrounds the icy waters underground
11. Stands on one foot, doesn't even fall
12. Shall we go, you and I, while we can
13. I see earthquakes and lightnin'
14. Some may say I'm wishing my days away
15. Let's play Twister, let's play Risk
16. Won't you come and wash away the rain
17. Till touchdown brings me 'round again to find
18. Where were you while we were getting high?
19. I'd like to dream my troubles all away

Guess what? I can play this one, because I still haven't figured out a single one.

musical monday, pop music, lyrics lyrics.

Not trusting the premises of the promises

The meat of Gen. Moshe Ya'alon's Misinterpreting the MidEast are these paragraphs.

The second misconception is that Israeli territorial concessions are the key to progress. The reality is that an ascendant jihadist Islam believes that it is leading the battle against Israel and the rest of the West. Given this dynamic, Israeli territorial or other concessions simply fill the jihadists' sails, reinforcing their belief that Israel and the West are weak and can be militarily defeated.

True, a majority of Israelis supported Israel's unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005 in the belief that meeting Hezbollah and Palestinian territorial demands would nullify the cause of conflict between them. We now know the results: The Hezbollah and Palestinian reactions -- concerted terror wars, kidnapped Israeli soldiers, rockets fired at Israeli cities -- made clear that the Mideast's central conflict is not territorial but ideological. And ideology cannot be defeated by concessions.

Emissaries also still believe that "the Occupation" blocks agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. In the West, the term usually means the territories Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967. If the problem between Israelis and Palestinians were just the 1967 territories, and the solution were dividing those lands up between the two sides (as proposed, most recently, in 2000 by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak), the conflict would have ended long ago.

He argues that if occupation was the main obstacle of peace in the Middle East then the Arab Israeli wars would have been over in 2000 (or 2005). It must be, therefore, that the problem is not territorial but existential. It is - still - Israel's existence that is the main point of contention in the Middle East.

Israel Matzav quotes the article favorably. And I mostly agree with his take on the op-ed. But I have to disagree with something he writes.

Yaalon's fresh thinking and refusal to abide by political correctness are just what this country needs. When Binyamin Netanyahu suddenly called Likud primaries on short notice, everyone assumed that he did so to keep his 'primary opponent' within the Likud - Sylvan Shalom - out of the race. The real reason may have been to keep Boogie Yaalon from being established enough in the party to make a primary run. I have already said that I believe that Netanyahu is trying to lure Shaul Mofaz back to the Likud to be defense minister ahead of Yaalon.

It was Netanyahu who recruited Gen Yaalon to Likud. Gen Yaalon has not been active in the political world but the academic world. (Last year he was a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; since his return he's been ensconced at the Shalem Center.) These aren't the activities of an ambitious politician. Surely Gen. Yaalon knows he can't just show up primary day and expect to win. If Netanyahu is wooing Mofaz back (and Israel Matzav has made a convincing case of it), I suspect that it's either because he has a different position for one of the two ex-Chiefs of staff in mind (such as the foreign ministry) or because Gen. Yaalon has been a reluctant politician.

After giving some background about the article - that it's a shortened version of one that appeared in Ma'ariv - Boker Tov Boulder writes hopefully

This may not be exactly good news, but it certainly is a breath of fresh air and we haven't had one in such a very long time. If only Ya'alon's pragmatic wisdom could break through the cacophony of diplo-babble....

There are more positive comments at Discarded Lies.

Boker Tov Boulder's information that the article was originally written as an open letter to Tony Blair should dispel some of the criticisms of Matthew Yglesias who writes

One can sympathize to some extent with Israeli officials feeling like their country attracts a disproportionate quantity of busybodies pushing peace plans, but while it would be one thing for Ya'alon to genuinely argue that Israel should be left to its own devices, it's another thing entirely to say that the United States should just be totally indifferent to how our most generously subsidized client state relates to its neighbors and to the millions of stateless Arabs over which it rules.

This question could and should be turned around: Why should the United States be advocating statehood to a quasi-government that is hostile to the existence of an American ally. Why should the United States continue funding that quasi-government to the tune of millions of dollars a year, when that quasi-government takes no steps to make peace. And why should the second largest recipient of American aid be spared any level of scrutiny when it does nothing to promote freedom within its own borders or to advance the causes that the American government claims are so important.

Yglesias can only see the problems that Israel's existence creates and still refuses to acknowledge the destructiveness of those who agitate against that existence.

UPDATE: more via memeorandum.

moshe yaalon, israel.

Rockers with second acts

Just in case you think that rock musicians are simply wastrels, who add nothing (of substance) to society it's good to know that there are some who have expanded their horizons beyond music and showmanship. For example there's Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, who is now an Anti terror adviser to the government.

From the original article

His defense work began in the 1980s, when it occurred to him that much of the hardware and software being developed for military use, like data-compression algorithms and large-capacity storage devices, could also be used for recording music. Mr. Baxter's next-door neighbor, a retired engineer who worked on the Pentagon's Sidewinder missile program, bought him a subscription to an aviation magazine, and he was soon reading a range of military-related publications.

Mr. Baxter began wondering whether existing military systems could be adapted to meet future threats they weren't designed to address, a heretical concept for most defense thinkers. In his spare time, he wrote a five-page paper on a primitive Tandy computer that proposed converting the military's Aegis program, a ship-based antiplane system, into a rudimentary missile-defense system.

On a whim, he gave the paper to a friend from California, Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. To Mr. Baxter's surprise, the congressman took it seriously, and the idea proved to be prescient: Aegis missile-defense systems have done well in tests, and the Navy says it will equip at least one ship with the antimissile system by the end of the year.

Then there's Queen's Brian May, who handed in and received his PhD thesis in astronomy.

Queen guitarist Brian May has handed in his astronomy PhD thesis - 36 years after abandoning it to join the band.

May recently carried out observational work in Tenerife, where he studied the formation of "zodiacal dust clouds".

The subject forms the basis of a 48,000-word thesis for Imperial College, London, where 60-year-old May studied before becoming a rock star.

"It's been the longest gap year ever," May said. "It was a tough decision back then to leave my studies for music."

But the star said that at the time, his "passion for music was stronger".

There were some mixed feelings though.

"I have no doubt that Brian May would have had a brilliant career in science had he completed his PhD in 1971," said astrophysicist Dr Garik Israelian, who worked with May in La Palma.

"Nevertheless, as a fan of Queen, I am glad that he left science temporarily," he added.

(h/t Secular Blasphemy,

He is now officially Dr. May as he blogged. He defended his thesis for nearly 3 hours and got a "category 2" grade, which is not quite the top category.

(h/t Don Surber)

And the lead guitarist of Blue Oyster Cult reads Powerline! (OK I know it's not quite on the same level, but apparently Don't fear the Reaper helped someone get his doctorate. Well sort of.)

Given such accomplishments who could possibly have said

"Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."

Oh, right that was a rock star, Alice Cooper.

Of course not all rockers have turned out so well. There's George Michael with a string of arrests going back further than I care to remember. And Boy George who just got into a bit of a row over a community service sentence he was fulfilling.

And horror of horrors John Hall of Orleans is now serving time - in Congress.

I guess that not all musicians become productive citizens in the end.

rock musicians.

Juggling carnivals 08/27/2007

Incoming Carnivals

I know I've announced this before but J-Pix 14 is up at Life in Israel. I mention this because Life in Israel graciously offered to host next week's Haveil Havalim. So, if you have a Jewish or Israel related post why not submit one or two of your best this week for his consideration.

I believe that I've also previously reference Kosher Cooking Carnival #21, which is up at Juggling Frogs.

The latest Carnival of the Insanities is up at Dr. Sanity with submissions by yours truly, My Right Word, Israel Matzav, and Yid With Lid,Simply Jews.

The latest Carnival of Maryland is up was wonderuflly done by Tinkerty Tonk. Pillage Idiot is still looking for a host for the next edition. If interest, you can submit your interest using this form.

So step right up and enjoy the carnivals!

Technorati tags: blog carnivals.

Press TV (Iran): "Another plot to kill Nasrallah"

The World Arrogance revolves around the Jewish-Arab axis:

Informed sources have revealed a plot by Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Amman and the Lebanese March 14 bloc to assassinate the Hezbollah leader.

According to the report, the Deputy of Israeli military intelligence, an advisor to the Israeli Premier, the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Deputy of the Saudi National Security Council and head of the Jordanian General Intelligence Department held a meeting in the house of Saad Hariri, the leader of the March 14 faction, on August 4 to discuss the assassination of Seyyed Hassan Nasrollah.

The participants in the meeting believed that the move could deal a blow to supporters of Nasrallah in Lebanon. They also underlined the need for another Israeli war against Hezbollah.

The reports added that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert- in an earlier secret meeting with Jordan's King, Abdullah II- had rejected launching a war to kill the Hezbollah chief, saying that the Israeli army could not enter another war with the movement.

Hezbollah, which has become aware of the plot, has beefed up security measures in order to protect Nasrallah and his family.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

The Hechsher Tamim: An idea whose time has come

The current enthusiasm for reinventing all forms of regulatory oversight on the model of kosher supervision, while promising new levels of consumer-driven justice-advocacy never before attained, unfortunately has led to a number of serious abuses and violations of the Tikkun Olam-oriented, non-narrowly ritualistic aspects of the Torah. The question arises: Who, exactly, is overseeing the overseers?

We therefore propose the long-overdue, even though not yet thought-of, HECHSHER TAMIM. As Rabbi Morris Allen has so eloquently stated, ”If we don’t connect [kashrut] to the world and the values we hold, then we fail to take kashrut at its core level.” Therefore the Hechsher Tamim proposes to broaden and extend kashrut supervision to the critical area of kashrut-expansion-advocacy itself.

Henceforth, any committee formulating standards, any seminar, any partnership-building session, any press-conference concerning the development of the social justice aspect of kashrut observance should be required to display its HECHSHER TAMIM CERTIFICATION CERTIFICATE before proceeding with its laudable activities.

To qualify as a certified individual, organization, or other entity in good standing, the applicant for supervision must undergo a rigorous inspection regime which focuses on the following six areas:

1. Violation of Ethical Mitzvot such as the prohibitions of motzi shem ra, rechilut, and hasagat g'vul: Has the applicant encouraged an atmosphere in which warmed-up allegations about a certain meat-packing facility are being served up with reckless abandon?

2. Vagueness: All applicants for the Hechsher Tamim certification certificate shall be examined to make sure that no vague and undefined references to the ethical mitzvot of the Torah have been made. Statements such as "I would think you would be interested in promoting important mitzvot such as having just weights and measures" or questions such as "Don't you care about Choshen Mishpat?" will result in the immediate disqualification of the applicant. Applicants must show that the *specific* standards promoted have a Torah-basis and address the question of *specific* methods of implementation.

3. Neo-Kara'ism: The following sort of statement will immediately disqualify the applicant: "I would suggest to you that the Torah says little about glatt kosher meat; says little about halav Yisroel, says little about the time we are to wait between fleishiks and milchiks to name just a few."

4. Trend-chasing: Statements such as "the relationship between religion and food is changing, and not just in Judaism" will immediately disqualify the applicant.

5. Sanctimony: The inspection will search for problematic elements such as spurious claims to broadmindedness, and the cultivation of an accusatory tone that equates all criticism and skepticism over the certification scheme with lack of concern for working conditions and other social justice matters.

6. Inanity: Statements such as "All religions, Jewish and non-Jewish, are increasingly narrow in their focus" will immediately disqualify the applicant.

Tamim tiheyeh im Hashem Elokecha! (Devarim 18:13)

And remember, if you don't think this is a good idea, you must not really care about the ethical dimension of the Torah.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Haveil havalim #131

Watch out for falling windmill fragments!

Sometimes you tilt at the windmills and sometimes the windmills tilt at you. From Der Spiegel:

[...] After the industry's recent boom years, wind power providers and experts are now concerned. The facilities may not be as reliable and durable as producers claim. Indeed, with thousands of mishaps, breakdowns and accidents having been reported in recent years, the difficulties seem to be mounting. Gearboxes hiding inside the casings perched on top of the towering masts have short shelf lives, often crapping out before even five years is up. In some cases, fractures form along the rotors, or even in the foundation, after only limited operation. Short circuits or overheated propellers have been known to cause fires. All this despite manufacturers' promises that the turbines would last at least 20 years.

Gearboxes have already had to be replaced "in large numbers," the German Insurance Association is now complaining. "In addition to generators and gearboxes, rotor blades also often display defects," a report on the technical shortcomings of wind turbines claims. The insurance companies are complaining of problems ranging from those caused by improper storage to dangerous cracks and fractures . . .

* In December of last year, fragments of a broken rotor blade landed on a road shortly before rush hour traffic near the city of Trier.

* Two wind turbines caught fire near Osnabrück and in the Havelland region in January. The firefighters could only watch: Their ladders were not tall enough to reach the burning casings.

* The same month, a 70-meter (230-foot) tall wind turbine folded in half in Schleswig-Holstein -- right next to a highway.

* The rotor blades of a wind turbine in Brandenburg ripped off at a height of 100 meters (328 feet). Fragments of the rotors stuck into a grain field near a road.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Today's Sesame Street is brought to you by the number 2, the letter B, and the word "Tahrif"

From Wikipedia with the usual caveats:

Tahrif (Arabic: تحريف "corruption, forgery"; the stem-II verbal noun of the consonantal root ḥrf, "to make oblique") is an Arabic term used by Muslims with regard to words, and more specifically with regard to what Islamic tradition supposes Jews and Christians to have done to their respective Scriptures. Most Muslims believe that Jews and Christians have deliberately changed the text of the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible, through altering words from their proper meaning, changing words in form, or substituting words or letters for others. This is considered by Islam to be a deliberate change which distorted the word of God, and which thus necessitated the giving of the Quran to Mohammed, to correct this perceived distortion . . .

The doctrine is accepted by most Muslims, excepting groups such as the Mu'tazili and Ismaili sects (who account for a fairly small percentage of the total Muslim population), as well as a few Islamic scholars and members of various liberal movements within Islam . . .

Muslim tradition reads the Quran as accusing the Jews of having deliberately altered the Torah and the rest of Hebrew Bible, and Christians of deliberately altering the New Testament.[citation needed] The Qur'an does not specify exactly which parts are meant, however they are usually considered to be the places where the Qur'an and the Bible differ.

Relevant verses on which the doctrine of tahrif is based are (Yusuf Ali translation):

* 3:78. There is among them a section who distort the Book with their tongues: (As they read) you would think it is a part of the Book, but it is no part of the Book; and they say, "That is from Allah," but it is not from Allah. It is they who tell a lie against Allah, and (well) they know it!
* 4:46. Of the Jews there are those who displace words from their (right) places, and say: "We hear and we disobey"; and "Hear what is not Heard"; and "Ra'ina"; with a twist of their tongues and a slander to Faith. If only they had said: "We hear and we obey"; and "Do hear"; and "Do look at us"; it would have been better for them, and more proper; but God hath cursed them for their Unbelief; and but few of them will believe.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

IRIB: It's Government Week in Iran!

Whenever you feel down and depressed, just read IRIB. It's so positive and uplifting!

Tehran's Interim Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said that President Ahmadinejad's government is successful in theory and practice, adding that the world has concluded that his government is a stable, enduring and popular one.

Addressing thousands of worshipers at Tehran University Campus, Ayatollah Jannati said, "Serious confrontation with America's hegemony, being transparent in affairs and frankly announcing enmity with the enemies are among the valuable approaches of the government which are manifestations of its strength."

"If a government is weak, it resorts to flattery, courtesy and respect and even if it is against something, it doesn't dare to announce its opposition, but a strong government announces its opposition frankly," Ayatollah Jannati said.

He added, "The grandeur of this government has been established now everywhere and the world has known about its stability."

Stressing that all the threats and sanctions by the hegemonic powers have been futile, Ayatollah Jannati said they thought that they could reach their objectives by employing the language of force and they used this language in the negotiations but "we never retracted from our positions."

"Thanks Allah, we are now at a point in which no one can deprive us of our nuclear technology," Ayatollah Jannati said.

Congratulating the government on the occasion of Government Week (August 24-30), Ayatollah Jannati expounded on President Ahmadinejad's successes in its two years at office.

Being justice seeking, President's trips to provinces, the courageous decision on rationing gasoline, adopting an economical approach in running affairs and reducing banks rate of interest were among the points which Ayatollah Jannati mentioned as the correct and wise decisions of President Ahmadinejad's administration.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

If ... you must 08/24/2007

If you haven't seen http://dzeni.blogspot.com/2007/08/infinity-beads.html">Infinity Beads at Not Quite Perfect; you must.
If you haven't seen Through Stormy Clouds at the Baleboosteh; you must.
Good art and good photography are always pick me ups.
If you haven't read Wile E. Coyote at Futility Closet; you must.
Hmm I don't know Latin, but that's pretty impressive.
If you haven't read how Newspapers win Readers at Kesher Talk; you must.
You mean that speaking to the values of readers is a winning strategy? Maybe someone should tell Sam Zell.
If you haven't read Scrappleface's CIA: U.S. Nearly Out of Americans to Blame for 9/11; you must.
You think we might be missing the big picture so people can engage in political showmanship?
If you haven't read What if they gave a campaign and no one came at Betsy's Page; you must.
If you haven't read Tampa Bay at 38 Pitches; you must.
So that's how rumors start.
If you haven't read Sanctuary Cities at Colossus of Rhodey; you must.
These are real concerns yet too many in the MSM consider restrictions on illegal immigrants "toxic." How can you have a debate when one position - based on similar scenarios that occur time and again is declared outside the pale of debate.
If you haven't read Don Surber's More Krauthammer More Viewers; you must.
I've been reading Krauthammer for 25 years now and still enjoy him. I don't know of any other columnist whom I've enjoyed for so long.
If you haven't read Likelihod of Success's It couldn't hurt; you must.
I've always maintained that Hillary was the better liar. Bill only got caught in the one lie his wife was not party to.
If you haven't I remember JFK's 50's nostalgia in the 70's; you must.
And now the 70's are even more distant than the 50's were then!

Sharon osbourne's dog

Responding to recent questions about the BBC, Mark Thompson the director general of the BBC writes in the Guardian

Given our history and the intensity of contemporary debate on all these subjects, it is from somewhere in this direction that we thought the threat was most likely to come. Instead we find ourselves wrestling with the aftermath, not of an intricate piece of investigative journalism, but of a competition the first prize of which was a hoodie last worn by Sharon Osbourne's dog. Not of a serious editorial error in the actual BBC programme about the Queen - but of an error in a publicity tape.

So it's just a publicity tape. And he's sure the public appreciates the BBC's efforts to straighten things out.

There are two reasons why I am sure we can do it. The first is the public themselves. A third of them say they have lost trust in the BBC in recent months. But they are far from despairing. When we asked them whether they trusted the BBC to sort out the situation and do the right thing in the future, 73% said they did and only 16% said they didn't.

My second reason for confidence is the people who work for the BBC. People join the BBC because they believe in it and they believe in the values of public service broadcasting. Passion and integrity are so visible and so widespread that perhaps we've been guilty of taking them for granted. Clear leadership, leadership that is explicit about our values and true priorities, will be vital, but just as important will be the experience and the wisdom and the decency that already exists in the BBC and in our independent partners.

One commenter, though, asks

Mr Thompson, how about letting us see the Balen Report?

I guess questions about the Beeb's impartiality and professionalism regarding its coverage about the Middle East are not worthy of discussion.

This is the problem with the media. They'll seize upon some minor issue that they've addressed and leave larger more significant questions unresolved. As if the fact that they've corrected an misimpression about Sharon Osbourne's dog absolves their correspondent for weeping over Yasser Arafat's impending death and the institutional bias that that incident reflected.

via memeorandum.

bbc, bbc.

Is a political "surge" in iraq ahead?

Charles Krauthammer notices that everyone's coming together in Washington, in Iraqi convergence. (or here.)

The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong Iraq War critic. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird, D-Wash.: Al-Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

On the other hand

As critics acknowledge military improvement, the administration is finally beginning to concede the political reality that the Maliki government is hopeless. Bush's own national security adviser had said as much in a leaked memo back in November. I and others have been arguing that for months. And when Levin returned and openly called for the Iraqi Parliament to vote out the Maliki government, the president pointedly refused to contradict him.

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.

The problem with this argument is that it confuses long term and short term. In the longer run, there must be a national unity government. But in the shorter term, our assumption that a national unity government is required to pacify the Sunni insurgency turned out to be false. The Sunnis have turned against al-Qaeda and are gradually switching sides in the absence of any oil, federalism or de-Baathification deal coming out of Baghdad.

In the interim, the surge is advancing our two immediate objectives in Iraq: (a) to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and prevent the emergence of an al-Qaeda mini-state, and (b) to pacify the Sunni insurgency, which began the post-liberation downward spiral of sectarian bloodshed, economic stagnation and aborted reconstruction.

Krauthammer writes further

We should have given up on Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

Perhaps that explains the recent op-ed in the Washington Post by the first Iraqi Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, this past week. The plan, which was dismissed by quite a few commenters, possibly was written at the behest of the administration. I'm just guessing but given that it's been referred to as a "campaign speech, "a stump speech," or "magic pixie dust".

But it also led one blogger to wonder why the Washington Post?

If the administration has finally decided to give its vote of no-confidence in the Maliki government, perhaps it wishes to get the most likely choice of a successor out in public for the public and more importantly Congress to see. Dr. Allawi had previously served as Prime Minister and when he was defeated, he stepped aside.

Daniel Pipes thought that he was an excellent choice at the time. Pipes argued at the time that the fact that Allawi was putting stability ahead of democracy.

That legitimacy comes from asserting an ability to control Iraq makes sense. This must precede other, more constructive accomplishments. I am a bit hopeful that Allawi might fill the democratically-minded strongman niche that I devised in April 2003. So far, he is showing the strongman side; but does he also have the democratic one?

Yes, the Allawi piece, whatever its faults, is a campaign speech. But maybe, more than anything, it is a statement of the administration's frustration with the Maliki government and the presentation of an alternative.

iraq, Iyad Allawi, Nouri Al-Maliki.

Cunningham falls state park

Is that Alvin?

A week and a half ago we made our summer trip to Cunningham Falls State Park.

The park is about 15 miles north of Frederick in or near Thurmont. (The entrance to the Houck Area of the State Park also brings you by the entrance to Catoctin Mountain Park, a national park.

Admission was $4 a person excluding those who were riding in car seats. Maryland State Parks no longer provide garbage cans. The do provide garbage bags (or bring your own) and haul your garbage home for disposal. Though I'm skeptical of such initiatives, it seems to work. The park was pretty clean.

We went to the Houck area and took the lower trail to the falls, which, with a little difficulty, was passable with a stroller. The older children though, took the more challenging upper trail.

The walk is pretty. I enjoy trails through the woods. However the falls were a bit disappointing due to the drought.

Because the falls are diminished, the rocks adjacent were dry and it wasn't difficult for the children to climb them.

Along the way there a few fallen trees.

Fortunately there's a store at the park so in case (hypothetically, of course) you plan a barbecue and you forgot to bring charcoal or matches, you can buy them their. We barbecued under the trees on a couple of tabletop grills.

Then we went to the area by the lake to throw around a frisbee a bit. It's a beautiful view from there.

It was a really nice afternoon.

cunningham falls state park.

Council speak 08/24/2007

The council has spoken ...

The winning council entry this week, by a wide margin was Rightwing Nuthouse's Is the United States an Imperialist Power and does it matter?. Put another way he convincingly gave imperialism a good name. The winning non-council entry (again by a wide margin) was a comprehensive look at How the New Republic got suckered in the Scott Beauchamp affair by Richard Miniter at Pajama's Media.

The runner up council entry was St. Nietzsche by Done with Mirrors, a reflection on the importance of religion in civil society. In the non-council category, there was a 3 way tie for second place between (my nominee) Israel and the Double Standard, a reflection on the reporting of the dilemma Israel faces concerning the refugees from Darfur; The technology of our dissent by Beijing Wide Open, a consideration of how dissidents are evading authorities electronically and The Peace Racket at City Journal.

The Peace Racket by Bruce Bawer argues that "peace studies" are just warmed over fellow traveling. It ought to be read along with Victor Davis Hanson's Why Study War.

What's the importance of debunking peace studies and studying war effectively? As I commented on Ocean Guy's essay about the latter:

Indeed, as the Romans said, “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.” Or as Scotty said, “The best diplomat that I know is a fully-loaded phaser bank.”

If you're a blogger and you'd like to be considered for the non-council portion of the competition next week, follow the instructions here.

watcher's council.

If ... you must 08/23/2007

If you haven't read God's Warrior's at Cheat Seeking Missiles; you must.
Mrs. Jamie Rubin is at it again. Extensive coverage with a nice roundup also at Elder of Ziyon. Doug Ross gets it too. (h/t Larwyn).
If you haven't read Fiery Spirited Zionist's Whitewashing the history of Muslim Spain; you must.
The other side of vilifying non-Muslim religions, is that you whitewash Islam. I've written about this here.
If you haven't read Who are the real Christian fundamentalists at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
If you haven't read Why Karl Rove isn't going away at Betsy's Page; you must.
If you haven't read They can't multiply either at PowerLine; you must.
If you haven't read North of the Litani at the Spine ; you must.
If you haven't read "I will have no choice but to pull back ..." at the Sundries Shack; you must.
If you haven't read Ideology as software at SarcastiPundit; you must.
If you haven't read Most commonly misspelled phrases at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
If you haven't read Haiku Challenge at Bookworm Room; you must.

