Soccer Dad

Council speak 09/30/2007

The council has spoken, this week's council winner was Bookworm Room's fascinating Cosmic Ironies, the history of her father's escape from his fate at the hand of the Nazis. The winning non-council post was Rafael Medoff: Columbia “Invites Hitler to Campus” --As it Did in 1933, which showed that when a Columbia professor said that he wouldn't have hesitated to give Hitler a platform as the school gave Ahmadinejad, he wasn't lying. Demerits for brazenness but at least give him points for honesty. (Though honesty like this may not be a virtue.)

The Council runner up was Big Lizards' The Human Touch, which argued for the use of human judgment in determining which immigrants ought to be allowed to stay and which ought to be rejected. It was particularly interesting as there was a news report this week that the TSA is considering using human observation of suspicious behavior at airports. Civil libertarians, of course, are scandalized. (Give Big Lizards credit for being ahead of the curve here. Here's a 60 Minutes report on Israeli airline security.) The non council runner up was Dr. Sanity's Islam and Marxism - A marriage made in Allah's socialist Paradise.

If you're a blogger and would like to participate in next week's competition, why not follow the rules here and submit an entry to Mr. Watcher?

watcher's council.

Thoughts about 25 years of season tickets

From the Baltimore Orioles mailing list ... (reprinted with permission)

This is kind of a long ramble, but hey...its about the O's :)

I went to this game last night....My family has had season tickets since
'82. 20+ rows back from the O's On Deck circle. Back then we had 4. A few
years into Camden Yards we increased it to 6. A few years after the
tailspin began, we lowered it back to 4. 2 years ago we lowered it to 2
seats. My family is now thinking we'll give up our seats next season. We
can't find anyone who wants to split them anymore and at $97 a game
($45/ticket, $7 parking) to watch this crap, its just not worth it.

So I figured I'd take my nephew and go to one last game in the family seats.
We rushed to make it in time for the first pitch--which Zambrano promptly
used to nail the first hitter in the side.

It only got worse...and it just seemed as if he had no control other than to
lay it in there. Any time he tried to actually PITCH, they took it for a
ball. Only things getting over the plate were medium speed meatballs.

Finally they pulled him after it was 5-0, bases loaded 2 outs. Birkins then
completed Zambrano's night by allowing all 3 inherited runners to score.

8-0. Zambrano's line? 2/3 inning, 8 runs. I kept repeating that in my
head. 7...8...9 years ago, that would have been all the sports stations
were talking about the next day. Yet today I know that if I turn on 1300 or
1570, it'll be mostly Ravens chatter about their game in Cleveland (I'm a
huge Raven's fan, so that doesn't bother me that much).

On the drive home (we left after the 6th inning since it was a bit sticky
out and a school night and I had to get my nephew home), I called my Dad and
chatted a bit. He lamented about giving up the tickets, but knew deep down
the only reason he'd kept them these last couple years was for my nephew
who's a huge Orioles fan. Prior to that, we'd kept them because my mother
and I were crazy Orioles fans and loved going to the games. My dad was
always a tag-along and would bring the Wall Street Journal or a sailing
magazine and read while my Mom and I would follow the finer points of the
game.

Every Opening Day was like a holiday for my family. I would have an excuse
written to get out of school to go see my dentist. What the administration
didn't realize was my Dentist was my Dad and I'd be seeing him sitting next
to be at the ballgame! (side-bar, I submitted this many years ago to ESPN
the Magazine for best excuse used to get out of something for opening day
and they printed it in issue #2).

Anyway, so I talked with my dad and just said "Angelos has killed my love of
the Orioles. Can you believe it? A diehard fan like me and he has left me
just not caring." And its true. I used to attend or watch well over 140
games a year when I was younger. I knew the O's TV schedule by heart and
looked forward to watching each game. As the losing continued, I would
watch less and less. I'd check the box scores less and less. Every Spring
I would get so excited. I had to watch the first televised spring training
game, even though I knew I would only see the real players for the first
inning or two. Didn't matter. It was the O's.

And here I am now. I'm 32 years old and I feel like I'm in mourning. I sat
in the old seats and it looked and felt different. I couldn't see the
Bromo-Seltzer Tower because of the monstrosity of a hotel they're building
which blocks out 1/2 the view of the outfield (not really Angelos' fault,
but still. The players are mostly mailing it in, other than Markakis. Even
BRob looked a little slow and uncaring on some plays/at-bats. There were
maybe 5 thousand people in the stands. There are far less employees around
(nobody directing traffic in the parking lots, most concessions only had 1
cashier working).

And in that phone conversation with my Dad I realized it didn't matter if he
gave up the tickets; honestly, what exactly would I be missing? It didn't
FEEL like a fun place to come. It felt like a Shiva house (a Jewish house
in mourning). I've gone to maybe a dozen Frederick Keys games over the last
decade and I can get more enjoyment out of those games. It feels like a
place people want to come! My boss has season tix to the Nationals so I'll
probably got a few of their games next year. Not that their record is much
better, but they show more promise and don't have the weight of 10 losing
years hanging on them.

I'll have positive memories of games I've attended in my family seats...

'83 playoffs and world series in Memorial Stadium (we had practically the
same seats/sections before the move)
Last game at Memorial
First game at Camden
Ripken's 2131 game with my mom
Playoff runs in '96 and '97
Ripken's last hit from game1 on 10/05/01

I'll always remember last night...but for much different reasons. With all
apologies to Don McLean, for me, it was the day the Orioles died.

Kevin

_______________________
Kevin Gandel
IT Manager
Lemek LLC dba Panera Bread

baltimore orioles

Blockbuster move

We noticed that the Blockbuster on Reisterstown Road near Old Court has shut its doors. There's no sign saying "We moved."

It's disappointing as I figured that when Goldberg's Bagels moved to that shopping center, it would become quite the happening Saturday Night place. I figured that many Orthodox families would head to the shopping center for post Shabbos bagels and movies. Apparently the first part will happen, but not the second.

I couldn't find any news stories about Blockbuster closing down stores in Maryland. While I can certainly understand that Netflix and Blockbuster on demand are reducing the need to staff stores, this closing seemed rather sudden. (It's not just closed, the whole store is stripped.)

I tried the phone number and there's no answer (and no message saying that the number has been disconnected.)

What happened?

(Here's a bit that suggests that things should be looking up for Blockbuster. I guess just not this one.)

blockbuster video.

Mahmoud the bold

h / t Elder of Ziyon

Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post - daughter of the late Katherine Graham - interviewed Mahmoud Abbas for the paper. The interview is here.

Elder of Ziyon is certainly correct that there's nothing "moderate" in the positions he espouses.

A comment at the site cites IMRA catching Abbas in a lie. (Or if you prefer to be polite an embellishment.) Abbas boasted that his security forces had captured two rockets aimed at Israel. IMRA thought cited an e-mail from Khaled abu Toameh that those weren't rockets but empty pipes.

So far the only other commenter on the article is Yaacov Lozowick who observes

So according to the Palestinian president, the 2nd Intifada was launched in response to an unprecedented offer by Israel's prime minister. It would have been legitimate to continue negotiating so as to achieve more - but that was not what happened.

Reading the interview it is impossible to get the feeling that Abbas is capable of much independent thought. He comes across as spoiled. (The world must support our demands, Israel must agree to our terms, Hamas must make nice to us.) He also is living in unreality. These Q & A's are precious:

Are there any concessions that you're willing to make in order to reach a deal with the Israelis? Are there any concessions you demand?

We will be flexible, but before 1947, we had 95 percent of Palestine. In 1937, the partition plan gave the Israelis only part of Palestine. And they were very happy at that time. [David] Ben-Gurion was very happy with it. It didn't work. After that [came] the 1947 partition plan -- we rejected this, so we lost.

You should have taken it?

Yes, at that time, of course. But it gave us 46 percent of Palestine. . . . Now, we accept [the pre-'67 borders].

So in other words, it is a concession that the PA is willing to forgo the 1947 partition plan. That ship sailed 60 years ago. There's no sense of shame, that since the Arab world rejected compromise 60 years they missed their chance.

The other part of the problem is "we had 95 percent of Palestine." Who is "we?" The areas now considered to be part of Palestine were sections of Jordan and Egypt at the time. Yes the untenable 1947 partition divided what was then Palestine into Jewish and Arab enclaves. But Gaza was part of Egypt and Judea and Samaria were parts of (Trans)Jordan - which itself was part of the British Mandate of Palestine. (And was Ben Gurion happy with the partition plan? Or was he willing to tolerate it in order to get a state?) "We" clearly does not refer to what Abbas (and the world) would now call "Palestinians."

And then there is this:

The Israelis thought they were doing a good thing when they withdrew from Gaza [in July 2005], but now they have been forced to evacuate a town near Gaza [because it has been repeatedly shelled by rockets from Hamas].

They did it unilaterally. They didn't do it bilaterally with us. We asked them many times to make [the Gaza withdrawal] the result of an agreement between us. But [former Israeli prime minister Ariel] Sharon refused. He didn't want to talk to us. . . .

OK, so what happened when Israel ceded territory under the terms of of a bilateral agreement? That happened in late 1995, when Israel ceded Tulkarem, Shechem (Nablus), Ramallah, Kalkilya, Bethlehem and Jenin to the Palestinian Authority. Starting in February 1996 Israel was struck with a series of suicide bombings that killed over 60 people and injured hundreds more. This violence didn't occur because Israel killed Yihye Ayyash or because Hamas was trying to "kill the peace process." It happened because Israel trusted its security to the PA. The PA, then under Arafat's leadership, had no interest in preventing terror or Hamas from developing a terror infrastructure. So Hamas took advantage of the opportunity, built its infrastructure while being protected by Arafat and struck at Israel when it could. What happened in Gaza is a repeat of that and of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, which afforded Hezbollah a better platform from which to attack Israel.

The lesson isn't that unilateral won't work. The lesson is that giving territory to terrorists (or those committed to your destruction) strengthens them.

Finally there's this:

Your popularity has increased since you declared yourself independent of Hamas and set up a government in the West Bank. Does this show that when you make a bold move, people like it?

Yes, but if I make concessions which are unacceptable to the people, I think that I will not be popular anymore. But it is not a matter of popularity -- it's a matter of fairness.

"Bold?!" Read the whole interview. "Bold" doesn't describe Abbas. He has chutzpah no doubt. But the best description of him is "passive aggressive." This is not a man that any sane person would trust to ensure his interests.

And note, even here, he refuses to make "concessions which are unacceptable to the people." Has he even thought of using his position as leader to persuade the people of the necessity of making concessions? Instead he just pretends that not demanding the 1947 partition plan is a concession.

Abbas is weak. And I'm not just talking about his political position.

Israel Matzav has more thoughts:

I want you to try to understand Abu Mazen's basic argument, because it's not something western minds are used to confronting. When we used to play football in the schoolyard and one team scored a touchdown, the ruled always was "suckers walk." The team that gave up the touchdown had to retreat to the other end of the schoolyard to receive the ensuing kickoff. In Abu Mazen's world, the winner has to give up all its gains in order to appease the loser.

Crossposted on Yourish.com.

mahmoud abbas.

Strudel eating surrender monkeys

Despite Don Surber's sensible quote of Angela Merkel
Germany, rather than France has been the European country working against any sort of sanctions against Iran. As Yossi Klein Halevi wrote in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required / h/t Daled Amos, the Shalem Center)

Business opportunities in Iran were the theme of a German government-sponsored conference last week in Darmstadt, Germany. "Iran is accustomed to crises," the conference invitation delicately noted, "but somehow always keeps going forward." In fact, Iran's resilience is made possible in no small measure by Germany itself, which remains one of Iran's largest trading partners. Now Berlin is balking at international attempts to intensify economic sanctions against the Tehran regime for its nuclear program.

Why would that be?

Still, however substantial, business interests alone can't explain Germany's refusal to seriously confront the Iranian threat. The men and women I met in Berlin are obviously concerned about the stability of the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish state, and recognize that a nuclear-armed and expansionist Shiite regime is a danger, ultimately, to Europe as well.

Perhaps another reason for German blindness on Iran is a misplaced sense of contrition. In insisting on engagement rather than confrontation with Tehran, Germans seem to believe they are keeping faith with the lessons of their history. All problems should be peacefully resolved; no aggressor is irredeemable. That was the message offered last week by German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger, who, even as he insisted that Germany was ready "if necessary" to confront Iran, quickly added that Berlin was prepared to give the Ahmadinejad regime "a chance to recover the international community's lost confidence in its nuclear program. If Iran is ready to do this . . . then I think we can spare ourselves future sanctions debates."

Gee I never thought that France would be tougher than Germany but that seems to be what's happening.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, 2 years ago Daniel Pipes wrote Weak Brits, Tough French. Maybe the French shouldn't be underestimated.

iran, europe.

The white butterfly

Michelle Malkin and others have posted about Shiri Negari, the terror victim who was featured in a sign protesting Mahmoud Ahmadenijad's invitation to speak at Columbia.

The name brought back memories. While the terror war against Israel was going strong, I kept on reading new names of those killed, but there was something about her story that stuck with me: the white butterfly.

The emergency physician who treated her, Dr. Avraham Rivkind wrote

Several weeks ago, I kneeled over a beautiful young woman named Shiri Nagari in the hospital parking lot. I asked her how she was feeling, and she answered that she was okay. But I felt that something was wrong.

What was wrong was

... her chest X-ray confirmed my hunch: a white butterfly on the black background.

Shiri's lungs had exploded.

The same loud wave of air that smashes your eardrums can compress the air in your lungs and send it to destroy the organs in your abdominal cavity. Three concussive waves do lethal damage when a bomb explodes in an enclosed area.

We rushed Shiri to our trauma operating room, always left empty for emergencies, and opened her up: blood in her chest and abdomen, a liver torn apart. No matter how much blood we pumped in, she couldn't survive.

I'm 52, and like most Israelis I serve in the army too. I have seen my share of tank injuries, unrelenting cancers and traffic accidents.

Shiri's death was the first time I ever cried at losing a patient.

All of her internal organs were crushed by the force of the blast. There was nothing the doctors could do.

I know it's a terrible way to remember someone, but when the terrorists were striking with regularity, it's how I reacted. I could name too many of the victims of the Arab terror during the so called "Aqsa intifada."

Hopefully we've seen an end to those terrible times. But when some brilliant academic, politician, journalist or diplomat comes up with another idea how to empower the purveyors of terror they increase the risk that they could recur.

With the Holiday of Sukkos on its way, I don't want to end on such a negative note. Fortunately, Dr. Rivkind tells of some of his successes too.

Adi Hudja, only 14, had more than 40 metal objects in her legs from the suicide bombings on Ben Yehuda Street last December.

She was bleeding uncontrollably from her wounds. On the spot, we came up with the idea of trying a coagulant for hemophiliacs still not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, certainly not approved for trauma. It costs $10,000 for a small bottle, but it worked.

Six months later, she's coming for therapy three times a week in Hadassah's Mt. Scopus Rehab Center, and she's learning to walk. Next year, maybe she'll be able to go back to school too. She's the same age as one of my daughters.

and ...

In October 2000, Shimon Ohana, an 18-year-old border police officer, was declared dead in the field. But I asked the ambulance driver to bring him to the hospital. Some decisions are hard to make in the field. I uncovered him, we opened his chest cavity and began to work. He came back to life but remained in a coma for 17 days.

At last, he woke up.

Shimon is my continued reminder that we can't give up hope.

Today, he is a fully functioning young man who trains dogs and loves computers.

No we can't give up hope. Even when seemingly every defensive action inspires questions of those who rarely question Israel's enemies.

Crossposted on Yourish.com.

white butterfly, Shiri Negari.

What's to debate?

Captain Ed has added his criticism to those who fault the GOP presidential front runner from not showing up to a debate at Morgan State University.

We have scolded the African-American community for its lock-step support for Democrats. However, as the avoidance of this debate demonstrates, Republicans haven't exactly beaten down doors in an attempt to engage these voters, either. Given that these invitations went out in March, the campaigns had plenty of time to schedule one debate to address one of the largest voting blocs in the country, and one whose loyalties could help the GOP turn national elections.

Some will say that the African-American community doesn't turn out for Republican primaries, and that's mostly true. They focus on Democrats. However, the entire point of outreach is to change that voting behavior, and leading Republicans have to give them a reason to do so. Ignoring them in the primaries will not gain the Republican nominee any votes in the general election.

Back in 2002, then Congressman Bob Ehrlich agreed to an NAACP sponsored debate with then Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. There was a report that Ehrlich's running mate, Michael Steele, was pelted with Oreos. Whether or not Oreos made an appearance at the debate still seems to be debated. What is clear is the hostility of the audience to Ehrlich. According to the Baltimore Sun ( Ehrlich and Townsend exchange jabs - Gubernatorial candidates debate campaign themes, attack records, promises Sun, The (Baltimore, MD)
September 27, 2002 )

The beginning of last night's debate was marred by jeering of Ehrlich during his opening remarks, booing that became so disruptive that NAACP National President Kweisi Mfume took the podium from Townsend to admonish the crowd.

"We have to be dignified in our approach, no matter where we stand on these issues," said Mfume, who used to serve in Congress with Ehrlich. "On behalf of all the citizens of this great state, allow us to have a debate where all the issues can be heard."

Ehrlich did reach out and was heckled for his troubles. If the African American community wishes for Republicans to take them seriously, perhaps they ought to be a little less hostile when Republicans do reach out. If Republicans feel that their outreach efforts are for naught they won't waste their resources.

The difference here is that this was to be a forum only for Republican candidates. Still I can't help thinking that the treatment Ehrlich received had to be a consideration of the Republican candidates who chose not to debate.

presidential election 2008.

The tip of a desert iceberg?

via memeorandum

Jules Crittenden, Elder of Ziyon and others noted this story from Saudi Arabia.

Members of Khobar's Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal.

According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice.

Head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Eastern province Dr. Mohamed bin Marshood al-Marshood, told Asharq Al Awsat that two of the Commission's employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street, an area usually crowded with shoppers during the month of Ramadan.

"Offer them advice" is likely a euphemism for "threaten them."

But what I find especially interesting about this story is that in occurred in the Eastern Province.

Max Singer wrote a fascinating article a few years ago, "Free the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia."

Before its conquest by Ibn Saud, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (EP), which lies along the shore of the Arabian Gulf and which contains all of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, was populated mostly by two groups of Shiite Muslims who were quite different culturally and religiously from their Najdi conquerors. One group was Bedouins and settled date-growers and farmers living around two groups of oases. The other was pearlers, fishermen, and traders living in coastal villages along the Gulf.

Since the vast recent expansion of the oil industry, the population of the EP has multiplied, partly from natural growth of the original local population, but also by migration from other parts of Saudi Arabia and a much larger immigration of foreign Arabs and other Muslims and some professionals and managers from Europe and the U.S., all of whom are excluded from citizenship.

Appreciating the predicament of the people of the EP requires some information about the official religion of Saudi Arabia. It is unofficially known as Wahhabism—which is conventionally described as a form of Hanbali Islam—begun by the Najd preacher Mohammed bin Abdul-Wahhab in 1745, who spread his faith by partnership with the local Najd warlord, who became the founder of the Al Saud dynasty. (Some Muslims resentfully say that calling Wahhabism a school of Islam is like calling the Branch Davidians of Waco a school of Christianity.) Wahhabism is an austere desert belief, based more on fanatic intensity than scholarly roots in Islamic writings and teaching. In addition to objecting to any memorials to the dead, and any freedom for women, it holds that most Muslims who are not Wahhabis are “polytheists” who should be treated like infidels, and killed if they refuse to convert to Wahhabism. They specifically deny that Shia Muslims are true Muslims and therefore insist that they have no rights in Saudi Arabia, even in areas where they had been living for many centuries before Saudi Arabia existed. (A newly published book, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Berkeley Professor Hamid Algar calls Wahhabism “a peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine” that was “stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars” since it was first put forth.)

So is this (seemingly) minor incident perhaps an indicator of deeper fault lines. Are the indigenous Shi'a of the Eastern Province starting to rebel against their Wahhabi enforcers? Or was this just an isolated incident.

Crossposted on Yourish.com.

saudi arabia, wahhabism.

Juggling carnivals 09/26/2007

Incoming Carnivals

Thanks to Dr. Sanity for including my entry (near the top!) in the latest Carnival of the Insanities.

Abolition of Man hosted the most recent Carnival of Maryland. It is extremely well done.

Jack's Shack has hosted the extraordinary Not Haveil Havalim #135. Though it's unauthorized, check it out. Even if I'm Soccer Dad and he's not.

So step right up and enjoy the carnivals!

Technorati tags: blog carnivals.