If you haven't read Talent at SerAndEz; you must.

Second time as farce - camping edition

Commenting on recent news about summer camps under control of Fatah and Hamas, Backspin observes that Color war used to be simpler. Reuters reports

Summer camp for the Palestinian children of the Gaza Strip isn't all swimming and soccer.

At a beachside camp run by the Islamist movement Hamas, youngsters race into the sea carrying the green flags of the group, which took over the territory in a civil war against the Fatah group of President Mahmoud Abbas two months ago.

At a camp run by the secular Fatah, yellow flags dominate, and boys and girls perform the Debka folk dance together -- a mixed activity frowned on by Islamists. A portrait of the late Fatah leader Yasser Arafat hangs on a wall.

Political and religious ideology are as much a part of the activities at both camps as traditional fun and games.

Divided into groups named after what Fatah considers Palestinian cities, including the Israeli port of Haifa and the holy city of Jerusalem, about 300 children study Fatah history and sing songs in praise of the movement and its "martyrs".

Keep in mind that Haifa is "occupied" according the "moderates" of Fatah!

In a piece that seems to be a bit of preventive PR, earlier this summer Hamas was boasting that it served better food at its camps than did Fatah, in Kebab instead of weapons. One camper enjoys it.

One of the kids who joined the Hamas' camp this summer is Ahmed (12), whose father is imprisoned in an Israeli jail. He talked to Ynet about his experience: "They take us to the beach and the zoo and we have many activities. We have many contests in math, general knowledge and religion. In Hamas' camps they talk a lot about the Prophet Muhammad, Islam and the history of Islam. We are not taught to use arms. They never taught us about weapons but they do teach us about Palestine and the Jews who occupied it. We learn how to be good Muslims."

The article then goes to differentiate between camps run by Hamas and those run by Fatah.

Indeed the conditions in the camps of rival movements are totally different. Hamas is a much wealthier and popular organization and employs many more counselors, offers a larger variety of activities and even gives the children generous portions of meat for lunch.

"This morning we ate a falafel and for lunch we had kebab," said Ahmed. At Fatah camps, the children settle for cold cuts.

Hamas does not disguise its intentions for the future: "These kids will become activists. The good students are sent to special seminars, we sponsor their academic education in the Islamic University and thus we nurture a leadership and membership for the future.

Interesting. Hamas is complaining that it doesn't have money, but they can afford to feed children kebab for lunch. And they're also claiming that there's no weapons training at their camps. I wonder if that's true or if they're just trying to undo some bad press they got earlier this summer.

Some Palestinian parents in the Gaza Strip are up in arms over Hamas summer camps which are being used to train children on the use of weapons and other military equipment.

Palestinians throw eggs at the United Nations headquarters in Gaza City during a protest against the Israeli shelling and the EU cutting aid to the PA.
Photo: AP

The families on Tuesday also accused Hamas of inciting their children against Israel and Fatah. Some of the families decided to pull their children out of the camps after discovering the goals of the camp. Most of the children who are participating in the current Hamas summer camps are between the ages of eight and 17.

Hamas may be claiming now that its camps don't include terror and weapons training, but if that's true it would mean their camps are breaking with a trend that has long been a part of Palestinian summer camps.

2005 San Francisco Chronicle Hamas camp: Sun, fun ... indoctrination

Seventeen-year-old Osama Abu Asi knows what Hamas stands for: swimming lessons, horseback riding, potato sack races and other summertime fun -- including religious education and paramilitary training.

This is summer camp in the Gaza Strip, as organized by Harakat al-Moqawama al-Islamiyah, the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas -- which is officially regarded by the United States and many other countries as a terrorist organization that has killed hundreds of Israelis.

2004 Sky News Gaza's Killing School(via Kesher Talk via LGF)

The recruits, some of whom are dwarfed by their AK-47 assault rifles, are taught how to carry out ambushes.

They are also made to do an obstacle course, crawling under barbed wire and leaping through hoops of fire while their instructors fire live bullets overhead.Hurd witnessed one training session in which a militant, dressed as a Jewish settler complete with yarmulke skull cap, was ambushed in his car.Gunmen pulled the "settler" from his vehicle and Hurd was told if this had been real he would have been killed.

Where the item mentions "recruits" we might use "campers."

2000 The New York Times Palestinian Summer Camp offers Games of War

It is summer camp time for 25,000 Palestinian teenagers, and strikingly unusual camps they are, too. As run by the men who handle psychological warfare for Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, they allow no horsing around in the dorm, no fun-in-the-sun by a cool clear lake, no rousing sing-alongs beside a roaring campfire.

Instead, there is the chance to stage a mock kidnapping of an Israeli leader by masked Palestinian commandos, ending with the Israeli's bodyguards sprawled dead on the ground. Next, there is the mock attack on an Israeli military post, ending with a sentry being grabbed by the neck and fatally stabbed. Finally, there is the opportunity to excel in stripping and reassembling a real Kalashnikov rifle.

Yes, color war was much simpler.

hamas summer camp, terrorism, israel, hamas.

What would it have been like if teixeira was still in texas?

Before tonight, the Orioles have been on the receiving end of some blowouts.

On June 26, 1978, the Orioles, on their way to a 90 win season (but 4th place finish,) faced the lowly second year Toronto Blue Jays at old Exhibition stadium. Earl Weaver was facing a difficult situation.

But desperate circumstances required desperate measures. At Exhibition Stadium on June 26, 1978, the Blue Jays, in their second big-league season, scored 24 runs, the most ever scored against the Orioles in one game.

The Orioles were down 19-6 in the fifth inning when Weaver, who was trying to conserve pitchers for a doubleheader the following day, sent for Harlow, an outfielder who had pitched one inning in the minors in 1971. Weaver later said Harlow claimed ownership of a slider, and was "throwing the ball at 92 miles an hour on our gun."

Perhaps, but Harlow only lasted two-thirds of an inning, yielding five earned runs, two hits and four walks and striking out one Blue Jay.

The score stood at 24-6 and Weaver needed someone to put an end to the fifth inning. He called the bullpen and got Hendricks, the former catcher who was on the roster as player-coach that season. Hendricks had thrown batting practice that year, but that was the extent of his pitching experience.

The game might have ended badly, 24 - 10, for the Orioles, but it ended well for Hendricks.

Former ace Jim Palmer watched it from the dugout. Asked to account for Hendricks' effectiveness, Palmer says, "Either Elrod had his good stuff that night or they just got tired."

Hendricks suggests the latter.

"They got themselves out," he says.

Palmer recalls that Hendricks used a little neck jerk motion reminiscent of changeup artist Stu Miller. "They swung at the neck twitch," Palmer says. "It seemed like they could have swung twice" by the time the ball crossed the plate.

When Hendricks' pitching debut was over, his ERA a tidy 0.00 and right-hander Don Stanhouse on the mound to finish the game, Weaver approached Hendricks and "he said, 'Nice job.' I'm thinking, 'Yeah, but don't think about it again.' . . . I'd like to say it was fun but it really wasn't."

He says he would rather forget. But that's not Palmer's version.

"Heck, no," Palmer says. "The next day we went down to get the papers and there were none left. Elrod had bought them all."

(For a happier memory of an Oriole-Blue Jay game, see here for the famous John Lowenstein playing third-Lenn Sakata catching game from 1983.)

In another good season, 1996 - when the Orioles were headed to the playoffs - the Orioles suffered another lopsided defeat at the hands of tonight's opponent, the Texas Rangers, allowing 16 runs in the 8th inning losing 26 - 7. Here's a description of what happened ...

But it was not a good day for the Baltimore staff. They were already down 10-7 when Armando Benitez came on to start the eighth. Benitez promptly gave up a single, a stolen base, a walk, a wild pitch, and another walk. Thinking they might still have a remote chance, the Orioles pulled Benitez and gave the ball to Jesse Orosco. He managed to retire one of the nine batters he faced. At this point, infielder Manny Alexander was summoned to finish up, and he walked the first three hitters. After a sacrifice fly and another walk, Kevin Elster capped it off with a grand slam before Darryl Hamilton recorded the final out on a (sympathy?) ground ball to second. Texas residents would have been forgiven if they thought the final score of 26-7 was really from a Cowboys game.

In that inglorious effort, the Orioles issued eight walks. Five were given up by a shortstop, however, so it doesn't really qualify as one of the worst control failures of this period. That honor goes to the Oakland A's of 1979, who walked 8 Angels in one inning on the fourth of July and managed to do so without using any non-pitchers.

(Hmm. There were an awful lot of one-time Mets in that game, including the bullpen - Orosco, McDowell and Myers - from the 1985 World Champions.)

Tonight all the damage was done against Orioles pitchers as the Texas Rangers scored 30 runs.

The Texas Rangers became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting an American League record Wednesday in a 30-3 rout of the Orioles.

Trailing 3-0 in the opener of a doubleheader, the Rangers scored five runs in the fourth, nine in the sixth, 10 in the eighth and six in the ninth.

It was the ninth time a major league team scored 30 runs, the first since Chicago set the major league scoring record in a 36-7 rout of Louisville in a National League game on June 28, 1897, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

I guess the silver lining is that it's nice to make history. But most would rather it be for something positive.

Headlines in the Baltimore Sun.
# Box score: Rangers 30, O's 3
# Maese: Will hiring Trembley look good in Oct.?

I think that acting decisively towards Trembley was a good idea. (I don't share Maese's hesitation.) However I'm glad they did it yesterday. If they'd been planning an announcement tomorrow, it would have been pretty difficult to pull off in the face of such an embarrassing defeat.

(Tonight's game featured two grand slams for Texas. The Orioles and Rangers have another interesting game between them. August 6, 1986 the two teams set a major league record by hitting 3 grand slams between them. The Orioles hit two of them. But they still lost 13 - 11. At the time the Orioles had been respectable and were only 2 1/2 games out of first place. That game started a tailspin that saw the Orioles fall to last place for the first time in franchise history and their first losing season since 1967.)

Roch Kubato has second thoughts.

Baseball Musings writes about Texas Tees Off. (via BallBug)

A quick hit from Inside Charm City.

Some thoughts from Oriole Post.

Sigh, in the nightcap the Orioles are losing by a rather pedestrian 6 - 4.

UPDATE: Baseball Tonight notes the many crazy things that have happened this week in baseball.

Texas sets a double header record, scoring 39 combined runs.

Texas kept right on hitting in the second game, too, although at a decidedly tamer pace. Travis Metcalf drove in four runs and the Rangers used a three-run eighth for a 9-7 victory and a sweep.

Texas set an AL record for runs in a doubleheader, surpassing the 36 scored by Detroit in 1937.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

orioles.

How terrorists die

Simply Jews recently took apart the Guardian's report on a Palestinian man who stole a guard's gun and started shooting in the Old City of Jerusalem.

He starts with the impression one might get initially looking at the story

Stage one: the headline: Man killed in Jerusalem after grabbing gun. What would a reader in a hurry think? Just that a person got himself killed by the simple act of grabbing a gun. Maybe he grabbed his own gun somewhat awkwardly and it went off - happens all the time.

Then he goes off and deconstructs the story quite effectively.

Similarly, last week I got the following screenshot from Bloglines.

The "militants" in Lebanon were killed. Apparently passively. But in the second story, "Israel Kills." I realize that these reports are from two different news agencies. Yet it seems pretty consistent. When Israelis kill enemies (engaged in firefights) the news agencies report it straightforwardly. But when other countries take actions against enemies, well, it just kinda happens.

media bias

Jugggling carnivals 08/22/2007

Incoming Carnivals

Again I got very nice placement at Carnival of the Insanities this past week. Check it out others who we read here including JudeoPundit, Israel Matzav and Yid With Lid.

The latest J-Pix is up at Life in Israel.

And Juggling Frogs has just posted the latest Kosher Cooking Carnival.

Upcoming Carnvials

Submitted 08/22/2007

This week's submissions are in at the Watcher of Weasels.

In Iyad Allawi's Stump Speech The Glittering Eye casts a cynical eye toward the former Iraqi Prime Minister. Perhaps he's angling toward another term, but surely he doesn't expect Washington to install him regardless of how poorly Maliki performs. During his term in office, Daniel Pipes wrote rather approvingly of his approach to governing.

The Colossus of Rhodey.Hube takes issue with A Misguided College Senior, who wishes for a conversation on race that involves only those who agree with him.

Done With Mirrors looks St. Nietzsche and contemplates the importance of religion for civil society. He includes a wonderful story about Thomas Jefferson.

‘Okie’ on the Lam provides thoughts On Science, Fashion & Being PC. He uses an example in a different discipline to show that those who dare to dissent on science that is important to the lords of PC, face, not welcome to scientific inquiry, but attacks on their integrity.

Horrific Nineveh Bombing Shows Counterinsurgency Working is Big Lizards' look at the facts behind the worst terror attack in post Saddam Iraq. It shows that the insurgents are being pushed away from the center of the country and are now not as able to sow mistrust among the Shi'ites and Sunnis.

Bookworm Room's Papa Giuliani considers the possibility that a candidate's (lack of) success in marriage may not necessarily demonstrate if he has the capability to lead the country.

Looking at his home state's politics Rhymes With Right contributes Noriega Rips Cornyn For Representing Texans The Way They Vote. Sen Cornyn's opponent may argue that the Senator doesn't represent the views of most Texans, but election returns say otherwise.

Joshuapundit questions an author's decision to endorse Hillary Clinton in Christians and Democrats: An Open letter To Anne Rice. Since Anne Rice made an issue of her religion in endorsing Sen. Clinton, JoshuaPundit argues effectively that Democrats generally don't support policies that are consistent with Christian values (as he understands them).

The Education Wonks criticizes the Secretary of Education in The Spellings Report: Margaret Heads South!. He supposes that Spellings is pretty far removed from actual schooling.

Cheat Seeking Missiles takes aim at God's Warriors? He criticizes a CNN special hosted by Mrs. Jamie Rubin about religious fanatics but as he points out

So yes, like an abortion clinic bomber, they were warriors on behalf of their religion -- but as the only example given, there terror is a mere shadow of a wisp, compared to al-Qaeda.

My own contribution this week was The Economic War On Terror, in which I look at the administration's reasonable plan to isolate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps financially.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

watcher's council.

Second as farce

A few stories recall stuff I've read before ...
Item #1)
Israel Matzav reports on Games terrorists play about a new video game created by Hezbollah.

The new game, named "Special Force 2" - a sequel to a similar game of a few years ago dubbed "Special Force" - involves various anti-Israel missions of increasing difficulty. The first mission is to kidnap Israeli soldiers, in the style of the abduction of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser that kicked off last year's Second Lebanon War. Imitating the events as they actually happened, the player must aim a missile at two IDF jeeps, hit at least one of them, and must then penetrate the border fence to capture the soldiers.

In addition, players undergo training, fire Katyusha rockets against Israeli towns, and participate in guerilla battles in Lebanese villages - just as happened in last year's war. The objective: to "cleanse" the villages of Israeli soldiers.

Strangely, Hezbollah's been here before. The reason that the name of the new game is Special Force 2, is because Special Force was released four years ago.

The hottest video game for the teenagers of Beirut's southern Shiite neighborhoods is "Special Force," a creation of Hezbollah, the strongly anti-Israel militant organization that is on the United States' terror list.

"Special Force," with its simulated attacks on the Israeli military, was released in February, quickly took off and is to be followed later this month by a more sophisticated version that can link multiple players on a network.

While not the first politically oriented video game to enter Middle Eastern cyberspace, "Special Force" is a sign of Hezbollah's elaborate propaganda efforts. Its popularity is also an indication of Hezbollah's success in permeating popular consciousness in Lebanon and in gaining political legitimacy here.

I guess it's also a sign of the computer skills of some members of Hezbollah.

Daled Amos gives a disturbing historical parallel.
Item #2)
The State Department will be training Fatah security personnel.

U.S. State Department officials will train Palestinian troops assigned to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"The course work and practical exercises will enhance the abilities of the Presidential Guard to carry out their primary function -- VIP protection," a department statement said Sunday. "This training is part of a series of courses that will be offered this fall through early 2008."

The training will be carried out by the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which trains security details around the world. It is part of an agreement signed this month by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and P.A. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the statement said.

Similar training worked really well in the past didn't it?

The saga began one night not long ago, when thieves picked two fairly sophisticated locks on our house and came in without a rustle while we were still awake. They took car keys, credit cards, cell phones, and other valuables. We later learned that operatives from Arafat’s personal security guard, Force 17, were seen driving our car and had been involved in the theft. They’d reportedly been trained in sterile break-in techniques, sniper shooting, and other such skills by the CIA. The idea was to make Arafat’s forces better able to fight terrorism, but the Palestinians are putting their know-how to other purposes.

Item #3)
A man in the UAE is looking to marry - again and again ...

A one-legged Emirati father of 78 is lining up his next two wives in a bid to reach his target of 100 children by 2015, Emirates Today reported on Monday.

Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.

"In 2015 I will be 68 years old and will have 100 children," the local tabloid quoted Abdul Rahman as saying.

In terms of wives it seems he has nothing on this guy.

UPDATE: Whoops, I didn't remember where I'd first seen the item about Daad. It was at co-blogger JudeoPundit's site. Sorry Yitz.

hezbollah video games, palestinian authority security training, polygamy on the arabian peninsula.

Musical monday's at elies expositions

Musical Monday 8 is up at Elie's Expositions. Challenge yourself to match his themed lyrics to the songs. And, of course, guess the theme.

UPDATE: Whoops I didn't include the answers from last week's Musical Monday 7.

If you wish to check out the clues before seeing the answers, this is your last chance.

Elie's Expositions got the theme correct. Harry Potter. I took events, things and people associated with each book and tried to come up with an appropriate lyric or song title for each.

Fiery Spirited Zionist, JudeoPundit and Rubicon3 all got correct answers too!

1) She is like a cat in the darkness (1)
Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac / How McGonagal first appears

2) There's a lot of us been pushed around (1)
Keeper of the Castle - Four Tops / Hagrid

3) You're sailing softly through the sun (1)
Strange Magic - ELO / Ron attempts to turn Scabbers yellow

4) When you hypnotize with your eyes (1)
You can do magic - America / The first years realize that they can do magic

5) She's a witch of trouble in electric blue, (1)
Strange Brew - Cream / Going to potions (for the first time)

6) Sparks fly from her finger tips (1)
Witchy Woman - Eagles / McGonagal

7) There's magic in my eyes (2)
I can see for miles - The Who / The Basilisk

7a) If looks could kill, they probably will (2)
Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel / The Basilisk, again.

8) I got silly and found a frog in the water by a hollow log (2)
Spiders and Snakes - Jim Stafford / Aragog and the Basilisk, again

9) His hair was perfect (3)
Werwolves of London - Warren Zevon / Prof Lupin was a werewolf

10) I heat up, I can't cool down (4)
Abra Cadabra - Steve Miller Band / Avada Kadavra the curse introduced at the old Riddle house.

11) What ever happened to my Translvania Twist (4)
Monster Mash - Boris Pickett / The Yule Ball (OK it's a stretch.)

12) She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door (5)
By the time I get to Phoenix - Glenn Campbell / Order of the Phoenix

13) But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine (6)
Love Potion #9 - The Searchers / Slughorn shows the class a variety of potions including a love potion.

14) All the vampires walkin through the valley (6)
Free Fallin' - Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker / One of the invited guests to Prof Slughorn's party is a vampire.

15) I hope you are quite prepared to die (7)
Bad Moon Rising - Credence Clearwater Revival / How Harry prepared for his confrontation with Voldemort.

musical monday, pop music, lyrics lyrics, harry potter

The economic war on terror

This week there's been the news that the administration is considering designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. In her initial report on the subject, the Washington Post's Robin Wright gives some background on the Guards.

Formed in 1979 and originally tasked with protecting the world's only modern theocracy, the Revolutionary Guard took the lead in battling Iraq during the bloody Iran-Iraq war waged from 1980 to 1988. The Guard, also known as the Pasdaran, has since become a powerful political and economic force in Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose through the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard and came to power with support from its network of veterans. Its leaders are linked to many mainstream businesses in Iran.

"They are heavily involved in everything from pharmaceuticals to telecommunications and pipelines -- even the new Imam Khomeini Airport and a great deal of smuggling," said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Many of the front companies engaged in procuring nuclear technology are owned and run by the Revolutionary Guards. They're developing along the lines of the Chinese military, which is involved in many business enterprises. It's a huge business conglomeration."

The Revolutionary Guard Corps -- with its own navy, air force, ground forces and special forces units -- is a rival to Iran's conventional troops. Its naval forces abducted 15 British sailors and marines this spring, sparking an international crisis, and its special forces armed Lebanon's Hezbollah with missiles used against Israel in the 2006 war. The corps also plays a key role in Iran's military industries, including the attempted acquisition of nuclear weapons and surface-to-surface missiles, according to Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

At the end of the article, though, Wright quotes a source who's against the proposed action.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

Such sanctions can work only alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added.

"Sanctions can serve as a prod, but they have very rarely forced a country to capitulate or collapse," he said. "All of us want to back Iran into a corner, but we want to give them a way out, too. [The designation] will convince many in Iran's elite that there's no point in talking with us and that the only thing that will satisfy us is regime change."

What interests me here is how the article came to be. The prose is sprinkled with the usual journo-blather: "according to US officials... sources said... analysts said," etc. But which officials and which sources and which analysts, nadie sabe. Meaning, I write what I want to write. Or perhaps I should say I Wright what I Wright. That's not to say this is wrong or it's not happening but my best guess is that someone at the State Department leaked this to the reporter because he/she knew the reporter would be cooperative,be the right mouthpiece. And he/she was correct. That's modern journalism. Or perhaps more accurately, "Scoop" lives.

This initial Post article, though, really isn't bad. Most of it provides the background for the administration's decision including an overview of the financial activities of the Revolutionary Guards. The end was a bit disappointing, but overall the article conveyed important information without really judging the program.

Unfortunately, Wright followed up that report with another one, As U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Iran, Aftereffects Worry Allies.

America's allies are increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's plans to unilaterally escalate pressure on Iran, fearing that an evolving strategy may also set in motion a process that could lead to military action if Iran does not back down, according to diplomats and officials of foreign countries.

Although they share deep concern about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, European and Arab governments are particularly alarmed about new U.S. moves, including plans to cite Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "specially designated global terrorist." The move would block the elite unit's assets and pressure foreign companies doing business with its vast commercial network.

Allies are less concerned about that step than they are about the new momentum behind it, and the potential for spillover in a region reeling with multiple conflicts. "If the region is strewn with crises, then there's potential for real disaster. There's a fear that they will all merge into a super-emergency bigger than any one country can deal with," a leading Arab envoy said.

The problem is that this article, rather than dealing with the possible effects of sanctions seemingly is addressing the fear that the administration has more than just sanctions on its mind. Other than reporting that there's "momentum" Wright provides no reason for us to believe the fears of the administration's critics. An article ostensibly about a specific and sensible plan takes on a tone of skepticism and fear of the administration because of what else it might do. I can't disagree with Roger L Simon that the followup is worse than the original.

Roger L Simon follows his criticisms of Wright with noting how the Revolutionary Guards responded to the threat (via BBC).

In a statement published by Iran's Mehr news agency, the IRGC condemned the plan as "worthless resolutions" issued "dauntlessly and under baseless pretexts... to damage this holy institution".

"Those who are enchanted by the material world fail to realise the depth of the spiritual power and iron determination of the devoted members of the IRGC, which have roots in the religious beliefs of the people, and will witness the definite victory of the children of Islam against global infidelity," the statement said.

Interestingly, despite some of Wright's reporting, the administration does have an ally. They would be the editors of the Washington Post who argued today in Tougher on Iran:

The designation could cause banks and exporters in Europe and Asia that do business with Guard affiliates to pull back. So what's the objection? Some European diplomats say they fear that an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran will end in war. But sanctions are the alternative to war -- Iran already rejected initiatives aimed at ending its nuclear program by offering economic concessions and other carrots.

Others suggest that the administration's labeling of a principal arm of the Iranian regime as a terrorist group would contradict its recent embrace of bilateral talks with Tehran about Iraq. Yet that contradiction, if it exists, seems puny compared with that of a regime that participates in those discussions while escalating its surrogate war against American troops. If Iran chooses to fight as well as talk, the United States should not shrink from fighting back with all the economic weapons it can muster.

I would guess that most of those opposed to fighting the Revolutionary Guards economically are certainly opposed to fighting them militarily. And yet failing to rein in the guards economically will almost certainly make a military confrontation with them - however ill advised it is - more likely.

It is possible that had those opposed to the sanctions against Saddam had observed them instead of enriching themselves by continuing to do business with him, that Saddam might have been contained. Or at least constrained.

One has to wonder if those opposed to the possible sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards are enjoying the benefits of doing business with them. Still if they are opposed to military action why don't they subscribe to weakening the Guards economically?

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

ISNA: Stone determined to make Ahmadinejad flick

The public never gets to see the Ahmadinejad with a song in his heart, but Oliver Stone is pressing on in his quest to bring him to the silver screen:

Oliver Stone has made his second request for depicting Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Alireza Sajadpour, an Iranian film producer said "Stones promotion manager Michele Nicholson made a second request through an e-mail."

Nicholson while pointing to the Ahmadinejad's letter to the American people said "I believe that negotiation between the two nations is what we need at the time and producing this film is a step on this way."

She regarding the Islam and Muslims' inappropriate image in the American media noted "Producing this film is an opportunity to rectify this image."

An official also said "The creators of this wrong image are the American media and Hollywood, and it is interesting to know how Mr. Stone will be able to conduct this reconciliation."

He regarding Ahmadinejad's opinion over the issue said "He has no objection against this project and he has asserted it before."

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, accompanied by several members of the cabinet, was a spectator at the 10th performance of the “Messenger of Love and Hope” suite symphony which was performed at the Vahdat Hall on August 19.

After the performance Ahmadinejad went on stage and expressed his appreciation to the artists. He stated that artworks constitute the best paraphrase for the truth and that this comprehensive and interesting musical composition is a monumental work in the history of Iranian art. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Shelo asani Karl?

Giving thanks, speaking truth to power, remorseful about beating up a tree, but glad to be non-Rove. From SFGate.com and the actual title is "Thank God You Are Not Karl Rove":

Yep, you've done some horrible things in your life. Embarrassing things. Stupid. Mean. Violent, even. Eaten dirt. Smacked a baby. Kicked a kitten. Stomped some flowers. Stole. Lied. Cheated. Beat up a tree. Spit instead of swallowed. Drank bad wine. Voted Republican. Shared a needle. Promised to call and then didn't. You know, the usual.

But maybe some of these things now make you cringe and recoil and slump down a little lower in your chair when you think about them, because, well, maybe you've developed something resembling a conscience over the years, or maybe you've even gone so far as to consider the possibility of karma, of cosmic consequence, of the dire effects of wallowing for far too much of your life in all that goopy, stupid low vibration we sometimes call war or hate or religious dogma or the Olsen twins.

Yes, perhaps you can now admit you've wasted far too much of your time simmering like bad meat in a gloomy stew of illness and ugliness and ignorance and now maybe, just maybe, you're trying to evolve to a point where you can step back and look over it all with a bit of wisdom, sly perspective, a big healthy healing sigh.

Whew. It is, as they say, a hell of a lot to process. It is, after all, one hell of a messy life.

But then, something happens. In the midst of all this consciousness review and energy sifting, you pause. You take a karmic time-out. You lift your head from the hardscrabble tumult of your cosmic computations and look around, maybe read the papers and take in the recent headlines and suddenly it hits you like a dominatrix spanks her evangelical preacher in the hot fetish dungeon of cosmic irony: The stuff you've done? That horrible little army of things you think are so dire and awful and mean? Child's play. Trifles. Piddly little nothingness of who-the-hell-cares, barely registering on the Richter scale of pain and injustice and true human misprision.

Because now perhaps you are reading up on the rise and fall and much-desirable end of this one particular man, this dank, sweaty, adipose embodiment of a sad political caricature, this shockingly powerful force of darkness and cruelty and pure, unfiltered iniquity known to the world as Karl Rove.

And somehow, looking at him, seeing the glistening, pallid face of true contempt as he finally, blessedly exits the main political stage, you feel better. Much, much better. In fact, somehow you feel like falling to your knees and offering sincere thanks, hot heaps of glorious gratitude to the gods of fate and time and love that you are not Karl Rove.

It is, in its way, a simple acknowledgment, a supremely fundamental idea. But trust me when I say, it holds tremendous power.

You are not Karl Rove. You are not, so far as you know, the master orchestrator of what is increasingly recognized as the most disastrous, divisive, scandal-ridden, secretive, abusive, warmongering, hate-inspiring, homophobic, morally debilitating neoconservative administration in modern American history.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

What blogs are good for

Michael Skube wrote All the noise that fits for the LA Times. In it he argues

The disgrace at Walter Reed, true enough, was first mentioned in a blog, but the full scope of that story could not have been undertaken by a blogger or, for that matter, an Op-Ed columnist, whose interest is in expressing an opinion quickly and pungently. Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby.

I certainly understand this. To a point.

Has he ever heard of Michael Yon, Michael Totten or Bill Roggio, for example, who report independently from any traditional news organizations? They look at the news from a perspective that different from that of a traditional reporter. They look at people, processes and ideas that are generally ignored by the MSM. But they've made a commitment that the average blogger has not and cannot.

The average blogger, though, can play a role. That is largely one of a critic. It's true that most of us don't do original reporting. But the MSM strays from its mission of reporting the news and we can serve as a corrective. Whether we can point to aspects of a story that the MSM misses or pointing out when opinion is inappropriately injected into a news story. The problem is that the MSM if often unwilling to acknowledge and correct its mistakes. So it's important there's a corrective out there to help news readers make informed judgments about what they read.

blogging, msm.

Pieces of peace

Ephraim Sneh lays out what he views are the essential elements for President Bush's peace conference in Checklist for a peace pact. I quote it not because I agree with it entirely, but because it doesn't focus strictly on what Israel must do.

Both parties also should be required to bring with them interim reports on what has been accomplished regarding security arrangements in the West Bank. This is critical, and tough questions must be answered. For instance, how are the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades fugitives complying with their commitments? How is law and order being imposed by the reformed Palestinian security forces? How is the movement of Palestinians being eased on West Bank roads?

If the answer to the first two questions is not satisfactory, I don't understand how Israel can make adjustments on the third.

This is of course a central question. Until now the Arab world has been eager to advance Palestinian nationhood in words alone. Its main goal has been the sustaining of Palestinian grievances not in their resolution.

Donor states must arrive prepared to pledge concrete support to specific projects or to finance key activities in Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad's government. This includes Arab states, especially those enjoying high oil prices. Solidarity with the Palestinian people cannot be confined to speeches in international or Arab conferences. The price of solidarity is commitment and action.

At least Sneh has a red line.

There is great expectation regarding Saudi Arabia's participation. But if the Saudis intend solely to promote reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, it is better that their delegation stay in Riyadh. Hamas, with its terrorist-Islamist charter, cannot be among the builders of Middle East peace; it is one of its principal spoilers. If, however, the Saudis intend to offer tangible support to President Mahmoud Abbas and his government, and to promote their own ideas for peace, then their participation is paramount.

Towards the end Sneh recommends

A "Marshall Plan" for economic reconstruction of the Gaza Strip based on private-sector investments in industry and tourism. The plan would take advantage of Gaza's educated, diligent population, as well as its natural assets and resources, specifically the $5 billion offshore natural gas reservoir. This would require the legitimate and internationally recognized government of Salam Fayad to restore its authority over Gaza. Such a plan cannot be implemented under the terrorist regime of Hamas. A Dubai-like economy cannot exist under Mogadishu-style governance.

This, of course, has been attempted. When Israel forcibly removed its citizens from Gaza, a number of donors invested their own money in buying the Israeli greenhouses. Those greenhouses, in short order, were looted and used against Israel. Gaza's diligent population was more interested in attacking Israel than in using these resources to better their lives.

While this is a reasonable try on Gen. Sneh's part, it's worth noting that a number of these items have been attempted in the past and failed. The problem isn't the implementation of bullet points on a check list, but a change of hearts on the part of the Palestinians. There is little evidence that that has changed.

israel, peace process.

Al-Buraq Bard Brigades Bomb

Dan Chiasson brings sound aesthetics and bad politics to bear on the Gitmo poets. From the NY Times:

. . .It is hard to imagine a reader so hardhearted as to bring aesthetic judgment to bear on a book written by men in prison without legal recourse, several of them held in solitary confinement, some of them likely subjected to practices that many disinterested parties have called torture.

You don’t read this book for pleasure; you read it for evidence. And if you are an American citizen you read it for evidence of the violence your government is doing to total strangers in a distant place, some of whom (perhaps all of whom, since without due process how are we to tell?) are as innocent of crimes against our nation as you are.

. . . a better subtitle might have been “The Detainees Do Not Speak” or perhaps “The Detainees Are Not Allowed to Speak.” But the best subtitle, I fear, would have been “The Pentagon Speaks.” To be sure, it’s hard to imagine a straightforward propagandistic use for the lines “America sucks, America chills, / While d’ blood of d’ Muslims is forever getting spilled”; but you can’t help suspecting that this entire production is some kind of public relations psych-out, “proof” that dissent thrives even in the cells of Guantánamo. (Does that sound paranoid? Can you think of another good reason the Pentagon would have selected these lines out of thousands for publication?)

You have to be in the mood for some death-defying Orwellian back-flips, then, to read “Poems From Guantánamo.” When Martin Mubanga, an “athletic kickboxer” and a “citizen of both the United Kingdom and Zambia” (the poems come with extensive biographical notes, often more evocative than the poems themselves) refers to “hard-core detainees like you an’ me” — is this a case of the Pentagon’s missing the irony or, more likely, has the Pentagon deemed that analogy so absurd as to reveal a dangerous criminal mind-set? Since the poem, written in an absurd ersatz-gangsta patois, possesses exactly zero literary interest, what is a reader to do besides try to locate the governmental cunning in clearing it for publication?

But the bulk of these poems are so vague, their claims so conventional, that they might have been written at any point in history by anyone suffering anything. “What kind of spring is this, / Where there are no flowers and / The air is filled with a miserable smell?” Even though these lines were, we are told, carved into a Styrofoam cup (the detainees were for a time denied pen and paper), they mimic the kinds of things sad or frustrated people have always written. But surely being imprisoned in Guantánamo rises to a level of wretchedness beyond mere sadness or frustration. When Sami Al Haj, a detainee whose biography says he was “tortured at both Bagram Air Base and Kandahar” before ending up at Guantánamo, writes that “hot tears covered my face,” he sounds like a teenage sonneteer, not the victim of nearly unimaginable physical cruelty. Such are the unfortunate diminishing returns of poetic figuration, which, except in extraordinary cases, blunts where it purports to sharpen, blurs where it promised focus.

The effect of this volume is therefore curiously to make Guantánamo and our abuses there unfold on an abstract “literary” plane rather than in real life and real time. That’s too bad, since Falkoff and the other lawyers behind this project have acted in enormous good faith and some day will be recognized for their legal work as national heroes . . .

More on the Gitmo Bards:

Gitmo Poetry Preview!
Gitmo Poetry Preview II

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Pilger: "what we see happening in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and other countries is an epic attempt at participatory democracy"

A current "Comment is Free" feature at the Guardian has John Pilger, who inspired the word "Pilgerize," answering reader's questions. Almost miraculously, there is no Israel-bashing (one of Pilger's specialties) until the comment thread. Here are three of the questions and answers:

3. What are your thoughts on Hugo Chavez's recent steps towards ending term limits in Venezuela, ie removing the limit to his own term as president? (blether2)

It's too early to assess what Chavez's intentions are. This of course is what Franklin D Roosevelt did during the extraordinary years of the Depression and war.

4. Is democracy possible in a one-party state? (presidentD) Is it possible in a society without an educated electorate? (wkrj)

The question above all surely is: what is democracy? What is fascinating about developments in Latin America is that the old preserve of the western liberal elite of the concept of democracy belonging to them, and them only is being challenged. Rousseau wrote about popular sovereignty; these days we call it participation. In western democracies, especially Britain and the US, there is a crisis of participation. Liberal elites have failed in defending the most fundamental civil liberties. Latin America has long been a source of democratic experiment; and what we see happening in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and other countries is an epic attempt at participatory democracy. The debate in Venezuela, which is an electoral democracy, is the relationship between the state and communities. In other words, the communities representing grassroots democracy can be the opposition to a state assuming unaccountable powers. As for the question about an educated electorate, in my experience education never guarantees democracy; on the contrary it can allow the "training" of a particular class who are beneficiaries of power.

5. What level of democracy do you consider the whole of Latin America to be at? (Scharlach)

Again, what is democracy? The Chartists made clear that democracy really didn't exist unless it had three components: electoral democracy, social democracy and economic democracy. You can substitute the word "justice" in all three of those concepts. I listened to Chavez describing the Chartists' view of democracy and I have to say I have never before heard a leading politician invoke those principles. I believe Latin America has a long way to go before it embraces all three, but a start has been made. It would be good if a similar start, or renewal, was made in Britain!

IRIB: "Muslim discord has foreign roots"

This speech is getting some coverage from non-Iranian sources. Here it is straight from the Mullah's mouth:

Division among Islamic world has external roots and is created as a result of enemies presence and interference in regional affairs, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Fourth Ahl-ul-Bait General Assembly, he said: "Islam is a complete truth which is partly seen in Judaism, in Christianity and in other divine faiths."

Criticizing the present division among different divine religions, the President said: "The present world is going through one of its most sensitive historic periods as we are witnessing massive, quick and various changes."

The international equations are rapidly changing in favor of justice and against falsehood," stressed the President.

Referring to the position of arrogant powers, he added the Western arrogance started deploying its forces worldwide following the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

President Ahmadinejad said the American invasion of Iraq and its occupation as well as massacre of defenseless people of Palestine and Lebanon were clear examples of America and the Zionists crimes against humanity.

Noting that the enemies were trying to sow discord among Muslims, the President said: "Despite all these efforts they (enemies) are caught in a quagmire from which they would hardly find a way out."

Stressing that nobody believed in the American-style democracy worldwide, President Ahmadinejad said: "No one supports the world arrogance's war-mongering policies."

"They (arrogant powers) have even failed to implement a true Liberal-Democratic system in their own countries," criticized the President.

Noting that Zionism was the pioneer of Western-style Liberal Democracy and the vanguard of occupation and aggression worldwide, he said, "The Zionist regime is the flag of Satan."[...]

Enemies are trying to replace Islam and Christianity with misleading man-made schools of thought by sowing discord among divine religions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday morning.

Addressing the opening ceremony of The Fourth Ahl-ul-Bait General Assembly, he said, "Misled groups with the least knowledge of Islam have been equipped by enemies during recent years to disgrace Islam by killing Muslims in the name of Islam."

"This is the same logic of the hegemonic system," stressed the president in his address to participants of the two-day gathering from over 100 world countries.

He stressed the necessity of maintaining unity and solidarity by Muslim nations and urged the participating Muslim scholars to protect souls of "the faithful whose hearts are prepared to accept the call of divine religions and prophets."

"We are not only responsible for world Muslims," said the president, "but also our duty is far beyond that," said the president.

He stressed, "People of the world are fed up with inefficient man-made schools of thought in addressing problems facing the world nations."

People of the world dislike the existing situation despite all abrications and concealing of the facts on the part of world arrogant powers," President Ahmadinejad added.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Haveil Havalim #130

What walt and mearsheimer didn't say

“The problem,” he said “is when you raise the charges of censorship or intolerance you are accused of Islamaphobia.”

Somehow the book burnings in England (where they were unafraid to publish Walt and Mearsheimer's paper) escaped the notice of Walt and Mearsheimer and didn't prompt a statement like the one above.

According to this supporter, the Israel Lobby is 18 on Amazon today. So exactly how are they being silenced? And yet they're distressed.

“The problem,” he said “is when you raise the subject of dual loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to the U.S.”

And would Walt and Mearsheimer raise the issue of dual loyalty regarding Michael Tarazi or CAIR? One sort of doubts it, doesn't one?

Previously at Soccer Dad.

Walt Mearsheimer.

If ... you must 08/17/2007

If you haven't read The "divisive" Karl Rove at Transterrestial Musings; you must.
Karl Rove has been a lightning rod for attacks, but he's hardly been divisive. "Successful" (to a point) was his greater failing to his enemies.
If you haven't read EZ Does It at Likelihood of Success; you must.
My problem with EZ Pass isn't that it's an invasion of privacy. It's as much an invasion of privacy as using your credit card. You choose to use it and suffer the consequences accordingly. My problem is that it makes raising the tolls a lot easier. Sort of like withholding.
If you haven't read Sarcastipundit's Slandering the Troops; you must.
He doesn't give us anything new about the Beauchamp story, but he gives it a historical context that's useful.
If you haven't read Don Surber's A Drudge Report headline may do what my editorials have failed to do; you must.
Paying attention to the victims and trying to reduce them is a good starting point.
If you haven't read Jewish Current Issues' Einstein in Israel; you must.
And catch the followup - that addresses a contribution of mine - too!Truth is I had confused the two aphorisms. But whether the one redoubling is an idiot or a fanatic, the effect is the same.
If you haven't read Taking the Columbia Quiz at Daled Amos; you must.
And don't miss the response; it's excellent.
If you haven't read Gaza Update at NRO's the Corner; you must.
Not exactly the stirrings of freedom and democracy are they?
If you haven't read Seraphic Secrets' Words about Screenwriting; you must.
And if you can fit those three words at the end into a single sentence, let me know. If you check the comments you'll see that you aren't alone in that endeavor.
If you haven't read Electorate Shifts Democratic; Dems fear Hillary drag; you must.
With the number of Republican representatives announcing their retirements, it's starting to look like the early 90's in reverse. Not a positive sign to me. And read the Mark of Rove where he explains the Hillary drag effect.
If you haven't read Picking the right ethicist at Pillage Idiot; you must.
More fun at the expense of Randy Cohen.
If you haven't read Israel Matzav's PETA slams Hamas video clip; you must.
Apparently the ethics of killing people aren't as established as the ethics of killing animals for the folks at PETA.
If you haven't read Roger L. Simon's The Revolutionary Guard continued; you must.
Roger continues to pick apart Robin Wright's efforts to mock the administrations efforts at fighting Iran.
If you haven't read Quickies at Done with Mirrors; you must.

similar in Soccer Dad.

if you must

How it got done

On Wednesday, I was very down on the Orioles. It looked as if the Orioles were going to end the day without signing their #1 draft pick, catcher Matt Weiters. If that had happened, the Orioles would have forfeited their rights to Weiters.

But then word got out at the last minute that the Orioles had reached an agreement with Weither's at a price less than what his "advisor" Scott Boras said he was insisting on. So not only did the Orioles enjoy a thrilling victory on Wednesday, they possibly landed the future of their franchise.

One element of the signing that I found interesting was a comment by the Orioles' director of scouting, Joe Jordan.

"They got the deal done," said an elated Orioles scouting director Joe Jordan. "You can tell the city of Baltimore that the old evil owner stepped up and took care of things tonight. We had to fight to the end."

I read the comment that Jordan was speaking with his tongue in cheek. It was, I thought, a healthy acknowledgment that Orioles management understood how poorly it was perceived by the fan base and that it was now going to work to repair that relationship.

Some of my fellow bloggers were not so pleased with the statement.
Oriole Post:

I'm proud that the Baltimore Orioles signed Matt Wieters, beat Boras, and scored a major coup, and I commend the team on doing so, but it is to be expected -- isn't it?

We all want to beat our chests and cry out to the sky when we do something good, but in the manner that Mr. Jordan did it in?

Absolutely not. He sounds so ornery and cock full of himself, it's not funny and very insulting to the people left who come out and support the team.

Inside Charm City :

Jordan is obviously taking a dig at Angelos detractors and it comes across as petty and vindictive on a night when you’d think mature members of the front office staff would have the sense to talk up the good news that occurred instead of taking pot-shots at people who pay their salaries through ticket sales.

According to this account in the Sun it appears that Boras's original contract demands were higher than he expected to get for Weiters.

MacPhail, in Toronto, and owner Peter Angelos spoke by phone with Boras. Meanwhile, Jordan and his administrative assistant, Marcy Zerhusen, worked and worried from the third floor of the B&O warehouse, maintaining dialogue with one of Boras' representatives while staying in contact with MacPhail.

"There were a lot of things going on, just trying to gather information and see where we were," Jordan said. "In the end, it came together quickly. Marcy and I high-fived each other.

"From about 7 o'clock on, it seemed like every 15 or 20 minutes we were getting updates from Major League Baseball, as far as signings. As close as it was getting to the deadline, you could just see there was a pecking order. And as much as we're trying to push this thing along, it's not going to happen."

Not until other first-rounders reached agreements, including Kansas City's Mike Moustakis at No. 2 and the Chicago Cubs' Josh Vitters at No. 3 - leaving Wieters as the last domino to fall.

"I don't think, in these kinds of situations, that you really know if it's going to happen," Boras said. "The way these contracts work, it's a fair deal for everyone. Skill-wise, this is an important signing for the Baltimore Orioles."

Boras said he told the Orioles that Wieters would consider signing if they agreed to pay him the net present value of the contract for high school pitcher Rick Porcello, another Boras client who received a four-year major league deal from the Detroit Tigers, as the 27th pick, worth $7 million, including a $3.58 million bonus.

Baseball musings links to Sports Agent Blog arguing (I think) that the earlier deadline keeps salaries in line, but that those who sign the latest still end up maximizing the salary and bonuses they'll earn.

Different Rules same outcome Rany Jazayerli explains why the new rules don't change the likelihood that a "tough sign" will still drop to one of the better teams later in the draft.

Ken Rosenthal argues that drafting well (and even overpaying for a high draft pick) can change around a team's fortunes and is, surprisingly, a cost effective way of improving. Jayson Stark, though, argued that more often than not high draft picks are busts.

Crossposted on OTB Sports and Soccer Dad.
baseball, matt weiters, baltimore orioles.

The rebirth of rick ankiel

No doubt you remember Rick Ankiel, the once highly touted pitching prospect of the St. Louis Cardinals. He rose quickly through minors, succeeding at every single stop. But when he reached the majors, his control left him. In the playoffs no less.

But that isn't the only misfortune he suffered.

Rick Ankiel did not grow up in a ticky tacky little box out of Agrestic, California. Instead, he scraped by along with his mother, who dealt with an abusive spouse that was serving a prison sentence. His dad was serving time for drug smuggling while Rick was being scouted heavily by every Major League team. His half-brother was also in jail, and was arrested 28 times in a 6-year span. If you think the past few years were rough, you have no idea.

Which is why I am not surprised that Rick Ankiel has persevered and is once again successful on a team that is struggling to be a playoff contender. Ankiel took his agent’s advice (none other than Scott Boras), and put baseball in the back of his mind for a while. He headed out to SoCal to get away from it all. Boras was there for Ankiel when he needed him most (unlike IMG for Jennifer Capriati). He hung out with Ankiel in Southern California, set him up with other players, and also linked him with a sports psychologist.

(For more on Scott Boras's operation, see here.)

Today Charles Krauthammer cheers Ankiel's return in the Natural returns to St. Louis. (or here.)

The kid is never the same. He never recovers his control. Five miserable years in the minors trying to come back. Injuries. Operations. In 2005, he gives up pitching forever.

Then, last week, on Aug. 9, he is called up from Triple-A. Same team. Same manager. Rick Ankiel is introduced to a roaring Busch Stadium crowd as the Cardinals' starting right fielder.

In the seventh inning, with two outs, he hits a three-run home run to seal the game for the Cardinals. Two days later, he hits two home runs and makes one of the great catches of the year -- over the shoulder, back to the plate, full speed.

Krauthammer correctly writes that this catch was so spectacular because Ankiel misjudged the ball. Despite the recent heroics, Krauthammer expect normalcy to return.

He made the catch. The crowd, already delirious over the two home runs, came to its feet. If this had been a fable, Ankiel would have picked himself up and walked out of the stadium into the waiting arms of the lady in white -- Glenn Close in a halo of light -- never to return.

But this is real life. Ankiel is only 28 and will continue to play. The magic cannot continue. If he is lucky, he'll have the career of an average right fielder. But it doesn't matter. His return after seven years -- if only three days long -- is the stuff of legend. Made even more perfect by the timing: Just two days after Barry Bonds sets a synthetic home run record in San Francisco, the Natural returns to St. Louis.

By learning a new position and to hit while already in his twenties Ankiel has accomplished something really rare. Is it the start of a very good second career? It's too early to tell. But you must want him to succeed.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

baseball, rick ankiel, st louis cardinals.

Having it both ways - walt and mearsheimer style

Earlier I wrote about the pre-emptive book tour staged Profs. Walt and Mearsheimer using the good offices of the New York Times. I've had a little time to reflect on their complaints and find it astonishing that they are taken seriously. But now I'd like to collect my thoughts in a more orderly fashion.

I've read their paper. What was remarkable is how familiar I was with the events they described and how they selectively quoted from news sources to back their position. What they wrote was not an academic exercise, but an extended blog entry - on paper - with no ability for the reader to click on a link and read their complete sources.

Think back for a moment for the reason that Walt and Mearsheimer claimed that they couldn't be published in America. The Forward reported last year

“I do not believe that we could have gotten it published in the United States,” Mearsheimer told the Forward. He said that the paper was originally commissioned in the fall of 2002 by one of America’s leading magazines, “but the publishers told us that it was virtually impossible to get the piece published in the United States.”

Most scholars, policymakers and journalists know that “the whole subject of the Israel lobby and American foreign policy is a third-rail issue,” he said. “Publishers understand that if they publish a piece like ours it would cause them all sorts of problems.”

"All sorts of problems?" In an interview with the sympathetic Mother Jones magazine, though we learn,

MJ: Have either of you experienced consequences at Harvard or the University of Chicago for publishing this report?

SW: Nothing substantial. There have been a few things I know about—invitations that were cancelled and things like that. But one of the reasons we wrote this is that John and I were both in a position where we could do this without losing our jobs.

JM: There is no evidence that I've suffered at the University of Chicago as a consequence of the article. What the actual long-term consequences will be for my professional career are hard to say. My sense is that Steve and I will pay a significant price, but it's hard at this early date to point to evidence that supports that conclusion, and hopefully I will be proven wrong.

MJ: In what sense do you imagine paying a price?

JM: I think that in the wake of the piece it would be almost impossible for either of us to ever be appointed to a policy-making position in Washington. It's also difficult to imagine Steve becoming a high-level academic administrator, despite the fact that he just completed a distinguished tour of service as the academic dean at the Kennedy School.

So despite the fact that they claimed (with no basis) that publishing their paper would have severe consequences for any publisher who assumed that risk, they acknowledged three months later that they, themselves had suffered no consequences. (Though they claimed to anticipate that they'd suffer some.)