Ahmadineajd meets with U.S. Muslim leaders, calls U.S. "big prison"

Ahmadinejad's message is delivered to a more receptive audience and adapted accordingly. From Iran's PressTV:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slams Washington's domestic policy saying the US has turned into a big prison for the American nation.

He made the remarks at a meeting with the leaders of US Muslim community on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad criticized the offensive remarks made by Columbia University's President Lee Bollinger adding, "They insult the guest they've invited and echoed statements of a terrorist group in their remarks. They knew their words would not affect me and just tried to prevent the university students from listening to new words."

Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a pretext to occupy Palestine and displace millions of peoples, therefore its aspects should be studied. "They displaced
the Palestinian nation under the pretext of the massacre of the Jews; if it is revealed that the Holocaust has nothing to do with the issue of Palestine and the figures in this regard are exaggerated, they will have nothing to say."

"Resolutions are no longer of any use to counter Israel's crimes and the approved resolutions are not implemented either. I'm sure that Americans are against those crimes and consider Palestinians to be right."

He described discord between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq as a plot hatched by the enemies, which can be thwarted by unity.

Ahmadinejad called on all Muslims to strive for justice in the world adding, "We believe all religions have the same origin. Christians, Jews and Muslims all believe in the savior."

Crossposted on Judeopundit

While in New York, Ahmadinejad met with Mugabe

Mahmoud has been very busy lately. But how could he not find time to meet with "the valiant African figure"?

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe on Monday reviewed avenues to bolster all-out bilate ralrelations.

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Underlining the need for unity of the developing states against American and British neocolonialism, he called for further activiation of various groups such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Group 15 and Group 77 in order to develop the United Nations.

The Iranian President further appreciated the active presence of Zimbabwe in the NAM Ministerial Meeting on Human Rights and Cultural Diversity held in Tehran early September.

For his part, President Mugabe, criticized the unilateralist approach and misuse of the UN Security Council by the bullying powers, and urged the developing states to confront such approaches by the big powers.

The two presidents underscored the need for formation of a joint economic commission.[...]

They better form it quickly.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Submitted 09/26/2007

1. "Jena 6" Update
Colossus of Rhodey acknowledges that the sentences meted out in the Jena 6 case were disproportionate and likely racist, but he shows that the rest of the interpretation of the incident is bogus. (I'd emphasize that Al Sharpton sullies any cause he's involved with.)
2. A Big Hole in the Desert (and in the story)
Soccer Dad
My post considers the mystery target in Syria that Israel attacked.
3. What Do Wahhabis Want?
Done with Mirrors considers that while Bin Laden may have grand designs, those who support him may not have quite the same grandiose dreams.
4. Point of Inflection
The Glittering Eye looks at economic data and wonders why some rather popular economists missed a rather important phenomenon when looking at the big picture.
5. Columbia Dhimmis Get Ahmedinejad Earful! Some Applaud, Some Laugh -- We All Should Just Cry...
Okie on the Lam comments on the support shown Ahmadinejad at Columbia, the media's cluelessness in covering it and a wonderful suggestion to make the visit that much more meaningful.
6. Cosmic Ironies
Bookworm Room considers the many strands of her family's history and the irony that ultimately saved her father from the Holocaust. For some reason this family history reminded me a bit of the one that Judge Alex Kosinski wrote more than ten years ago.
7. How The Arab Lobby Works
JoshuaPundit uses the example of PLO lobbyist Edward Abington to show that there's an Arab lobby working against American interests.
8. Krugman Spews Race-Baiting Bile
Rhymes with Right takes issue with Paul Krugman's imputation of racism in the Republican politics in the refusal of the top presidential candidates to debate in front of a black audience. I'd add another reason. In 2002, gubernatorial candidate Bob Ehrlich agreed to debate Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend at Morgan State. The crowd got so rowdy (and, need I say, anti-Ehrlich) at times that moderator Kweisi Mfume had to stop the proceedings.
9. Gates' Iraq Agenda Short On Democracy
Cheat Seeking Missiles regrets the lack of commitment to post-war Iraqi democracy demonstrated by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
10. The Free-Radical Approach To EduReform
The Education Wonks points to the education reform plans of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
11. The Human Touch
Big Lizards wants to see more human involvement in screening potential immigrants, instead of relying on set procedures.
12. The World Is Still Here
Right Wing Nut House notes the hypocrisy of those in academia applauding the likes of Ahmadinejad who suppresses the academy at home (despite his boasts to the contrary.)

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council

With the mostest

I was privileged to be invited to post at Yourish.com about 2 weeks ago. That's the site of Meryl Yourish, one of the most prominent pro-Israel bloggers who was blogging before people knew what blogging was!

A few months ago she gave me permission to announce Haveil Havalim, an opportunity that I didn't always avail myself of. However now that I can crosspost, expect to see most of my Israel related blogging posted there too. And of course when you go there make sure to read the hostess who shows all us bloggers how it's done!

And Mazel Tov to Meryl on her new job and getting a bit on a BBC program!

One note: When I crosspost, I'll usually take advantage of a delay that WordPress allows, so when you follow the link to Yourish, it may tell you there's no post there yet. But don't worry, just click around and read. You'll enjoy it and be informed.

UPDATE: I also have a couple of co-bloggers here. One, Daled Amos, somehow keeps track of nearly every single Israel related blog post and finds a pithy comment to describe it. More recently I asked JudeoPundit to join me. He spends his time slogging through the Iranian media so you don't have to. Whether or not they're posting here, it's well worth your while to check them out.

meryl yourish, blogging.

Waiting for assad

Back in 1996, the New York Times had some surprisingly kind words for President Assad of Syria. In Closing Ranks against Terror the editors of the Times fretted that the senior Assad wouldn't attend the "Summit of the Peacemakers" but that he was still on the right side of history.

President Hafez al-Assad of Syria was conspicuously absent, as he was last fall at the funeral for the slain Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. But as Prime Minister Shimon Peres noted on Wednesday, at least Syria is engaged in the Middle East peace effort, unlike Iran, Israel's implacable foe.

"Peace effort?" Please. Assad went to his grave after rejecting 98% of the territory he demanded of Israel, when President Clinton went to Geneva in 2000. As William Safire remembered the elder Assad in "The Rejectionist.'

Wisely, Bill Clinton decided to bypass this chance at wearing his inimitable lip-biting mournful look, and won't dispatch Vice President Al Gore, his normal substitute, to Damascus.

Why? Because three months ago, at a much-touted meeting in Geneva, Clinton presented Assad with the Golan Heights on a silver platter. The Syrian then humiliated the supplicating American by refusing to take yes for an answer, making fresh demands for control of Galilee that embarrassed not only Clinton but even the most appeasement-prone doves in Jerusalem. Assad scuttled negotiations in the most dramatic way possible.

It's important to remember this bit of history as the editors of the NY Times applaud the inclusion of Syria in .... peace talks.

We welcome President Bush’s decision to include Syria on the list of countries invited to a November Middle East peace meeting. The president’s distaste for such efforts — aides still balk at the term “peace conference” — is only slightly less visceral than his distaste for Syria. We hope this means that Mr. Bush and his aides are finally ready to push all sides to make the compromises essential for moving toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

If Damascus chooses not to attend the meeting, it would again confirm its role as one of the region’s dangerous spoilers. If it chooses to come, the chances for peace may increase. The invitation will certainly make it easier for Egypt and Saudi Arabia — whose political and economic support for any Israel-Palestinian agreement is crucial — to be there. Mr. Bush will still probably have to twist the arms of the risk-averse Saudis to show up.

"...confirm its role..." How many times does reality have to smack you upside the head before you realize that it's telling you something? These games have been going on with Syria for more than a decade. It's the dream of every peace processor to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East including Syria.

But come on, how many times has an Assad rejected importunings to make peace with Israel? How many times has an Assad launched a war against Israel via its proxies? Now that there's apparent evidence that Syria is up to some greater mischief is not the time to engage the younger Assad (can I call him Dorktator or is that copyrighted?) but to at least consider taking diplomatic action against him.

Additionally as Mere Rhetoric points out

When we were taught Israeli-Arab Peace Process 101, it was an ironclad principle that Israel pushes for bilateral talks with each individual Arab enemy and the Arabs push for multilateral talks with Israel. Why? Because when the Arab states combine their negotiating strength they can make demands in unison: "hey Israel, you want this concession from the Palestinians? Well then you're also going to have to give back the Golan to Syria." Israel has to give something to every Arab state in order to get anything that it wants. That's why the Saudis are already setting preconditions for their participation (nice to see major media outlets helping them out with that - teamwork). They understand that the State Department has maneuvered Olmert into an impossible situation, and they're ready to exploit it after three decades of Israel successfully resisting multilateral talks.

The editorial continues:

As for why this sudden flexibility from the White House? The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, wants to try and salvage the president’s legacy — and her own — with a peace deal that could help stabilize the region that Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq has so destructively roiled. It will take a lot more creative diplomacy to make that happen. Indeed, six trips into a too-little, too-late peace effort, Ms. Rice is having as much trouble making progress with Israel, America’s close ally, as with Palestinians.

And how successful was the non-stop peace processing of the Clinton administration? Well, not very. As the editors of the New York Times noted at the time:

Mr. Arafat, regrettably, showed no interest in this proposal, holding out for full control of all areas of the city formerly under Jordanian rule. Talks on Jerusalem cannot usefully resume until Mr. Arafat shows a greater willingness to compromise.

Mr. Arafat seems to feel he cannot do so. His rigidity reflects his failure to prepare Palestinian opinion for anything less than full sovereignty over East Jerusalem. But it also reflects the vocal opposition of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to recognizing any Israeli sovereignty there. This Arab opposition must be defused in the weeks ahead.

It's not the lack of effort or lack of Israeli concessions. It's the unwillingness of the Palestinians (and most of the Arab world) to make peace with Israel.

The editorial continues:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is insisting that the meeting produce a full declaration on the most sensitive and difficult issues: borders, Jerusalem and when the Palestinians get the independent state that President Bush promised them five years ago. Israel, concerned that Mr. Abbas is too weak to guarantee Israel’s security but unwilling to do more to strengthen him, has made clear it is interested in much smaller steps.

Israel has ceded territory, funded, armed and granted amnesty to Fatah, what hasn't it done to "strengthen" Abbas? But that's the crux of the problem Abbas wants everything handed to him and then refuses to live up to his commitments. (Much like Arafat.) Egged on by the likes of the Times he hopes at some point America will diplomatically force Israel to give him what he wants. But that will not bring peace. It will just bring demands for more while chaos likely ensues.

America’s recent record in the Middle East is one of failure — in Iraq, in promoting genuine democracy, in stopping Iran from spreading its brand of militant Islam at odds with the West. The region doesn’t need another failure nor does America’s tattered reputation. All sides need to come away from the November meeting feeling that something concrete has changed in the Middle East — and finally for the better.

This conclusion is simply ludicrous. Do you want blame for the spreading Iranian influence? How about the blind eye turned to Hezbollah from 2000 to 2006?

And the importance of doing something concrete? Overrated. Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon and from Gaza and reaped terror in return.

Again it's not what the United States or Israel do or don't do that matters. It is if the Arab world changes its belief that Israel is illegitimate. No number of summits or peace conferences or one-sided concessions will change that.

As Dore Gold argues

When former U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross sought to understand the failure of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, in which he was an active participant, he zeroed in on the need to bring about a "transformation" of political attitudes that the Palestinian leadership failed to encourage. Ross pointed to the education that Palestinian children received, concluding "that no negotiation is likely to succeed if there is one environment at the negotiating table and another on the street."

Actually I'd say that the environment at the negotiating table is the same as the one in the streets as the Palestinian leadership has encouraged the latter. Until those attitudes change, there's no chance for peace.

Or as Elder of Ziyon puts it:

History shows, however, that Palestinian Arabs have not the slightest interest in a state. The could declare a state in Gaza today if they wanted to; they could build all the institutions they want and make a model democratic society in a contiguous area where not a single Jew or Zionist lives. When they were offered a state in 2001 they rejected it, as they did in 1947 when they rejected partition and in 1940 when the West Bankers voluntarily chose to be annexed to Jordan and become Jordanian citizens.

Peace conferences without a change of heart are useless.

Crossposted at Yourish.com.

israel, peace process.

When the free speech denier gets a platform

Helene Cooper of the NY Times reports on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech yesterday at Columbia University.

Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack. He said it was “well documented” that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran has refused “to adhere to the international standards” of disclosure for its nuclear program.

“I doubt,” Mr. Bollinger concluded, “that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad did not directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so though, he said pointedly:

“In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.”

He added, to some cheers, “Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.”

Bollinger's opening taunt came across as gratuitous and more defensive than sincere. I got the impression from Bollinger that he was trying to show that he understood the man whom he had disgraced his institution by inviting. But rather, I think, he played into his hands. He allowed Ahmadinejad to come back with his "we actually respect our students" giving him an excuse to pose as more committed to academic freedom than Bollinger.

Later on Cooper reports:

“Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?” Mr. Coatsworth asked.

“We love all people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged. “We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran.” He went on to say that the Palestinian “nation” should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future.

Mr. Coatsworth persisted: “I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it,” he shot back. “I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.”

For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium.

This would have been a perfect point for a serious reporter to add some facts about the current status of Jews in Iran. Instead, Cooper emphasizes Ahmadinejad's point and adds an approving exclamation point to it.

Well actually, Columbia provided him with a platform. Free speech doesn't demand that everyone get the same platform. As Michael Rubin wrote

they might want to enable those who don't have it, rather than celebrate the men who have taken it away.

(via Michelle Malkin's excellent and comprehensive coverage.)

The NY Times editorial, Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks, of course, gets it wrong. (Interesting, the NY Times editorial describes Ahmadinejad as "bobbing and weaving" and the headline of the news article uses the verb "parries.")

So we are dismayed by the behavior of some of New York’s democratically elected representatives who denounced and threatened Columbia University for inviting the Iranian leader to speak there yesterday. We can imagine no better way to give hope to opponents of Iran’s repressive state than by showcasing America’s democracy and commitment to free speech. And we can imagine no better way to lay bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s views than to have him speak, and be questioned, at a university forum.

Again, if, say, an Iranian dissident was given the same platform at Columbia as Ahmadinejad, they'd have a point. But despite the jeers of Columbia officials, Ahmadinejad was given a platform that he dominated. One that he didn't deserve and one that debases the institution that provided it.

And of course the Times finds fault with the response to the speech.

Unlike Iran’s citizens, Americans have the right to laugh at leaders, as well as protest Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit and Columbia’s decision to schedule his speech. The threats of possible sanctions against Columbia were an insult to that freedom. In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of New York’s Assembly, Sheldon Silver, warned that legislators might now “take a different view” of capital support provided to Columbia.

Except a private institution has no right to receive public funds. If Columbia has somehow abused the public trust, why shouldn't the public be able to respond. Punishing Columbia in no way diminishes freedom.

In Playing Democrat at Columbia, Anne Applebaum, shows that she gets it.

Ahmadinejad's agenda, though, differs from that of the traditional autocrat. His goal is not merely to hold power in Iran through sheer force, or even through a standard 20th-century personality cult: His goal is to undermine the American and Western democracy rhetoric that poses an ideological threat to the Iranian regime. Last winter, when he invited a host of dubious Holocaust-deniers to discuss the Holocaust in Tehran, he claimed that it was in order to provide shelter for the West's "dissidents" -- that is, for Western thinkers "who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust." This week, he declared that his visit to New York would help the American people, who have "suffered in diverse ways and have been deprived of access to accurate information." Thus the speech at Columbia: Here he is, the allegedly undemocratic Ahmadinejad, taking questions from students! At an American university! Look who's the real democrat now!
...
All things being equal, Columbia would have done better to ignore him, instead of feeding the media circus that serves his purposes. It's not as if he is deprived of a platform in this country: Only last week, he ducked and dodged his way through a long interview on "60 Minutes," and his pronouncements regularly appear in media of all kinds.

("ducked and dodged!" Those boxing metaphors keep on coming.)

Nevertheless, it would have been wrong, once he'd been invited, to ban Ahmadinejad from speaking: To do so would have granted him far more significance than he deserves and played right into his I'm-the-real-democrat-here rhetoric. Instead, the university should have demanded genuine reciprocity. If the president and dean of Columbia truly believed in an open exchange of ideas, they should have presented a debate between Ahmadinejad and an Iranian dissident or human rights activist -- someone from his own culture who could argue with him in his own language -- instead of allowing him to be filmed on a podium with important-looking Americans. Perhaps Columbia could even have insisted on an appropriate exchange: Ahmadinejad speaks in New York; Columbia sends a leading Western atheist -- Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens or, better still, Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- to Qom, the Shiite holy city, to debate the mullahs on their own ground.

While this suggestion is brilliant, I don't agree that Columbia had to observe any rules of etiquette with Ahmadinejad. Still demanding reciprocity in this fashion, or asking an Iranian dissident to speak at the same forum) would have undermined Ahmadinejad's pose.

UPDATE: Citing Shmuel Rozner Israel Matzav asks if Israel was hurt by Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia. If so Helene Cooper played a role in assuring that that part of the speech got across to her readers.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Ahmadinejad, columbia university.

Daily Kos: "The Conspiracy"--"Explaining Diane"

This diarist presents a letter/comment, responding to a column by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com about Diane Feinstein, "symbol of the worthless Beltway Democrat." This diary will probably be removed, but as of right now . . .

I have a theory that I am finding fits this example too, Diane is, I believe, part of the much larger Zionist conspiracy to control this country and to control its political will to serve the Right wing Israeli dream of dominating the middle east . I know this is regarded as "anti-semitic" and characterized as paranoid fantasy by supporters of this dream but this is what I see. This country has been taken over by domination of the Main Stream Media (MSM), (indeed a lot of the European press is heavily influenced too) and domination of the congress by AIPAC with heavy infiltration of the security, military and other branches of government and finance to serve this dream of a bigger stronger Israel. This domination did NOT happen by accident, it has been directed and financed and supported by a group of people who are posing as Americans but acting in what they see as Israels' best interest. Of course Americans are guilty of allowing this to happen, in our complacency we have been too lazy and blind to the realities of the larger world. I doubt we are ready to wake up yet, the pain is not large enough. To accept this theory is too difficult and requires too much learning and painful looking at realities, it requires accepting that we have been duped and been suckers to a brilliant strategy of subversion and control and to admit that our much admired system of government and constitutional law has many loopholes and weaknesses. This is a bitter pill to swallow and one that will take awhile for most people to digest if they ever get the chance.

I think this question (for most people) needs to be examined carefully. I know I will be attacked for bringing this up, I will be called all kinds of names and accused of all kinds of things. I still think it is an issue that needs to be examined carefully, thoughtfully and sensitively. Most of the people perpetrating this conspiracy believe wholeheartedly that they are doing a good thing, something that needs to be done. They believe that they know better than other people in the world, that they are hated or misunderstood by the world and have to resort to trickery in order to survive . . .

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Related: "The interview I wanted to hear"

Nuttiness from Iran: a mini-review

Now that Ahmadinejad is making the rounds in New York, it might be useful to review some of the conspiracist statements frequently uttered by either Ahmadinejad or the "Supreme leader," Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Ayatollah on the Samarra bombings (US, Zionist plot)

The Ayatollah on the prophet cartoons (Israel conspiracy)

Ahmadinejad on Shia-Sunni infighting. (US, Zionist conspiracy)

Ahmadinejad on the reason for establishing Israel (". . . to halt the process of all other countries' scientific and economic development and advancement, on the pretext of ensuring that regimes's security" and "so that the regional nations would not taste a day's length of peace and stability.")

Interviewers should bring up some of these claims. Scott Pelley's interview with Ahmadinejad on 60 Minutes supposedly involved some tough questioning, but I'm not that impressed. I'm sure "Mr. President" came expecting to deliver some nuclear denials and to do some damage-control on the Holocaust issue. Why not try to draw Ahmadinejad out on some of the above-mentioned conspiracist fantasies?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Rotten to ...

In "The Mideast Core" The editors of the Washington Post argue

Ms. Rice should also discourage Israel from intensifying the ongoing conflict with Hamas-ruled Gaza by shutting off its electricity and fuel supplies. It's hardly possible that Mr. Olmert will be able to negotiate peace with one set of Palestinians while waging war against another. Instead, Israel should be open to striking a cease-fire with Hamas and opening peace talks with Syria.

The logic here is, in a word, rotten.

At the beginning of the editorial the editors were joyfully proclaiming "serious" talks between PM Olmert and President Abbas, then they show exactly how "serious" they truly are.