Two more points are worth noting. Walt and Mearsheimer are having the book published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux effectively refuting their claim that no American publisher would handle their work. Secondly, now in their recent appearance in the NY Times they're claiming

American Jews who lobby on Israel’s behalf are not all that different from the National Rifle Association, the anti-tax movement, AARP or the American Petroleum Institute, he said, “They just happen to be really good at it.”

“It’s the way American politics work,” he continued. “Sometimes powerful interest groups get what they want, and it’s not good for the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and about the Cuba lobby.”

To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents’ Day sales and “Law & Order” reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: “People are allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties, loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland.”

Either they're argument is so explosive (as they claimed) that people wish to stifle them, or there's nothing particularly remarkable about their argument (as they're claiming now), in which case what's so important about their book? Clearly they're being disingenuous now. They understand the gravity of the charge of dual loyalty, so now they're saying that the charge is no big deal. And they can't have that and still attach the importance to their paper.

Last year when David Duke expressed his approval of the paper, Walt was quick to repudiate that support

Mr. Walt said last night, "I have always found Mr. Duke's views reprehensible, and I am sorry he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world."

But of course what Walt (and Mearsheimer) won't acknowledge is that, of course, in this case Duke was right. Their paper is perfectly aligned with the believers in ZoG. But if they rejected Duke's support, why'd they run off and do an interview with Robert Fisk? And consider the artwork that accompanied that interview. (Scroll about halfway down and read the accompanying commentary.)

Blogger David T. notes that the Independent's cover art--shown nearby--depicts an American flag with the stars replaced by Stars of David. The same image, he notes, appeared on a flyer, also shown nearby, from International Third Position, "a neo-nazi group founded by Nick Griffin."

My guess is that they object to Duke's support because his views are too well known in America. There's no way they can co-opt him and retain any level of credibility. But they'll accept Fisk's embrace even if it means accepting an ideology remarkably similar to Duke's. There's no cost in that. Fisk isn't the pariah like Duke.

Walt and Mearsheimer have been playing a double game since their paper appeared. They claimed that it was too controversial, now they're saying (effectively) it's not too controversial. They reject David Duke's but accept Robert Fisk's.

They want to be recognized for taking on a taboo subject but don't want to accept the consequences because the way they approached the topic was unacceptable.

Previously at Soccer Dad.

Walt Mearsheimer.

Council speak 08/17/2007

The council has spoken and, for me, there's some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I voted for the winner and runner up in each category. The bad news is that I was shut out for the third straight week. I don't recall having such a severe drought since joining the council!

On to more pleasant things. The Council Winner was
The "Don't Make Waves!" Theory of Iraqi Politics by Big Lizards. It was a thinking peace that forced us to consider that the conventional wisdom about what was necessary politically in Iraq, may be wrong. The Council runner up was Bookworm Room's Political Fairy Tales **Bumped ('cause it was getting lost below)** which reconsidered past history and compared it to the first draft we are now experiencing.

The winning non-Council entry was General James Mattis -- Attacking the al Qaeda "Narrative" at Small Wars Journal. Small Wars Journal is a valuable resource into the minds of the Generals running the war under Gen. Petraeus. If you're going to win the debate with your enemy (after which hearts and minds follow) you must define the terms of the debate instead of him. There were two runners up. One was a nifty bit of detective work at Captain's Quarters: Progressive For Racist Smears? (Update: Progressive Wises Up A Little Late). It tells how Capt. Ed tracked down the owner of website devoted to smearing Fred Thompson. And Yehuda's The difference between reward and punishment - which was my nominee - was tied as runner up. It's a photo essay of by a father of a recent inductee into the IDF.

If you're a blogger and you'd like to be considered for the non-council portion of the competition next week, follow the instructions here.

watcher's council.

Daily Star demands carrots not sticks for Iran

The Daily Star weighs in on the "disastrous foreign-policy blunder" of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group:

[...] The Bush administration's policy of dealing with Iran by using sticks, tough talk and threats has already proven ineffectual on all fronts. The only measurable impact of backing Iran into a corner - without offering a way out - is that the regime has been given a perfect excuse to impose domestic restrictions in the name of national security.

Labelling the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group will give the Iranian people even greater reason to rally together in the face of perceived American hostility and will strengthen the hand of those who are already restricting Iranian civil society. Such a move would serve to bolster the view that regardless of what the Iranian government does, the Americans will continue to pursue the objective of regime change in the Islamic Republic. The voices of those Iranians who have been calling for greater cooperation with the West over Iraq and the nuclear file will likely be drowned out by those who say that such a policy is futile.

As a result, a terrorist classification would undoubtedly undermine whatever progress has been made toward a cooperative approach to stabilizing Iraq. And in that regard, the American move will represent yet another tragedy for this crisis-plagued region.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

He saw a cloud ...

where most Republicans probably saw a silver lining.
from Rumsfeld Resigned as Defense Secretary on Day Before Elections

That revelation angered many Republicans who thought GOP electoral losses would have been reduced if Rumsfeld had been removed earlier.

"If Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said at the time. "I'd still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee."

Emphasis mine.

via memeorandum.

"Servitudes in Persia"

This is a document entitled "Servitudes in Persia" from The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam by Bat Ye'or, Associated University Press, 1985, p. 336. I expanded the bibliographic citation at the end. By the way, those "advantages in inheritance" are in effect in Iran right now, according to the BBC.

At Hamadan in 1890, Shah Nasr-ad-Din (1848-1896) renewed his 1880 edict, which forbade advantages in inheritance for a Jewish convert to Islam to the detriment of the other Jewish heirs. This royal edict incited the mollahs and the mob to force the Jews of Hamadan in 1892 to conform to the following obligations, under threat of death or conversion:

1. The Jews are forbidden to leave their houses when it rains or snows [to prevent the impurity of the Jews being transmitted to the Shiite Muslims].
2. Jewish women are obliged to expose their faces in public [like prostitutes].
3. They must cover themselves with a two-coloured izar (an izar is a big piece of material with which Eastern women are obliged to cover themselves when leaving their houses).
4. The men must not wear fine clothes, the only material permitted them being a blue cotton fabric.
5. They are forbidden to wear matching shoes.
6. Every Jew is obliged to wear a piece of red cloth on his chest.
7. A Jew must never overtake a Muslim on a public street.
8. He is forbidden to talk loudly to a Muslim.
9. A Jewish creditor of a Muslim must claim his debt in a quavering and respectful manner.
10. If a Muslim insults a Jew, the latter must drop his head and remain silent.
11. A Jew who buys meat must wrap and conceal it carefully from Muslims.
12. It is forbidden to build fine edifices.
13. It is forbidden for him to have a house higher than that of his Muslim neighbour.
14. Neither must he use plaster for white-washing.
15. The entrance of his house must be low.
16. The Jew cannot put on his coat; he must be satisfied to carry it rolled under his arm.
17. It is forbidden for him to cut his beard, or even to trim it slightly with scissors.
18. It is forbidden for Jews to leave the town or enjoy the fresh air of the Countryside.
19. It is forbidden for Jewish doctors to ride on horseback [this right was generally forbidden to all non-Muslims, except doctors].
20. A Jew suspected of drinking spirits must not appear in the street;
if he does, he should be put to death immediately.
21. Weddings must be celebrated in the greatest secrecy.
22. Jews must not consume good fruit (1:377).

K Leven. English translation in Littman, D. G. "Jews Under Muslim Rule: The Case of Persia." WLB 32 (1979): 7-8

Kos diarist expert on Judaism, O'Reilly not

This is so cutting-edge:

[...]I'm Jewish.

Not only am I Jewish, but I am professional Jewish, meaning I have an advanced degree in Jewish Studies (M.Phil.in Modern Jewish Studies from Oxford) above and beyond my Ph.D. in Anthropology. That means I am officially licensed and have been paid to talk, write and otherwise be an expert on Jewish stuff. In fact, one of the things I have written about is anti-Semitism--all kinds of anti-Semitism. I know, for example, that when you write "anti-Semitism," you capitalize the "S." Many people do not know that, but I do.

Among the many things I know about Jews, Judaism, one thing I know for certain is that Bill O'Reilly is not an expert on Jews and Judaism. If he was an expert, I would have come across that fact at some point in my studies or, if he had become an expert so recently that he was not yet mentioned in books or articles, then one of my many Jewish studies expert friends would have told me. It probably would have happened at at Jewish Studies conference (we have them every year) with a friend walking up to me and saying something like: 'Did you hear? Bill O'Reilly is now an expert on Jews and Judaism.'

That hasn't happened. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Walt and mearsheimer get sanitized by the nytimes

The New York Times today writes about Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel

“Now that the cold war is over, Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States,” they write. “Yet no aspiring politician is going to say so in public or even raise the possibility” because the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful. They credit the lobby with shutting down talks with Syria and with moderates in Iran, preventing the United States from condemning Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon and with not pushing the Israelis hard enough to come to an agreement with the Palestinians. They also discuss Christian Zionists and the issue of dual loyalty.

There are other reasons for not condemning last year's war against Hezbollah. For example Hezbollah attacked Israel. Hezbollah is sponsored by Iran that is hostile to the United States.

Alas they're hurt.

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.

The authors were particularly disturbed by the Chicago council’s decision, since plans for that event were complete and both authors have frequently spoken there before. The two sent a four-page letter to 94 members of the council’s board detailing what happened. “On July 24, Council President Marshall Bouton phoned one of us (Mearsheimer) and informed him that he was canceling the event,” and that his decision “was based on the need ‘to protect the institution.’ He said that he had a serious ‘political problem,’ because there were individuals who would be angry if he gave us a venue to speak, and that this would have serious negative consequences for the council. ‘This one is so hot,’ Marshall maintained.”

A Jewish organization's cancellation "particularly disturbed" them? Why should Jews be offended? I'm more offended that a Jewish organization considered giving them a platform.

“It’s the way American politics work,” he continued. “Sometimes powerful interest groups get what they want, and it’s not good for the country as a whole. I would say that about the farm lobby and about the Cuba lobby.”

To the authors, dual loyalty is as American as Presidents’ Day sales and “Law & Order” reruns. As Mr. Mearsheimer explained: “People are allowed to have multiple loyalties. They have religious loyalties, loyalty to family, to an organization and you can have loyalty to other countries. Someone who is Irish can have a loyalty to Ireland.”

“The problem,” he said “is when you raise the subject of dual loyalty, many people tend to think of it in the context of the old anti-Semitic canard and making the argument that Jews are disloyal to the U.S.”

And why would people think that? Because the arguments are poorly made? Was it that interview that they gave to Robert Fisk last year that featured an American flag with a star field made up of Jewish stars?

The disingenuousness of these two is astonishing. They claim that their views are controversial (therefore worth debating) but then say that dual loyalty is no big deal? Come on.

Given the sloppiness of their work demonstrated in their paper last year you really have to question their motivation. They weren't happy last year when David Duke praised their work, but given what they wrote they had no reason to be surprised.

more via buzztracker.

Previously at Soccer Dad.

Walt Mearsheimer.

Guarding the guards

The New York Times reported Terrorist Label for Iran Guard Reflects U.S. Impatience With U.N.

“We are confronting Iranian behavior across a variety of different fronts, on a number of different, quote unquote, battlefields, if you will,” the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters in Washington. His use of the word “battlefields” was described by some European diplomats as another ratcheting up of the anti-Iran statements.

Mr. McCormack maintained that his use of the word did not mean that the State Department had adopted the view that the United States should confront Iran militarily, a view that has been advocated by some officials in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

“I was trying to illustrate that you don’t just confront Iran with guns and soldiers; sometimes you do it with lawyers and accountants and diplomats,” Mr. McCormack said.

But other administration officials said that the United States was getting increasingly frustrated that Security Council sanctions, which were meant to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, have been anemic. Beyond that, administration officials are worried that America’s allies in imposing the sanctions — particularly Russia and China — have been slow to agree to increase the pressure and have balked at imposing tougher measures.

The article goes on to bring up Iranian objections to the designation.

“The Americans want to cover up their own failure in Iraq with these kinds of accusations,” said Akbar Alami, a reformist member of Parliament.

A former deputy defense minister, Alireza Akbari, warned that the measure could cause instability in the region. “If they put pressure on the security apparatus of a country, they should expect a similar reaction,” he said. “And it would certainly serve the real terrorists in the region if the United States and Iran move toward confronting one another.”

Since there would be financial implications to this designation, I'd guess that this is how the Iranians express their fear of the American action.

The Hashmonean appreciates the American move.

Of course, the Iranian missionaries of murder don’t fight soldiers head on, they are cowards who target civilians with rockets, or scurry around like rats & roaches leaving roadside bombs along the way in the hopes of thwarting their number one enemy - Liberty & Freedom.

They train, they arm and they recruit because Iran is the foremost World sponsor of Terrorism, home of the Islamic Revolution and the Guards are the foot-soldiers in their terrorist army. It was the Revolutionary Guards who abducted at gunpoint the UK’s sailors recently, and it is the Revolutionary Guards whom Iran has threatened to employ in the training & deployment of over 50,000 human suicide bombers to target America & its interests.

When one considers all this, in conjunction with the mad drive for nuclear weapons, the endless threats and sickening repression, the lack of human rights, the religious police strolling around beating people for not dressing according to Islamic code.. One can only stop, look at the American administration and ask - What the hell took you so long!?

Robin Wright gives some details in the Washington Post how the designation could work.

The main goal of the new designation is to clamp down on the Revolutionary Guard's vast business network, as well as on foreign companies conducting business linked to the military unit and its personnel. The administration plans to list many of the Revolutionary Guard's financial operations.

"Anyone doing business with these people will have to reevaluate their actions immediately," said a U.S. official familiar with the plan who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced. "It increases the risks of people who have until now ignored the growing list of sanctions against the Iranians. It makes clear to everyone who the IRGC and their related businesses really are. It removes the excuses for doing business with these people."

Unfortunately at the end of the informative article Wright finds a naysayer to quote.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

Such sanctions can work only alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added.

(see more at memeorandum)

Roger L Simon critiques Wright's reporting

What interests me here is how the article came to be. The prose is sprinkled with the usual journo-blather: "according to US officials... sources said... analysts said," etc. But which officials and which sources and which analysts, nadie sabe. Meaning, I write what I want to write. Or perhaps I should say I Wright what I Wright. That's not to say this is wrong or it's not happening but my best guess is that someone at the State Department leaked this to the reporter because he/she knew the reporter would be cooperative,be the right mouthpiece. And he/she was correct. That's modern journalism. Or perhaps more accurately, "Scoop" lives.

ScrappleFace has a handle on the problem:
US May Label Iran Guards ‘Terrorist’, Earth ‘Round’

Today's reporting by Wright confirm Roger L Simon's assessment. Somehow she can't find anyone to offer unqualified support of the administration's action.

Although they share deep concern about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, European and Arab governments are particularly alarmed about new U.S. moves, including plans to cite Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "specially designated global terrorist." The move would block the elite unit's assets and pressure foreign companies doing business with its vast commercial network.

If the Revolutionary Guard is a threat doesn't it make sense to limit their resources? This seems to be a no-brainer.

UPDATE: Maryland Conservatarian weighs in with At the risk of offending Iran ...

more via buzztracker.

iranian revolutionary guards.

The missing killed

Two weeks ago Elder of Ziyon posted Grim Milestone in which he noted that, since the beginning of the year, 500 Palestinians had been killed by other Palestinians and that most of these deaths had occurred under the radar of the international media.

This week there was an excellent example of this occurring.

Yesterday Ynet (and other news organizations) reported that a clash between Hamas and two members of Hamas were killed.

Two Hamas security men were killed on Tuesday evening in heavy clashes with members of the Dogmush clan in Gaza.

Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported on this story. (Each newspaper carries links to wire service stories, so it's possible that they linked to an AP or Reuters report; they didn't use their regular correspondents to report it though.)

However both papers reported on the Israeli incursion into Gaza in which 6 people were killed.

This perpetuates the false impression that Israel is the reason for the Palestinian/Israeli violence rather than the radicalism of the Palestinian groups like Hamas and Fatah.

Mere Rhetoric observes that the idea that one of the men killed was a civilian is a bit hard to buy.

And then there's this innocent civilian. According to the AP, he just happened to wander onto his roof - where snipers hang out - at the time of the firefight. He was then gunned down by heartless Zionists:

israel, hamas, media bias.

Submitted 08/16/2007

The Watcher's Council's nominations are in:
The Glittering Eye presents Re-Crafting U.S. Foreign Policy in which he presents and critiques the foreign policy statements of Gov. Bill Richardson.

In Needed Perspective, The Colossus of Rhodey.Hube argues that those who claim that African American achievement is left out of the textbooks, haven't been reading the textbooks very carefully.

Done With Mirrors criticizes Mitt Romney's response to a hostile quesition in Mitt Wit and offers advice how he could have better answered the question.

Rhymes With Right recounts An Interesting Morning and the sermon he offered his church.

Bookworm Room offers Political Fairy Tales **Bumped ('cause it was getting lost below)** a consideration of how the popular story of Mutiny on the Bounty distorts historical reality and how some in our media are doing the same right now.

The "Don't Make Waves!" Theory of Iraqi Politics is this week's entry by Big Lizards. He's arguing that too much time is spent worrying about whether the political leaders of Iraq will do their jobs, when what will be significant is how Iraq develops politically from the grass roots up.

‘Okie’ on the Lam laments how Brussels has gone from being a place of innovation to a place surrendering to the yoke of the Caliphate in Something Rotten In Brussels

Cheat Seeking Missiles questions if Globalization Killed the Bison?! He uses the story of the bison to point out that tremendous strides have been made in fighting pollution in the developed world.

Joshuapundit's Roundup With Weekend Monkey, 8/10/07, a clever recounting of his commentary on last week's events including Barack Obama's saber rattling over Pakistan, the eviction of Jews from Hebron, the CAIR trial and the exoneration of two more Marines in the Haditha killings.

The Education Wonks identify The Elephant in the EduReform Room that is that teachers are often unqualified to teach the subjects they're teaching.

In A Straw in the Wind, Right Wing Nut House analyzes the recent Ames, Iowa straw pole using all the requisite cliches of pundit-hood.

In Africa Appreciates, I looked at a recent op-ed by Amnon Rubenstein that observed that Israel was actually growing more popular in Africa (in contrast to Europe where anti-Israel Israeli academics have a good following) and offered reasons of my own why that would be.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

watcher's council.

SF Chronicle: Israel "ripe for boycott"

The author is George Bisharat. We're seeing this sort of thing with increasing frequency in left-leaning newspapers:

. . . "the worst first" has never been the rule for whom to boycott. Had it been, the Pol Pot regime, not apartheid South Africa, would have been targeted in the past. It was not - Cambodia's ties to the West were insufficient to make any embargo effective. Boycotting North Korea today would be similarly futile. Should every other quest for justice be put on hold as a result? [...]

What state actions should trigger a boycott? Expelling or intimidating into flight a country's majority population, then denying them internationally recognized rights to return to their homes? Israel has done that.

Seizing, without compensation, the properties of hundreds of thousands of refugees? Israel has done that.

Systematically torturing detainees, many held without trial? Israel has done that.

Assassinating its opponents, including those living in territories it occupies? Israel has done that.

Demolishing thousands of homes belonging to one national group, and settling its own people in another nation's land? Israel has done that. No country with such a record, whether first or 50th worst in the world, can credibly protest a boycott.[...]

What are the Palestinians' "just demands"? What would Israel have to do, exactly, to yield to Bisharat's boycott? Withdraw to the '67 borders? Doesn't that only get them a hudna? White South Africans comprised a small minority of the population of a large country, and it was expected that they would simply relinquish power. They were expected to recognize, in other words, that they had no right to self-determination as Whites. I think that is often part of the appeal of comparing Israel to South Africa. It enables one to call for Israel's dissolution without having to state it openly.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Nasrallah: "The West tried to separate the Arabic homeland to smaller parts and it was happened"

Nasrallah speaks for all "freedom seekers" and essentially describes the map of the Middle East as a giant Western plot. From IRIB, although the mangled English (even by IRIB standards) suggests it was taken from somewhere else:

Secretary General of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah underlined that the West's goal was isolation of the Resistance, so they focused on religious and tribal conflicts.

"They tried to pretend that this victory was for a certain party or tribal but as I said in August 2006, the victory belongs to all of Lebanese people, all Arabs and all of the Muslims and freedom seekers around the world," Nasrallah said.

"The West wants to sow the seeds of discord among us. This is their plot. When we fight each other, they will succeed and we will defeat," he added.

"We said that we were fighting as representative of Islamic Ummah. If we were defeated in that war, it would have affected the fate of Palestine, Syria, Iraq and even Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt," Nasrallah said.

"If the Resistance had been failed, Jordan would have changed into the everlasting residence for Palestinians and the Saudi Arabia would have been separated," he revealed.

"We nipped the new Middle East plan in the bud, Nasrallah said, warning that "they want to revive it again."

Pointing to remarks of the World Zionism founder, Teodor Hertzel that had said" we should establish common wealth union in the Middle East in which the 'Jew state' has an active role," Nasrallah warned all of Lebanese and Arabs about Zionists' old plot.

"The West wanted to carry out two plots. First, they planned to make a powerful human shield to separate the Arab countries in west of the Suez Canal from those in eastern part of the Canal. Second, they wanted to make the Suez Canal, enemy of the regional nations. So they established 'Israel' in line with the mentioned goals, he added.

"The West tried to separate the Arabic homeland to smaller parts and it was happened," Nasrallah said.

"America tried to establish some states in the region to put them in permanent religious and racial enemity. It wants to make the Zionist regime the gendarme in the region," Nasrallah warned.

"We (Islamic Ummah) should be vigilant. We should recognize priorities and resist against the plots with unity and solidarity," he added. [...]

Treating Hamas Like The IRA

Great Britain is straining at the bit, trying to set the stage for dealing with Hamas:

On the day that the British Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee called for a reassessment of Britain's Mideast policy, including dialogue with Hamas and Hizbullah, the Labor Party chairman of the committee, Mike Gapes, once again drew comparisons between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the troubles in Northern Ireland.

Saying that the lessons of Northern Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army moved away from terrorism and into political dialogue with Britain, should be applied to the Middle East, Gapes said: "I think from experience in Northern Ireland, you know that sometimes you have to engage with people in a diplomatic way, sometimes quietly."

Joint Press Availability with British Secretary of State of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
October 24, 2001

...QUESTION: Secretary Powell, does the situation in Northern Ireland not show us all that negotiations is really the only way forward in all of these situations? And just secondly, when you met Martin McGuinness yesterday, did he give you assurances that there is no link between the IRA and the FARC guerillas in Colombia?

SECRETARY POWELL: We didn't, when I met with him yesterday, we didn't discuss that. We were just sort of celebrating the progress that was achieved yesterday. And I think negotiations are always to be preferred to military conflict, and even when you have military conflict, it doesn't always result in the kind of classic military win. Very often, it sets the stage for negotiations.

And so I hope what we have seen in Northern Ireland in the last 24 hours, which culminates a process that took many, many years long to get to this point, is an example of what can be achieved when people of good will come together, recognize they have strong differences, differences that they have fought over for years, but it's time to put those differences aside in order to move forward and to provide a better life for the children of Northern Ireland.

FOREIGN MINISTER STRAW: Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better -- infinitely better -- than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Crossposted at Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jack Straw and Mike Gapes and Great Britain and Hamas and IRA and Irish Republican Army.

Al-Ahram: "Marx . . . saw by the 1840s that the Jewish god was really money"

Pretty disgusting. And ever-obliging, Al-Ahram saved MEMRI the trouble of translating it for us:

[...] This pact with the devil -- Zionism using anti-Semitism to justify and assist the creation of a Jewish state -- eventually led to Zionists actually abetting Hitler in his desire to expel all Jews from Europe, since the Zionists very much wanted all Jews to move to Palestine. The term becomes a farce when applied to Arabs, who are the real Semites and are the very real victims of racism today. It is well known that Muslims and Jews lived in harmony for their entire history until the rise of Zionism . . .

. . . the real situation is the opposite of what is touted by Israel and its friends. Frustrated, powerless anti-Zionists let off steam by spray-painting swastikas on synagogues or blowing themselves up, not a pretty thing. But the real racism is by the militarily dominant Jews of Israel and America -- the Zionists, the causus racismi. The Zionists manage to have their cake and eat it -- use "anti-Semitism" to attack their enemies and promote the continual expansion of a religious, imperialist state. And so far, the world has let them get away with it.

Then there's the devastating socio-economic critique of Judaism by Marx, who saw by the 1840s that the Jewish god was really money. The Jews were the traditional usurers and this had become the touchstone of Judaism over the past 2,000 years. Marx's Das Kapital begins with "making money out of money", with usury as the zenith of obfuscation -- a gold coin just sitting there magically reproducing itself. Beats the hell out of the Golden Calf. "Money is the essence of man's life and work which have become alienated from him: this alien monster rules him and he worships it." Who can deny that we all worship money today? A Jew himself, Marx renounced this negative heritage and called for assimilation (and revolution, to be sure).

Add to this economic role the power-behind-the-throne aspect of Jews, who have throughout history surrounded princes and even sheikhs as advisers or -- surprise -- moneylenders, trading with both sides during the many European wars and marrying into royal families. It should therefore come as no surprise if a Jewish agenda creeps into the plans of Christian or secular imperialists, more so today after the spectacular success of Jews in the past two centuries. Just look at the roster of Clinton's and Bush's advisers. Who says politics and religion no longer mix? [...]

The True Torah Jews or Neturei Karta reject Zionism and call for dismantling the state of Israel. They even sent a delegation to the recent notorious anti-Zionist conference in Tehran. But they are a tiny sect which is disowned by mainstream Jews. Their version of Judaism is probably closest to the original Judaism and seems quite harmless. But take a glance at Old Testament texts such as Joshua or Numbers for blood, gore and racism. Yahweh regularly helps the Jews massacre their enemies, including women and children, though occasionally turning his considerable wrath against the Jews themselves for straying.

This is hardly the New Testament or Quran's God of compassion. Then there's the Babylonian Talmud, which boasts of murdering Jesus, who is roundly insulted in the worst possible language and where goyim, especially Christians, are dismissed as less than human. And Jewish holidays, apart from the wonderful Day of Atonement, all seem to focus on massacres of Jewish enemies -- Purim, Hannukah, even Passover. Could this have to do with the frightful remorselessness which Israelis show in their daily murdering of Palestinians? [...]

Tehran Times: "Sans brain, Bush will be a better president"

I often sneer at Mullah-induced warpage in the Iranian Press. This reminds us, at first anyway, of literary traditions that are not so sneer-worthy:

Noon Meem Rashid, the “poet of poets” and pioneer of free verse in Urdu, was also a decorated diplomat who represented Pakistan in numerous cities throughout the world from New York to Jakarta . . .

In one of his fascinating poems, he tells the tale of a leading politician of a rich country who accidentally lost the major parts of his brain. His government panicked over the sudden loss of the prime minister’s brain. A national state of emergency was declared. In an extraordinary session, ministers, government functionaries, advisers, and bureaucrats brainstormed and came up with the idea of sending the brainless leader to the Persian city of Shiraz.

An unusual barber used to live there, expert in his own field, but who was also given another extraordinary gift from God Almighty. He possessed a unique talent for cutting the human skull, removing the brain, and cleaning it before putting it back in the skull or even replacing it if the brain was too badly damaged.

After hectic diplomatic efforts and desperate appeals from the patient’s family, the barber agreed to perform the unusual operation on the foreign leader. While the operation was being performed, a tragedy struck. Somehow the barber wasn’t paying attention for a moment and out of the blue a cat came, picked the brain up off the operating table, and ate it.

The wise barber didn’t panic at all. With the aplomb of a man skilled at his profession, he called his assistants and asked them to immediately bring him a bull’s brain. He then placed the bull’s brain in the politician’s skull and discharged the patient, giving him a clean bill of health.

After he returned to his country, people noticed that the prime minister had become more active, agile, alert, and wise in the affairs of state . . .

Rove, Bush’s chief strategist and the mastermind of his two presidential election victories, who was often called the president’s “brain”, played a major role in orchestrating death, destruction, and misery from Iraq to Afghanistan, to Palestine, to Lebanon.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

No more waiting on wieters

Considering Andy MacPhail's tenure with the Twins, Ken Rosenthal wonders if history is about to repeat with Matt Wieters now that MacPhail is with the Orioles.

MacPhail, the Orioles' new chief operating officer, could be headed toward a negotiating stalemate with the team's first-round pick, Matt Wieters, according to major-league sources.

Like Varitek, Wieters is a switch-hitting catcher out of Georgia Tech. Like Varitek, Wieters is represented by Scott Boras.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos had a long history of avoiding Boras clients before the team selected Wieters fifth overall in June.

MacPhail, former colleagues say, also would not be afraid to adopt a firm position with Boras.

"We're still talking back and forth," MacPhail told FOXSports.com on Monday. "I really don't know how it's going to go."

Andy MacPhail's Jason Varitek debacle may be repeating itself with Matt Wieters. (Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)

The Orioles are not alone in their uncertainty; 11 other clubs have yet to reach agreement with their first rounders. The first-ever deadline for signing picks is 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday.

Boras represents three other unsigned first rounders — high-school infielder Mike Moustakas, the Royals' pick at No. 2; high-school right-hander Rick Porcello, the Tigers' pick at No. 27, and North Carolina State right-hander Andrew Brackman, the Yankees' pick at No. 30.

The Orioles are not along in their quandary, still it's hardly encouraging if the new regime fails to sign one of the most highly regarded picks in this year's draft.

True, there's always a risk and the premium paid to a Boras client makes failure even more expensive. (Think Brien Taylor.)

Rosenthal suggests that MacPhail may not be as rigid as feared.

The Sun's Roch Kubato isn't appeased.

The hiring of MacPhail altered the dynamics of the negotiations, according to one source. Another, however, disagreed, saying, "I don't really think that's it."

MacPhail, who served as a management negotiator during last year's labor talks, would seem likely to follow MLB's slot recommendations for draft-pick bonuses.

However, during MacPhail's tenure as CEO, the Cubs exceeded slot when they signed pitcher Mark Prior to a record $10.5 million contract in 2001.

I don't know what would be worse. Would the failure to sign Wieters be a good sign because it would mean that MacPhail was really in charge? I'd guess that to say that is to engage in wishful thinking.

No knock on Andy MacPhail, but I’d feel better about the Orioles securing the Georgia Tech catcher if someone else was handling the negotiations.

MacPhail, for better or worse, is not going to be overly generous when it comes to signing bonuses. The commissioner’s office wants to keep them down, and MacPhail’s not going to fight it. Not with his background.

He’ll be fair, but I’m not sure fair gets it done. Stay tuned.

More Roch here

I’m told it will be a few more years before the MASN money starts rolling in, so that’s not a factor as tomorrow’s deadline approaches. In the meantime, and again, it’s not my money, but letting Matt Wieters re-enter the draft sends a bad message to fans, the players and the rest of the league.

The Orioles will have egg on their faces if they don’t sign him. Or for drafting him without realizing how much it would cost to sign him.

The latest from the Baltimore Sun.

Less than 24 hours before the deadline to sign draft picks, the Orioles remain about $5 million apart from reaching a deal with their top selection, Georgia Tech catcher Matt Wieters. And while team officials maintain they haven't given up hope of signing the fifth overall pick, it will take a dramatic change to reach an agreement before tonight's midnight cutoff.

According to club sources, Wieters' adviser, Scott Boras, is asking for a deal that slightly exceeds the approximately $10.6 million deal that Mount St. Joseph graduate Mark Teixeira signed after he was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 2001. Meanwhile, the Orioles have sweetened their offer in recent days to just less than $6 million.

Even if the team gets the deal done, being this far apart so late in the game doesn't reflect well on the franchise. Sigh.

UPDATE: Commenter John Gibson below was correct in pointing to the signing of Jered Weaver. The Orioles signed Wieters at the last minute.

Like the Angels and Weaver, the Orioles signed Wieters at the last minute. Principal owner Peter Angelos and new president Andy MacPhail worked on the deal while in Toronto for the quarterly owners' meetings last night and, with 10 minutes left before the midnight amateur signing deadline, reached a pact during a phone call with Wieters' agent, Scott Boras.

"They got the deal done," said an elated Orioles scouting director Joe Jordan. "You can tell the city of Baltimore that the old evil owner stepped up and took care of things tonight. We had to fight to the end."

"Evil owner?" Good, it shows that the front office has some perception how popular Angelos is with the fan base. Maybe he'll start listening to his baseball people. And maybe we'll then start appreciating him.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

matt wieters, scott boras, baltimore orioles.

ACN: "Fidel Castro Awarded Cuban Press Dignity Award"

There hasn't been such a great day for humanity since Kim Jong Il won the International Kim Il Sung Prize!

The Cuban Journalists Union (UPEC) granted President Fidel Castro the Prize to Dignity for his exceptional merits and his work in favor of the Cuban press.

In a ceremony held at the UPEC's headquarters, the president of the organization, Tubal Paez, said Fidel embraces in himself the dignity of all Cubans, of the country, and of humanity."

Paez said Cuban journalists have been encouraged by the work of Fidel and Raul. For that reason they decided to give the award to the Cuban President, he said.

Other reporters receiving the prize were Nicolas de la Pena Rubio; Tomas Alvarez de los Rios and Nydia Sarabia Hernandez, for their service to the Cuban press and the Revolution, reported Granma digital Tuesday.

The ceremony was presided over by Alberto Alvarino, deputy head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party's Ideological Department; Ernesto Vera, President of Honor of the Latin American Journalists Federation; and other UPEC members and reporters.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Update: Castro's award is garnering other blog reactions.

Update: Soccer Dad points out that Jeff Jacoby wrote the following a few months ago:

Freedom House gives Cuba its lowest possible rating for civil liberties and political rights, placing it with Burma, North Korea, and Sudan as one of the world's most repressive regimes. Hundreds of political prisoners are behind bars. Among them, writes Carlos Alberto Montaner in Foreign Policy, are "48 young people [imprisoned] for collecting signatures for a referendum, 23 journalists for writing articles about the regime, and 18 librarians for loaning forbidden books."

Brush up your Sheik Zubair

The results can sometimes be impressive when the resources available to a head of state are turned to scholarly pursuits. We have all heard, no doubt, of the contributions of Chairman Mao and James I of England to literary theory. Now, evidently, Muammar Gadhafi has discovered that Shakespeare was an Arab. From the New York Sun:

In the mid-1980s, I had an eight-hour session with Colonel Muammar Gadhafi that began at midnight at an encampment by the Gulf of Sidra in Libya.

Like several press interviews before and after, it essentially consisted of an uninterrupted monologue about his "Green Book" — a thin volume of platitudes he authored — along with his theories on human evolution, relations between males and females, and his belief that Shakespeare was an Arab Bedouin whose original name was Sheik Zubair. (No kidding.) [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

IRIB: "Canadians welcome Nasrallah poster"

Remember that Canadian Hizbullah billboard? You thought it created controversy before it was finally removed, didn't you? Not so, evidently. According to IRIB, it made everybody happy. As the article explains, "The people in Windsor city come to the place of the big poster and take memorial photograph."

People welcomed affixing of a big poster of the Secretary General of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement, Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah in the Canadian city of Windsor along with America's borders.

The poster was affixed on the occasion of the first anniversary of Hezbollah's victory against the usurper Zionist regime.

Pictures of the Lebanese parliament Speaker, Nabih Berri, Leader of the National Free Movement Party Michael Aoun and the former Lebanese prime minister, Salim al-Hoss are alongside of Nasrallah picture.

The big poster with three meters height and seven meters length can be seen from the other side of Deitroit river's west coast in Michigan state.

"The Lebanese and Arab residents in Windsor felicitates the Lebanese nation for their resistance and efforts to establish peace in Lebanon," this sentence has translated into Arabic and English in the poster.

The people in Windsor city come to the place of the big poster and take memorial photograph.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Juggling carnivals and schmoozing

Incoming Carnivals

The latest J-Pix is up as the home of its founder Mr. Bagel. I especially liked the Temple mount pictures.

There are some great Deathly Hallows reviews up at the latest Harry Potter Carnival. So if you're read the book and wish to read some considered comments about it check it out.

Upcoming Carnivals

Schmoozing

The rules: If, and only if, you get The Power of Schmooze Award, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think, or have schmoozed you into submission. Link to this post and Mike so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.

Optional:
Proudly display the ‘The Power of Schmooze Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

So, in accordance to the rules of award, five (actually six) bloggers do indeed come to mind (though I would honestly love to award many more). In fact, I WILL award more, and you'll just have to read them all, because I said so! There! : P

So with no further ado here are my choices

Me-Ander - Shiloh Musings. She has been one of the most frequent hostesses of Haveil Havalim, and flattered me by creating her own Kosher Cooking Carnival.

Mr. Bagel who provided the logo for Haveil Havalim and clever logos for many individual editions, including the classic for the 100th edition that he hosted, has started J-Pix a Jewish Photography Carnival.

Pillage Idiot created the Maryland Blogger Alliance. (When I joined membership increased by 100%. It was very flattering.) And though CrabLaw created the Carnival of Maryland, it is now Pillage Idiot who maintains that carnival.

Remaking a blog is very difficult, but Daled Amos did just that. He has become a one man aggregator of pro-Israel information. Using every source at his disposal, Daled Amos provides links to the most important Israel related articles and blogs of the day. Best of all, most of those sources are available to you on his sidebar.

Meryl Yourish has been blogging longer than even Instapundit. But she doesn't just blog, she promotes other bloggers, especially pro-Israel bloggers, highlighting their contributions (aside from her own great blogging.)

Last but not least, I'm going to give a Schmooze award to Mere Rhetoric for developing the J-Blogosphere search engine.

Blogging is about a conversation where a good idea is suggested by one and promoted by others. My awardees have contributed to that conversation by by promoting others either by maintaining carnivals or by other means.

Promotions

Long time blogging pal Colossus of Rhodey.Hube has been invited to contribute to Newsbusters. I think I first encountered him at a blog called Oh that liberal media, so this is essentially a return to his roots.

Inside Charm City has broken a story of (at least) local interest when noticed the infamous "Stop Snitching" video at the UMBC library.

Nice work all.

blogging, blog carnivals.

Ambassador cal ripken

The State Department announced yesterday that Cal Ripken would become an unofficial ambassador for the United States.

Baseball Hall of Fame player Cal Ripken Jr. is taking his talents teaching kids the fundamentals of the sport to a higher level as a new U.S. State Department public diplomacy sports envoy.

Ripken’s first assignment will be visiting China October 28-November 6 to train Chinese youngsters in the Asian country’s budding baseball program.

Ripken, a shortstop and third baseman in his 21-year career with the Baltimore Orioles, said August 13 at the State Department that he plans to use his new position to bridge the gap between people of different languages and cultures.

Ripken will be the second "sports envoy" the first was figure skater, Michelle Kwan.

The first State Department public diplomacy sports envoy, figure skating star Michelle Kwan, recently returned from Russia on behalf of the United States, where her “message of working hard and dreaming big resonated with young people” in that country, said Hughes.

The Baltimore Sun has a little more on the program.

Cal Ripken Jr., who usually avoids the political arena, was named a State Department sports envoy yesterday. He plans to remain politically neutral even as he joins forces with the Bush administration to try to bolster America's image overseas.

The former Orioles superstar said yesterday that he didn't accept the unpaid post to make a political statement but rather to work with children from other nations on baseball.

He's part of an effort, largely orchestrated by longtime Bush confidant Karen Hughes, to expand the role of athletes in diplomacy. The effort has included sending American wrestlers to Iran and naming figure skater Michelle Kwan as an envoy in 2006 and dispatching her to Russia and China.

The position is unpaid though the State Department will pay for Ripken's travel.

The Sun brings up an additional quesiton, that isn't particularly fair.

The Hall of Famer's appearance with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others from the Bush administration raised the question: Can a sports celebrity enter a political world and still be apolitical?

To Ripken and spokesman John Maroon, the answer is yes. But not everyone is so sure. In Washington, it is hard to pose for pictures with Rice and Hughes - as a smiling Ripken did after delivering brief remarks yesterday - without political meaning being attached to the gesture.

"If I'm someone who is looking at those pictures, I am going to think Cal Ripken supports President Bush," said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. "Ripken is obviously an incredibly popular baseball player and President Bush is unpopular, and you could ask the question: 'Is he trying to boost his popularity?'"

It isn't really a question now. If a Democrat is elected next year and Ripken immediately steps down, that would be a political statement. But nothing Ripken's done or said suggests that there's any political agenda here.

I'm not convinced that this program will work, however I have little doubt that if the State Department of President Kerry had initiated a similar program, that Ripken would have accepted a similar role. It's all hypothetical now, of course, but the question is a little too cynical.

More at USA Today and ESPN.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

cal ripken, sports envoy.

The pursuit of moral arms sales

The UK has long sought a moral arms-sale policy. UK arms sales to such countries as Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Indonesia, for instance, have been viewed as morally problematic in some quarters. So it is certainly understandable that arms sales to the usurper Zionist entity would raise, shall we say, concerns. From JPost.com:

The British government has blocked almost one third of British military exports to Israel this year, citing possible threats to regional stability and fears the equipment might facilitate human rights violations.

According to official figures, the value of UK military sales arms to Israel declined by one third last year, and has fallen by a drastic 75 percent since 2005.

"There is evidence that the British government's export control policy to Israel may have been tightened up," said Parliament's new 2007 Strategic Export Controls report, issued by the Quadrapartite Commission, which comprises representatives from four ministries.

The change in policy, said the report, reflects a convergence of government attitudes with its own official guidelines.

The report comes amid a period of uncertainty in Anglo-Israeli relations . . .

Outside of government, the opposition Liberal Democrat party has called for a rethinking of arms sales to Israel, while in May the UK's Legal Services Commission, the state agency that provides funding for attorney's fees for indigent defendants, agreed to underwrite the costs of litigation brought by a Palestinian man in a British court seeking a ban on arms sales to Israel.

The August 7 Quadripartite Committee report largely praised the government's overall handling of strategic exports but warned that the rapid pace of technological change and rising threat of terrorism required increased state vigilance . . .

While the "case-by-case" approach gave the government a "flexibility" that allowed a "latitude to adjust policy without the need for public explanation," its arms sales policies towards Israel were "neither transparent nor accountable," the panel found.

The committee asked that "the government explain its policy on licensing exports to Israel, Jordan or other countries in the Middle East and that it explain whether it has adjusted its policy since 1997 as events in the Occupied Territories and Middle East have unfolded."

"We further recommend that the government explain how it assesses whether there is a clear risk‚ that a proposed export to Israel might be used for internal repression," it said.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

I guess they really are having economic troubles in Gaza

A few days ago I posted an excerpt from an article containing the following:

The blockade has put Gaza’s fragile economy in danger and the window of opportunity for addressing the crisis “is small and fast closing”, said Filippo Grandi, the deputy head of UN Relief and Works Agency, the international body responsible for Palestinian refugees . . .

Grandi appealed to “the Palestinian Authority, Israel and all other parties” to open the crossings, saying failure to do so would lead to “disastrous consequences . . . "

Shortages in fertilizers used by Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip to produce makeshift rockets have led to a decrease in the number of rockets fired towards Israel.

Ynet found that Palestinian terror groups prefer to save their rockets for rainy days.

But rockets continued to be fired towards Israel on Sunday, with three rockets landing in the western Negev.

The shortages have been blamed on Egypt's clampdown on smugglers operating along the border with the Gaza Strip and Israel's closure of border crossings used to transfer goods into the coastal territory.

The price of a kilo of fertilizer rose from $20 to $50.

Palestinian operatives confirmed the shortages to Ynet but said they still had large quantities of rockets stored in secret caches.

"In addition to the smugglings, our people are producing a similar substitute. But the shortages also apply to materials we use to produce fertilizers and substitutes to it and therefore there is a crisis and the situation is difficult," one operative said.

The shortage led Hamas gunmen to storm the Fatah-affiliated al-Azhar University where they confiscated dozens of kilos of fertilizers.

Terror groups also face shortages in steel used to build the rockets. The price of a steel rod rose from NIS 120 to NIS 800.

"God willing, our men will find other alternatives. The most important thing is that the resistance remains unharmed. Thank God we have brilliant brains in the Strip," another operative said.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

(North) Korean News: "Kim Jong Il Gives On-Site Guidance to Hungnam Fertilizer Complex"

One of the ongoing themes of the North Korean press is the Dear Leader's on-site guidance in various industrial, agricultural, and military settings. The idea is that he is an expert in all fields and that he is micromanaging all those undying feats. Just between me and you, I sometimes find it hard to believe that he is an expert in all those fields, but fertilizer--there's a field where he is bound to have genuine mastery!

General Secretary Kim Jong Il gave on-the-spot guidance to the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex.

He was accompanied by Chief Secretary of the South Hamgyong Provincial Committee of the WPK Hong Song Nam and Secretary Kim Ki Nam and Department Director Pak Nam Gi of the WPK Central Committee.

He first went round the revolutionary museum.

Noting that the complex turned into the nation's dependable big fertilizer producer under the wise leadership of President Kim Il Sung, he said that the undying revolutionary feats of the President would always remain shining in the history of the country.

Then he looked round the newly reconstructed fertilizer production processes to learn about the construction and production there.

Watching the gigantic fertilizer production processes which demonstrate the might of the Juche-based industry, he expressed great satisfaction over the fact that the complex has successfully built a great structure in the spirit of self-reliance fully meeting the need of the new century.

It is a great success that the complex has completed the difficult and complicated reconstruction project requiring high technology in a brief span of time by its own efforts and technology, he said, highly appreciating the feats performed by the officials, workers and technicians of the complex who have devoted all their wisdom and energies to the project and the scientists, technicians and workers of the State Academy of Sciences, the Hamhung Branch of the academy, Hamhung University of Chemical Engineering, the Ryongsong Machine Complex and other units who helped them in the project with an attitude befitting master.

Noting that the successful completion of the updating of the fertilizer production processes, a product of the spirit of self-reliance, is one more demonstration of the might of the nation's rapidly developing science and technology, he stressed that there is nothing impossible when they strive hard to introduce advanced science and technology in a bold and positive manner.

Now that the fertilizer production processes have been updated, it is necessary, accordingly, to improve the management of equipment and technical control and raise the level of technical skills of the workers and thus keep the fertilizer production going at a high rate, he stressed.

He set forth tasks to be fulfilled by the complex, saying that the complex has a very important duty to fulfill for the purpose of developing the nation's agriculture.

In order to solve the problem of food, a key point in the issue of clothing, food and housing, it is necessary to actively develop agriculture and increase the supply of fertilizers for successful farming, he noted, underscoring the need to focus efforts on the fertilizer production, always bearing in mind the President's proposition that "Fertilizer immediately means rice and rice, socialism."

He pointed out that in order to boost the production and supply of efficacious fertilizers it is necessary to keep energetically pushing ahead with the technological updating to furnish all the production processes of the complex with latest equipment and intensify the drive to introduce advanced technology.

He underlined the need for the complex to establish a fertilizer production system depending on locally-available raw and other materials and conduct strenuous scientific researches to steadily cut down the production cost for the purpose of strengthening the Juche character of the chemical fertilizer industry.

He had a photo session with the labor innovators of the complex.

At the end of his on-site guidance, he together with the innovators who have performed feats in the reconstruction project appreciated a performance given by the employees art group of the complex at the Workers' House of Culture.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Terror to necessitate decentralization in the future?

A current article by John Robb at City Journal is entitled "The Coming Urban Terror." Some parts are pretty scary, but the article suggests a solution:

[...] Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists’ likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city . . .

It is almost certain that we will see repeated, perhaps incessant, attempts to deploy bioweapons with new strains of viruses or bacteria. Picture a Russian biohacker who, a decade from now, designs a new, deadly form of the common flu virus and sells it on the Internet, just as computer viruses and worms get sold today. The terrorist group that buys the design sends it to a recently hired lab tech in Pakistan, who performs the required modifications with widely available tools. The product then ships by mail to London, to the awaiting “suicide vectors”—men who infect themselves and then board airplanes headed to world destinations, infecting passengers on the planes and in crowded terminals. The infection spreads quickly, going global in days—long before anyone detects it.

It’s very possible that many cities will fall in the face of such deadly threats . . .

In almost all cases, cities can defend themselves from their new enemies through effective decentralization. To counter systems disruption, decentralized services—the capability of smaller areas within cities to provide backup services, at least on a temporary basis—could radically diminish the harmful consequences of disconnection from the larger global grid. In New York, this would mean storage or limited production capability of backup electricity, water, and fuel, with easy connections to the delivery grid—at the borough level or even smaller. These backups would then provide a means of restoring central services rapidly after a failure.[...]

(Hat Tip: Real Clear Politics)

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Musical monday 7

I'd like to thank Elie's Expositions for hosting last week's Musical Monday 6. Check back with him next week for Musical Monday 8.

This week's a little different. The theme has to do with something fictional. Using the clues you'll probably guess a theme quickly, but it will be wrong. You'll notice that a few items don't quite fit in. Each lyric or title refers to an event, person or thing in that fictional work. The numbers are important. (I'll admit that that is an example of my best guess, rather than rigorous. Some answers may be somewhat subjective. The theme is hidden somewhere in this post.)

1) She is like a cat in the darkness (1)

2) There's a lot of us been pushed around (1)

3) You're sailing softly through the sun (1)

4) When you hypnotize with your eyes (1)

5) Shes a witch of trouble in electric blue, (1)

6) Sparks fly from her finger tips (1)

7) There's magic in my eyes (2)

7a) If looks could kill, they probably will (2)

8) I got silly and found a frog in the water by a hollow log (2)

9) His hair was perfect (3)

10) I heat up, I can't cool down (4)

11) What ever happened to my Translvania Twist (4)

12) She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door (5)

13) But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine (6)

14) All the vampires walkin through the valley (6)

15) I hope you are quite prepared to die (7)

Now for the answers to Musical Monday 5 sponsored here 2 weeks ago. Thanks again to Malibu Stacy for the them and most of the lyrics.