A country's first priority is to defend its citizens. If "highly inaccurate" Qassams are continually fired into Israeli territory, Israel ought to be defending itself regardless of who it's negotiating peace with. After all wouldn't it be a measure of the seriousness of the peace if Abbas would say, "We understand why you are doing this you must defend your people." That, of course, is the rub. The Post knows how unserious these talks are. They aren't about peace but about what Israel can do for the Palestinians - and get nothing in return. And they know that the moderate Abbas will never countenance Israel defending itself - even against Hamas who was throwing Fatah people off tall buildings a few months ago. But if Abbas can't accept the how serious can the peace be?

If the Post were serious about peace, it would be encouraging a real Palestinian (and Arab) change of heart. Instead, it just continually asks for Israel to do more and more with ever lessening (positive) returns.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, peace process.

Moveon already

Richard Cohen - What she ducked

Certain Republicans, particularly Rudy Giuliani, have attempted to exploit the MoveOn.org ad for their own political purposes, even wondering whether the Times violated election law by selling the page at a (standard) discount. This is silly.

Clark Hoyt - Betraying its own best interests

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

Unfortunately, Hoyt can't resist editorializing a bit

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

The Times is, like MoveOn.org an opponent of the war.
It's editors assign stories colored by their perceptions and beliefs.
Don't belittle this by calling it "fresh ammunition." It's what many of us call "confirmation."

And of course many of those questions about the war arise from the way your editors and reporters choose to portray the war. If the Times were as balanced as you're assuming, I don't think that the war would be as unpopular as it is now. That's not to say that the administration hasn't made mistakes or that it has communicated the importance of the war particularly well. But given the almost almost universal opposition of the media, it would be very difficult for the war to be popular even if it were run perfectly.

This was also interesting

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times and chairman of its parent company, declined to name the salesperson or to say whether disciplinary action would be taken.

Well let's say for the moment that a member of the administration had bungled something. Would the editors say that it was acceptable that no disciplinary action be taken? Well glad you asked.

Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so — even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing.

Well someone clearly mis-informed the public even if he or she didn't lie. Will the Times demonstrate the same of level of accountability that it demands from its government?

Confederate Yankee deserves a lot of credit for breaking this story!

new york times, media bias.

Musical monday #13

The rules are figure out the songs. Figure out the theme. No fair Googling even if I did it to make sure I got the lyrics right! Next week's scheduled host - Elie's Expositions who also hosted last week, as we alternate weeks.

Like Elie's last week, the grouping is significant.

1) Just 'bout five feet four, From her head to the ground
2) I try to get in, But I can't find the door
3) I think you're headed for a breakdown, so be careful not to show it

4) Said you'd give me light, But you never told be about the fire
5) Danger in the game when the stakes are high
6) When the children were babies and played on the beach.

7) Throw down your hat, kick off your shoes
8) Cupid by the hour sends valentines

9) I play it cool when its slow and jump it when its fast
10) My grandpa, he's 95, And he keeps on dancin'

11) The past is gone, It goes by, like dusk to dawn
12) Lay your head down on my shoulder

13) A little girl asked me what am I gonna' do, When I get old and blue and worn clear through?
14) Oh, how you tried to cut me down to size

15) Say it right now, baby (say you will)
16) In violent times, You shouldn’t have to sell your soul

Don't yell at me over these last two sets as the don't quite match the others. You may supply the details!
17) And comin' apart at the seams
18) Doesn't take much to make me happy and make me smile

19) Lonely sailors pass the time away
20) Shadows of a man A face through a window

(There's a trick in that last set.)

And now the belated answers to our last outing

Thanks to Elie's Expositions - who identified the theme "dance", Fiery Spirited Zionist, Jack's Shack, Judeopundit and SerAndEz for playing. If you like these, check them out and tell your friends! The more the merrier.

No, Dance the night away (I can't believe I forgot it, wasn't among them.)
But here's one that I meant to include and one that I realized way after the fact that I should have included. (That's right two bonus lyrics!)

21b) She was a be-bop baby on a hard day's night
22b) You know there's no excuse, You know you're gonna lose you never win

1) Molotov cocktail-the local drink.
All she wants to do is dance - Don Henley

2) I hit the radio dial and turn it up all the way.
Dance, Dance, Dance - Beach Boys

3) Can't you see the music is just starting?
Dance with me - Orleans

4) We could dance under the moonlight ...
Do you want to dance - Bette Midler and others

5) Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
I hope you dance - Lee Ann Womack

6) To hold me, to scold me ...
Last dance - Donna Summers

7) put on your red shoes and dance the blues...
Let's dance - David Bowie

8) I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again.
Mary Jane's Last Dance - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

9) And all the leaves on the trees are falling
Moondance - Van Morrison

10) And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet
Safety Dance - Men without Hats

11) But don't forget who's takin' you home
Save the last dance for me - Drifters, Sam Cooke and others

12) The two heart two-step baby, that's me and you
Sweetheart Dance - Pam Tilles

13) I'm glad I didn't know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go
The Dance - Garth Brooks

14) He's silent and quick just like Oliver Twist
Vanz kant danz - John Fogerty

15) You keep your mind on the money
Private Dancer - Tina Turner

16) Blue jean baby, L.A. lady
Tiny Dancer - Elton John

17) That’s where the big bands used to come and play.
Come Dancing - The Kinks

18) But your empty eyes seem to pass me by...
Dancing with myself - Billy Idol

19) One of my legs is shorter than the other
Dancing Fool - Frank Zappa

20) Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore and D.C. now
Dancing in the streets - Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

21) It's a supernatural delight
Dancing in the Moonlight - King Harvest (love that song, whatever happened to them?)

22) Friday night and the lights are low
Dancing Queen - Abba

23) With just the music on the radio
(Slow Dancing) Swaying to the Music - Johnny Rivers

24) You've got a cute way of talking
You make me feel like dancing - Leo Sayers

Previous editions:

Musical Monday 12
Musical Monday 11
Musical Monday 10
Musical Monday 9
Musical Monday 8
Musical Monday 7
Musical Monday 6
Musical Monday 5
Musical Monday 4
Musical Monday 3
Musical Monday 2
Musical Monday 1

musical monday.

Is scott adams antisemitic?

In a word, "no."

I received an e-mail from a reader asking me to respond to a recent item in Scott Adams' blog. (I have to admit that the foul language of the item is very offputting. Adams has talent, why he can't express himself without an excess of 4 letter words is beyond me.)

It appears that this is the offending sentence:

Aren't there any Iranian words for saying a set of historical facts has achieved an unhealthy level
of influence on a specific set of decisions in the present?

I'm sorry but I didn't read this the way my correspondent did. Here was the previous sentence:

Furthermore, why does an Iranian guy give a speech in his own language except for using the English word "myth"?

Adams' complaint wasn't about the Holocaust. It was about Ahmadinejad's use of the term "myth" to describe the Holocaust. Adams was noting that is was convenient for Ahmadinejad to use the English word myth, but not very convincing. So he mocked him, in the next sentence with his "historical facts" line. (I'm not sure when Ahmadinejad actually said "myth" in English, asAdams said.) But that's Adams's point, Ahmadinejad says myth; Adams, in his rant, says "historical fact" and then uses the phrase "unhealthy level of influence" to describe Ahmadinejad's beliefs, not his own.

The construction is awkward, but I can't make the inference that my correspondent made.

In a follow-up post Adams - mercifully free of expletives - wrote

With your indulgence, allow me to clarify.

1. I am not happy that Hitler killed your relatives.
2. I do not support the killing of Americans
3. I do not support nuclear annihilation of Israel
4. I do not support the stoning of virgins in Iran
5. I believe the holocaust happened

I also don’t argue there’s a moral equivalence between Iran and the United States, or Israel and the Palestinians, or anyone and anyone else. Groups pursue their own perceived self interest. Arguing relative morality is an idiot’s game. Pointing out similarities in policies, and shaking the box, is good clean fun.

The tone is snarky and non-apologetic, and the politics are muddled. There's a lot to disagree with. But I just don't see him providing the comics version of Walt and Mearsheimer?

Am I being too generous? Let me know in the comments and if you blog and wish to comment on it, e-mail me and hopefully, I'll link to you.

I see a couple of bloggers (at least) have registered their views what Adams wrote. Ranting to /dev/null seems to agree with me. Dossy's blog OTOH, agrees with my correspondent, but unlike my corresponent, finds those views admirable.

UPDATE: via memeorandum
Daimnation reads Adams the same way my correspondent (Balashon - see below) does:

Yeah, Syria would be the new Singapore if it wasn't for these pesky Zionists keeping them poor. And Israel's need to control as much territory as possible explains why they gave the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt. Reverse psychology, you see.

As for a Palestinian "Gandhi," I'd like to think Adams is saying he's come under fire from Hamas or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. But I have my doubts.

UPDATE II: Treppenwitz weighs in with his own thumbs down.

The post is such a well written bit of irony / sarcasm, and so disarmingly charming (despite the gratuitous swearing) in its mock rage, that one doesn't immediately 'get' that his deadly serious intent is to criticize Israel and Jews.

Reading the piece through the first time was like being a lone American at a dinner party amidst a bunch of Brits... grinning along with the well-bred banter for ten or fifteen minutes before realizing with dawning horror that the 'colonial' they've been making jokes about all evening is you.

Crossposted on Yourish.

scott adams.

N or c?

The Times of London purports to report on the details of the Israeli raid into Syria including a new "detail" that Israel seized some nuclear material.
But as Hot Air and Israel Matzav point out, the reporter has been known for flights of fancy. (via memeorandum)

I wrote on Friday that there seemed to be more evidence to suggest that the target was chemical not nuclear weaponry and news reports are ignoring that angle.

The New York Times does suggest that the suggestion of nuclear material comes from Israel.

Even though the Israelis are whispering that there was a nuclear connection to the Sept. 6 attack, so far there has been no hard evidence that the North has ever tried to sell elements of its two nuclear programs. One of those programs, involving plutonium, is quite advanced, enough to produce six to a dozen nuclear weapons. But selling that fuel would be enormously risky, and perhaps easily detectable.

I guess, that "whispering" might mean off the record. I still haven't seen a report that explicitly tied the nuclear charge to Israel. The Times does provide some interesting background though.

American officials are also studying at least two technology trade agreements between Syria and North Korea that were signed over the summer, trying to determine whether the arrangements may be designed for nascent nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

“One has to balance the skepticism that the Syrians can build an indigenous nuclear program with the very sobering assessment that North Korea is the world’s No. 1 proliferator and a country willing to sell whatever it possesses,” said a former senior Bush administration official who once had full access to the intelligence about both countries, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence assessments.

Though it has long sold its missile technology — to Syria, Iran, Pakistan and other customers — North Korea has never been known to export nuclear technology or material. Last Oct. 9, hours after the North tested its first nuclear device, Mr. Bush went in front of cameras in the White House to issue the North a specific warning that “the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or nonstate entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.”

The problem with this story is that there are a lot of dogs not barking. And the one dog who did bark, was Bibi Netanyahu. Netanyahu spoke up to credit the government and (cynically) grab some of the credit himself. But why would he speak up if the raid wasn't significant? Or was the significance simply that Israel was demonstrating its capabilities regarding Syria to forestall any more mischief to the north? Given the seeming complexity of the operation, I'd have to think that this was more than just a show of force. Which is why I have to believe that there was something more than missile parts involved.

Blue Crab Boulevard has a nice summary:

So, is it true? I have no idea. Neither, I suspect, do the reporters. What we do know is this: the Israeli government is not saying much of anything. In a country where leaking to the press is considered an art form - nothing. What is even more important: Syria, after a brief bit of whining, has shut up completely. They are silent about this whole incident. If they were innocent, they would be screaming from the rooftops. But, no, they are quiet.

Logically, the conclusion then is that something very, very important was hit by the Israelis. Syria does NOT want the world to hear about what exactly got pounded. So this could be the real deal. Maybe yes, maybe no. But it is - completely - plausible.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, syria.

If ... you must Yom Kippur 5768

If you haven't read May it by Your will at Elie's Expositions; you must.
If you haven't checked out Rabbi Frand's annual Teshuva Drasha ; you must.
If you haven't read American Yom Kippurs in 19th Century Newspapers at Elder of Ziyon; you must.
If you haven't read Yom Kippur Messages at Jewish Current Issues; you must.
If you haven't checked out Yom Kippur Links at A Simple Jew ; you must.
h/t Life of Rubin
If you haven't read Drinking the Segulah Drink at Life in Israel; you must.
If you haven't seen views at Me-Ander ; you must.
If you haven't checked out the Yom Kippur Roundup at SerAndEz ; you must.
If you haven't read Yom Kippur and my Daughter at Jack's Shack; you must.
If you haven't seen Yom Kippur 5768 at Not Quite Perfect ; you must.
If you have't read the 10th Jew (about my ancestor); you must.
If you haven't read Gmar Chatimah Tova at Yourish; you must.
You have to wait until 5 PM to read the last one!

yom kippur.

A big hole in the desert (and in the story)

It's been a bit disquieting to read the newspapers lately. Something big is possibly happening and little if any reporting is being done about it. Until yesterday.

Yesterday's Washington Post ran an editorial Shock Waves from Syria:

Media accounts are beginning to converge on a report that Israel bombed a facility where it believed Syria was attempting to hatch its own nuclear weapons program with North Korea's assistance. The Post's Glenn Kessler reported that the strike came three days after a ship carrying material from North Korea docked at a Syrian port and delivered containers that Israel believes held nuclear materials. It's not clear whether U.S. intelligence agencies concur with Israel's conclusion, and independent experts have said that Syria lacks the resources for a credible nuclear weapons program.

The previous Glenn Kessler articles are here and here. The independent expert is apparently Joseph Cirincione who told Foreign Policy Passport This story is nonsense. The Washington Post story should have been headlined "White House Officials Try to Push North Korea-Syria Connection."

This is a political story, not a threat story. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from the run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad commentary on how selective leaks from administration officials who have repeatedly misled the press are still treated as if they were absolute truth.

Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted "intelligence" to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria.

To which Kessler responded

All I can say in response is that I (and a number of uncredited colleagues) spent more than week knocking on doors of many agencies, seeking answers. No one tried to wave us off the story, including people who normally I thought would have tried their best to prevent us from printing it. I did note a number of caveats and explained that Syria never had much of a nuclear program. There appears to be a connection to the Israeli raid, which is now the subject of some of the tightest censorship in years.

To many "independent experts" the Bush administration is a bunch of out of control psychopaths looking for any excuse to go to war, whereas Kessler notes that even the more levelheaded members of the government believe that there's something there. (Yes, there's something missing in all this reporting, which I'll get to later.)

Today there's been a proliferation of American reporting on the topic. The Washington Post reported Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Nuclear Site and secrecy seems to be affecting every part of the story

The target of Israel's attack was said to be in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. A Middle East expert who interviewed one of the pilots involved said they operated under such strict operational security that the airmen flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know the details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said. Syrian authorities said there were no casualties.

U.S. sources would discuss the Israeli intelligence, which included satellite imagery, only on condition of anonymity, and many details about the North Korean-Syrian connection remain unknown. The quality of the Israeli intelligence, the extent of North Korean assistance and the seriousness of the Syrian effort are uncertain, raising the possibility that North Korea was merely unloading items it no longer needed. Syria has actively pursued chemical weapons in the past but not nuclear arms -- leaving some proliferation experts skeptical of the intelligence that prompted Israel's attack.

The secrecy leads to this conclusion

"There is no question it was a major raid. It was an extremely important target," said Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence officer at Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "It came at a time the Israelis were very concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The decision was taken despite their concerns it could produce a war. That decision reflects how important this target was to Israeli military planners."

(Bruce Riedel, whom you might recall from yesterday's news apparently wears many hats. Yesterday he "... was a negotiator in the 2000 Camp David effort.")

The NY Times finally does a little more reporting on the topic with Bush Declines to Lift Veil of Secrecy Over Israeli Airstrike on Syria.

One former diplomat who has spoken to Israelis involved in the decision to attack said the airstrike was aimed at what Israel believed to be a Syrian nuclear program in cooperation with North Korea. The two countries already have a relationship that has concentrated on missile technology, which North Korea has long exported.

The former diplomat, along with current and former American and Israeli officials, said a shipment of North Korean material labeled as cement arrived by ship three days before the attack. That material was transferred to a facility, which Israel bombed.

Current and former American and Israeli officials have said the Israelis gave the Bush administration advance notice of the attack.

While the article also finds plenty of sources skeptical about the nuclear angle, there is an acknowledgment that Israel did something out of the ordinary.

Charles Krauthammer has valiantly tried to tie all the loose ends together, in Middle East Volcano (or here).

Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran's headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt and partially activate Iran's proxies in the Arab Middle East:

(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault.

(2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The third Lebanon war, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran's order.

(3) Syria, Iran's only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed in a massive car bombing.

(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Why is Iran doing this? Because it has its eye on a single prize: the bomb. It needs a bit more time, knowing that once it goes nuclear, it becomes the regional superpower and Persian Gulf hegemon.

Krauthammer earlier in his essay wrote

Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons -- on Monday, Jane's Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile -- but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

All the MSM reporting and speculation has centered around a Syrian nuclear program. But what if the raid is somehow related to that chemical explosion a few weeks ago? Maybe the latest shipment wasn't a new type of weapon but the expansion of Syria's existing chemical program?

Meryl Yourish had already noted that the summer's explosion probably involved Iran. Israel Matzav provides reasons why he believes that the Israeli target was chemical not nuclear. The Hashmonean doesn't rule out the nuclear angle but concludes

Channel 10 reports local area hospitals had to treat many of the injured from the event, among them over a dozen Iranian technicians.. Makes further mention of the Iranian Syrian defense pact signed last year, stipulating one of the key areas of cooperation? The adapting / arming of Syrian Scud arsenals with chemical weapons.

(Emphasis mine.)

Could it be then that Krauthammer's overall analysis is correct even is one detail is wrong? Iran is ratcheting up tensions in order to be able to complete its nuclear program. However, the WMD in the picture are not nuclear but chemical. I realize that neither Israeli nor American officials need to disabuse journalists of their mistaken speculations. However, why aren't these reporters tying the Israeli strike to the chemical explosion?

And was PM Olmert's expression of admiration for Syria meant as a taunt?

UPDATE: More at Memeorandum.

UPDATE II: via Small Wars Journal Con Coughlin's reading of the situation is alarming.

But judging from the small scraps of information that have emerged, it would be fair to conclude that a new axis of evil is under construction, with Syria assuming Iraq's place. But unlike Iraq, Syria has well-documented links to the pariah regimes in North Korea and Teheran, and is cooperating with them on a range of projects, from the acquisition of long-range ballistic missiles to the development of chemical and nuclear weapons.

The failure to find ready-to-use stockpiles of WMD in Iraq following Saddam's overthrow may have seriously undermined the coalition's justification for invading Iraq, but no such doubts exist about Syria's capability.

Even before the Israeli raid, Syria had been identified by a number of intelligence and government agencies as possessing the largest and most advanced chemical weapons capability in the Middle East.

Moreover, unlike Saddam's Iraq, Syria has the delivery systems to make them a palpable threat.

UPDATE III: Buzztracker 1, 2, 3.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, syria, iran, chemical weapons.

Council speak 09/21/2007

The Council has Spoken!
The Watcher's Council winning entry this week was Is War With Iran Now Just a Matter of Time? by Right Wing Nut House, who read the tea leaves and saw indications that, much to his chagrin the administration was spoiling for a fight. The Watcher himself provided the margin of victory in the non-Council category by breaking a tie and giving a point to Dead Eyes
at Acute Politics, an account of an officer's initiation to battle (in Iraq.)

The runners-up were: among council members, Freedom, But From What? at Bookworm Room, a disquisition into what and what is not considered too much government intrusion; among the non-council entries it was Iraq the Model at Hugh Hewitt, but written by Dean Barnett, Mr. SoxBlog himself, which was a rather optimistic view of the current state of affairs in Iraq.

If you're a blogger and would like to participate in next week's competition, why not follow the rules here and submit an entry to Mr. Watcher?

watcher's council.

Fisk on the Antoine Ghanem murder

Note the gratuitous references to Israel as he discusses--or avoids discussing--Syria's role. From the Independent:

Antoine Ghanem was an easy target. Few bodyguards, no one would think that a member of parliament who represented the Armenians of Lebanon was a target. The little street in which he lived – tall tower blocks, boutiques, flower shops, was not a place where you would try to kill an enemy of Syria – if he was an enemy of Syria – but Antoine was blasted to pieces in his car as he left his home yesterday evening . . .

Lebanon is not a democracy in our Western sense of the word. Nor, for that matter, is Israel. "Democracy", as we like to call it in the West, does not sit easily in this part of the world.

But Lebanese politicians – for the most part but not always, men, are brave folk – who know the cost of standing up for their country against its more powerful neighbours, be those neighbours Israel or Syria.

There will be few in this country last night – and today – and tomorrow – who will not see Ghanem's murder as another attempt by the Syrians to destroy any form of freedom in this little country. There will be equally little proof that shows Syria to blame.[...]

We'll see. Is Fisk accusing Israel? There are other hints in the parts I didn't excerpt.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Faces of evil

Dara Mandle in Contentions

Today, the New York Times makes available photographs obtained by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from the other side of Auschwitz: not the familiar images of starving prisoners, but new shots of vivacious German officers. It churns the stomach to envision the high life these Germans enjoyed while participating in the murder of over one million people.

Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the camp commandant, compiled the scrapbook. The photos, which include the first authenticated images of the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele at the camp, feature Höcker lighting a towering Christmas tree and a singalong of SS men at their Alpine retreat.

In the Times article the writer observes:

For example, one of the Höcker pictures, shot on July 22, 1944, shows a group of cheerful young women who worked as SS communications specialists eating bowls of fresh blueberries. One turns her bowl upside down and makes a mock frown because she has finished her portion.

On that day, said Judith Cohen, a historian at the Holocaust museum in Washington, 150 new prisoners arrived at the Birkenau site. Of that group, 21 men and 12 women were selected for work, the rest transported immediately to the gas chambers.

The contrast between the recreational actions of the Germans and their murderous enterprise demonstrates, I guess, the "banality of evil." It reminds me of Avner Less's account of interrogating Eichmann.

Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina 23 years ago, placed on trial for seven months in Jerusalem and then hanged. He was interrogated by Capt. Avner W. Less for 275 hours. The book is interesting for its solid police work as well as its portrait of Eichmann. Even Captain Less, a Berliner who emigrated to Palestine, uses ''ordinary'' and ''normal'' to describe Eichmann:

''My first reaction when the prisoner finally stood facing us in the khaki shirt and trousers and open sandals was one of disappointment. I no longer know what I had expected -probably the sort of Nazi you see in the movies: tall, blond, with piercing blue eyes and brutual features expressive of domineering arrogance. Whereas this rather thin, balding man not much taller than myself looked utterly ordinary. The very normality of his appearance gave his dispassionate testimony an even more depressing impact than I had expected.''

The transcripts reveal that this ''ordinary'' man was clever without being intelligent. Knowing that his life is at stake, he clings to the tactics of the major defendants at the Nuremberg trials. He lies - until defeated by documentary evidence showing his signature or a record of his presence in concentration camps. When this doesn't work, he presents himself as a small cog and puts all the blame on others, subordinates as well as superiors. Most often, Eichmann pleads: ''Orders from above.''

There is unexpected drama in the relationship between the police captain and his prisoner. Eichmann respected his interrogator while trying to save his own neck. He felt that one uniform was speaking to another, that rank had its privileges, even for a prisoner. The reader watches for the cat-and-mouse interplay. When Captain Less tells him that his father had been deported to Auschwitz by Eichmann's own headquarters, Eichmann opens his eyes wide and cries out: ''But that's horrible, Herr Captain! That's horrible!''

Like the Germans at Aucshwitz, Eichmann was seemingly able to switch off his emotions. He could compartmentalize. He could be human. Or he could be the architect of millions of murders.

When I originally read that account I hadn't thought that his expression of sympathy for Less's father was a pretense as much as cluelessness, an inability to connect his own actions with their consequences. He was devoid of conscience.

What these pictures remind us is that in Nazi Germany the business of murder wasn't just acceptable. It was, to the Nazis, just another day at the office. Or worse. Another day at a resort.

BBC: Journalist has limited options

This is actually called "Israel has limited options in Gaza." See if you can spot the journalistic option chosen by this writer:

For any government, ensuring the security of its citizens is paramount . . .

One possibility might be to explore the Hamas leadership's apparent interest in some kind of ceasefire . . . But the Israelis clearly want to do nothing that would give Hamas a breathing space to consolidate its control in Gaza . . .

The Israeli cabinet decision to declare the Gaza Strip hostile territory . . . talks of steps to reduce the supply of fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip . . . But this will only be seen by Palestinians as a form of collective punishment . . .

A major incursion of long duration would risk significant Palestinian civilian and Israeli military casualties.

Israel could re-occupy the north-eastern part of the Gaza Strip and push back the rocket launchers, but for how long would it stay? [...]

Some analysts have reluctantly suggested that the preferred option might be a return to the targeted killing of senior Hamas leaders . . . But this too raises all sorts of issues . . . Such a step would inevitably draw strong criticism from abroad, further damaging Israel's diplomatic standing. [...]

It sounds to me as if Israel has a large number of options. Even good options have drawbacks. The question in each case is whether the drawback is more objectionable than the continued Qassam attacks. Any elected government that decides on a policy of firing missiles at an other country pretty much acquires total responsibility for any damages which ensue in the event that the other country has the means to defend itself. That should dispose of a number of these objections. Or it would in a sane world. Or in an insane world that contained a sane Israel.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Specifics of peace

Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler's U.S. Faces a Middle East Hungry for Peace Specifics is pretty standard fare.

The Bush administration has so far failed to generate serious traction behind its latest Middle East peace effort, with the opening session of its Washington conference of Arab and Israeli leaders tentatively scheduled for Nov. 15, according to senior Arab and U.S. officials and former U.S. envoys.

Noticeably missing from that list are "senior Israeli officials." Well this might explain that absence.

Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia, are looking for specific timelines and language on the most controversial issues, including the final status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, eventual borders between the two states and security guarantees. "If this conference will not discuss serious topics aimed to resolve the conflict, put Arab initiative as a key objective, set an agenda that details issues as required and oblige Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, this conference will not have any objective and will turn into protracted negotiations," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters last week.

If the "Arab initiative" is the "key objective," it makes sense that Israeli concerns aren't at the forefront of those officials interviewed for the article.

Citing insufficient diplomacy, many are pessimistic that anything significant will come from the U.S. efforts. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, said Rice has "underestimated the amount of heavy lifting she'll have to do," and that "she could succeed, but it's going to take the kind of legwork that she hasn't been prepared to take until now."

James A. Baker III, serving as secretary of state, made nine trips in nine months to set up the 1991 Madrid conference on Middle East peace. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spent more than a year to set up the 1998 Wye River summit that led to an interim agreement that was never implemented, noted Aaron David Miller, former Middle East envoy.

These two paragraphs are particularly interesting. Indyk thinks that the problem is "insufficient diplomacy," but Miller notes that the result of sufficient (or, more precisely, excessive) diplomacy was "never implemented."

Maybe the problem isn't diplomacy, but mindset. For example these two Arab officials. "What we want!" Doesn't sound like they want negotiations or diplomacy, but rather terms dictated.

"The first lesson of diplomacy is that you don't enter negotiations without knowing what the next step is," said a senior Arab official. Added another: "Working on an agenda [at this conference] for what happens at a next conference is not what we want. Another failure is not good for the U.S. or the region."

Finally the survey (mercifully) ends.

But the Bush administration has limited leverage, experts note. "Bush is the lamest-duck president in our lifetimes and now completely preoccupied with dragging out a war in the Middle East, which is extremely unpopular with Arabs across the board," said Bruce Riedel, who was a negotiator in the 2000 Camp David effort. "He has not in almost seven years in the White House used his political capital to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process. Instead, he has been notably absent."

Yes Mr. Riedel was a negotiator in 2000. And after all that political was expended on that summit, what exactly was the result? Did Arafat accept the terms that Ehud Barak offered? Did he make a counter offer? Well, no.

And despite all of the commotion that he was still committed to negotiation, here's how his rejection of Camp David was treated in the Arab world. (You know, those folks who are so interested in peace.)

The refusal of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to negotiate away his claims to Jerusalem may have dashed American hopes of a Camp David peace agreement today, but it allowed him to return home with his credibility among Arab and Muslim leaders intact, Middle East analysts said.

That's right, rejection of the offer enhanced his credibility in the Arab world.

What's clear is that those officials who were the source for this story don't really want specifics. What they want are terms imposed upon Israel. (How much would have to be imposed is a question. I still doubt that however generous PM Olmert is, it will satisfy the demands of the Arab world hungering for specifics.)

Crossposted at Yourish.com.

peace process, israel, palestinians.

Juggling carnivals 09/19/2007

Incoming Carnivals

I'm a little late, but last week Pillage Idiot hosted a wonderful edition of Carnival of Maryland. He shows how a carnival ought to be done.

More recently, yesterday, in fact, the Kosher Cooking Carnival returned to the home of its creator, Me-Ander with edition #22.

And though I've not been included in the last two Carnival of the Insanities, there's lots of good stuff including posts from the likes of Israeli Matzav, Yid with Lid and Simply Jews.

I'm proud to say that Haveil Havalim is scheduled to be Blog Carnival's Featured Carnival once again tomorrow. Thanks to all of you who keep it going - especially the hosts and those who publicize Haveil Havalim.

So step right up and enjoy the carnivals!

Technorati tags: blog carnivals.

Submitted 09/19/2007

In What Did I Miss?
, Done With Mirrors reluctantly contemplates news stories he missed while he was on vacation.

Rhymes With Right writes about California's legislature intent to permit gay marriage - at a cost - California Legislature Intent On Violating California Constitution. Maryland's legislature did the same, but the (very liberal) court rejected the cause of the day and followed the law. For now.

Bookworm Room contemplates what level of involvement Americans want from their government - broken down conservative vs. liberal - Freedom, But From What?.

The Glittering Eye asks Why? What? When? about alternatives to our current strategy in Iraq and the war on terror. No one seems to provide any real alternatives to the ones articulated by President Bush.

The Colossus of Rhodey reads about a study with interesting conclusions and then wonders in I'd Like To Buy Into It, But Then I Read On...

Big Lizards observes in "Surge a Failure, Democrats Tell General" that Senate Democrats seemed less interested in hearing Gen. Petraeus than in hearing themselves, and it contains this great line:

"Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT, 95%) went Biden one better, furiously asking a rhetorical question that tortured the English language until it begged for mercy..."

‘Okie’ on the Lam "complains" Just When You Thought You Had Something Figured Out something happens that makes you re-think your prejudices. Like a French minister shows a backbone.

In LA Times: "No Blood For Oil" Lackey, Cheat Seeking Missiles looks at how the media (mis)construed Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan's comments about the war in Iraq to undercut the administration.

The Education Wonks asks Exploitation? And he answers that having a 13 year old fashion model is, indeed, exploitation.

Joshuapundit looks at statements by Democrats and their supporters at MoveOn.org and concludes that their view is that America Must Be Defeated!

Right Wing Nut House catalogues the reasons he has to ask Is War With Iran Now Just a Matter of Time? And answer, "most likely yes."

In my misspelled Detering the Deterrers, I question the judgment of the Israeli courts in launching a criminal investigation into the targeted killing of Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh.

Read. Enjoy, Be informed.

watcher's council.

Date Up-Date

Remember that MPAC-UK-proposed boycott of Zionist entity dates? You'll be shocked to learn that not all Muslim shopkeepers jumped to support it. MPAC says it best in a new, admirably restrained article entitled "Boycott Muslim Shops That Turn Traitor!":

Ramadan has come, a time when Muslims around the world focus on all that is good and just. All Muslims come closer to Allah in this period except those who are truly cursed. It seems many Muslim shop-keepers fall into that category. Putting the money God before the One true God that created them. For years some Muslim shop-keepers have been selling dates soaked in the blood of Palestinian children. Can you believe the parasites who are selling Muslims dates from Israel to open their fasts with during Ramadan?!

Israel is raking in bundles of money from Muslim neighbourhoods and ploughing this back into stealing the land from the people we Muslims pretend to care about. Buying more bullets to shoot in the back of little stone-throwing youths, building more illegal settlements for the rabid racists that they call ‘settlers’ and we know as colonists

Non-Muslims around the country have been brave enough to launch boycotts of Israel. Can you believe Muslim organisations are not doing the same within our own community? Typically, neither have our scholars organised an effective call to stop this blood soaked trade, focusing our minds instead only on how high our trousers should be or how long our beards are. Scholars such as Shaykh Yusuf Al Qaradawi have clearly supported the boycott – so why have we not heard about this issue in the mosque? [...]

Why indeed? Boycott the non-boycotters of the non-boycotters!

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Council speak 09/18/2007

The council has spoken. This week's top post among Council members is Okie on the Lam's excellent 2001 - Our own odyssey began on 9/11. Among non-council members the winning post was When the left cares and when it doesn't at the American Thinker.

There was a 4 place tie among Council members for the runner up. They were 50 Million Intellectuals Can Be Wrong at Bookworm Room - laughing at the superior intelligence; The Way We Were at Right Wing Nut House - comparing his pre and post 9/11 selves; Osama's Real Message at Joshuapundit - emphasizing Osama's seriousness; and Voter Racism Must Be Condemned! at Rhymes With Right - in which he notices the all too common phenomenon of excusing those who will say they will only vote for someone of their own color. The non-council runner up is The Counterterrorism Blog's Iran plan for Iraq.

watcher's council.

Horses fleeing maryland

Two years ago The Washingtonn Post recently ran a story "Making Hay in a Horse-Based Economy." At the time I observed that the subtext of the article was that slots were not essential to the survival of Maryland's horse industry (the Washington Post editorially opposes slots) and that it ignored the possibility that once purses in other states grew, it would draw all horse breeders out of the state.

Yesterday the Baltimore Sun reported that Md. not holding its race horses

It's been a lonely year for the studs on Maryland horse farms.

The state's breeding operations, which have traditionally helped keep Maryland racing in a class above its neighbors, have seen a rapid drop-off since Pennsylvania began heavily subsidizing its racing industry through slot machine proceeds this year.

As higher purses lure better horses to neighboring states, Maryland breeders worry that one of the financial underpinnings of the horse industry - as well as a distinctive feature of the state's identity - may be on shaky ground.

Some Maryland breeders are even considering moving north.

I am uncertain how I feel about slots. But this news story confirms my suspicions and then-Governor Ehrlich's fears. He argued that the horse farms would suffer and leave unless Maryland could compete with the purses offered at racing venues in neighboring states.

While the Sun article differentiates between racing and recreational riding, I doubt that the difference is significant. If there's money in raising horses in Maryland horse breeders will stay, if not they'll move on. Recreational riding is almost certainly an outgrowth of the racing industry.

horse racing, maryland.

Democracy, whiskey, sexy

but not in Gaza

For years, the seaside Flower of the Cities resort was that rare place in the Gaza Strip where the dress code did not rule out bikinis. Now, with some of its cinder-block cabanas turned into prayer rooms, the beach club shows how Hamas is consolidating its hold here three months after seizing power.

Bushy beards and black head-to-toe cloaks for women have become common at the club, which the armed Islamic movement torched in June after routing the secular Fatah party on the streets. The facility has been rebranded the al-Aqsa Resort, with a new logo featuring the revered mosque complex in Jerusalem next to a beach umbrella. Hamas followers collect the $2.50 entrance fee.

Like the party it supported, the bikini crowd has disappeared, leaving the trash-flecked beach and murky swimming pool to Bassem al-Khodori and a half-dozen other Hamas supporters, who now have jobs at the resort.

UPDATE: Douglas Farah observes

But ultimately, the Gaza experience shows us what the Muslim Brotherhood wants to create. It has a chance on the ground to build a government that has actual authority. How will it use that authority, and how will it respond to dissent?

The answer, so far, is not a very bright picture.

(h/t Seraphic Secret)

And Noah Pollak adds

In many ways Hamas has been emboldened by the continued arrival, regardless of its terror war, of foreign aid money and water and electricity from Israel. Hamas, in other words, has been given the ability to run a consequence-free jihad.

(h/t Daled Amos)

Crossposted on Yourish.

gaza, hamas.

Detering the deterrers

On September 9, 2003 16 people and more than 80 were wounded in two suicide bombings in Israel.

Sept 9, 2003 - Nine IDF soldiers were killed and 30 people were wounded in a suicide bombing at a hitchhiking post for soldiers outside a main entrance to the Tzrifin army base and Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
The victims: Senior Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, 39, of Haifa; Chief Warrant Officer Yaakov Ben-Shabbat, 39, of Pardes Hanna; Cpl. Mazi Grego, 19, of Holon; Capt. Yael Kfir, 21, of Ashkelon; Cpl. Felix Nikolaichuk, 20, of Bat Yam; Sgt. Yonatan Peleg, 19, of Moshav Yanuv; Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, 19, of Moshav Ganei Yehuda; and Cpl. Prosper Twito, 20, of Upper Nazareth. Sgt. Liron Siboni, 19, of Ramat Gan died of her wounds on November 19.

Sept 9, 2003 - Seven people were killed and over 50 wounded when a suicide bomber at Cafe Hillel on Emek Refaim St., the main thoroughfare of the German Colony neighborhood in Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
The victims: Dr. David Appelbaum, 51, and his daughter Nava Appelbaum, 20, of Jerusalem; David Shimon Avizadris, 51, of Mevaseret Zion; Shafik Kerem, 27, of Beit Hanina; Alon Mizrahi, 22, of Jerusalem; Gila Moshe, 40, of Jerusalem; and Yehiel (Emil) Tubol, 52, of Jerusalem.

Three days earlier Israel had the opportunity to strike

It was Sept. 6, 2003, a time -- much like today -- of open warfare between Israel and Hamas, which Israel, the United States and Europe have labeled a terrorist group, and which now controls the Palestinian Authority. Eight Hamas leaders had gathered to plan terrorist attacks, Israeli intelligence reported.
. . .
A Shin Bet agent in the command center called out the identities of the men. "It was the 'Who's Who' of Hamas," said Gabi Ashkenazi, then Yaalon's deputy. "People we'd been hunting for years."

"It got intense," Yaalon recalled. "The reports -- 'Here comes Mohammed Deif.' 'Here comes Adnan al-Ghoul.' 'Here comes Ismail Haniyeh.' They said the names, I pictured each one, and I pictured blown-up buses and disco bombings, and shootings, murders of children, and kidnapped soldiers."

Gallant, the prime minister's adviser, called Sharon at his ranch and told him about the extraordinary gathering. "We're talking about people responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis," Gallant said. "They're planning on killing hundreds more."

In the end, then Prime Minister Sharon aborted the mission refusing to risk the civilian deaths. Would the September 9 terror attacks have been averted had Israel struck? Probably not, the proposed Israeli strike was too close to those terror attacks. But in the next two months over 30 people would be killed in terror attacks, including 3 Americans in Gaza. Had Israeli struck some number of Israeli (and American) civilians likely would have been saved.

There will be no condemnation in Turtle Bay for those Israelis who weren't protected by the pre-emptive strike. And not statement of concern from Foggy Bottom about the employees Israel failed to protect. But in Israel there could be a prosecution for killing Salah Shehadeh in June 2002. In that attack, 14 civilians were killed. According to the Geneva conventions (Article 28) there is no immunity to civilians when a combatant is present.

The State Prosecution has agreed to establish an independent commission to probe the death of 14 civilians during the targeted assassination of Salah Shehadeh in June 2002, Channel 10 reported Monday evening.

Shehadeh was Hamas's military leader in the Gaza Strip at the time. A one-tone bomb dropped by Israeli aircraft on a Gaza City neighborhood killed Shehadeh and an additional 14 civilians who were in the area.

The State Prosecution informed the High Court of Justice on its decision to launch the investigation during a hearing on a petition submitted by the extreme left-wing group Yesh Gvul.

It's difficult enough fighting an enemy that doesn't respect any international limits on targeting non-combatants. But when those fighting terror have to worry about possible legal complications of their actions, it makes their job nearly impossible. This threatens to deter the deterrers more than it will deter the terrorists. As Israel Matzav asks

Suppose - by some miracle - Ehud K. Olmert decides next month that the time has come to introduce Ismail Haniyeh or Mahmoud al-Zahar to their 72 virgins. Who in the IDF will carry out the order?

israel, terrorism.
Crossposted at Yourish.com

Juan Cole locates himself in the political spectrum

This is all in one relatively brief post. We learn, for instance, that Stephen Walt's opponents are "fascists":

The techniques of smearing and pressure politics deployed against his appearance can only be described as a form of Zionist-fascism (whether deriving from Christian Zionists or Jewish ones), which is a much more potent danger to open intellectual inquiry in the United States than is usually realized.

We learn that speakers are "disinvited" at Harvard "apparently on grounds of disagreeing with Alan Dershowitz." The David Project is called "Likudnik" (the biggest insult in the Cole lexicon) and its name put in quotes. Criticism of Jewish Israel-bashers is called "a form of anti-Semitism." (Juan, we didn't know you cared!) Solidarity is expressed with Norman Finkelstein, and a George Bisharat op-ed is recommended. Finally, we learn that "Gaza is the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo." The imprecision and vagueness of this last statement actually helps. Tempers the extremism.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

3 day yom tov soup

When there's a 3 day Yom Tov and you want cholent on Shabbos you have to keep your crock pot on for 3 days. If you use the crock pot liners, you can prepare most of the cholent before Yom Tov and store it in the refrigerator.