1. "I been Ayn Randed, nearly branded Communist 'cause I'm left-handed"
A simple desultory Phillipic - Simon and Garfunkel

2. "Remember what the dormouse said"
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

3. "Do you know what it's like on the outside?"
New York Mining Disaster 1941 - Bee Gees

4. "I was hoping for a replacement"
After the Gold Rush - Neil Young

5. "Eyes that shine burning red, dreams of you all through my head."
Black Dog - Led Zeppelin

6. "What a field day for the heat"
For what it's worth - Led Zeppelin

7. "Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles"
Space Oddity - David Bowie

8. "He just grinned and shook his head"
The weight - the Band

9. "And I laid traps for troubadors who got killed before they reached Bombay"
Sympathy for the devil - Rolling Stones

10. "Sally, take my hand, we'll travel south cross land"
Baba O'Reilly - The Who

11. "Talking in our beds for a week"
Ballad of John and Yoko - the Beatles

12. "Reflecting the glow Of the winter moonlight."
Wednesday Morning 3 AM - Simon and Garfunkel

13. "When I read the words that it told me It made me sad sad sad"
D'yer Mak'er - Led Zeppelin

14. "I have never met Napoleon But I plan to find the time"
Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan

15. "You fill up my senses like a night in the forest."
Annie's song - John Denver

16. "Meet me in the middle of the night."
Romeo's Song - Steve Forbert

17. "People smile and tell me I'm the lucky one, and we've just begun"
Danny's Song - Loggins and Messina, Anne Murray

18. "I wish that for just one moment you could stand inside my shoes"
Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan.

Thanks to Elie's Expositions, Fiery Spirited Zionist and Rubicon3 for playing!

musical monday, pop music, lyrics lyrics, harry potter

Tehran Times: "Western media keep people uninformed and distracted"

The title is true, I guess. Perhaps what we all really need is the Iranian Press. Let's see how the informed and undistracted view things. Via Mehr News:

[...][Mohammed]Dahlan is the ideal person to lead a coup. He is a petty warlord who thrives on violence and needs Isramerica to give him stature and purpose. He appears not to mind that he is being used to enslave his own people. It matters not to him that Hamas pledged to work out a truce with Israel and stopped all sacrifice bombings once it came to power.

Khalid Meshaal, leader-in-exile of Hamas’s political wing, articulated Hamas’s essentially democratic, conciliatory position in an opinion piece in The Guardian soon after Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006 . . .

Greg Felton is the author of The Host and The Parasite -- How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America, which is a detailed study of Israel’s use of the U.S. economy, government, and military to terrorize the Muslim world and destroy the American republic.

A Palestinian man was martyred by the Zionist regime's guard at an ultra-Orthodox religious school in the old city of occupied al-Qods on Friday.

At least five other people were wounded in the incident, apparently by shots fired by the Zionist guard.

The Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva was founded in 1978 and is located in the heart of the old city near the Temple Mount houses the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

The Zionist regime occupied east al-Qods in the June 1967 war and quickly annexed it, declaring Qods the "eternal and indivisble" capital of the Zionist areas. However, its claims are not recognised by the international community.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Re-thinking barry bonds

For the most complete Barry Bonds smackdown read Right Wing Nuthouse's Not about Barry Bonds.

I am not going to write about his tax problems, brought on by his unreported cash income from signing balls, bats, and anything that isn’t nailed down in a ballpark.

I am not going to write about his personal trainer Greg Anderson, languishing in jail on a contempt charge because he refuses to testify against Bonds and confirm that he and Victor Conte of BALCO helped Bonds bulk up.

I am not going to write about Barry Bonds because Barry Bonds is a cheat, a scoundrel, a woman abuser, and a tax dodge.

In the end though, he lets some ambivalence show through.

No, I won’t write about Barry Bonds. Tomorrow. Today, I, like anyone else who loves baseball, can’t think about anything else.

For a diametrically opposed view of Bonds read John Sickels.

I don't understand why everyone picks on Bonds. Did he use stuff he should not have used? Probably. So did the pitchers he was hitting against. It probably made him stronger, yes, but it did not improve his strike zone judgment, or his hand-eye coordination, and those were the things that have made him such an exceptional hitter. And it helped the guys he was hitting against just as much as it helped him. And he was hitting in San Francisco...you think that the steroids helped him more than the park hurt him the last few years?

This is really ridiculous I think. If Bonds were more personable, this wouldn't be a controversy. The press has hated Barry Bonds way before the steroid thing, just like they hated Ted Williams. Because he doesn't put up with their crap.

This is important. Gaylord Perry was known for scuffing balls, something that had an immediate impact on the game, for it caused a pitched ball to move in unpredictable motions. No matter how long Barry Bonds took steroids he still had to work out to build up his muscles. And it likely had no impact on his coordination.

But even Sickels accepts the premise that Barry is a bad guy personally. Still it's hard to get past some of the evidence otherwise. Consider for a moment what Bonds has done for some of pitchers he's victimized. He's given them autographed bats. And not just Hensley, he also did this for Kip Wells who gave up 600.

And then there's Cal Ripken

It was a joint effort by Barry and me. I like Barry a lot. I think he's got a heart the size of a lion, and a lot of people might not recognize that or might not see it. I just thought that commercial had some potential to go beyond what had been written into it. Not that we're writers or anything. We actually didn't write it. Someone else did. But we talked it through, and I guess I gave them my permission to make a fool out of myself.

(The context of Ripken's remarks were about a commercial he and Barry Bonds had made for Franklin batting gloves. The two player were compared. Then finally the announcer says "Barry Bonds has an earring." As I recall the final scene has Cal sporting an amazingly garish earring with Bonds observing with a bemused look. Cal asks - something like - "You think my Dad will like this?" It's a classic.)

There's no getting many of the negative things Right Wing Nut House wrote about Barry Bonds. However I think his biggest problem wasn't his surliness, but rather that he was surly towards the press corps. Thus he's never gotten the enefit of the doubt in the media, assuring that he's never going to get the benefit of the doubt.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

barry bonds.

Haveil Havalim #129 is UP!

The 129th edition of Haveil Havalim is up at Jack's Shack. Despite his great coverage of many topics, Jack's Shack suggests that he might have even more links as the day goes on. So check back once, twice or even more often to make sure you get them all!

Warning: Next week I'll be getting ready for two sons to go to Yeshiva. No way I'll be able to link to more than about 40 because I'll want to devote the day to family.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of haveil havalim
using our carnival submission form. (This makes things a lot easier for the host than e-mailing links.)

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: haveil havalim, blog carnival.

UPCOMING EDITIONS

August 19 - #130 - Soccer Dad
August 26 - #131 - Soccer Dad (?)
September 2 - #132 - (?)
September 9 - #133 - (?)
(If someone wishes to volunteer for any of these editions please let me know!)

I'd like to thank the wonderful folks at BlogCarnival for this wonderful Blog Carnival Widget that gives information on upcoming hosts and past editions.

Thanks for participating, reading and keeping Haveil Havalim going!

However is someone decides that he/she wants to host in the future let me know at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com or use the BlogCarnival Contact form.

Remember, that while the hosts and hostesses of Haveil Havalim do a wonderful job of editing and searching for interesting posts, they can't see everything. If you want a better chance of being included in Haveil Havalim please submit one or two posts for inclusion.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Most recent editions of Haveil Havalim at Blog Carnival
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

War in a non-war zone

In his column today, Charles Krauthammer deconstructs Scott Beauchamp in the Baghdad Fabulist (or here)

In it Krauthammer points out the central fallacy to Beauchamp's narrative:

Beauchamp follows the terrible tale of his cruelty to the disfigured woman by asking, "Am I a monster?" And answering with satisfaction that the very fact that he could ask this question after (the reader has been led to believe) having been so hardened and brutalized by war shows that there is a kernel of humanity left in him.

But, oh, how much was lost. In the past, you see, he was a sensitive soul with "compassion for those with disabilities." In a particularly treacly passage, he tells us that he once worked in a summer camp with disabled children and in college helped a colleague with cerebral palsy. Then this delicate compassionate youth is transformed into an unfeeling animal by war.

Except that it is now revealed that the mess-hall incident happened before he even got to the war. On which point, the whole story -- and the whole morality tale it was meant to suggest -- collapses.

QandO observes that this puts Beauchamp in the same company with - John Kerry.

Brian Beutler disparages Krauthammer for criticizing the New Republic, where his name is still on the masthead. This is nonsense. Yes Krauthammer once used to contribute rather regularly to TNR, but he hasn't in years. Senior editor is more of an honorific than a position at the magazine or an approval of its contents. (On certain issues even Martin Peretz disagrees with the content!) In no way does this detract from Krauthammer's perceptive criticism.

more at memeorandum.

Council speak 08/10/07

The council has spoken and it has said that Right Wing Nuthouse's My Excellent Adventure and YearlyKos was the top Council submission of the week and Michael Yon's Breads and a circus part II of II was the best non-council entry of the week.

Runner up in the council category was Tancredo and Tonic by Done with Mirrors and there was a tie between Ayaan Hirsi Ali's My View of Islam at the Washington Post's On Faith section and A bridge too far by The Loan Star Times. It speaks volumes about this section that Ms. Ali is a "guest voice," and extremists like former Iranian president (a "moderate" in PC speak) Mohammed Khatami and Hezbollah's Sheikh Fadlallah are considered regular contributors. So to is Islamist apologist John Esposito.

If you'd like to participate in any upcoming Watcher's competition follow the rules here.

watcher's council.

What's trending in africa is trending in china?

Which of the world's largest faiths, Christianity or Islam, is experiencing the greater ideological reassertion and demographic surge?

"Islam" is surely nearly everyone's answer. As American Christians experiment with ever-milder versions of their faith, Muslims display a fervor for extreme interpretations of Islam. As Europe suffers the lowest population growth rates ever recorded, Muslim countries have some of the highest.

But, argues Philip Jenkins recently in the Atlantic Monthly, Islam is the wrong answer. He shows how Christianity is the religion currently undergoing the most basic rethinking and the largest increase in adherents. He makes a good case for its militancy most affecting the next century.

Lots of people seem excited by this article, which begins: "Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter's veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history."

It could happen, I suppose, and my colleague Rosalind Hackett, who studies these things, has suggested that militant Christianity, not Islam, is likely to be the religious force of the 21st century.

A Christian China? Instapundit August 9, 2007

Both items seem to be data points showing an growth in Christianity. Might that have a liberalizing effect on Africa and Asia? Or are Instapundit's doubts justified?

And is the Christian boom in any way related to the positive view many in Africa hold for Israel? (I know that Rubenstein wrote that this friendliness towards Israel was also manifest in Muslim majority countries. But Europe is majority Christian yet its attitude toward Israel seems guided somewhat by fear of its Muslim minority.)

christianity, religion.

Suggestion or prediction?

Steve Levitt wrote in his Freakonomics blog at the NY Times, If you were a terrorist, How would you attack?

Hearing about these rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear. One thing that scares people is the thought that they could be a victim of an attack. With that in mind, I’d want to do something that everybody thinks might be directed at them, even if the individual probability of harm is very low. Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.

Also, I’d want to create the feeling that an army of terrorists exists, which I’d accomplish by pulling off multiple attacks at once, and then following them up with more shortly thereafter.

Third, unless terrorists always insist on suicide missions (which I can’t imagine they would), it would be optimal to hatch a plan in which your terrorists aren’t killed or caught in the act, if possible.

Fourth, I think it makes sense to try to stop commerce, since a commerce breakdown gives people more free time to think about how scared they are.

Fifth, if you really want to impose pain on the U.S., the act has to be something that prompts the government to pass a bundle of very costly laws that stay in place long after they have served their purpose (assuming they had a purpose in the first place).

In response, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial today, Levitt's Follies:

The time has obviously come to send Steven Levitt packing and shut down the wacky freakonomics column he writes at the NY Times. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Levitt -- a terror brainstorming session where commenters could suggest the best ways to perpetrate terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups - was published in the paper yesterday. His column ought to be discontinued and Mr. Levitt fired.

Well actually the Wall Street Journal did nothing of the sort, but the NY Times published an editorial Poindexter's Follies, July 30, 2003:

The time has obviously come to send John Poindexter packing and to shut down the wacky espionage operation he runs at the Pentagon. The latest idea hatched by Mr. Poindexter's shop -- an online futures trading market where speculators could bet on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups -- was canceled yesterday by embarrassed Pentagon officials. The next logical step is to fire Mr. Poindexter.

The program in question a terrorist futures market. Adm Poindexter wanted to create a market for terror futures. Maybe government officials would participate. Maybe terrorists would. Or maybe someone with specialized knowledge. (Perhaps someone in charge of inventory for Home Depot would notice an unusually large purchase of fertilizer.) Theoretically, the combined knowledge of those participate would effectively predict when a terror attack was likely.

When word of the program got out the ensuing political firestorm led to its cancellation. (It obviously didn't help that Adm. Poindexter was associated with Iran-Contra.) Still as Just one Minute observed, TradeSports took bets on such events. So if the government wasn't going to engage in this sort of predictive exercise, there was apparently enough interest for private enterprise to take up the slack.

Ron Bailey writing in Reason magazine wrote how such a market could work

The PAM concept is the brainchild of George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson. Hanson has been working on the concept of "ideas futures" for years and is in fact working with the DARPA subcontractor that devised the PAM. "Look, intelligence is about spending money in order to find out information about gruesome things like war and terrorism." says Hanson. "This is just an alternative institution that tries to aggregate intelligence information... It's a research project and it might not work, but there is a lot of history and data showing how effective markets are at predicting events."

(h/t Instapundit)

My question is why are so many conservatives upset at Levitt's proposal? Is it because there's no money involved? Is it because this isn't a government initiative? (The latter seems to be Michelle Malkin's objection.) Getting hundreds of answers as his comments indicate are likely to provide thinking into how a terrorist might operate. Will these suggestions necessarily provide law enforcement with useful information? No. But consider that hundreds of people have provided possible scenarios. Isn't there a chance that one or two will give authorities scenarios that they hadn't previously considered and will now act to reduce the chances of those happening?

Might these scenarios give an idea to a terrorist? That's a problem, but at least now the idea is in play and there's a chance that society will be able to defend against it.

I'm not thrilled with Levitt's attitude that the terror threat is exaggerated, but I just don't see that his terrorist suggestion idea is a whole lot different from what the administration was proposing a few years ago.

UPDATE: Hashmonean (welcome back, it's been too long) takes issue with Levitt.

Ya.. sure. Instead of letting the cave dwellers try to outwit us on their own, Mr Levitt prefers to implore western civilization into serving up the next ‘big thing’ in mass murder - pipping hot & fresh for the Islamists.

In an e-mail he explained that the difference between Levitt's exercise and the future's market is that the future's market is closed. (People make guesses that hopefully increase the knowledge of the authorities without sharing it with others would do us harm.)

This view is very similar to the one expressed by Gabriel Schoenfeld at Contentions in Let's help Al-Qaeda kill Americans

There is thus a case for a public discussion of the issue raised by Levitt. But raising the issue and generating actual scenarios in public are two different things. Levitt defends himself on this point by noting that “a lot of the angry responses [he received made] me wonder what everyday Americans think terrorists do all day. My guess is that they brainstorm ideas for terrorist plots. And you have to believe that terrorists are total idiots if it never occurred to them after the Washington D.C. sniper shootings that maybe a sniper plot wasn’t a bad idea.” ... But there are also more than a few terrorists and would-be terrorists roaming around who might qualify as “idiots,” or something close. Most recruits for terrorist action in the Islamist cause are not sophisticated planner types like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but angry, ignorant, low-level figures, used by the higher-level terrorist plotters as expendable “muscle.”

Schoenfeld condemns Levitt because he might well provide ideas for lower level operatives who want to make a name for themselves.

I also agree with Schoenfeld on the point of Levitt's tone.

To Levitt, however, this solemn subject is not solemn at all. He writes about it in a glib and flippant tone, as in his summons to the public to come up with even more lethal scenarios by which al Qaeda might wreak death and destruction on the United States: “I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them.”

And of course in Levitt's followup, he cites Robert Pape's dubious hypothesis that occupation leads to terror. The United States hadn't invaded Iraq in 2001. Clearly I gave him too much credit initially.

terrorism.

Comment is Free (Guardian): "Tehranophobia"

A new phobia identified! The nomenclature for describing various sorts of prejudice has become admirably varied, enabling great precision in classifying bigots of every stripe, as illustrated here:

. . . Bush damaged his already low credibility in foreign affairs when he went on to claim that Iran had a government "that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon" ".

This statement is false. On September 12 2004, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei issued a fatwa (religious decree) that it was "un-Islamic" to use an atom bomb.

In his Friday prayer sermon on November 5 2004, Khamanei declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam" and for "our believing nation", and added: "They accuse us of pursuing nuclear weapons program. I am telling them as I have said before that we are not even thinking about nuclear weapons." (See Middle East International, Issue December 4 2004.)

But then again, in George Bush the world is dealing with a politician who prides himself on acting on gut feeling - rather than facts, expertise or historical experience.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said even Iran's most powerful enemies are unable to launch any form of attack against the country.

“The enemies of the Iranian nation will be given such a heavy blow they would not even consider attacking Iran,” he said on Wednesday addressing a group of martyr's families killed in a bomb blast by the Mujahideen Khalq Organization in 1981.

“All relations and equations will change in our favor once Iran is stabilized as a nuclear nation,” he added.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

IRIB: Chavez's Vice-Chief say America heap big Yankee imperialists

Now there's someone entitled to speak for Native Americans, and what better press to report on this than Iran's:

Venezuelan Vice President, George Rodriguez Gomez, said on Wednesday that the American civiliztion which introduce itself as a supporter of democracy, has been stablished on the bodies of innocent original people in the American continent.

Rodriguez made the remarks in an international gathering of American continent's original people in Venezuela.

He described poverty, genocide and war as the only results of the American civilization for these people in the continent.

"We don't want such a civilization. We hate culture of warmongering, exploitation and genocide," he added.

"We also like heros of the original people will resist against such a civilization."

The first gathering of American continent's original people is underway in Venezuela. Chiefs of Indian tribes from 22 American countries are participating in the gathering.

Africa appreciates

Amnon Rubenstein writes

What country in the world boasts the highest rate of support for Israel? The United States? Wrong. The highest rate of support for Israel can be found in the Ivory Coast, where 61 percent support Israel and only 16 percent support the Palestinians.

The same ratio is true where support for Hamas is concerned: Only 2% have a favorable opinion of Hamas and 37% have a "very negative" opinion of this organization.

This surprising finding is part of a global opinion survey conducted this year by the PEW Research Center, which included tens of thousands of participants in 47 countries. And Ivory Coast is not the only African country to demonstrate a high rate of support for Israel...

There is an exception though.

The opposition to Hamas in the African countries polled is even higher. The exception to this rule is Egypt, in which the opposition to Israel is all-embracing and support for Hamas especially high.

That would be the first Arab country to make peace with Israel.

Why would it be?

In absence of a scientific study, we can only guess that support for Israel likely has a number of sources: the memory of the Arab slave trade (to this day, the Arabic word for "black African" is the same as the word for "slave"); the threat of Muslim expansion; the genocide perpetrated by Sudanese Arabs in Darfur; the asylum Saudi Arabia provided to murderer Idi Amin, and the absorption of Ethiopian Jews in Israel (which may explain the results of the survey in Ethiopia).

However, there may be a secondary reason: Israel's own anti-Zionist propaganda squads are not active in Africa: There could be a hidden connection between this activity and the level of hatred for Israel in other places.

AS A CASE in point, take Britain's Oxford University. The following activities were held there in the past school year: "Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon," with Avi Shlaim and Shachar Nativ; "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine," with Ilan Pappe; "Israeli apartheid week," with Avi Shlaim and Jemal Zehalka; screening of the film Route 181 by Eyal Sivan (the screening of which was canceled by the government of France because of French Jewish community claims that it was anti-Semitic); "Ethnic terror as a crime against humanity: The case of Palestine" - Lecturer: Ilan Pappe.

That second bit of speculation is especially damning.

But there might well be another reason too: MASHAV. Or even a private initiative like Save a Child's Heart. Israel, officially and unofficially is extending a lot of practical aid to African countries. Perhaps it's finally getting recognized.

Of course some better known African celebrities like Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who hang with rock stars to save the world are not know for being that friendly to Israel.

Mandela, despite his fight for freedom in South Africa has shown a troubling tendency to embrace tyrants.

Mandela has long been a friend of tyrants, from Fidel Castro to Muammar Qaddafi to Yasir Arafat. In the current issue of Azure, I explore the theme of Mandela’s support for these autocrats within the larger context of the troubling direction in which his political party—the African National Congress—is taking South African foreign policy.

Say an ill word about Nelson Mandela and you become, in the eyes of the mainstream media, international glitterati, and pop culture stars, a heretic of all that’s right and good in the world. But no one is immune from criticism, not even someone who spent 27 years of his life languishing in prison for the ideals of non-racialism and democracy.

Still, there's one South African freedom fighter who remains a light unto nations: Helen Suzman and who sees Israel without blinders.

She continues to speak out on a wide range of topics including Israel. Last year, for example, she accused Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils of fostering anti-Semitism for likening the Jewish state to the Nazis. Although never having being a member of any Zionist organisation, Helen describes herself as a passive Zionist. She has over many years contributed to Israeli causes and has had thousands of trees planted by the JNF in her name. On two occasions she has visited Israel but has yet to see the Knesset in action.

Why is it that being a progressive hero means never saying a good word about Israel? Surely aiding Africa is a great anti-colonial enterprise.

Also posting on this Daled Amos, Rubicon3.

africa, israel.

Haveil Havalim #128 is UP!

128 is 2 to the 7th power, so don't be surprised that Haveil Havalim the 53X edition hosted by Yehuda is filled with clever double entendres.

Submit your blog article to the next edition of haveil havalim
using our carnival submission form. (This makes things a lot easier for the host than e-mailing links.)

Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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UPCOMING EDITIONS

August 12 - #129 - Jack's Shack
August 19 - #130 - Soccer Dad
August 26 - #131 - Soccer Dad
(If someone wishes to volunteer for any of these editions please let me know!)

I'd like to thank the wonderful folks at BlogCarnival for this wonderful Blog Carnival Widget that gives information on upcoming hosts and past editions.

Thanks for participating, reading and keeping Haveil Havalim going!

However is someone decides that he/she wants to host in the future let me know at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com or use the BlogCarnival Contact form.

Remember, that while the hosts and hostesses of Haveil Havalim do a wonderful job of editing and searching for interesting posts, they can't see everything. If you want a better chance of being included in Haveil Havalim please submit one or two posts for inclusion.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Most recent editions of Haveil Havalim at Blog Carnival
#22 Mystical Paths
#21 Rabbinical Authority Consortium of HACKers
#20 Shiloh Musings
#19 Devarim
#18 Soccer Dad
#17 Mystical Paths
#16 Critical Mastiff
#15 Soccer Dad
#14 Multiple Mentality
#13 IsraPundit
#12 DovBear
#11 Kesher Talk
#10 Biur Chametz
#9 Soccer Dad
#8 It's Almost Supernatural
#7 Bloghead
#6 Willow Tree.
#5 Crossing the Rubicon2
#4 Dov Bear
#3 Biur Chametz

Baseball milestone's roundup

Baseball Crank disputes that with Glavine we've seen the last of the 300 game winner.
Plus he has related thoughts here and here. Still, Dayn Perry doesn't think we're seeing another 300 game winner any time soon.

In Drinking up the Dregs Baseball Musings seemingly asks the question if great sluggers beat up on the worst pitchers the most. He has more at The Story and Thank the Pirates. Hardball Times engages in some similar speculation in How to Fix the Pirates. Dayn Perry considers A-Rod's chances of dethroning Barry Bonds as Home Run king. Deadspin doubts the claim that Barry Bonds' arms haven't grown since 1992 and presents photographic evidence.

JoshuaPundit thinks the ambivalence shown Bonds is a good thing. Don Surber's thoughts are closer to my own.

Finally, Outside the Beltway has the ultimate Barry Bonds roundup.

Elie's Expositions writes about them all!

The New York Times runs an op-ed the Emperor of Swat about the Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh. Unfortunately instead of just celebrating the Japanese great, the author mixes in some nonsense to boost Oh.

During Oh’s era, Major League Baseball players who ended their careers in Japan reported that two or three pitchers on each Japanese team could have played, and in some cases even starred, in North America.

I don't think this proves that the quality of pitching was as good in Japan as it is here. It says two or three not whole rotations. Then there's also the matter of the source. Major league players who ended their careers in Japan usually went because they couldn't make the cut in the U.S. anymore. Often they had very successful careers in Japan even though they were no longer good enough for American baseball. (Cecil Fielder who succeeded in America after catching on in Japan is an exception.)

Crossposted at Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

baseball, tom glavine, alexander rodriguez, barry bonds.

If ... you must 08/09/2007

If you haven't read Dr. Helen's Double Standards; you must.
If you haven't read Judeosphere's Double the Standards, Double the Fun; you must.
Certain beliefs are only wrong if Jews hold them.
If you haven't read Cheat Seeking Missiles' Fighting pork now, more than ever; you must.
Spend money on what we need; not what we, or the politicians, want.
If you haven't read Evaluating the two income trap hypothesis at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
Why is it that when both halves of the couple work they're no better off than if only one did?
If you haven't read Back Talk's Liberal media's Hall of Shame; you must.
h/t Instapundit, plus related thoughts here.
If you haven't read Dr. Sanity's Beauchamp at Bat; you must.
If TNR is standing by Beauchamp why did it remove links to Shock Troops? Seems like a swing and miss.
If you haven't read Secular Blasphemy's Climate Model Predictions never agree with each other; you must.
If you haven't read the Ignoble Experiment's Judgment's Aplenty; you must.
What? Even open-minded people can be close-minded?

media bias, scott beauchamp, conformity, antisemitism, economics.

Submitted 08/08/2007

This week's Watcher's Council Nominations are in.

Bookworm Room leads of with Always look on the bright side of life. In it she considers the field of Republican candidates for President and, despite the supposed doubts, finds herself impressed with their records of accomplishment.