For Yom Tov you can use the crock pot for soup for lunch. Manischewitz (and other brands) have tubes of soup. We like the split pea.

I cut up potatoes and carrots and add an onion and some meat. (Usually about a pound of beef cubes.) Though the instructions call for 5 cups of water per tube, add an extra cup of water to account for evaporation. Although it's probably not necessary I'd stir the mixture once or twice. By the first day lunch you have really delicious, filling soup as an appetizer. (After the first day I refrigerated the crock pot, because I couldn't replace in the cooker until night.)

We actually used two tubes last week and had soup both lunches. And then afterwards on Friday, I took the bag with the soup out and put in the cholent bag. (Of course, that assumes you made an Eruv Tavshillin.)

kosher cooking.

Musical monday #12 is up!

This week's very clever edition is up at Elie's Expositions. Hopefully I'll post answers to last week's edition later tonight or tomorrow morning.

musical monday.

No Crocs on the escalator!

Don't even ask how many of my kids wear those things. From the AP via SFGate.com:

At rail stations and shopping malls around the world, reports are popping up of people, particularly young children, getting their toes caught in escalators. The one common theme seems to be the clunky soft-soled clogs known by the name of the most popular brand, Crocs . . .

Four-year-old Rory McDermott got a Croc-clad foot caught in an escalator last month at a mall in northern Virginia. His mother managed to yank him free, but the nail on his big toe was almost completely ripped off, causing heavy bleeding.

At first, Rory's mother had no idea what caused the boy's foot to get caught. It was only later, when someone at the hospital remarked on Rory's shoes, that she began to suspect the Crocs and did an Internet search.

"I came home and typed in 'Croc' and 'escalator,' and all these stories came up," said Jodi McDermott, of Vienna, Va. "If I had known, those would never have been worn."

According to reports appearing across the United States and as far away as Singapore and Japan, entrapments occur because of two of the biggest selling points of shoes like Crocs: their flexibility and grip. Some report the shoes get caught in the "teeth" at the bottom or top of the escalator, or in the crack between the steps and the side of the escalator . . .

I knew there was a reason those things annoy me so much.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Did israel get its groove back?

In recent weeks Israel's apparently carried out two spectacular raids that brings back memories of times passed. Mere Rhetoric observed

And Israel specifically still needs to be able to convince its enemies that not only can it use its tanks and soldiers, but that it's willing to do so. Since Halutz resigned and Ashkenazi took over, the IDF has moved away from the over-reliance on the IAF that had marked Halutz's disastrous tenure.

The Defense Ministry under Barak is trying to take care of the second part, which involves restoring Israel's deterrent. Barak has ordered the IDF to undertake riskier missions, from dropping troops a mile inside Gaza for Hollywood style special forces operations to ordering the IAF to conduct airstrikes in Syria that are nothing short of humiliating (article is subscription-only, but if you search for it on Google News you can get the full article behind the Google-subscription link)

Given that PM Ehud Olmert seems risk averse, these operations are likely the idea of new Defense Minister Ehud Barak (as Mere Rhetoric notes). Realizing that failure to act will only hurt him politically, Olmert accedes to these ideas, even if he is strengthening a future rival.

Ehud Barak is well known as a former commando. In his most famous (alleged) mission he led the assassination of Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Arafat's #2 at the time, in Tunis.

Current chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi is credited with participating in one of Israel's most daring military strikes: the operation to rescue the hijacked passengers at Entebbe in 1976.

And Israel's chief of military intelligence is Gen. Amos Yadlin who might be the third most famous member (after the late Ilan Ramon and Yifrach Spector) of the group of pilots who destroyed the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981.

With three men of action in charge of the military now, perhaps the two attacks that have recently made the news are harbingers of future actions.

I don't pretend to be happy with the political situation when any military gains are likely to be wasted by political and diplomatic maneuvering. But at least its possible that Israel will start striking fear into the hearts of its enemies again.

UPDATE: The Hashmonean asks

Who turned off the music in the first place?

and expresses his skepticism that things have changed. He wishes that Israel's leaders would keep hitting real targets instead of boasting about the ones they already did.

Crossposted at Yourish.

idf.

Israel's problems are solved!

That's what I thought when I read the headline "Madonna: I'm an 'ambassador for Judaism'". Who better to represent the Jewish state than a Catholic born superstar from the 80's who parades around the stage in her underwear? (via memeorandum)

Madonna met Peres at his official Jerusalem residence on Saturday evening and the two exchanged gifts, with Madonna receiving a lavishly bound copy of the Old Testament.

She gave Peres a volume of "The Book of Splendor," the guiding text of Kabbalah, inscribed "To Shimon Peres, the man I admire and love, Madonna," the Yediot Ahronot daily reported.

A Peres aide confirmed the meeting but had no details.

"You don't know how popular the Book of Splendor is among Hollywood actors," Yediot quoted Madonna as telling Peres. "Everyone I meet talks to me only about that. I am an ambassador for Judaism."

Madonna, who was raised a Roman Catholic, has taken the Hebrew name Esther, and has been seen wearing a red thread on her wrist in a Jewish tradition to ward off the evil eye.

Yes the Book of Splendor is a many splendored thing, as is the rest of Kabbalah.

The Haaretz daily quoted Kutcher as telling a group of Israeli businessmen and entertainers on Saturday that Kabbalah had answered fundamental questions in his life and made him a better actor.

Will wonders never cease? The star of "Dude where's my car?" is now a better actor? I mean 4 years later he starred in the immortal "the Butterfly Effect." It's already working!

The commitment of these stars to Judaism is absolutely beyond belief. I am so glad they represent me!

Crossposted at Yourish.

Madonna, judaism, israel.

CS Monitor: "Palestine: democracy not Zionism"

This Jimmy Carter-ish article declares that a "decent two-state solution to the 'Palestinian problem' has become impossible." Other bloggers have already noted the extremeness of the author's anti-Zionism. I would just like to look his claims to practicality:

. . . if this problem is ever to be solved, it must be redefined. Those who truly seek justice and peace in the Middle East must dare to speak openly and honestly of the "Zionism problem" – and then to draw the moral, ethical, and practical conclusions that follow . . .

What does the "practical" part of that look like?

Just as marriage is vastly less complicated than divorce, democracy is vastly less complicated than partition. A democratic post-Zionist solution would not require any borders to be agreed, any division of Jerusalem, anyone to move from his current home, or any assets to be evaluated and apportioned. Full rights of citizenship would simply be extended to all the surviving natives still living in the country, as happened in the United States in the early 20th century and in South Africa in the late 20th century . . .

And all the Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, of course, will then line up to turn their weapons in. We didn't want a Palestinian right of return after all! We're fine with no explicitly Palestinian sovereignty over anything! Of course, Whitbeck is not saying that all this will be "easy":

No one would suggest that the moral, ethical, and intellectual transformation necessary to achieve a decent one-state solution will be easy. However, more and more people now recognize that a decent two-state solution has become impossible.

What distinguishes the "not easy" from the "impossible"? I'm not supposed to ask that. Does he have to do everything? Redefine the problem and solve it, too?

It is surely time for concerned people everywhere – and particularly for Americans – to imagine a better way, to encourage Israelis to imagine a better way, and to help both Israelis and Palestinians to achieve it. It is surely time to seriously consider democracy and to give it a chance.

Not that this involves weening the Palestinians from forming People's Liberation Fronts or Martyrs Brigades or anything . . .

Crossposted on Judeopundit

More Dates to Boycott

A recent MPAC-UK article contemplates the horrifying prospect of Muslims breaking their Ramadan fasts with Israeli dates.

To some people this may be nothing to worry about, but think about this. Is there really any point in fasting if on the other hand you are providing the state of Israel with money which will inevitably kill and oppress your fellow innocent Muslims in Palestine?

To enable their fellow Muslims to identify Israeli date packaging, MPAC helpfully provides some photos. And this is not only of great benefit to Muslims who wish to boycott Colonialist Medjools and Apartheid Deglet Noor dates, but also to Imperialist lackeys who actively seek out these oppressive but delectable jewels of the desert. So we thought we would supplement their excellent work with some further examples:

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Haveil Havalim #134

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

This is just a test 1..2..3..4

What was the story behind last week's reported Israeli raid into Syria? Noah Pollak quotes Time Magazine:

The recently developed Pantsyr, which its Russian manufacturers claim is immune to jamming, includes surface-to-air missiles and 30mm Gatling guns, providing complete defensive coverage for a range of eleven to twelve miles and six miles in altitude. Pantsyr batteries could pose a serious challenge to either an Israeli or a U.S. air strike on Iran. So were the Israeli aircraft playing a perilous game of chicken to assess the capabilities of the Pantsyr system in response to their countermeasures? Some in Syria believe so.

Looks like JoshuaPundit was correct.

Actually, it's likely that they did, in order to recon the Syrian missile buildup and prove Syrian air defenses now that the Russians have sold them all that new hardware.

Nice call.

more here.

israel, syria.

Language of the left

Max Boot:
The leftwing blogosphere has found its next star. He is an articulate champion of a modern leftist sensibility:
. . .

• He bemoans that the White House is focused on Iraq rather than on the real dangers facing all mankind, such as “global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations,” “the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes, and real estate mortgages,” and of course “the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa.”

Anne Applebaum

And now, ladies and gentlemen, time for a quiz. Three guesses as to who said this:

"And Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; and the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa; all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system."

Why the person so faithfully adhereing to these principles of American leftist thought is none other than the person claiming to be Osama bin Laden in the recent video.

Max Boot again:

But the overlap between bin Laden’s world view (at least as it’s expressed in his most recent videotape) and that of many Western leftists is uncanny. This does not mean, I should stress, that leftists support al Qaeda. It does seem to mean, however, that bin Laden is trying to rally the “antiwar” crowd to his side in language they understand.

Anne Applebaum again:

Bin Laden will sooner or later die or be captured. But he, or someone close to him, is trying to ensure that his ideology lives on. And he, or someone else, wants it to survive in a form that will appeal to Americans and other Westerners disillusioned with their own political systems.

So Bin Laden or the fellow claiming to be him left off the parts about concubines, the prohibition of abortion and the "protected" status of Jews to keep his leftist credentials. Imagine for a moment, if he'd mentioned that American was suffering because the country allowed abortions, we'd hear plenty about how he was somehow similar to the "religious right." I wonder how many others are going to emphasize that he sounds like the anti-war Left?

Which party is the Taliban of American politics?

osama bin laden.

Between iraq and a hard place

9/11 Linked To Iraq, In Politics if Not in Fact

The Washington Post's Peter Baker uses his report to argue that a recent campaign to tie the war in Iraq to 9/11 is, well, politics. But when he gets to Ari Fleischer he gets an explanation for the campaign.

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, one of the group's founders, said the ad is not misleading by saying "they attacked us" in the context of Iraq and showing the image of the Sept. 11 attack. "Iraqis did not attack us on 9/11," he agreed. But it does not matter, Fleischer added, because some of the same sorts of people who did are now fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

"Nine-one-one absolutely is a bona fide, legitimate reason to remind people what's at stake," he said. "The point is not that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. They're not. But 9/11 should be a vivid reminder to everyone about how vulnerable our country is and that's why we need to win in Iraq."

President Bush is often described as rigid in his beliefs. But the War on Terror demonstrates just the opposite. In his campaign against Al Gore, he mocked the idea of nation building.

After 9/11 though, George Bush started arguing for democracy. Countries like Somalia provided breeding grounds for Al Qaeda. Nature - human nature too - abhors a vacuum. During the 90's Al Qaeda grew where there was no strong central government or support from rogue states. President Bush drew a lesson from the 90's and realized that those who allow or assist terror organizations are working against American interests and must be stopped.

It wasn't that Saddam's Iraq was involved in 9/11 as the media and Democrats like to mis-represent President Bush's charge, but that someone like Saddam is likely to play a role in the next attack against America.

Now the problem in Iraq is how to prevent it from becoming a failed state that would incubate new terror movements capable of hitting the United States. But if the United States is tied town in Iraq, so to is Al Qaeda and that engagement is likely one of the factors that has prevented another 9/11 during the subsequent 6 years.

war on terror, iraq, president bush.

9/11 + 6

My 9/11 post from last year, Three strands not easily broken.

On the occasion of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's ouster last November I recalled what he did on 9/11.

Last year's 9/11 roundup.

How not to /to remember 9/11 from two years ago.

While I can't relate to the Christianity of Alan Jackson's "Where were you (when the world stopped turning)" many of the lyrics recall how I felt.

Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)
Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?

I was at work when my wife called to tell me that there was a fire at the World Trade Center (where her brother worked) and she was quite concerned. I did as much research as I could and was pretty certain that Jon was OK as the fire was at least 30 floors higher than where he worked. But the internet didn't work too well that day as servers were no doubt overloaded by people trying to do what I was trying to do.

Were you in the yard with your wife and children

That's what I came home to. On another day it would have been beautiful. My wife with our new daughter sitting out in the sunny front yard. But the idyllic appearance would be deceiving for we were filled with worry.

Did you burst out with pride for the red, white and blue
And the heroes who died just doin' what they do?

This line is still the most poignant. The path down the emergency exits was quite hot. The firemen used their axes to break open soda machines to provide the evacuees with water on the way down. Jon said that he was sure that not too long after a firefighter handed him a bottle of water on the 21st floor, that that firefighter almost certainly died. Died, while saving others. Just doing what he did.

Or driving down some cold interstate?

The interstate I went home on was not cold. Though it was, as I recall, empty. As a federal employee in the DC area, I would have been sent home anyway, but I had to take leave a little earlier to support my wife.

This year's additions:
Seraphic Secret
Pillage Idiot
And you must read Oyvay Blog's response to 9/11 "fatigue."
Jewish Current Issues
Kesher Talk's 9/11 story and roundup.
Jack's Shack has a completely unique perspective.
Life of Rubin has a roundup with a number that I haven't included.
Israel Matzav.
LGF on remembering 9/11 through a PC lens.
Roger L Simon's review of Norman Podhoretz. His criticism of the President is on target:

But truth to tell, the president has been the enabler of these hypocrites. He has not stood four square in front of the public and done his job FDR-style in keeping us together. “What we have here,” as Strother Martin told us so memorably in Cool Hand Luke, “is a failure to communicate.” We also, sadly, have a leader who, for all his reading of history, forgot the most famous words of the great military strategist Sun-Tzu: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

I wish Elder of Ziyon would re-post his picture of lower Manhattan.

9/11.

Base motive

Richard Cohen, who last year wrote that Israel was a mistake, is bothered that Professors Walt and Mearsheimer feel the same way. In Rationalizing Israel out of Existence he writes

The book, which almost instantly made Amazon's list of bestsellers (right below the Harry Potter paperback boxed set, when I last checked), has produced the sort of intellectual and emotional storm you don't have to be Jewish to understand -- but it sure helps. Mearsheimer and Walt have been called anti-Semitic by the New York Sun (among others), and they have been praised as gutsy truth-tellers by elements of the British press (among others), an irony we shall return to in a moment. My own reading of the book found no evidence of anti-Semitism but also no evidence that either man has an ounce of sympathy for Israel. They swear they support its existence, but if Israel were to disappear tomorrow, I doubt they would reach for the hankies.

I understand that Cohen is critical of Walt and Mearsheimer and I give him credit for that. He writes further

All these points are made by Mearsheimer and Walt -- and bully for them. Where Israel is wrong, they say so. But where Israel is right, they are somehow silent. By the time you finish the book, you almost have to wonder why anyone in his right mind could find any reason to admire or like Israel. It is always doing the most dastardly things and then looking to Uncle Sam either for money or muscle. It is, no doubt about it, a brat among nations.

Exactly right. This was the case with their paper and apparently it's the same with their book. Every interpretation of Israeli relations with the Arab world are interpreted negatively by Walt and Mearsheimer. There's no benefit of the doubt. But surely singling out Israel for this sort of "brat" treatment says something about their motivation. But Cohen doesn't go that far. But I would.

Noah Pollak also eschews the term "antisemitism" but he points out something important in Walt and Mearsheimer’s “Realism”

It is no exaggeration to say that France’s Middle East politics are exemplary of the kind of foreign policy Walt and Mearsheimer claim will best serve American interests. But what, after all, did France gain for all its legendary favoritism toward the Arab world? Absolutely nothing—except, I suppose, revenue from arms sales during the Iran-Iraq war (overtly to Saddam Hussein and covertly to Khomeini). France, as with so many Western countries, has found it difficult to convince Middle East thugs to return its affections.

(Even Europeans are starting to realize this.)

One could, perhaps, excuse Walt and Mearsheimer's portrayal of Israel, if one could show that there was a purpose. But for all their efforts to portray Israel in the worst possible light, it's uncertain if throwing Israel under the bus would really help the United States gain friends in the Arab world. That being the case there's no reason to be generous in judging Walt and Mearsheimer charitably. Their motive is hate not realism.

Missile-leading modifiers

Continuing a trend of violence against Israel, terrorists from Hamas controlled Gaza fired a rocket into Israel, hitting a military training camp and injuring nearly 70 young men and women.

About 67 Israeli soldiers were wounded after a Qassam rocket launched from northern Gaza landed on a military base in the western Negev early Tuesday morning. Four soldiers were seriously injured in the attack, seven sustained moderate wounds, about 20 were lightly hurt and the rest were treated for shock. This is the largest number of casualties to date resulting from a single Qassam attack.

Last week, I criticized the Washington Post's Scott Wilson for referring to Qassams as "highly inaccurate." It is one of those biases that shows up in reporting from the Middle East. The threat to Israel is usually understated. There is, I suppose a justification for such terminology when the rocket causes relatively little damage. But today when a rocket hit its mark he was at it again.

The number of reported casualties was extraordinary for an attack involving the rocket known as a Qassam, a highly inaccurate weapon cut from lamp posts and other tubing that usually carries only a small amount of explosives in its warhead. Palestinian gunman compensate by firing the rockets with frequency, including more than 100 last month.

If Wilson't adding modifiers he might as well add "potentially lethal." His choice of "highly inaccurate" is purposeful and doesn't reflect well on him.

As long as he's giving background to the Qassam attack why doesn't point out the implication of terrorist groups destroying infrastructure to attack Israel?

Wilson's coverage of the immediate Israeli response stands in contrast to his reportage on the initial attack.

Some officials renewed that threat in the angry aftermath of Tuesday's strike. But the only military response occurred a few hours after the attack when Israeli aircraft fired on rocket-launch sites in Beit Lahiya. Four Palestinian children were injured in the strike, health officials in Gaza said.

He adds no modifiers here. No speculation. Wouldn't it be correct to report "rocket-launch sites placed unconscionably close to civilian dwellings?"

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times chose a different modifier

The crude Qassam rocket landed on an empty tent while young soldiers undergoing basic training at the Zikim base near the Gazan border slept in tents around it. They were struck by shrapnel from the rocket.

Yes it's "crude." Again, so what? It is designed to cause injury, death and destruction and this time it cause two out of those three. The rocket fulfilled its purpose, no modifier needed.

As Seraphic Secret points out

This attack indicates that that the terrorists have improved their ability to aim the Qassam rockets. These are not pin-point laser munitions, but they don't have to be. They are weapons of terror. Last week the Arab terrorists targeted a children's day care center. Today an army base. Soon the terrorists will improve the Qassam's range and the lethality of these rockets will make them something more than just a weapon of terror.

(Yes it's crude and inaccurate, but neither reporter drew the reasonable conclusion that the Qassam is becoming more sophisticated and accurate.)

HonestReporting describes why the term "homemade" isn't even accurate.

The word "homemade" is a strange term to use. These rockets are manufactured in industrial areas or have been transported across the porous Gaza-Egyptian border. While Qassam Rockets are not the most sophisticated military weapon, they do require both expertise and dedicated locations to manufacture. Although the Palestinians have located many of the Qassam "labs" within residential areas, the notion that these are some type of "homemade" devices is misleading.

But the standard modifiers for Qassams aren't chosen for their descriptive value. They're used to promote a narrative that Israel is secure from its enemies and that any response is, by definition, an overreaction.

And yet by now this shorthand is so common, that every time there's a Qassam attack Meryl Yourish calls them crude homemade rockets in tribute to the finely tuned sense of objectivity that reporters stationed in Israel regularly demonstrate.

qassams, media bias.

BBC: More of the same old nonsense about Shakespeare

Don't believe it:

Actors including Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance have launched a debate over who really wrote the works of William Shakespeare.

Almost 300 people have signed a "declaration of reasonable doubt", which they hope will prompt further research into the issue.

"I subscribe to the group theory. I don't think anybody could do it on their own," Sir Derek said.

The group says there are no records of Shakespeare being paid for his work.

While documents do exist for Shakespeare, who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, all are non-literary.

In particular, his will, in which he left his wife "my second best bed with the furniture" contains none of his famous turns of phrase and it does not mention any books, plays or poems.

The 287-strong Shakespeare Authorship Coalition says it is not possible that the bard's plays - with their emphasis on law - could have been penned by a 16th Century commoner raised in an illiterate household.

The group asks if one man alone could have come up with his works
It asks why most of his plays are set among the upper classes, and why Stratford-upon-Avon is never referred to in any of his plays.

"How did he become so familiar with all things Italian so that even obscure details in these plays are accurate?" the group adds.

Conspiracy theories have circulated since the 18th Century about a number of figures who could have used Shakespeare as a pen-name, including playwright Christopher Marlowe, nobleman Edward de Vere and Francis Bacon.

"I think the leading light was probably de Vere as I agree that an author writes about his own experience, his own life and personalities," Sir Derek said. [...]

So de Vere was a Venetian Jew, a mythical ancient British king with three daughters, and a Moorish general? Shakespeare's plays were popular. They are intensely poetic, but they are not self-consciously learned (compare the plays of Ben Jonson) and they draw heavily on English sources, such as North's translation of Plutarch's Lives. People who complain that Shakespeare was a "commoner" are snobs.

If there was a conspiracy to falsely pass off William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon as the author of the plays in the First Folio, then Shakespeare's fellow actors Heminges and Condell were in on it, as was Ben Jonson. And about being paid for his work, he was part owner of the acting company that performed his plays. The ideas in this article reappear periodically and serious scholars of Shakespeare generally do not take them seriously. You shouldn't either.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

About that report ...

Senators McCain and Lieberman argue for staying the counterinsurgency course. In Listening to Gen. Petraeus they conclude

Whatever the shortcomings of our friends in Iraq, they are no excuse for us to retreat from our enemies like al Qaeda and Iran, who pose a mortal threat to our vital national interests. We must understand that today in Iraq we are fighting and defeating the same terrorist network that attacked on 9/11. As al Qaeda in Iraq continues to be hunted down and rooted out, and the Iraqi Army continues to improve, the U.S. footprint will no doubt adjust. But these adjustments should be left to the discretion of Gen. Petraeus, not forced on our troops by politicians in Washington with a 6,000-mile congressional screwdriver, and, perhaps, an eye on the 2008 election.

The Bush administration clung for too long to a flawed strategy in this war, despite growing evidence of its failure. Now advocates of withdrawal risk making the exact same mistake, by refusing to re-examine their own conviction that Gen. Petraeus's strategy cannot succeed and that the war is "lost," despite rising evidence to the contrary.

The Bush administration finally had the courage to change course in Iraq earlier this year. After hearing from Gen. Petraeus today, we hope congressional opponents of the war will do the same.

Seemingly on the same page out of necessity but not out of conviction seems to be George Will in Letting the Soldiers do the Thinking

The officers here -- 71 percent have served in Iraq, 34 percent in Afghanistan, many in both -- are doing something their civilian leaders did negligently five years ago -- thinking.

They think America needs, in the words of one officer, "an expeditionary capacity other than military." Officers here especially admire the introduction to the University of Chicago's edition of the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Written by Sarah Sewall of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, it says:

We see in Iraq "military doctrine attempting to fill a civilian vacuum." In counterinsurgency, "nonmilitary capacity is the exit strategy," which is problematic when "more people play in Army bands than serve in the U.S. foreign service." Counterinsurgency "relies upon nonkinetic activities like providing electricity, jobs, and a functioning judicial system. . . . But U.S. civilian capacity has proved wholly inadequate in Afghanistan and Iraq." The military is "in a quandary about the limits of its role" as it is forced "to assume the roles of mayor, trash collector and public works employer."

Will would have preferred if America hadn't invaded Iraq in 2003, with no or ill-defined goals. But now that it has he's signing on to the counterinsurgency, even if it means that the military will now be acting in a non-military capacity.

A cynical NY Times editorial accuses a cynical President of hiding behind a cynical Gen. Petraeus.

President Bush, however, seems to be aiming for maximum political advantage — not maximum clarity on Iraq’s military and political crises, which cannot be separated from each other. Mr. Bush, we fear, isn’t looking for the truth, only for ways to confound the public, scare Democrats into dropping their demands for a sound exit strategy, and prolong the war until he leaves office. At times, General Petraeus gives the disturbing impression that he, too, is more focused on the political game in Washington than the unfolding disaster in Iraq. That serves neither American nor Iraqi interests.

Of course garnering political support is essential to President Bush's intent to improve the situation in Iraq. And are the editors of the NY Times so certain that a withdrawal of American troops won't leave an even bigger problem for Mr. Bush's successor? Wars are not neat endeavors that can be wrapped up when one term ends. Yet that seems exactly what the editors of the Times want!

In Accepting Iraqi Reality the editors of the Washington Post question whether a continued military presence will accomplish anything if the Iraqi central government makes no progress in reconciliation

The most important question, however, must be faced by Mr. Bush: If Iraqis are not moving toward political reconciliation, what justifies a continuing commitment of U.S. troops, with the painful sacrifices in lives that entails? U.S. generals have said repeatedly that tactical military successes will be unsustainable without political breakthroughs. The Jones commission said that the "sustained progress" it believes is possible within the Iraqi Security Forces "depends on such a political agreement." If there is to be no political accord in the near future -- and such an accord seems as distant today as it did in January -- what will be the goals of the U.S. mission in Iraq? The president needs to spell out concrete and realistic aims for American forces -- and limit troop levels to those necessary to accomplish them.

Despite that rather harsh conclusion the bulk of the editorial is much tougher on Congressional Democrats But Democrats who have spent the past few months proclaiming that "this war is lost," as Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) put it, also have an adjustment to make. That's because the military results of the past few months have been in some respects undeniably positive. The surge appears to have modestly improved security in and around Baghdad and reversed the previous momentum toward all-out civil war. According to the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, a group of retired U.S. military officers and police commissioned by Congress, there has been improvement in the Iraqi army and security forces, and more progress can be expected if U.S. training programs continue.

Most significant is that both the commission and other outside experts agree with the administration's assessment that a major change has taken place in Sunni-populated areas of Iraq -- one that offers the prospect of a military victory over the forces that have been the principal enemies of U.S. troops since 2003. Dozens of Sunni tribes and tens of thousands of their fighters, many of them former insurgents, have allied themselves with American troops and are now helping to combat al-Qaeda in Iraq. The commission, chaired by former Gen. James L. Jones, described a "dramatically improved . . . security situation in Anbar" province, once the epicenter of the war, and added that "there are positive indications that popular support for al-Qaeda in Iraq is decreasing dramatically in other provinces as well."

If one believes - as I do - that the big failure of American foreign policy prior to 9/11 was the failure to recognize failed states as breeding grounds for terror organizations, the success of the counterinsurgency is important well beyond Iraq. It may well represent our best line of defense against future 9/11's. Obviously there is quite a bit of dissent about that view. That's why it's essential that Gen. Petraeus make a convincing case that the effort must not stop now. (In other words he needs to be clear about what has been accomplished as well as about what can and cannot be accomplished.

iraq, general petraeus, war on terror.

Crying wolfie yet again

What happens when you make a bad investment and lose a large amount of your hard-earned money? You go to a columnist and give him your sob story in the hope that it will make others look worse than you do.

That what James Wolfensohn did when he complained about the Bush administration to James Hoagland.

Wolfensohn's version says he had to fight his way into key meetings over the opposition of Rice and National Security Council staff member Elliott Abrams. That led to Wolfensohn's staff of 18 being fired without his being consulted and in apparent retaliation. "I was stupid for not reading the small print," Wolfensohn said. "I was never given the mandate to negotiate the peace." He assumed -- wrongly -- that contributions toward that end would be welcomed.

Never given a mandate? Is the man deluded? Here's what I wrote about him in the past:

Wolfensohn is treated as some sort of expert about the Palestinian economy. He, of course, donated a substantial sum of his own money to the PA, only to see it go for naught. At another point he said that Israel wasn't doing enough to promote the PA even after withdrawing from Gaza. Israel eventuall opened the Rafah crossing only to see terrorists enter Gaza from Egypt and Wolfensohn said nothing.

Wolfensohn showed a lot of misplace optimism about how ready the Palestinians were ready to develop a civil society and make peace with Israel. He even bet his own money on the project. And he was proved wrong. Maybe he was fired and undermined because he still believed in the tooth fairy. His record shows that he wasn't exactly the most realistic player in assessing the Middle East.

It's too bad he lost his money but that's a reason not to take his whining at face value. I would have told him it was a bad investment, but no one's listening to me.

Technorati tags: James Wolfensohn, Hamas, Israel.

Be an action hero in your own home

An Israeli company has developed software to allow just about anyone to participate in video games

This is XTR - Extreme Reality, a south Tel Aviv startup that has developed a technology that allows a user's three-dimensional body movements to be translated onto the computer in real time. When you run, so does the animated character in the game. When you throw a punch, or mimic the moves of tennis, the computer character does the same.

While many game developers are moving rapidly into this field, what makes XTR unique is that players don't require any special hardware to play these games. All they need is an ordinary webcam - something many computer users already own - and software. ThinkMinority Report, but without the glove.

This is the first time anyone has managed to translate the movement of a person into a three-dimension space using only software and a single camera. "For years people thought it was impossible," admits Michal Ludzki, 30, the company's CEO. "Game developers cannot believe we have managed to create this movement with software only. When they play with it, they are amazed."

virtual reality.

The usual way that a person is "captured" for a video game is to have sensors attached to him as he performs the activities his character will perform in the game. This would allow a person to be recorded without the sensors.

More scientific proof that liberals make better decisions than conservatives

Two months ago Time's Sharon Begley wrote in her (political) science column that liberals have been shown scientifically to be better at making decisions than conservative.

Cheat Seeking Missiles skewered the thesis here and here. I objected here.

Well I guess I better dig out my dunce cap, because there's further proof that liberals are intellectually superior to conservatives. The LA Times reports (via memeorandum)

Participants were college students whose politics ranged from "very liberal" to "very conservative." They were instructed to tap a keyboard when an M appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a W.

M appeared four times more frequently than W, conditioning participants to press a key in knee-jerk fashion whenever they saw a letter.

Each participant was wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency (pressing a key) and a more appropriate response (not pressing the key). Liberals had more brain activity and made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw a W, researchers said. Liberals and conservatives were equally accurate in recognizing M.

Researchers got the same results when they repeated the experiment in reverse, asking another set of participants to tap when a W appeared.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

So the previous study showed us that liberals are more likely to make informed rather than emotional decisions. This latest study shows us that liberals are more likely to assimilate new information and make proper decisions based on that new information. Or maybe it just shows us that liberals are bettter typers than conservatives.

For example Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Actually those of us who considered John Kerry a "flip-flopper" thought that he didn't provide an adequate reason for changing his mind.

Has anyone ever done a study of "scientists" who do these experiments to "prove" that liberals are more intellectually rigorous than conservatives?

politicized science.

Musical monday #11

You know the drill. Identify the songs. Find the theme.
Solutions to Musical Monday #10 are at Elie's Expositions.

1) Molotov cocktail-the local drink.

2) I hit the radio dial and turn it up all the way.

3) Can't you see the music is just starting?

4) We could dance under the moonlight ...

5) Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens

6) To hold me, to scold me ...

7) put on your red shoes and dance the blues...

8) I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again.

9) And all the leaves on the trees are falling

10) And we can dress real neat from our hats to our feet

11) But don't forget who's takin' you home

12) The two heart two-step baby, that's me and you

13) I'm glad I didn't know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go

14) He's silent and quick just like Oliver Twist

15) You keep your mind on the money

16) Blue jean baby, L.A. lady

17) That’s where the big bands used to come and play.

18) But your empty eyes seem to pass me by...

19) One of my legs is shorter than the other

20) Philadelphia, PA, Baltimore and D.C. now

21) It's a supernatural delight

22) Friday night and the lights are low

23) With just the music on the radio

24) You've got a cute way of talking

Previous editions:
Musical Monday 10
Musical Monday 9
Musical Monday 8
Musical Monday 7
Musical Monday 6
Musical Monday 5
Musical Monday 4
Musical Monday 3
Musical Monday 2
Musical Monday 1

musical monday.

Dissident Voice on the "inversions" of the "ethnic cleansing regime"

I love pretentious writing.

How were the terms of US political and economic debate severed from basic standards of evidence and common sense? Why does the word “hypocrisy” seem inadequate to describe the pretzel logic of the neo-conservatives? Why do the people of the United States remain inert as the madness at the top claims the authority to hemorrhage its execution of Iraq into a nuclear war on Iran?

The people . . . inert to the hemorrhage-authority-claiming madness . . .

John McMurtry is a decorated professor of philosophy who has pursued questions like these to the ideological foundations of today’s US-centric global empire. His analysis offers insights that can help us identify and think our way out of this now ubiquitous "mind-lock". McMurtry’s approach also turns out to be useful for illuminating core ideological contradictions in Israel’s US-supported ethnic cleansing regime, which has been forcing Palestinians off their lands for the last 60 years.

Taking time out for meals, of course.

McMurtry narrates the ascendance of a "fanatic mind-set" in the west following the demise of the Soviet Union, when "a strange ideological inversion occurred." Marxism’s ‘economic determinism,’ "abhorred by liberal theory," was swiftly replaced with the West’s own brand of imposed economic determinism. "Inevitable globalization" was framed as a product of unaccountable and unstoppable forces unleashed by a veritable law of nature, the ultimate "wisdom of the market" that benefits all.

McMurtry demonstrates the destruction of value and meaning inherent in the adoption of this absolutist dogma, which claims to encompass all human activity and reflexively rules out of order any other explanation or concern. He also traces the use of this irrationality to justify brutal economic and military predation under the twin deceptions of "free trade" and "democracy". The nakedness of this nonsense is revealed by McMurtry’s observation that it glorifies its "no alternative" market theory and bullying imperial trade policies as the ultimate in economic freedom . . .

Observers of Israel and its influence within the United States see a long trend toward ideological convergence between the two nations, especially in foreign policy, war, economics, and propaganda. One of the little-noted fundamentals of this growing affinity is a mutual and increasing need and desire to justify unjustifiable acts and obscure incriminating truths.

The convergence of the Big and Little Satans . . .

So it is not surprising that Israel is awash in the same intellectual process of inversion that McMurtry finds so pervasive in the US.

Israel . . . awash in a pervasive inversion process . . .

Indeed, one could argue that many of Israel’s ideological contradictions are at least as old as the state. Using McMurtry’s style of formulation and taking broad liberties with his method, here are a few of the more obvious inversions of meanings and values underlying the Israeli government’s proclamations and practices. US readers may note the obvious parallels:

Israel’s "right to defend itself" assumes the "harsh necessity" of its military and civilian occupation of Palestinian land, which is an illegal act of war. Self-defense = Aggression

Israel’s security depends upon the continual provocation of forces that will threaten Israel’s security when provoked. Security = Promotion of insecurity

Israelis’ freedom depends upon the imprisonment of another people. Freedom = Denial of freedom

Israel’s democracy depends upon the racist exclusion of its indigenous5 citizens and the empowerment6 of the most intolerant of its privileged citizens. Democracy = Apartheid

Israel is a "bastion of religious freedom" in which civil law is based on an “orthodox” version of a single religion. Religious freedom = Religious exclusivity

Israel’s continued prosperity requires "market liberalization" that dramatically increases poverty and consolidates wealth at the top. Prosperity = Poverty [...]

You mean, prosperity *doesn't* equal poverty?!?!

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Haveil Havalim #133 is UP!

Crossing the Rubicon3 hostesses the final Haveil Havalim of 5767. Please check out #133. She's done a great job including and commenting on each entry. Please check it out!

(She is one of the original hostesses of Haveil Havalim and one of the 3 bloggers I originally consulted about the process.)

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

September 16 - #134 - Soccer Dad
The 23rd will definitely be a vacation week, but if anyone is interested in hosting the 30th (Chol Hamoed) let me know.
October 7 - #135 - Life of Rubin

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

Why i like rudy

Matt Bai has a rather cynical profile of Rudolf Giuliani in today's NYT Magazine. The best observation is at the beginning.

Giuliani’s campaign, like his resurrected political career, is built atop the rubble of the twin towers; his appeal is firmly rooted in the visual images of Sept. 11, 2001, and the policy dilemmas that grew from it. As Ken Mehlman, the former Republican Party chairman, explained it to me recently, elections can either be “squishy” or “crunchy.” Squishy elections, like the one in 2000, are ones where the candidates attempt to blur the differences among them on major issues and run, instead, on more ethereal attributes like character and authenticity, the kind of traits best demonstrated by sipping beers or emoting on “Oprah.” Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t stand much chance in a squishy election. But 2008, Mehlman theorizes, may be a crunchy year, where the nominees of both parties present sharp contrasts on hard philosophical questions, starting with how to view the threat of Islamic terrorism and what course to take in Iraq. And Giuliani is well positioned for such debate, having defined himself, in the public mind, as the unflinching foe of a radical and dangerous ideology. To many, he remains the Churchillian figure who strode up lower Broadway covered in a fine dust of plaster, removing the air filter from his face long enough to rally his panicked city.

Truth is that it was his job in making NYC livable again is the main reason I support him. Here's a nice Q&A from Rudy supporter Fred Siegel that sums up the case nicely and fills in some blanks that Bai leaves out. His handling of 9/11 confirms what we already knew, but gave him a platform that he didn't previously have. He has to be careful, though.

Mr. Giuliani has been a regular at the memorial event. But, now that he is running for president, "he has to be careful," said Trevor Parry-Giles, a University of Maryland political scientist. "There's a fine line between exploitation and commemoration."

There are some points of Bai's that are worthy of rebuttal.

It’s not an especially convincing routine, but it may be good enough. Conservatives desperately fear another Clinton presidency and may embrace anyone who seems likely to blunt Hillary’s advantage in moderate swing states. (A button I saw in Iowa proclaimed, “I’m helping Rudy stop Hillary.”) And old assumptions of what an evangelical voter actually wants may no longer be operative. There is a sense among the Christian right, says the Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who isn’t working for any of the candidates, that beating back the global onslaught of radical Islam may be a more pressing religious issue than stomping out liberal judges at home. “These same people who are pro-life, they’ll support Giuliani because he’ll uphold the Judeo-Christian ethic, and he isn’t afraid to talk about it,” Luntz says. “For these voters, the war has become a social issue.”

When Luntz talks about “the war,” he does not draw a hard distinction between the quagmire in Iraq and Bush’s war on terror, and this is one of the differences that now sharply separate the two parties in Washington.

Bai's being dismissive when he describes the war on terror as a "religious" issue. (And I don't think that Luntz is distinguishing himself either.) The second paragraph, is more on target where he attributes the difference of views to political differences. Of course by referring to Iraq as a quagmire, Bai is tipping his hand.

He takes a cheap shot at the end.

Nor is it self-evident, as Louis Freeh puts it, that Giuliani would “put good people in charge” and “hold them accountable.” It was Giuliani, after all, who promoted Bernard Kerik, a former detective and once his driver on the campaign, to become police commissioner, and who pushed for his nomination as Homeland Security secretary. Kerik had to withdraw amid a litany of allegations and is still facing possible prosecution on tax fraud.

Kerik did have problems, but they weren't with his running of the NYPD. There were scandals outside of his professional work that sank his nomination as head of DHS.

Bai's profile and he points to inconsistencies in Giuliani's positions. I suspect if you exposed most candidates to this level of scrutiny you'd find similarly substantive inconsistencies.

But again as Richard Brookhiser writes

Strongest is Giuliani who, alone of all the candidates in both parties, has done something. Two things—saved New York City; and led America for two days six years ago.

He has a record of accomplishment unmatched by any other candidate of either party in 2008.

Rearranging the deck chairs

Following the Orioles hasn't been easy.

We're watching another collapse. We've seen some pretty bad ones over the past 21 years. In 1986 the Orioles had been doing well and were only 2 1/2 games out when they lost 13 - 11 to the Texas Rangers. The game was historic in that three grand slams were hit in the game. Two of them, in fact, were hit by the Orioles. That started a slide of 14 - 42 - a .250 winning percentage over the last third of the season. It ruined Earl Weaver's brief comeback and marked the official start of Oriole futility that has seen them reach .500 just six times and the playoffs twice since then.

In 2002 it was a double header sweep at the hands of the Toronto Blue Jays that started a 4 - 32 slide that took them from .500 to 67 - 95.