Apropos of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, The Glittering Eye considers How do you know when a bridge needs attention? In a nutshell, his answer, is "always." And it's also a metaphor for our nation's infrastructure in general. Ever hear of Galloping Gertie?

In Gonzales, Intelligence and Perjury: the Penultimate Word, Big Lizards considers the Democratic charges against AG Gonzales and finds that they've stretched his statements well beyond his original intent to charge him with dishonesty.

Colossus of Rhodey.Hube's I didn't do squat - now give me a passing grade is a real hoot. It would make excellent satire - if it weren't true.

In Tancredo and Tonic, Done with Mirrors reflects on recent sabre rattling by Congressman Tancredo. His conclusion: as outrageous as the statements seem in our day, historically, it's hard to argue that they are that crazy.

Cheat Seeking Missiles seeks out liberal hypocrisy at a progressive publication in Racists and classists at Mother Jones. He highlights a profile of a do-gooder who is happy to do good, except in his own neighborhood.

Okie on the LAm observes how Newsweek attacks Global Warming deniers. Perhaps not surprisingly it's written by "science" writer, Sharon Begley, who earlier promoted the idea that Republicans have an advantage in politics because they're fearmongers and that fear overcomes the good sense of the average voter. Sharon meet kettle.

The education Wonks want to know if this how to build a better NCLB. The wonks seem skeptical if ought to be done on a national level.

Rhymes with Right covers the same territory as Colossus of Rhodey, in Grading Policies. What he adds is his own similar experience that, fortunately, turned out well.

In Olmert evicts Jews from Hebron JoshuaPundit goes over the outrageous story of this week's removal of two Jewish families from the marketplace of Hebron. He emphasizes two essential aspects of this story.
1) That the government behaved in bad faith.
2) That those who hold sacred the UN's formulation of the inadmissibility of land acquisition or land settlement by military force only applies to Israel. Historically Jews lived in Hebron until the massacres of 1929 and 1935. (I've seen the doorways of the buildings there. They have holes where mezuzahs had been. If Jews don't belong in Hebron, it's because the Arab violence was acceptable. For more on this topic please see Elder of Ziyon and the Muqata. Ans since this is the Shalhevet neighborhood, read Seth Lipsky's meditation on the Little Flame.

Right Wing Nuthouse recounts his Excellent Adventure at the Yearly Kos. He tells Republicans to dismiss the power of the Yearly Kos at their own peril. Compare to Bookworm Room's entry.

Finally, I entered Agents of Influence a reply to a recent post by Bookworm Room. Two of my council colleagues have commented on it. But I look at this week's entries and see some validation of what I wrote. The thrust of my entry was that blogging means that you're a part of a community, by utilizing the community or being recognized by it you can affect perceptions even if you're not a Higher Being.

Shortly after I submitted my entries for this week's vote, I received an e-mail from Meryl Yourish asking for help in promoting Elder of Ziyon's Grim Milestone Reached..., my non-council submission. It was an excellent effort showing that the Palestinian violence had turned on their own. I e-mailed a number of correspondents, while Meryl informed some bigger bloggers. After a day the post had accumulated 25 incoming links most significantly from Instapundit. Thus this important observation was shared with thousands, many of whom learned something new.

Also the entries by Bookworm Room and Right Wing Nut House showed that some bloggers get greater attention by writing in venues other than their own blog. (In the former case it was American Thinker, the latter case it was Pajamas Media.)

In short the blogosphere is an excellent incubator of talent. If you display enough talent, you will likely move ahead, improve your visibility and affect the conversation taking place in the blogosphere.

Read. Enjoy. Be informed.

watcher's council.

It's Journalist Day in Iran!

Iran Daily's title is "Role of Journalists Appreciated." That should remind us that Iran is so overflowing with appreciation for journalists that Reporters Without Borders called it "the Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists and bloggers":

Vice President Mohammad Aliabadi hailed the role of journalists in the society, referring to them as a link between the people and officials.

Speaking in a ceremony held on the eve of ’Journalist Day’ (August 8) in Kashan on Monday, Aliabadi added that journalists should be honest and powerful, and create a safe climate in the society, IRNA reported.

“Honest journalists will make the society unsafe for those who try to endanger it,“ he said, noting that journalists are the open eyes of the people.

Meanwhile, the presidential advisor for media affairs, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, said the mass media and journalists should move in pace with the nation, praising journalists for playing a significant role in society.

“The role of journalists and those working in media is determining,“ he said, adding that people’s confidence is the main asset of the mass media.

Javanfekr urged the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as the Iranian media to help overcome problems in the field of press activities.

“The promotion of the present status of Iranian media to reach the point where it would have the last word in the international arena is crucial,“ he said. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

"channeling efforts that should have gone into development into a near obsession with Palestine"

A fairly thoughtful Daily Star opinion piece by Mona Eltahawy:

[...] Egypt has been at peace with Israel for 28 years. For the past 25 years, we have had the same president, who has never visited Israel - just the tip of the iceberg known as the "cold peace" between the two countries, which Egyptian officials usually blame on negative public opinion of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.

We have subsumed so much into the Palestinian cause, channeling efforts that should have gone into development into a near obsession with Palestine, for little apparent good. Egypt boasts that it can talk to both the Israelis and the Palestinians, but even that has done little for its influence in halting intra-Palestinian fighting in Gaza . . .

My generation, sadly, might be lost to defeat and humiliation. If so, the best gift we can offer those coming behind us is clear advice: Don't walk in our footsteps, and know that the best way you can help Palestinians is to help your own countries.

The Arab leaders of the 1967 era are gone, replaced in Jordan and Syria by their sons; preparations for a similar handover are under way in Egypt. The Palestinians are led by the dangerously impotent combination of a weak president and an exiled prime minister who is a religious zealot.

And still there is no Palestine.

Why has time stood still for the Arab world? The Syrian town of Quneitra is exactly as it was when it was destroyed after the 1967 war with Israel, untouched so that we never forget. Yet how many German cities, almost leveled during World War II, have been rebuilt and are thriving again?

The 1967 war was one of the many conflicts with Israel that bookend our ages. Looking around the Arab world today, we must ask: What were they all for? It's time to move on.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

For whom the death tolls

When I visited Israel in early 1989, I remember the front page of Yedioth Ahronot one day. It showed the burned out shell of a bus. A Palestinian had firebombed the bus. Fortunately the driver escaped injury and no one was hurt. The reason for that incident making the front page was that it was the 1000th attack by Palestinians against Israelis since the beginning of the so-called intifada.

The American media, of course, didn't keep track of such incidents. They denied that the violence was orchestrated. They ascribed it to Palestinian suffering.

What they did do, and did scrupulously, was keep track of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Each death stood as an unspoken indictment of Israeli over-reaction and the running toll a conviction of Israel acting in a uniquely reckless fashion. (For context, this occurred about the same time as the massacre at Tiananmen Square in China where hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters were massacred in a single night by Chinese security forces. )

Things did change though. Jackson Diehl, then the Jerusalem Bureau Chief of the Washington Post reported on March 9, 1990 (The article was republished in the San Francisco Chronicle as "Arab Killings Now Dominate the Intifada
More Palestinians slain by other Palestinians than by Israelis")

For the second consecutive month, fatalities in February from clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians dropped to a new low for the revolt: nine died, including only three in the West Bank.

At the same time, February was the first month in which more Palestinians were killed by Palestinians than by Israelis.

In all, 15 such slayings occurred, including a number of grisly cases in which men and women - including one pregnant woman - were crudely stoned or hacked to death by masked gangs. All were accused of collaboration with Israeli security forces, although Israel contends that only a minority of them were actually its agents.

Of course the PLO was eager to keep a lid on the violence.

For several months, PLO figures outside the country and the Unified Command of the Uprising have been appealing to Palestinians either to end the killings of alleged collaborators or to carry them out only after receiving permission from senior authorities.

Still this was the exception rather than the rule. The majority of the American media portrayed Israeli soldiers as trigger happy yahoos in service of an extremist government. There was no threat posed by the Palestinians that couldn't be understood and no defense by Israel that could be excused. Palestinian on Palestinian violence was largely ignored.

17 years later, really not much has changed. Palestinian violence is still largely under-reported or ignored by the MSM.

While the MSM has been loath to report that Hamas/Fatah/PA-Israel ceasefires are don't necessarily involve the "cease" part of that term, Elder of Ziyon has been keeping count of the Palestinian violations with his monthly Qassam calendars.

Elder of Ziyon has also been using publicly available information to keep track of the "PalArab self-death count." In describing what he does, Elder of Ziyon writes:

My reasons for maintaining this count is to show the hypocrisy of those who pretend to care about Palestinian Arab lives. In fact, my thesis is that they only care about Israeli actions that they can call criminal, and the victims are only important in how they can implicate Israel, not as tragedies in themselves. The fact that Palestinian Arabs have less regard for their own lives than Israel has for PalArab lives is rarely reported.

The sources for these statistics are many Palestinian Arab newspapers (both English and Arabic, using Google auto-translation) and human rights organizations, as well as Israeli papers and other sources. All my postings about this topic include links to the original articles. I far prefer to only count deaths for people that are named, although during particularly violent periods of time this can prove almost impossible so I may rely on reported aggregate figures.

Since he started keeping the "self-death toll" Elder of Ziyon has recorded over 700 Palestinians killed by other Palestinians. Last week though, he noted a grim milestone for the year 2007. If 500 Palestinians had been killed by Israel in little more than a half year, you could be sure that it would be front page news. But since Palestinians are doing it to themselves it doesn't rate a mention.

Meryl Yourish (who deserves a lot of credit for bringing attention to this) sees an opportunity for enterprising media folk.

Calling all reporters: Here’s a different death count you can use as a reference.

Where's the outrage? There is none. And there's no coverage in dhimmedia, either. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Dhimmedia's only interested in Palestinians if they're abused or killed by Israelis. It's sad for everybody. I don't know which media treatment is worse, to be unfairly hated like Israelis are, or to be callously exploited on the one hand yet substantially ignored on the other, like the Palestinians are.

Daled Amos wants to know why the media that so freely throws around Palestinian terminology won't employ it here

Ignored by the UN, these kinds of killings are doomed to continue. This is the kind of Naqba the UN should be talking about.

The situation brings out the sarcastic wit of Serpahic Secret

Who cares if little Arab girls are are mowed down my machine gun bullets: Inshallah, right?

Or to the liberal mind: It's Israel's fault anyway because they are, y'know, so mean to the peace loving Arabs who want nothing more than to sit under their olive trees and recite poetry.

Protein Wisdom notes sardonically

We seem to have finally discovered what Palestinians can do better than Israelis.

Discarded Lies and Fiery Spirited Zionist also linked to Grim Milestone.

Technorati links to Grim Milestone.

InstaPundit has now linked too.

UPDATE II: A few more bloggers have linked to Elder of Ziyon including Simply Jews who emphasizes this from the original article

Don't expect any press releases about this milestone, though.

EOZ continues to produce excellent content.

Perhaps the $80 million just given to The Butcher’s “political wing” in order to “enhance the capability of the Palestinian security sector” will -- as we approach three years of full-time U.S. military training by Generals Ward and Dayton of the Palestinian Authority’s bloated “security forces” -- solve things.

UPDATE III: Rubicon3

Personal responsibility? No one even knows what term means when it comes to the Palestinians. The expectations for them are so low as to be non-existent, while the expectations for the Israelis so high (don't dare even think about fighting back, even if they send suicide bombers and qassams aimed deliberately at your children and other non-combatants) as to be - well, ridiculous doesn't begin to describe it. No other nation would put up with what the Israelis have had to put up with for the past 60 years.

Ocean Guy:

As far as the world cares the deaths mean nothing because Israelis didn’t cause them. It’s just those damned savages acting up… noble may they be. No news here.

In Context:

These are statistics that you'll rarely see. And why? If the world is so terribly wrought up about the "plight of the palestinians" why is it only when Israel can be blamed directly that they bother to notice?

media bias, palestinian violence.

Out in centerfield

There's something odd about Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley positioning himself as a centrist. It's odd because he supported the Maryland General Assembly's Wal Mart bill, he signed a "living wages" bill into law for the state of Maryland and he was one of the first public officials to jump on the Dean bandwagon in 2004. These are not signs of centrism.

I don't doubt that he will make an excellent candidate for President as he is photogenic, in person he comes across as gracious, he speaks well and can raise loads of money. He is not, however, a centrist.

But he writes along with Harold Ford in today's Washington Post about Our chance to capture the center.

But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before. George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment. Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven't voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out. With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win back the White House, expand its margins in Congress and build a political and governing majority that could last a generation.

A majority comes hard for Democrats. In the past 150 years, only three Democrats, one of whom was Franklin Roosevelt, have won the White House with a majority of the popular vote.

So who do Ford and O'Malley cite as a Democrat who successfully captured the center?

Contrast the collapse of a conservative president with the success of the last centrist president. Bill Clinton ran on an agenda of sensible ideas that brought America a decade of peace and prosperity. He was the only Democrat to be elected and reelected president in the past seven decades, and he left office more popular than almost any other president in recent memory.

Bill Clinton, of course, wasn't ever elected with a majority of the popular vote, so why they hold him out as an example of what the Democrats ought to emulate is a mystery. I'd argue that Clinton's popularity had more to do with his personality and his opponents overplaying their hands than with his policies.

And if Clinton was such a success how'd he manage to leave with both houses of Congress in the oppositions hands? Maybe he was popular precisely because there was countervailing force to prevent him from straying to far to the left.

Maryland Conservatarian rightly points out that the recent behavior of the Democratic Presidential candidates suggests that they are running from, and, not towards, the center.

Coincidentally, I’m sure, Mr. Ford is now the head of the DLC and just last week it was reported that the Dems were No-Shows at DLC. That might have been a bit awkward since Mr. O’Malley has already thrown his hat in the ring to be no-show Ms. Clinton’s Veep with his early, enthusiastic endorsement of her candidacy. The same Ms. Clinton who went through some trouble to make last weekend’s Yearly Kos confab in Chicago…where voices criticizing such centrist thinking were in plentiful supply.

There's more via memeorandum.

governor o'malley, harold ford,

Of "settlers" and "sources"

Two events in Israel and Gaza have shown a difference in the way news organizations report from the Middle East.

One was the forcible eviction of Jews by the Israeli government from the marketplace in Hevron; a marketplace that was cleared of Jews in the past during the riots on 1929 and 1935. The other was the mis-firing of a Palestinian rocket at Israel from Gaza that landed early and killed two Palestinian children.

In the latter case the results are portrayed in the most sympathetic of terms.

Palestinian relatives mourn ... (AP)
Palestinian mourners ... (AP)
A Palestinian boy watches the funeral of two Palestinian children ... (Reuters)

But when the scene switches to Hevron
A Jewish settler woman ... (AP)
Israeli soldiers forcibly remove a young Jewish settler boy ... (AFP)
A young Jewish settler cries ... (AP)

I suppose I shouldn't be outraged so much. In a number of the cases the term "settler" is used as an adjective rather than as a noun. The real outrage is in that third picture, which shows a boy - no older than 13 - who is described simply as a "settler." He is a child, a boy. But AP only considers him a "settler." The term "settler" (as applied to Israelis) should be retired. It is accusatory, dismissive and dehumanizing. (When Tali Hatuel and her daughters were massacred, they were described in a press account as a "settler family." It was as if they were not people, not worthy of life.)

But there's another problem with the story of the children in Gaza who were killed by the errant rocket.

Elder of Ziyon found the Ma'an account.

Ma'an reported

A leader within the Palestinian resistance commented on Ma'an's report of the death of the children. He said "the investigation of the resistance revealed that the explosion resulted from an unexploded rocket, launched by the Israelis."

He added "the rocket was found by the children and while they were playing with it, it exploded and caused the disaster."

How did AP (h/t Meryl Yourish) report it?

Witnesses said a group of children stumbled upon a homemade rocket or a mortar shell and began playing with it. The device exploded, injuring all seven children, two of whom died later of their wounds.

In other words the "investigation" of Ma'an became "witnesses" in the AP version. I'm skeptical that the witnesses really exist because as Ha'aretz reported

A Qassam rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing an eight-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister, and injuring five other children.

The rocket, fired at Israel, fell short and hit the children's house in the village of Beit Lahiya. No group claimed responsibility.

So there was no "rocket" or "shell" that children started playing with. Ha'aretz goes on to report

The Associated Press had earlier quoted witnesses as saying the blast was the result of the children playing with a homemade rocket or a mortar shell that they had stumbled upon.

Of course it's unlikely that there were witnesses. Either the AP was quoting liars or they were relying on a Hamas official who was identified as "witnesses." But why wouldn't AP consider that the children had been killed in an inadvertant rocket strike? Well, Ma'an provides the answer

The source vehemently denied any Palestinian resistance activity in that area at the time.

And the virtue of Hamas officials is such that they'd never lie and deny that terrorists who were trying to kill Jews had inadvertantly killed two of their own.

I realize that the importance of the use of certain words may be dismissed as subjective. Fine. But the bigger problem is that it looks like AP relied on an unreliable news source and passed it off as news.

media bias, gaza, hamas, terrorism, israel.

Juggling carnivals 08/07/07

Incoming Carnivals

The 12th Carnival of Maryland was posted at Maryland Politics.us on July 29.

J-Pix #13 the Jewish photography carnival is up at the home of its founder, Mr. Bagel and the pictures I saw were awesome, especially those from the southern part of the Temple Mount.

I'd like to thank Dr. Sanity for including posts of mine in the two most recent editions of the Carnival of the Insanities.

And though it's not, strictly speaking, a carnival I'd like to thank Elie's Expositions for composing and hosting Musical Monday #6 yesterday. Please check it out as there are still plenty of unclaimed lyrics! I don't have time now, but hope to post the results of last week's Musical Monday later.

Upcoming Carnivals

You may submit to the next Carnival of Maryland is to be hosted at Maryland Politics this Sunday.

Give that fan a contract

While he was the Orioles' public address announcer, when the late Rex Barney would observe a fan catching a souvenir ball in the stands, he would announce, "Give that fan a contract!" And an usher would go off to the fan and give him a mock "contract" in return for his fine "play."

Getting a souvenir is one of the thrills of attending a ball game. In order to enhance fans' enjoyment of the game, the Baltimore Sun has provided a guide to the best locations to sit to get a ball, in "Have a Ball."

Over a period of nine consecutive games, The Sun tracked every foul ball hit by the Orioles and their opponents. There were 422 foul balls hit off 2,657 pitches, and 214 of those pitched balls (8 percent) made their way to the seats. Three sections -16, 52 and 252 - got the most.

In 2006, major league baseball averaged 50 foul balls a game throughout the regular season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Where are those seats exactly?

Section 16 is only a few feet from the tarps down the right-field line. Section 52, down the left-field line, is closer to the visitors dugout but not far from the adjacent tarps. Section 252, however, is a small section on the club-suite level, at the midpoint of the left-field line, between the lower bowl of seats and the third deck. There are only 126 seats in the entire section.

The accompanying graphic shows the places in the stadium. (UPDATE: Louis Spirito got the Sun's graphics people to update the graphic to make it easier to read and graciously sent me the link.)

Louis Spirito who tracked the balls writes in a companion piece:

started by creating a custom score sheet that allowed me to track several types of data. I then observed all 2,657 pitches in a nine-game Orioles homestand from the right-field club level, in Section 288. The result was a database that held the location of every foul ball hit plus other information, such as pitcher, batter, pitch type, pitch speed, inning, etc. For the graphic, I decided to keep the focus on balls that were hit into seats because this is where the game interacts with the fans on a unique level.

If you think this project is a bit too esoteric, consider: Over those nine games, 151 pitches were hit safely into play, while 214 were hit to the fans.

I have never gotten a foul ball at a major league game.

However during the past 11 years, I've taken the family to at least Bowie Baysox game a year. After a few years of sitting in the general admission seats by third base, I observed something: the majority of foul balls going to the fans go to the first base side. Since 2001 we've been sitting in the first base stands and have gotten two foul balls. It seemed that foul ball to the stands were hit to the opposite field. Given that most batters were right handed, it followed that the majority of foul balls would therefore travel to the first base side of the stands.

There is a real thrill to getting a souvenir. In 2001 it was towards the end of the season and there were very few fans left at the end of a blowout when Bowie first baseman Franky Figeoura hit a ball in my direction. I moved back a few rows and tracked its arc. My position was pretty good as the ball bounced on the bench in front of me. After the bounce I reflexively swiped the ball with my right hand. It was a magical moment and my first souvenir.

Last year we also got a foul ball, but that wasn't fielded nearly as cleanly. (Another time a member of the grounds crew threw a ball to one of my sons.)

I'll grant that I haven't seen many more games than Louis Spirito did, but I wonder if he really got a good representation of the distribution of foul balls. (Yes it was over 2000 pitches, but it was still just nine games.) While I don't fully understand the physics, this article at Hardball Times explains a bit about the mechanics of how a ball travels after being hit by a bat. I'd expect that the proportion of balls hit to the first base side of foul territory to outnumber those hit to the third base side by the same proportion that right handed batters outnumber left handed batters.

(While it's true that a minor league park is smaller than a major league park; I'd still expect that the distribution of foul balls to be about the same for each.)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

baseball, foul balls, oriole park at camden yards, bowie baysox.

Agents of influence *UPDATED*

In preaching to the choir Bookworm Room gives voice to that question that plagues many of us (self important!?) bloggers: What difference do I make? Or more specifically:

I think that the big bloggers, whether Right (Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Power Line, American Thinker, etc.) or Left (Daily Kos, et al.) matter a great deal and have the heft to affect the political process. I’m wondering, though, about politically oriented blogs like mine, and like many of those in my blogroll. We’re blogs that probably get between 200 and 2000 hits per days, depending just how popular we are, but we’re definitely not in the big league. Instead, we’re often preaching to a core group of the choir, which is a delightful feeling, but I wonder if it matters when the rubber hits the road.

In other words, do you think that all of these little political forums affect the political process? I’d very much like your opinion on this.

As I've written before I got my start in commenting on current events writing letters to the editor. The shortcoming with writing letters to the editors is that the editors decide how often to publish your letters and what to publish of your letters. And if they do they can make mistakes that make you look foolish. (Like the time the editing changed "predicated" to "predicted." Now at least the mistakes are my own.)

Blogging allows me to comment on what I want to, when I want to (and am able) and have regular readers. I suppose that, for the most part, those readers are members of the choir, but hopefully I'm informing them of information they wouldn't read elsewhere. (In the past year, I've taken on two co-bloggers - Daled Amos and Judeopundit, because they inform me of things that I wouldn't have otherwise have caught.)

Occasionally, during blogging, I've been part of something bigger. Perhaps my biggest thrill a few years ago occurred when I sent a tip that a (now-retired) blogging friend Mystery Achievement had noted that an Italian newspaper had reported that then Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi had reported on a meeting between Osama Bin Laden deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Saddam Hussein - in 1999. I tipped off Roger L. Simon from whose blog Austin Bay picked it up. (And later do did Instapundit.)

Was it proof that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together prior to 9/11? By itself there were reasons to doubt Allawi. Still there were other indications (as well as doubts) but perhaps more could have been developed. So it remained the province of the blogosphere, but many thousands more were exposed to this possibility. (I would think that if an Iraqi official had said unconditionally that there were no Iraqi-Al Qaeda connections prior to 9/11, regardless of his credibility, the MSM would have trumpeted that as "proof" that no such connections existed. That Allawi's statements weren't investigated further demonstrated a lack of curiosity displayed by the MSM toward stories that strayed from their accepted plot.)

More recently, I e-mailed quite a few bloggers (and others) about a Time Magazine article chronicling Israel's remarkable military victory in the 6 Day War. Not only did a number of bloggers pick it up, I was pleased to see that big blogger LGF ran with the item. Jeff Jacoby featured the Time story from 1967 in a column too. Again, through blogs, this story received significant exposure.

True I didn't need a blog to publicize either story. I might have just found the stories and e-mailed them to the critical bloggers. Then again, being a blogger, means that I'm more likely to be looking in a place where I'd find an obscure story.

It's true that the big bloggers set the agenda, but even smaller bloggers have some effect. By giving their support to the bigger bloggers they agree with, lesser bloggers can up the volume by a notch or two. (Yes the volume control might range from 0 - 1000, so a notch or two may not mean much, but if others pitch in, then the change in volume might be significant.)

So yes, bloggers, other than the super "big bloggers" are usually somewhat hamstrung when it comes to having influence. But a well placed e-mail or informative post could have a major effect on an issue or two.

Part II: There are other ways that a smaller blogger can influence or inform. Certain items a blogger posts are going to have information that people are going to come back to. A post of mine about the famous photograph of South Vietnamese General Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner is regularly found by people looking for information about that photo. I had compared the photographer's - the late Eddie Adams - concern for the consequences of the photo - reduced public support for the government of South Viet Nam with the seeming willingness of AP in our time to aid the enemy. I realize that not everyone who finds the post necessarily agrees with my comparison, but he or she will learn about the regret expressed by Eddie Adams.

And finally the most obvious way even a smaller blogger can influence the national conversation about issues is to become bigger.

I don't necessarily mean that a blogger will increase his or her traffic. I believe that a blogger reaches a plateau about 1 to 1 1/2 year of blogging and doesn't increase traffic significantly afterwards.

But blogging serves as a minor league system. Good bloggers often get noticed. That can lead to an invitation to write at a larger group blog or online periodical or even an op-ed in an old fashioned newspaper. If you're good at what you do, you're likely to get a bigger megaphone at some point.

While such promotions are not necessarily common, they do happen.

Finally, even the smallest blogger (in terms of traffic) is going to develop a neighborhood of bloggers who have similar interests and outlooks. Having a small community of like-minded blogging buddies will also raise a blog's profile.

One way or another there's usually an opportunity for even smaller bloggers to et heard.

blogging.

11 months

At 1:15 AM she turns 48 weeks old.

The pace of her development continues to amaze.

She had just started crawling regularly last month and continues this month. She sometimes scoots in a sitting position, if she wishes to hold something when she's moving. It's an odd position. She uses her right arm to pull herself forward and pushes off with her left leg behind her. (Her right leg usually is in front.)

She can also cruise - walk holding on - a little bit. But her big accomplishment last week was learning how to climb the stairs. At first she'd climb one step and contemplate what to do next. It took her a few days of false starts before she perfected the art of getting one leg up to the next level and pulling her body up after it. She really is quite adept at climbing steps now. (And we are learning to become adept at chasing her up the steps. She doesn't know how to go down yet.)

The sounds coming from her mouth are becoming more deliberate, if not more intelligible. Still her first words seem to include "Abba" and "Ma."

She plays peekaboo. Start playing with her and there's a fair chance that she'll cover her face with a sheet or a blanket and then uncover it. Another game she seems to play is "beep," where she'll reach to a nose and touch it, so that the other player says "beep."

These are exciting days and I look forward to each new development as she changes for infant to toddler.

Previous related posts: 10 months,9 months,eight months,seven months, One month, two months, three months, four months and five months, six months.

Electoral college daze

via memeorandum

In A Red Play for the Golden State, Jonathan Alter writes:

Our way of electing presidents has always been fer-tile ground for mischief. But there's sensible mischief—toying with existing laws and the Constitution to reflect popular will—and then there's the other kind, which tries to rig admission to the Electoral College for strictly partisan purposes. Mischief-makers in California (Republicans) and North Carolina (Democrats) are at work on changes that would subvert the system for momentary advantage and—in ways the political world is only beginning to understand—dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008.

Note that what bothers Alter isn't that these plans "would subvert the system" but the conclusion that "dramatically increase the odds that a Republican will be elected president in 2008." In other words, I doubt he'd be expressing the same outrage if these changes were likely to help elect a Democrat. (The title of the webpage:

Is California GOP Trying to Steal the 2008 Election?

I don't think either scheme has much merit. As I wrote before our current electoral scheme, whatever weaknesses it has, has been remarkably robust. Trading it for the uncertain results of a new scheme invites mischief. But pretending that schemes for changing the electoral college are a way that Republicans are atttempting to "steal" the election is dishonest. Both sides are doing it. And, from the way I see it, the Democrats are much more active in changing the rules of the game to their advantage.

I don't agree with this initiative wherever its being proposed, but to blame it on the GOP is dishonest. Similar initiatives to change how the President is elected have generally been launched by Democrats in order to prevent another Florida 2000 from occurring. (In Maryland there is an effort afoot to award Maryland's electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. Pillage Idiot, Crablaw and I have commented on Maryland's propose scheme.)

While the scheme in Maryland is different from those proposed by California and North Carolina, the fact that changing the electoral process is likely to produce unexpected results - Crablaw's argument - is reinforced by the Hedgehog Report's analysis of North Carolina's (Democratic) scheme.

electoral college, 2008 election.

Gulf News: "Is Israel worthy of peace?"

More about that eternally-extended Arab olive branch:

Since 1991 the Arab world has been fixated on a peaceful Israel. For years, Arabs have been desperately waiting for Israel to give a nod of approval on accepting to live in peace with them.

Once again today, Arabs are attempting to convince an historic enemy - Israel - of how serious they are about a peace agreement. Is it not reasonably valid to ask why should a futile mission still be chased?

For the past 16 years, peace accords were born only to become incapacitated later. Every single Arab stride towards peace was met by a tactful Israeli evasion of a commitment. First tiptoed the Madrid conference in 1991, only to end up inconclusively.

The Oslo Accords of 1993 trailed afterwards, which was sealed off with indecisiveness. The better half followed two years later with Oslo II, also failing to offer absolute solutions. By 1998 the Wye River Memorandum managed to create indefinite obstacles.

And finally the 2003 Quartet's so much full of hope and promises Roadmap for Middle East Peace had dissolved into oblivion and without much fanfare.

Peace between Arabs and Israel remains confined to the realms of illusion. This being regardless of the fact that Arabs, under the forcefulness of history and the influence of geography, have come to terms with the dynamics of the times and the constraints brought about by the century's realpolitik.

Arabs have bitterly consented to the legitimacy of an illegitimate state when the Arab Peace Initiative was the offer on the table in 2002. Yet Israel has consistently rejected any lasting - let alone just and comprehensive - peace deal as it exists as a state that is at war with its Arab neighbours - yesterday, today and perhaps even tomorrow.

But Arab governments seem to turn a blind eye to Israel's belligerence. And hence the Arab peace initiative after being initially launched six years ago was adamantly re-launched in the coming years.

Persistently, time and again and with absolute conviction, Arab governments falsely hoped that Israel would respond with a similar gesture.

Enough damage has been perpetrated. It is time to stop revitalising any and all peace initiatives. A state of no war is as damaging as a state of no peace. But if Arab governments are so keen on pleasing Israel with a peace bargain that is tailored to its accord, then the verdict should be left with the Arab people.

The so many Arab governments that have championed appeals for transparency for so long should follow the spirit of their calls by permitting all the Arab people the chance to vocally and publicly decide: is Israel worthy of living with in peace?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

j. "Dancer-rabbi becomes Renewal minyan’s rabbi-chaver"

This Berkeley-related story has it all: (female) dancer-rabbi-chavers, Aquarian minyans, astrologers who advise you to go to San Diego, some Buddhism . . .

Diane Elliot wanted to be a dancer, to move her audience through movement.

And she did. Then, after years of a successful dance and theater career, she wanted to move her audience in a different way.

So she became a rabbi.

This summer, Elliot became the newest rabbi-chaver, or "teacher among peers," at the Aquarian Minyan, the oldest Renewal congregation in the Bay Area. She is the first person to have an official title with the Minyan in about six years.

Elliot is a soft-spoken, thoughtful woman who wears colorful silk blouses and a bright kippah. She smiles often and speaks enthusiastically about her second career as a rabbi.

She grew up in a Reform family in suburban Chicago. After high school, she pursued a career in the performing arts, working in theaters in New York City and Minneapolis and teaching and performing in Canada, Hungary and France.

Eventually, Elliot’s interest in movement grew beyond the stage, and in 1987, she became certified in body-mind centering, which uses movement as a form of psychological healing.

She also became interested in Buddhist meditation, which indirectly drew her back into Judaism via a Renewal chavurah.

“It hooked me back into my camp experience — there was a lot of singing and dancing,” she recalled.

She met Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank at a subsequent shabbaton and "knew something was calling me, but didn’t know what it was." Wolfe-Blank, who died in 1998, took Elliot under his wing, inviting her to Seattle to learn from him and his chavurah. (Ironically, Wolfe-Blank served as the rabbi-chaver at the Aquarian Minyan for 15 years.)

The death of her mentor shook her up. "I had never experienced a death like that," she said. "I didn’t know what I was supposed to do." An astrologer advised her to go to San Diego. So she moved.

Soon after, she got connected to the local Renewal congregations. One congregant told her about a new rabbinic school in Los Angeles, one that would ordain Renewal rabbis.

“The next thing I knew, I was applying for rabbinic school,” she said.

She knew no Hebrew when she was accepted. She also had never had a bat mitzvah, something she corrected within a month of enrolling in the Academy for Jewish Religion.

Her friends in San Diego, Seattle and the Twin Cities helped pay for her tuition — $80,000 for six years.

"I learned to understand that a rabbi is created by the community," she said. "In this situation, people had a stake in my rabbinate. They saw me grow. They made me." [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Tehran Times: "On annihilation of the Zionist regime, he said the issue is related to the Palestinians"

The actual title of this little item is "Attack on Iran would be suicide for U.S.: Rafsanjani." The article does not say what exactly would be suicidal about such an attack--no mention of invincible military forces--but only that "it would be regarded as a suicide for that country." This is typical of the pronouncements of Iranian politicians: hyperbole evaporating into vagueness even before the sentence is over.

Chairman of the Expediency Council Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Saturday that if the U.S. dares to launch any military attack on Iran it would be regarded as a suicide for that country.

In an exclusive interview with Al-Arabiya TV channels on Friday night, he said the issue is regarded as a psychological warfare and there is no doubt that the role of UN Security Council would be highlighted but there are lots of concerns as to what extent such measures would bear fruits.

"We are now facing various threats and challenges but we believe that the past experiences should be used in order to dissuade enemies from targeting us. We have always proved that we are capable enough to thwart plots hatched by the enemies," he said.

Based on historical experiences, when bullying powers are trapped in a quagmire they might take illogical measures to save themselves, Rafsanjani said.

"I believe that the U.S., UK, and their allies are now experiencing a very tough situation in Iraq and Afghanistan and seek a way out of the crisis," he said.

There is no doubt that such suicidal measures would create problems for both sides but they would be the final loser with their strategies leaving devastating consequences for the whole region, he said.

Some Arabs have questioned that in case the U.S. targets Iran's nuclear facilities, what would be Iran's response, asked the reporter.

There is no doubt that Iran has various options and plans on the table to give a crushing response to such an attack, he said.

On existing hurdles to expansion of ties between Iran and Arab countries, he said it would be to the benefit of Arab countries to have much closer ties with Iran.

On rifts between Shiites and Sunnis, he said there are no ideological differences between the two groups but it is the enemies of Islam that try to create rifts among them.

"As a united Ummah, we support Palestinians who are not Shiite but are our Sunni brothers and the same applies to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Afghanistan," he said.

"We regard the Zionist regime as illogical and believe that they have occupied the Palestinian territory and won support of western powers particularly the U.S.," he pointed out.

"On annihilation of the Zionist regime, he said the issue is related to the Palestinians because they are the ones who are fighting with them," he said.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

We are the Caliphate Restoration Society

Soccer Dad just reminded me of a new stage-production, Jihad the Musical, which is beginning to receive some attention in the blogosphere. It so happens that I have uncovered an early draft of the show and that it was evidently originally planned as a rock-musical. Here is the original theme-song:

We are the Caliphate Restoration Society
We have a centrifuge that's causing you some anxiety
We are the Andalus Reclamation society
We love bomb belts and big explosions of piety

Protecting the Ummah from Danish cartoons
Enforcing the dress-code with all of our goons
For so many moons

We are the Infidel Subjugation Fraternity
Allah save Tony Judt and good old Uri Avnery
We are the jizya tax-collection cooperative
We saw Paradise Now and found it to be evocative

We are the PLF Appreciation Dominion
Allah save Robert Fisk and friends of Sami Al-Arian
We read Sayyid Kutb just to ward off insomnia
We love OBL and Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
We pass security with bombs in the body cavity
We love mangled flaps, pressureless cabins, and gravity

Protecting the Ummah from Danish cartoons
Enforcing the dress-code with all of our goons
For so many moons

Allah save Tony Judt!

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Tags: song-parodies, Jihad, Caliphate, Qin'qs

The final frontier. *hic*

Charles Krauthammer comes to the defense of the drunk astronauts who have been reported on this week in "Lit up for Lift Off" ( or here)

Have you ever been to the shuttle launch pad? Have you ever seen that beautiful and preposterous thing the astronauts ride? Imagine it's you sitting on top of a 12-story winged tube bolted to a gigantic canister filled with 2 million liters of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Then picture your own buddies -- the "closeout crew" -- who met you at the pad, fastened your emergency chute, strapped you into your launch seat, sealed the hatch and waved smiling to you through the window. Having left you lashed to what is the largest bomb on planet Earth, they then proceed 200 feet down the elevator and drive not one, not two, but three miles away to watch as the button is pressed that lights the candle that ignites the fuel that blows you into space.

Three miles! That's how far they calculate they must go to be beyond the radius of incineration should anything go awry on the launch pad on which, I remind you, these insanely brave people are sitting. Would you not want to be a bit soused? Would you be all aflutter if you discovered that a couple of astronauts -- out of dozens -- were mildly so? I dare say that if the standards of today's fussy flight surgeons had been applied to pilots showing up for morning duty in the Battle of Britain, the signs in Piccadilly would today be in German.

But then he gets a bit off course.

Cut these cowboys some slack. These are not wobbly Northwest Airlines pilots trying to get off the runway and steer through clouds and densely occupied airspace. An ascending space shuttle, I assure you, encounters very little traffic. And for much of liftoff, the astronaut is little more than spam in a can -- not pilot but guinea pig. With opposable thumbs, to be sure, yet with only one specific task: to come out alive.

Actually, there is plenty of traffic in space as William J. Broad of the NY Times, following up on an earlier article in the NY Times reports that NASA has now had to move some satellites out of the path of orbiting debris (h/t Instapundit)

Traffic in space is getting so congested that flight controllers in the past few weeks have had to nudge three spacecraft out of harm’s way, in one case to prevent the craft from colliding with its own trash. . . .

While this isn't directly relevant to the story it's interesting that the February article had this paragraph.

Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests.

The more recent article has changed little.

Officials and private space experts say episodes like these illustrate the danger of a drastic rise in satellites and space debris in Earth’s orbit. Early this year, after decades of growth, the federal catalog of detectable objects (four inches wide or larger) orbiting Earth reached 10,000, including dead satellites, old rocket engines and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and weapon tests.

Still Krauthammer is arguing that there's little maneuvering that an astronaut can do as he's lifting off. So I guess that a rocket reaching escape velocity is not going to be affected by most space junk out there.

I'd agree that if it's just a few astronauts out of the total, it's probably not enough to get alarmed about. But in case of emergency you still probably need at least one person with all his faculties at their sharpest to react quickly.

Of course Krauthammer was just using this story to get to his real agenda: pushing for more space exploration.

It's hard to entirely blame this state of affairs on a fickle public. Blame also belongs to the idiot politicians who decided 30 years ago to abandon the moon and send us on a pointless and endless journey into low Earth orbit. President Bush has sensibly called an end to this nonsense and committed us to going back to the moon and, ultimately, to Mars. If his successors don't screw it up, within 10 years NASA will have us back to where we belong -- on other worlds.

space junk, astronauts, nasa.

The accountability contrast

The New York Times reports

Israel began dismantling a low concrete barrier that ran for 25 miles along roads south of Hebron. Israel had claimed that the barrier, though just 32 inches high, was intended to provide additional security for Jewish settlers, but in February 2006 the High Court accepted the contention of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that the wall violated the rights of Palestinian residents in 21 rural communities and prevented farmers from crossing the roads with their herds of livestock.

LGF writes:

Imagine my surprise. Report: Amnesty deal between Israel and Fatah falls through.

Pan-Arab satellite television network Al-Arabiya reported Thursday that the agreement between Fatah militants and Israel promising amnesty to militants who turn in their weapons has fallen through.

According to the report, Israel informed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, affiliated with Fatah that the amnesty offer is no longer on the table as half of the Fatah militants who signed documents promising to refrain from terrorism failed hand over their weapons.

I'm not in favor of Israel dismantling the wall anywhere. I believe it was built with consideration given a well established concern of preventing terror. However these two incidents illustrate the relative accountability of each side here. Israel is concerned with its laws and will conform to them.

The Palestinians ignore agreements left and right and have no internal system of correcting failures. They just count on the world to ignore their violations. There is no way to make peace like that. None.

The peace process is simply a process by which Israel transfers money, arms and territory to the Palestinians and receives broken promises in return.

If ... you must 08/03/07

It's been a while, so some may seem a little stale. But I assure that they're still quite good.

If you haven't read I didn't do squat - now give me a passing grade at Colossus of Rhodey.Hube; you must.
This sort of indulgence eventually leads to this.
If you haven't read A crying Indian at I remember JFK; you must.
It's a story about an effective advertising campaign and a surprise twist. I remember a different different advertising campaign that featured an American Indian. (In the days before Native American.)
If you haven't read Mandela's elders have a solution at LGF; you must.
If you haven't read The world changes the toy doesn't at Done with Mirrors; you must.
Actually now they make toy cell phones.
If you haven't read JoshuaPundit's the new seven wonders; you must.
I like his ideas. Especially one of them!
If you haven't read Manhattan-enge at the Maryland Weather Blog; you must.
If you haven't read Bad Medicine at Bookworm Room; you must.
If you haven't read Maryland Conservatarian's They Spend you pay; you must.
As Maryland's budget crisis becomes more imminent politicians look to proof that the citizenry wants them to continue spending. Given that this is Maryland, they may well be right.
If you haven't read Crablaw's Keith Ellison compares 9/11 to the Reichstag burning; you must.
I know a lot of people have hammered Ellison on this. But this is one of the better ones for illustrating exactly how perverse the statement was.
If you haven't seen E-motion at Not quite perfect; you must.
If you haven't read It is broken now at Jack's Shack; you must.
Every parents' nightmare - not being able to make things right for their children.
If you haven't read Monoblogue's Who will I support; you must.
I have a feeling he's headed in a different direction than I would but this is an excellent methodical look at issues and rating the candidates accordingly. He just ought to have links to all previous posts in the series so readers can easily go back over all the relevant posts.

The path to irrelevance

Gleefully trashing his former employer, David Ignatius writes in The path that led to Murdoch

For Journal alumni, the past decade has been like watching a car wreck in slow motion. The people driving the car were our friends, the journalists we respected most. Now an ambulance of sorts, in the person of Rupert Murdoch, has arrived to pick up the bodies.

People will bemoan what Murdoch does to the Journal, no matter what it is. They will say that he is killing a great newspaper. But the sad part of this story is that "the empire," as we reporters once liked to call it, was already dying -- and that so many of its wounds were self-inflicted.

It's sort of odd reading this from one of the most vapid and dense op-ed columnists around. As Maryland Conservatarian wrote about a recent column

Actually, I have no idea what David Ignatius is saying…which is alright because I doubt anyone else reading him will gleam anything useful from this piece

It is a sentiment I often feel when I'm reading Ignatius too.

Ignatius may cast no tears over the acquisition of his old paper by Rupert Murdoch, but it isn't like he's exactly been covering himself in glory during the past 20 years.

But still I wonder is it that bad that Murdoch is acquiring the Wall Street Journal? Did he really destroy the Times of London as critics predicted when he purchased that institution?

The Spine doesn't have any such worries.

And as for the reliability of family control: what about the Times? Could Rupert do worse to the Journal than the Sulzbergers have done to the Times?

Remember there is always the Financial Times out there, eager to compete with the WSJ. That is a big constraint. Also Rupert is very smart. And so is James.

But Jay Ambrose might well put David Ignatius's fears to rest, to the reporting staff of the Journal isn't exactly a hotbed of conservative ideologues.

Conservatives have reason for concern, but it has chiefly been liberals worrying themselves silly about Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion deal to purchase Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. They should cheer up. The incessantly maligned media mogul has conceivably saved a publication that, among mainstream newspapers in this country, may be without leftist peer. In its news sections, that is.

Still what Ambrose points out that is important is that Murdoch plans to make the Journal part of something bigger.

It’s largely because of those holdings that the purchase made sense for Murdoch and that the prospects of the Journal are vastly lifted. He can use the Journal’s outstanding talent to help create an interlinked TV-newspaper-online financial-reporting organization that just may leave competitors far behind while soaking up oceans of advertising.

Finally Ambrose points to the one factor that sets the Journal apart from most other newspapers these days.

Comfort can be found in this fact, though it would be more comforting, still, if American journalism returned to the sort of standards pronounced early in the history of the paper as it began to establish itself as America’s foremost financial news source: Opinion is to stay out of the news. Get that old ideal more firmly entrenched in mainstream media outlets today, and it would be yet more difficult for even so forceful a personality as Murdoch to push editors around, which can in fact happen.

The ideological divide between the Journal's opinion and news pages is obvious. It is not at all clear that such a divide exists at most major newspapers. Instead of taking aim at his former employers perhaps Ignatius should be taking instruction.

wall street journal, rupert murdoch.

Council speak 08/03/07

The council has spoken and declared that Colossus of Rhodey's excellent NEA Also Confused About SCOTUS Decision Regarding Race & Schooling was the best Watcher' Council post of the week. It has also voted Michael J. Totten's Baghdad Raid Night the best non-council post of the week.

The runner's up this week were Right Wing Nuthouse's Whose Freedom? What is Speech? and for the non-council side it was Build a better world by destroying value by Classical Values.

If you'd like to get in on the fun but aren't a member of the council follow the instructions here to be included in next week's vote.

watcher's council.

Deathly hallows roundup

There will be spoilers - both those I link to and some in this post.

Be forewarned.

In non-spoiler news. Harry Potter Prognostications is putting together a JK Rowling thank you book. Follow the instructions if you wish to participate.

Spoiler alert, don't click on these links unless you wish to be spoiled:
Harry Potter Prognostications also has posted its podcast review of the book.

Baseball Crank has posted his (extensive, excellent) review and recap. It's great and thought provoking, even if I didn't agree with it all.

My friend, Elie's Expositions has now reviewed his predictions. He was a lot closer to the mark than was I.

Rabbi Slifkin has written about the origins in Jewish sources of various magical creatures mentioned in the book. (h/t Hirhurim)

Finally, JK Rowling gave a great chat at the Bloomsbury site recently, filling in even more detail than she did in her interview with Meredith Viera. (h/t Elie's Expositions.)

While I still want to get a review up (It's not happening today) some of her comments made me want to respond.

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Su: How did neville get the gryfindor sword, is there a link to the hat

J.K. Rowling: Yes, there is very definitely a link to the hat!

J.K. Rowling: Neville, most worthy Gryffindor, asked for help just as Harry did in the Chamber of secrets, and Gryffindor's sword was transported into Gryffindor's old hat -

J.K. Rowling: - the Sorting Hat was Gryffindor's initially, as you know.

J.K. Rowling: Griphook was wrong - Gryffindor did not 'steal' the sword, not unless you are a goblin fanatic and believe that all goblin-made objects really belong to the maker.

As Elie's Expositions pointed out to me in an e-mail, if the Sword of Griffindor would disappear from someone's possession when someone needed it, well then it would be very easy for a Goblin to assume that wizards were stealing it, regardless of the interesting views on ownership that Goblins held.

Lady Bella: Whose murders did voldemor use to create each of the horcruxes

J.K. Rowling: The diary - Moaning Myrtle. The cup - Hepzibah Smith, the previous owner. The locket - a Muggle tramp. Nagini - Bertha Jorkins (Voldemort could use a wand once he regained a rudimentary body, as long as the victim was subdued).

J.K. Rowling: The diadem - an Albanian peasant. The ring - Tom Riddle snr.

Since Rowling doesn't say the manner he murdered the others, I don't have this question. But she seems to be saying that Voldemort killed Bertha Jorkins with a spell. If so, why didn't her image appear to Harry at the end of the Goblet of Fire? She should have come back between Frank and Harry's parents, shouldn't she have?

Barbara: I was very disappointed to see harry use crucio and seem to enjoy it his failure to perform that kind of curse in the past has been a credit to his character why the change, and did harry later regret having enjoyed deliberately causing pain

J.K. Rowling: Harry is not, and never has been, a saint. Like Snape, he is flawed and mortal.

J.K. Rowling: Harry's faults are primarily anger and occasional arrogance.

J.K. Rowling: On this occasion, he is very angry and acts accordingly. He is also in an extreme situation, and attempting to defend somebody very good against a violent and murderous opponent.

This is a cop-out answer. In fact in the Deathly Hallows the good guys were using unforgivable curses frequently. And yet Rowling never gives a reason why it was OK. Sure they were going up against some bad folks, but Moody/Crouch never explained that there were circumstances where the curses were allowed (e.g. self defense.) "Unforgivable" seems pretty definitive to me.

Chucky: Have you had another alternatives as book title apart from deathly hallows

J.K. Rowling: The two other possibilities were 'the Elder Wand' (used instead as a chapter title) and 'the Peverell Quest', which I decided against quite quickly. I think the word 'Quest' is a bit corny!

I read that the Chamber of Secrets was originally to be called the Half Blood Prince. I guess that subplot waited until later. I wonder why.

Casey Kunze: Who killed remus and tonks I think if I knew this, I would get some closure over the very sad, but understandable, death of two of my favorite characters

J.K. Rowling: I'm so sorry! I met a couple on launch night who had come dressed as Lupin and Tonks, and I felt dreadfully guilty as I signed their books!

J.K. Rowling: Remus was killed by Dolohov and Tonks by Bellatrix.

I'm a little disappointed in this. I'd figured that Bellatrix (or possibly Narcissa) had killed both, outside the scope of battle given Voldemort's nasty comments at the beginning of the book.

Renee: From reading about the original owners of the deathly hallows, the peverell brothers, i'm wondering if harry and voldermort are distantly related voldermorts grandfather ended up with the resurrection stone ring?

J.K. Rowling: Yes, Harry and Voldemort are distantly related through the Peverells.

J.K. Rowling: Of course, nearly all wizarding families are related if you trace them back through the centuries. As was made clear in 'Deathly hallows', Peverell blood would run through many wizarding families.

In fact, then, the only clear Wizarding blood Harry had in him was Slytherin. As Rowling points out later in the book, muggles born with Wizarding power, probably had a witch or wizard as an ancestor, so it's possible that Harry descended from one of the other founders of Hogwarts, but only his Slytherin blood was certain!

More Harry Potter on Soccer Dad.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.<