I'm leaving out the historic 0 - 21 start to the 1988 season - because I'm looking at season ending swoons, but, needless to say, that was also quite bad. (The other team that was as bad that year at season's end was Atlanta. Atlanta though has enjoyed some measure of success lately.)

But over a shorter period of time this team has been much much worse. A contributor to the Baltimore Oriole mailing list wrote that from August 22 to July 5 they'd allowed 8.5 runs per game; 9.9 runs if you include the 30 -3 game. The full numbers over that stretch, according to Thomas Boswell this was the

... Oriole flock that's been mauled 149-66 in its previous 15 games. After all, when you've given up more runs in a fortnight than any team in history -- losing by 30-3, 11-3, 15-8 and 10-0 (while being no-hit), as well as that 17-2 drubbing, why advertise your true identity?

After Dave Trembley took over the team, it was possible to have delusions of adequacy.

But Peter Schmuck wrote that perhaps we just read too much into those 54 games.

The Orioles' record under Trembley at the time of his extension was 29-25, which was quite in contrast to the club's 29-40 mark when Sam Perlozzo was fired. The difference also was apparent in the team's demeanor between June 18 (when Trembley took over) and Aug. 22 (when the extension was announced). That's all well and good, but the only fundamental change was the new manager's increased emphasis on fundamentals.

That 54-game span of modestly winning baseball is not some dynamic statistical anomaly. Over the course of a 162-game season, almost every team - no matter how hapless - has an extended run of respectability.

Want proof? The Kansas City Royals, the yardstick by which baseball measures pain, went 29-24 from June 1 through Aug. 1. The Washington Nationals, the other MASN partner that entered the weekend mired in a long losing streak, went 29-26 from June 6 through Aug. 7.

In other words, it happens. Don't get carried away.

I guess we could take comfort in the fact that the Orioles don't have the worst record this year in blowouts.

Being this bad has caused some observers to have buyer's remorse. Rick Maese of the Baltimore Sun writes that this shows that the Orioles were too quick to make Dave Trembley manager for 2008.

Trembley could still be a great hire for 2008, but the front office appears to have jumped the gun by locking themselves into the one-year extension so soon. They should have given Trembley more time to showcase himself. Haven't we learned something about Trembley - something about Trembley's team - these past two weeks that we didn't see in the previous two months?

Maese comes to this conclusion after acknowledging that the collapse was not due to anything that Trembley did. (BTW, he had questioned the decision right away.)

The problem is that if the Orioles have shown anything in recent years is that they've been poor in acting decisively and subject to judging talent poorly. The inadequacies exposed now are the residue of poor preparation. Giving Trembley security about next year (and the rest of this year) shows a welcome initiative on the part of the front office. The team is failing not because of a lack of effort, but for a lack of talent.

When October comes, Trembley will be able to sit down with his bosses and discuss the good and bad he's seen. He'll be able to work with them on addressing the team's biggest needs. (Hopefully the front office has no delusions of being competitive next year and will be looking three or four years down the road.) But these discussions will be able to start immediately instead of after some drawn out search process.

I can't agree with the Loss Column either. Shedding the whole roster isn't what's needed.

I’m talking about trading Tejada and Mora (who, I’d imagine, will have no problem relinquishing his no-trade protection). I’m talking about taking offers on Roberts and, yes, Bedard. I’m talking about ridding this team of every last scrap of the past ten years of futility.

The future is Matt Wieters, Billy Rowell, Brandon Snyder, and the guys we get in those trades. It’s guys who aren’t part of the losing culture.

I have no problem with trading Tejada and Mora even conceding that the Orioles probably won't receive much in return for either. They are not part of the team's long term future and the Orioles need to acknowledge that, even if it means taking a hit on their contracts. Roberts as probably the Orioles most appealing star probably can bring the most in a trade and the team would do well to entertain offers for him. He's good but he's not young (i.e. not under 25) and the Orioles need to get better and younger.

However trading Bedard and Markakis would be wrong. Bedard showed this year that he is or could be an elite talent. The problem is that he's injured. The Orioles won't get value in return for him right now. It's just too risky for another team. If he can return to where he was this year, he will be an important part of the team for a while. (Though he's not young, if he can return to the level he was at from June to August, I expect that he will be a better long term bet than Roberts to maintain his level of achievement.)

Markakis is good. Perhaps he's even very good. And he's young enough that the team can expect improvement from him. There is no way that the team will get equal value (in terms of talent) in return. He may not turn into a hall of famer but all-star doesn't seem to be out of his reach.

Of course the likes of Millar, Bradford, Walker - who might bring some talent in exchange - and Baez, Payton, and Huff - who won't, all must be available for trade, even if it means eating contracts.

The Orioles need to identify their long term needs. They also need to evaluate talent properly. The latter is obviously much tougher than the former. Acting decisively with Trembley was a good first step. Considering reasonable trades int he off-season is the next one.

baltimore orioles.

(North) Korean News: "the flood-victims directed attention to protecting the portraits of President Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il than their families"

Remember the story about the lady who got burnt trying to protect slogan-bearing trees from fire? This one is called "Spirit of Defending Leader with Very Life Displayed in Flood-hit Areas":

The recent unprecedented heavy rains triggered off flood and landslide in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, causing heavy human and material losses.

But the flood-victims directed attention to protecting the portraits of President Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il than their families.

The torrential rains on August 9 submerged the township area of Hoeyang County. Over a thousand families there were evacuated to safety places. They came there, carrying not their properties but the portraits of the President and the leader.

Students of Koksan County School for Agricultural Skilled Workers and people in the county defended the picture of smiling President from the downpour.

Ri Chun Hwa, a worker of the Changdo County Clothing Factory, brought over 1,500 books carrying the images of the great men of Mt. Paektu, from the County Publication Circulation Office to a safe place through torrents of water at the risk of her life.

Many people including People's Security officer Choe Myong Gil in Ichon County and teacher of Ichon Middle School No. 1 Hwang Myong Ok rushed in public buildings and dwelling houses without hesitation to save portraits, realizing that they would soon crumble.

Among such people are peasant of the Jongdong Co-op Farm in Phyonggang County Cha Hyang Mi who handed over portraits to rescuers and went to the bottom of the torrent water, peasant of the same farm Pak Jong Ryol who lost his wife and child by landslide but saved the portraits and worker of the Ichon Foodstuff Factory Kang Hyong Gwon who firmly took portraits in his hands in flood though his five-year-old daughter slipped down from his back.

Oh no . . . no . . .

After the flood, corpses were dug out of the silt. Found out in their bosom were portraits wrapped with vinyl sheets to prevent them from being spoiled by water.

It is the just outlook on life of the Korean people to enjoy their existence, dignity and happiness in the effort for defending the leader at the cost of their lives.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Fahrenheit vs. the path

An Editorial from Today's New York Times entitled "Disney's Craven Behavior"

Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking the distribution of a DVD that criticizes President Clinton and is likely to be embarrass his wife, presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a mini-series that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary.

The mini-series was produced by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a respected Hollywood writer who based his story on the public record. As described by Johm Miller last year in the National Review, the mini-series, "The Path to 9/11," shows the Clinton administration failing to act decisively against the growing terror threat. It describes the fecklessness of Mr. Clinton's appointees in their failure to stem the threats that led to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The mini-series was shown last year on ABC and a DVD was expected a few months later.

Well actually that isn't what's in today's editorials in the NY Times. There wasn't a single item addressing the charge that Disney refused to release the DVD. The LA Times reported

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries' many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that "if Hillary weren't running for president, this wouldn't be a problem."

(h/t Seraphic Secret)

Three years ago, the NY Times wasn't so shy. When Michael Moore charged that MiraMax wouldn't distribute his film "Fahrenheit 9/11" the Times chimed in with Disney's Craven Behavior

Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds of acceptable political commentary.

The documentary was prepared by Michael Moore, a controversial filmmaker who likes to skewer the rich and powerful. As described by Jim Rutenberg yesterday in The Times, the film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," links the Bush family with prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden. It describes financial ties that go back three decades and explores the role of the government in evacuating relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The film was financed by Miramax and was expected to be released this summer.

The problem was that Moore never had a distribution deal with MiraMax. Moore was simply and dishonestly raising publicity for his movie. Except Moore himself admitted that he never had a distribution deal with Disney; so there was no censorship involved.

I wrote to the public editors of both the New York Times and Baltimore Sun asking them to retract the editorial since it was based on a false accusation. Neither newspaper acknowledged my e-mail and neither repudiated its dishonest editorial.

So now when the shoe's on the other foot and a Disney official reportedly admits to restricting distribution of a DVD for political purposes. the Times is silent. I can't say that I'm surprised. On the Times editorial page partisanship usually trumps the truth. But rarely is that reality so obvious.

9/11, new york times, media bias.

Iraq in three or four pieces

In The Partitioning of Iraq, (or here) Charles Krauthammer argues that the situation on the ground dictates the next stage of evolution of post-Saddam Iraq.

It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.

1. The Sunni provinces. The essence of our deal with the Anbar tribes and those in Diyala, Salahuddin and elsewhere is this: You end the insurgency and drive out al-Qaeda, and we assist you in arming and policing yourselves. We'd like you to have an official relationship with the Maliki government, but we're not waiting on Baghdad.

2. The Shiite south. This week the British pulled out of Basra, retired to their air base and essentially left the southern Shiites to their own devices -- meaning domination by the Shiite militias now fighting each other for control.

3. The Kurdish north. Kurdistan has been independent in all but name for a decade and a half.

Baghdad and its immediate surroundings have not yet been defined.

This is an extension of Krauthammer's column from last week advocating the possibility of change coming from the electorate/grass roots and working its way up to leadership. This week, he's arguing that partition (or a weak partition) is the effect of ground-up political change. The central government was weak, and now, to some degree, it has ceded control to events on the ground.

Krauthammer seems to be arguing that the central government needs to be weak for now, but not too weak so as not to invite unwelcome interventions. It's not the ideal.

The lines today are being drawn organically by self-identified communities and tribes. Which makes the new arrangement more likely to last.

This is not the best outcome, but it is far better than the savage and dangerous dictatorship we overthrew. And infinitely better than what will follow if we give up in mid-surge and withdraw -- and allow the partitioning of Iraq to dissolve into chaos.

UPDATE: via memeorandum

Max Boot doesn't really disagree with Krauthammer, except with his terminology.

Pretty much everyone agrees that there should be some degree of decentralization in Iraq, with the central government in Baghdad taking care of a few responsibilities (such as the army, foreign policy, and splitting oil revenues) and the rest of the governance functions delegated to provinces and municipalities (with funding provided from Baghdad). The chief success of American troops in the past year in Anbar and other provinces has been in beefing up local law enforcement functions, within a framework of a larger Iraqi state. For instance, the Iraqi army, composed of Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, is actively working with Sunni militias and local Sunni-dominated police forces to fight al Qaeda.

That hardly constitutes vindication, to my mind, of those who advocated partitioning Iraq into three new states composed exclusively of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. That is a “solution” still rejected by most Iraqis: it would be almost impossible to implement without tremendous bloodshed because most of Iraq’s eighteen provinces have mixed populations. Federalism, on the other hand, is a way that Iraq can remain a single state while still recognizing great differences between different provinces. Why this should be called “partition” is a bit of a mystery.

UPDATE II: Does Jackson Diehl read Krauthammer?

iraq.

This blog is full of crape 2007

This year the crape seemed to bloom a bit late. It was only after a rainstorm August 5, or so that it seemed to come into full bloom. Still the blooms are going strong a week into September.

But then all the crapes in the neighborhood seemed to bloom unevenly this year. So I think it was the drought that affected the blooming schedule. I asked Maryland Weather Blogger, Frank Roylance and he gave a different answer.

Alan Thomson, nursery manager at Valley View Farms in Cockeysville, blames winter damage. Crape myrtles are vulnerable this far north. After a mild start to our winter, overnight lows in late January and early February sank to the teens, even single digits, turning myrtle buds to duds.

I'd like to welcome a new crape blogger, In Context for both her lavender and a really impressive pink crapes.

Last year's.

Terrorist tool

View from a Height characterizes Human Rights Watch: Watchdog? No, scared puppy. He notes that when HRW wanted to publicize its report on Hezbollah it had to cancel its press conference due to intimidation by Hezbollah, though it was able to publicize its report critical of Israel with no pressure from the Israeli government. But of course.

When concluding, as it does that Israel killed many more civilians than terrorists HRW claimed that it scoured graveyards.

The "vast majority" of the at least 1,109 Lebanese killed in the war were civilians, including many women and children, the report concluded. The Israeli military has said it killed 600 Hezbollah fighters during the war. But the rights group said the number, based on its count of fighters' graves in Lebanon and other evidence, was closer to 250.

Unfortunately, the Post's reporter Samuel Sockol doesn't provide us with a clue as to how Israel arrived at its figure. Gen Yaacov Amidror did.

A few months ago he wrote We have identified by name and address 440 members of Hizballah who were killed during the war. From my experience, this figure is between half and two-thirds of the actual casualties, which were not less than 500 and may have reached 700 - a figure greater than all the casualties Hizballah has suffered during the last twenty years. It will take Hizballah at least two years to rebuild its capabilities and to recruit and train new people. This is why Hizballah is keeping the cease-fire.

I'm reasonably certain that Israeli intelligence got more complete results than a combination of touring cemeteries and interview eyewitnesses. After all, surely at least some of the witnesses were intimidated into giving HRW the answers that Hezbollah demanded.

When the report about Hezbollah was released, HRW mentioned that it was going to go after Israel next. Its report is typically dishonest, denying that Hezbollah - the terrorist organization that cowed them into silence - used human shields or intimidated the population of Lebanon during last year's war. That requires ignoring photographic evidence.

Human Rights Watch continues to be a tool for terror organization falling far short of its noble sounding name.

human rights watch, israel, hezbollah.

Council speak 09/07/2007

The Council has spoken.

This week's winning council entry was Contemptible by Done With Mirrors a rather brutal (but well deserved) takedown of director Brian DePalma's anti-American propaganda movie. On the non-council side the overwhelming winner was Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt by Gen David Kilcullen - a former aid to Gen. Petraeus - at the Small Wars Journal.

The runner up in the council side of things was Right Wing Nuthouse's The War To Remember 9/11. The runner up was my nominee The State that must not be Named at Thoughts by Seawitch, in which she compares the more effective silent approach Mississippi politicians have taken in rebuilding after Katrina with the louder blame game being played in Louisiana.

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.

Human Rights Watch accuses DePaul of "indiscriminate" tenure denial

Professor Norman Finkelstein still shakes with anger when he recounts the night the denial-of-tenure notices came in the mail disappointing his career-hopes and those of eight of his colleagues.

"We were all leading scholars. There was not a single one of us who was not heavily published," the 54-year-old said.

A prominent human rights group on Thursday rejected DePaul University's claim that the firings were caused because of erratic and unprofessional behavior.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said there were only "rare" cases of Finkelstein's showing disrespect for others' views and that DePaul's "indiscriminate" firing actions have outraged thousands of students and social-justice advocates.

Human Rights Watch said its report was based on interviews with 94 students, 13 anti-war activists, and 27 faculty members, including "non-tenured Assistant Professor" Mathew Abraham, who commented "The general public used to look to the academy for leadership, vision, and most importantly, uncorrupted knowledge. Not anymore."

Update: Unlike previous reports, the current HRW report includes recommendations, most notably, that DePaul should be tried in the World Criminal Court for crimes against the humanities.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Rooz: "What Has Government Done with 140 Billion Dollars?"

Some things are simple. Countries with oppressive governments have bad economies:

Six months after state-run news agencies estimated Iran’s foreign reserves to be around 20 billion U.S. dollars, and five months after the central bank put that figure at 9 billion dollars, and coinciding with the resignation of central bank governor Ebrahim Sheibani, news reports announced that Ahmadinejad’s administration had spent the country’s foreign exchange reserves despite generating Iran’s highest ever oil revenues.

The central bank’s foreign currency chief reported that only 3.6 billion Dollars was left in Iran’s foreign exchange reserves, thus refuting the administration’s claims that more money is held in the reserves.

With the figure announced by Mr. Mohammad Jafar Mojarrad, Majlis deputies have no option other than to question the administration once they return from their summer recess. How has the administration spent 140 billion Dollars [the highest reserves Iranhas ever had] in just two years?

According to financial analysts, this is the highest amount spent by any administration in Iran’s history.

In a news story, E’temad daily speculated that government officials may have lost track of actual amounts in the foreign exchange reserve accounts, as the government has released two contradictory reports about its account balance in two days . . . .

What worries financial analysts more than anything else is the fear that government officials may hide or distort reported figures in an effort to boast their achievements in the face of growing foreign threats. The government’s political and economic officials constantly downplay the effects of U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran and insist that foreign governments are hurt more by sanctions than Iran is. This claim is made now with as much force as it was made before any sanctions resolutions were passed against Iran.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Selective legalisms

Scott Wilson impressed last week when he reported that a member of the family of the children killed last week in an Israeli (defensive) airstrike actually blamed Islamic Jihad for their deaths. This week he's back to his regular tricks in Israeli Court orders rerouting of barrier

The Jewish settlement of Modiin Illit has been planning to build a new neighborhood on some of the Bilin land that is on the Israeli side of the barrier. But the three-justice panel ruled that the 24-foot-high wall that splits Bilin, which is set among olive groves northwest of Jerusalem, should follow a course that takes less of its land.

"We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bilin's lands," Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in the unanimous decision.

The opinion, one of only a handful that have gone against Israel's military in more than 100 cases challenging the barrier, noted that "this will require destroying the existing fence in certain places and building a new one." It gives Israel's government a "reasonable period of time" to comply..

It's remarkable that, for the most part, the military has taken enough care to avoid the interference of the Israel's meddlesome courts. My guess is that the court was probably ruling less on the facts of the case than on the publicity it garnered.

Wilson isn't good on describing the risks inherent in Israel abiding by the decision - something he devoted a single sentence to - but he is scrupulous in describing the damage that the barrier does.

The village of roughly 1,700 residents, most of whom rely on their farmland to make a living, has been the scene of regular Friday demonstrations. The protests draw Israelis, Palestinians and international opponents of the barrier and often end in tear gas-shrouded clashes with Israeli police and soldiers.

And, of course, he manages to get quotes from an opponent of the barrier.

"The fact the justices even agreed to hear this case is attributable to the struggle," said Jonathan Pollak, an organizer with the group Anarchists Against the Wall. "It's a great political victory for the popular movement. When people unite, they have power over Israeli institutions, whether it's the army or the courts."

But Pollak said the proposed alternative routes for the wall near Bilin all remain within the West Bank rather than along the boundary with Israel that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.

Finally he tells us.

A 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice at The Hague declared the barrier illegal because it did not follow that prewar boundary, a decision Israeli officials said ignored the Jewish state's security concerns.

Later he describes the latest rocket attack on Sderot. But he, of course, reports this by focusing on possible Israeli responses to the attacks.

Meanwhile, Israeli political leaders proposed increasingly harsh measures Tuesday to stop steady rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. On Monday, seven rockets landed in the Israeli town of Sderot on the second day of the school year. Although no one was injured, one rocket landed close to a day-care center, terrifying more than a dozen children and their parents.

"Increasingly harsh?" Israel has a city where the whole population is being terrorized and Wilson is concerned only with the effect responses might have on the terrorizers! (Israel may have no good options to respond effectively, its hands being tied by the planned "peace conference." h/t Daled Amos)

Wilson then reports

The group that asserted responsibility, the Islamic Jihad, declared that the attack was a reprisal for the death last week of three Palestinian cousins, ages 10 to 12 , in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The children were playing tag near an Islamic Jihad rocket launcher when an Israeli airstrike killed them. The Israeli military later characterized the attack as a mistake.

"Mistake?" Actually the only statement that the IDF made that I could find does state that if the army could have identified the figures near the rocket launchers as children it wouldn't have fired. However it is very clear in assigning blame. Though the IDF doesn't say it, according to the Geneva Conventions, international law would find the party that placed a weapon in a civilian area guilty of the deaths of the civilians.

Israel regrets terrorist exploitation of children

"The terror organizations are making cynical use of children, they are sending them to areas where the launchers are located, they are sending them to collect weapons and are consciously endangering them in places where there are IDF targets."

"More than once we preferred not to carry out this type of attack so as not to harm civilians. Nothing is certain here, if Palestinian civilians are identified, we hold fire, but this is not always possible," the source said. "In many cases, upon investigating the incidents, we find that civilians were killed because the terror organizations sent them to the battle zone, because the terrorists were staying among civilians or carrying out a certain activity that endangered the civilians."

But think about the IDF's response. What does it mean? That if the IDF could have ascertained that Palestinian civilians would have been harmed in its counter-attack it would have allowed Israeli citizens to remain at risk. It's mind-boggling.

But it still place the legal burden on the terrorists. Funny, but Wilson who is so careful to mention every legal reason Israel should endanger itself can't find it in himself to show that the IDF's claim is legally correct. Rather he simply writes that the IDF claims that striking the children was a "mistake."

In another blow to Israel's credibility Wilson throws in some gratuitous modifiers. He refers to "highly inaccurate rockets." In other words, the threat that Israel was responding to, wasn't that great.

Finally who gets the last word in the article? Why that expert in international law, Ahmed Yousef,

"We are just reacting to Israeli violence," said Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to deposed prime minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. "This is just self-defense."

Right. And what did Deborah Howell write two months ago?

Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt said, "We frequently run op-eds from people with whom we disagree, sometimes vehemently. Sometimes we even run op-eds that express views we find repugnant. I think it can be useful for readers to get a sense of how people in the news think -- or how people in the news want to be perceived. I think our readers are smart enough to evaluate a Hamas piece in that light." My view is that we need to know what a group labeled as terrorist is thinking.

You see it was important to give Yousef an unchallenged op-ed because otherwise we wouldn't know what Hamas was thinking. Well then why does he get an unchallenged sound bite in a news story?

israel, hamas, terrorism.

Submitted 09/06/2007

The Glittering Eye identifies different dishonest arguments in Gripes About Public Discourse


The Colossus of Rhodey methodically picks apart his hometown paper's justification for not fully identifying criminal suspects and gives Proof: The News Journal Is Politically Correct

Cheat Seeking Missiles regrets the coarsening of our commercials in Our Crumbling Civilization: Flat Buns Edition

Done With Mirrors compares Brian DePalma with Frank Capra and finds the former Contemptible
.

Following up on a compelling thread on her blog Bookworm Room explains the various reasons Why I Support Israel.

Big Lizards follows up on last week's entry and explains that Civilian Deaths in Iraq Are Up, But They're Really Down

A recent Time magazine article reports on Mother Teresa's doubts, ‘Okie’ on the Lam expresses his doubts about the article in Thoughts On Mother Teresa and Religion Bashing By the MSM

Rhymes With Right carefully dissects a court decision limiting the free speech rights of students in Shocking Decision In Douchbag Case

The Education Wonks criticizes a school for punishing a student who draws a gun - on a piece of paper that is - in More Zero-Tolerance Lunacy?

In the past Natan Sharansky called President Bush a "dissident" - it was a compliment. Now JoshuaPundit looks at a recent interview with the former dissident rating the President now in Natan Sharansky: Where Bush Went Wrong. Sharansky makes clear though, that the President ranks higher than any of the candidates to replace him right now. Still, 8 years ago, the President Sharanksy would not have ranked President Bush so highly either. The president's "freedom agenda" was largely a response to 9/11.

Right Wing Nut House describes the underlying battles in The War To Remember 9/11.

Me. I wrote my thoughts on watching our youngest child reach her first birthday this week, in One Year.

Read. Enjoy, Be informed.

watcher's council.

Murder he wrote

Graphic novels are starting to gain popularity in England.

“On the Continent graphic novels have been as accepted as films or books for many years,” said the author Raymond Briggs in a 2005 interview with the newspaper The Observer, “but England has had a snobby attitude towards them. They’ve always been seen as something just for children.”

But things have started to change.

First came the surprise successes of “Ethel and Ernest,” Mr. Briggs’s 1998 word-and-image biography of his parents, which sold more than 200,000 copies, and “Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth,” the American artist Chris Ware’s graphic novel, which controversially won The Guardian’s first-novel award in 2001. Since then, the graphic novel — loosely defined as a novel whose content is displayed in both images and text — has begun to break into the British mainstream.

Leading the pack, Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House UK and the British publisher of “Jimmy Corrigan” and “Ethel and Ernest,” has more than tripled its graphic novel output over the past year, publishing nine new titles since July 2006. Dan Franklin, Cape’s publishing director, said he hoped to increase this number.

Unfortunately in Poland they've discovered a graphic novelist.

A court in Wrocław has sentenced a novelist to 25 years in prison for murder, basing some of the evidence on descriptions in a crime story he published. The novelist was charged with the brutal killing of a local businessman, whom he suspected of having an affair with his ex-wife, in November 2000.

literature, murder.

Next and previous generation airline safety

Air traffic control is heading towards integrating GPS

Satellite navigation and positioning took a step closer to ruling the skies on June 28, when a spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told Congress of the agency’s plans to solicit bids in March 2007 for the first phase of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS).

FAA administrator Marion Blakey called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) “the backbone of the Next Generation System” — and GPS in turn supplies the data backbone for ADS-B.

Still the price will be rather steep for this modernization.

Blakey told Congress that the agency’s “commitment to a national program to make ADS-B the backbone of the Next Generation System is reflected in the President’s fiscal 2007 budget for the FAA, which proposes $80 million for the program.”

There could be some cost savings though, in adopting the new technology.

In addition to increasing safety and adding capacity to the skies, the program could drive costs down. The United Parcel Service has also been trialing ADS-B. “They’re saving millions in jet fuel,” asserted Blakey, “shaving precious minutes off their delivery schedules, reducing emissions because the planes don’t have to idle — and they’re getting reliability and predictability.

Then again there are other cheaper ways of enhancing airline safety.

Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions, an official said.

"The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights," said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Secular Blasphemy, though, notes that even this approach has its costs.

Some people tend to say that such superstitions at least don't do any harm. Well, have you asked the goat about that?

gps, airline safety.

Before i get old

Remember that a number of rockers have gone on to productive careers? Maybe they get into other careers to avoid dying young.

Rock stars -- notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles -- really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age.

A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.

Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.

This "surge" in deaths is at least partly attributable to the rock stars' lifestyles.

More than a quarter of all the deaths were related to drugs or alcohol abuse, said the study in the Journal of Epidemial Community Health.

Among British artists the risk of dying remains high until around 25 years after their first success, when they return to near normal life expectancy.
. . .
But this trend was not found in North America, where ageing rockers remain almost twice as likely to suffer a premature demise, particularly from heart attack or stroke.

And what might the reason for this disparity be?

Bellis suggested that the high death rate among older American musicians could be related to the continent's greater appetite for reunion tours, exposing the artists for more years to an unhealthy "rock'n'roll" lifestyle.

It could also be due to the poor medical outlook for impoverished American ex-pop stars who have no health insurance, he said.

Aren't the English guys Who doing reunion tours? Still the risks of reunion tours aren't so nebulous. Bobby Hatfield died from OD'ing on cocaine.

What's interesting is how the paper finds ways for older American rock stars to die whether they're successful or not. Did the authors control for the working status of the rock stars? Did they also look at those who didn't necessarily hit the big time?

Did the paper look into deaths in plane crashes? That would be a cause of death attributable to the rockers' lifestyles though not a sign of irresponsibility.

If the report on the paper has portrayed it accurately, the paper is filled with generalizations rather than anything specific.

What exactly was the point of the paper anyway? Was it to argue for state sponsored health insurance for fading rockers? Or was it just to review the history of rock and roll in a scientific paper?

(h/t Best of the Web Today)

rock musicians.

What i did last summer

Jules Crittnden gives Katie Couric credit for at least trying to learn about the war in Iraq. He calls her the anti-Cronkite for perhaps building support for the war in Iraq just as her predecessor (three times removed) saw his job as undermining support for the war in Vietnam.

The Anchoress, though, sees Couric's visit as simply burnishing her "serious" credentials. (Scroll down to "In Politics.")

But perky Katie isn't the only getting an education from Gen. Petraeus. So to is Wesley Morgan, a sophomore at Princeton.

Morgan, a sophomore at Princeton, spent his summer vacation in Iraq on a personal invitation from Petraeus. He met with the visiting then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, and had access to multiple classified briefings. He helped patrol streets in Baghdad. His identification card read "journalist," because he keeps a blog about his experiences, but he was treated more like one of the members of Congress or other VIPs who have passed through Iraq.

The trip was the chance of a lifetime for Morgan, an ROTC cadet who said he first became interested in military history and counterinsurgency at age 6.

Why would the general take such an interest in the young man?

Petraeus's willingness to be a mentor stems from a desire to position himself as the man who rebuilt the Army, people who have worked with him in Iraq and elsewhere say. He has been open about his desire to shape the officer corps into a group of highly educated thinkers and has surrounded himself with Rhodes Scholars and PhDs, a group that has come to be known as his brain trust.

This is interesting

Through his research, Morgan began following Petraeus's career 10 years before most Americans had ever heard his name. He read Petraeus's highly regarded guide to counterinsurgency and started to think that someday he could be one of Petraeus's "designated thinkers," as the general calls his circle of advisers with advanced degrees and combat experience.

And General Petraeus doesn't see his mentoring as a waste of time either.

"This is someone who is knowledgeable enough to be an officer here right now," he says. "We need all the brilliant young people we can get. I'll just have to wait three years or so for this one."

Wesley Morgan's blog is here.

general petraeus, Iraq,

Chavez economics start to work their magic

I figured Chavez might get away with his economic adventures for a certain time thanks to Venezuela's oil wealth, but the inevitable economic rot seems to be setting in immediately. From the International Herald Tribune:

The Venezuelan economy, under the direction of President Hugo Chávez, is starting to unravel in the currency market.

While Venezuela earns record proceeds from oil exports, consumers face shortages of meat, flour and cooking oil. Annual inflation has risen to 16 percent, the highest in Latin America, as Chávez tripled government spending in four years.

Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips are pulling out after Chávez demanded that they cede control of joint venture projects . . .

"This has been the worst-managed oil boom in Venezuela's history," said Ricardo Hausmann, a former government planning minister who now teaches economics at Harvard University. "A devaluation is a foregone conclusion. The only question is when."

JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch expect Chávez to devalue the bolivar 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 after he introduces a new currency Jan. 1 that will lop three zeros off all denominations . . .

Chávez terminated the broadcast license of the country's most-watched television network in May, sparking weeks of student protests. He has threatened to take over cement makers, hospitals, banks, supermarkets and butcher shops, saying they were not obeying price controls.

"It's like our director of marketing, our director of sales, our director of manufacturing is President Chávez," said Edgar Contreras, who runs international operations at Molinos Nacionales, a Caracas-based food manufacturer that employs 1,500 people. "We can't go on like this."

Contreras called the government-set prices on many products "fantasy prices" that are below production costs. Milk, chicken, coffee and flour have disappeared from store shelves in Caracas at times this year.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

CS Monitor: US "Craig-like"

Since it does not appreciate the democratic nature of Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran!

What most Americans often don't seem to realize is that a Craig-like credibility gap characterizes how the US is perceived by much of the outside world . . . .

The US promotes democratization in the Middle East and has taken direct action by invading Afghanistan and Iraq to bestow the blessings of democracy. However, for Muslims, the coverup emerges when Washington then rejects the outcome of the democratic process following Hamas's victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, and when it disregards the fact that in Lebanon Hizbullah is an elected part of the government. Washington ignores the fact that Iran is a democracy (albeit one of a very theocratic sort) with hotly contested elections . . .

"Of a very theocratic sort"--that's an important qualification.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

How to fight the new antisemitism

Denis MacShane - The New Antisemitism

Our report showed a pattern of fear among a small number of British citizens -- there are around 300,000 Jews in Britain, of whom about a third are observant -- that is not acceptable in a modern democracy. Synagogues attacked. Jewish schoolboys jostled on public transportation. Rabbis punched and knifed. British Jews feeling compelled to raise millions to provide private security for their weddings and community events. On campuses, militant anti-Jewish students fueled by Islamist or far-left hate seeking to prevent Jewish students from expressing their opinions.

More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt.

MacShane, an Labour Party member, argues that the European antisemitism provides a fertile ground for the vicious antisemitism of Ahmadinejad to prosper. He seems to say that the views of Noam Chomsky and Edward Said constituted criticism of Israel. I don't think that they were quite that benign. Still it's worthwhile.

I wouldn't assume though, that having the BBC train Palestinian "journalists" is a good start. As Daled Amos writes, that's like bringing "coals to Newcastle."

UPDATE: At buzztracker.

Rhymes with Right wonders if the antisemitism figures to coincide with feelings towards another religion.

Indeed, not only is it time to examine the anti-Semitism running rampant in America, it is also time to closely examine the philo-Islamism that threatens to undermine our struggle against the forces of jihadi terror.

VodkaPundit comments

Wow. Imagine UC-Berkeley enlarged to a nation-state, and you've got the postmodern UK.

And what does Norman Finklestein have to say, Harry's Place writes

"I am just the messenger who reports on the actions of the Jewish establishments, actions that are encouraging anti-Semitism."

Words vs. qassams

Powerline (and others - via memeorandum ) has video of a Qassam attack at a Sderot day care center.

LGF is incredulous that the Israeli government would ask the UN for help in fighting the Qassam's.

Elder of Ziyon shows that the words of the PM have not been effective in stopping Qassams in the past.

Powerline writes that MK Tzahi Hanegbi sees the the need to send the IDF into Gaza. Elder of Ziyon's post shows that the government has made similar statements in the past. Does it mean it now?

israel, qassams.

A turning point?

Frederick Kagan has a fascinating article about the current American efforts in Iraq and why the pacification of Anbar has been so significant in the The Gettysburg of This War. He argues that the changes brought about in Anbar are lasting for a number of reasons. Anbar, the primarily Sunni province, seems to have bought into the American plans for Iraq. The effect of defeating Al Qaeda Iraq there, has induced the tribal leadership there to buy into American plans and look toward being part of Iraq and not simply press their advantages for greater Sunni political gains. Kagan writes:

It remains true that Anbar’s leaders are now more reasonable and probably more committed to the political success of Iraq than the Sunni parties in the Council of Representatives. Those parties were chosen at a time when most Iraqi Sunnis really did reject the notion of accepting a lesser role in Iraq, and many Sunni parliamentarians have continued to press for a maximalist version of Sunni aims. Local elections would help, although scheduling them is very complicated for a wide variety of reasons have nothing to do with any putative unwillingness of the Maliki government to “empower” Sunnis, but another event looms on the horizon of greater significance: Iraq will hold new parliamentary elections in 2009. As those elections approach, unreasonable Sunni parliamentarians will face the classic politician’s dilemma: tack more closely to their pragmatic base, or lose their seats to more pragmatic leaders. Either way, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the turn in Anbar will not have a profound effect on the political dynamics of the central government in Baghdad within a few years if not sooner.

Kagan also describes the decision of Anbari leaders joining the American cause as self-interest:

The Anbaris have certainly not reached out to American forces or the Maliki government because they have suddenly decided that they like us or them. Their turn has been based entirely on self-interest — which is why it is likely to be durable and meaningful. If Anbari leaders were now espousing their longing for Jeffersonian democracy or their enthusiasm for Shia rule, one would have to be highly suspicious of their motives. They are not. They turned toward us initially because they needed allies against AQI. They are joining the ISF rather than working to establish their own militias for similarly self-interested reasons. For instance, the Iraqi Army has always been held in high regard in Iraq and still is, for all its problems. Young Anbaris, who feel defeated by the Americans and the Shia in their quest to regain control of Iraq, need a way to regain honor in Iraqi society. Joining a militia won’t accomplish that goal — we’ve all spent four years telling them that militias are bad. Joining the Iraqi army does accomplish that goal — it gives them an honored place not just in Anbari, but in Iraqi society.

One of the articles Kagan references is from the Sunday NYT by Michael Gordon. Gordon writes in the Insurgent Counter-insurgency

The fact that the patience of American politicians was running out had at least concentrated Sunni minds. For many Sunnis, the American troops were the most reliable protectors they had, and the Americans were looking less like long-term occupiers with each passing day. The development of new Sunni security forces was a way to blunt any Al Qaeda and Shiite militia countersurge when the Americans eventually pulled back.

So the political machinations of the war's opponents may have played a role in encouraging the leaders of Anbar to see things America's way.

Kagan's essay was based on the President's visit to Anbar, Blackfive adds this comment:

I love the staging of bringing Maliki to Anbar, the heart of what was the Sunni insurgency. It does two things, it reminds Maliki and the Shia that we took care of the Sunnis and now they are our friends, it also brings the dialogue out of Baghdad where it has been quagmiring. Anbar and the other Sunni enclaves deserve recognition for deciding a free Iraq is probably a nicer place than the Islamic State of No Smokia.

How significant are these changes? I can't pretend to know. Kagan's arguments are specific enough to be convincing. But war is a tricky endeavor. So I'm going to have to say that time will tell. If Kagan's correct, the election two years down the road will provide the surest sign of success or not.

via memeorandum.

iraq, president bush.

Kucinich meets Assad

"If everybody in the world today had a flower instead of a gun
There would be no wars
There would be one big smell-in."

From PR Newswire via Earthtimes and DKos:

In a meeting today with Dennis Kucinich, US Democratic Presidential candidate, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that Syria would be willing to participate in a multinational conference and peacekeeping force to help Iraq to manage its transition from occupied country to sovereign nation.

Assad made these assurances and other observations in a two-hour meeting with Kucinich, who traveled to Syria to discuss a peace initiative which has arisen out of his anti-war work in the House of Representatives. President Assad agreed with Kucinich that various US demands for the privatization of Iraq's oil and partition of Iraq would mean a continuation of war.

"We must stand for strength through peace, for a sovereign and unified Iraq. President Assad is willing for Syria to play a significant role in assisting in the stabilization of Iraq," said Kucinich. "President Assad knows that an international peace keeping and security force must be organized and ready to deploy in order to facilitate the end of the occupation. He understands that the US cannot leave a vacuum in Iraq, but that at the present time the US occupation is fueling the insurgency. He is recommending a parallel political process involving an Iraqi national conference, the disarming of militias, and the building up of an Iraqi army which would eventually takeover from international peace keepers."

Kucinich said the fact that Syria, a nation of just 20 million people, has both welcomed and is providing free health care and education to the million and a half Iraqi refugees is evidence of Syria's vital role in the region. "The international community must recognize and appreciate that Syria has at its own great cost provided a lifeboat to millions who suffer from the humanitarian crisis which the war in Iraq has created." [...]

Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth visited the ancient holy site of Notre Dame de Saydanaya, where today fully veiled Muslim women worship together with Christians. "This is the one of the few places in the world that I have witnessed such profound coexistence, and harmony," Mrs. Kucinich said. "In this time of religious strife it is important to bear witness to places which show the way of peace."

This evening Kucinich spoke to over 150 academicians, journalists and politicians in Damascus where he presented his new security doctrine. "Strength through Peace turns the neoconservative doctrine of Peace through Strength on its head. The neo-cons' Peace through Strength, has led to unilateralism, military build up and illegal war." Kucinich told the packed audience, "Strength through Peace favors the upholding of international law, treaties and direct engagement, which is why I am here" Kucinich added.

"I believe that through direct communication there is new hope for peace," he said. "The world is ready to fall in love with America again. It is important that America reaches out to show our true values, our compassion and our willingness to work for peace." [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Seattle P-I: Nativist Luddite wields crowbar at Home Depot

This story is ripe for politicization:

. . . that age-old adage -- that patience is a virtue -- somehow slipped the mind of a man shopping at Home Depot on Utah Avenue South in Seattle on Thursday.

Around 9 p.m., the man was in line at a self-service checkout stand, ready to buy a pry bar and hacksaw, according to a Seattle police report.

But as a manager told an officer, the man accidentally hit the button for Spanish on the computer screen.

And that was the tipping point for this consumer.

He became "frustrated that the machine was speaking Spanish," the police report says.

But what was it saying in Spanish? Perhaps it said "Para concluir tu transacción romper por favor la computadora con una palanca."

So, instead of asking for customer service help, he let loose a blow with the pry bar and shattered the computer. He ran from the store and made a beeline to some nearby railroad tracks, the report said . . .

He's still at large, evidently, and likely to engage in more political activism.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Juggling carnival 09/03/2007

Incoming Carnivals

The latest carnival of the Insanities is up at Dr. Sanity. It features posts from me, Israel Matzav, Simply Jews, Yid with Lid, Cheat seeking missiles and Judeopundit, to name a few.

The Baleboosteh hostessed the 15th edition of Mr. Bagel's J-Pix, Jewish Photography Carnival.

Not really a carnival but Musical Monday #10 is up at Elie's Expositions.

Juggling Frogs has taken all (?) the Kosher Cooking Carnivals and sorted them into a Meta-carnival (or blog cook book). Take a look!

So step right up and enjoy the carnivals!

Technorati tags: blog carnivals.

Thanks etc.

SarcastiPundit writes about an establishment that once had a phone number of a single digit.

It reminds me about an oddity in Delaware. License plates are the property of the car owner. So License numbers can be sold. With Delaware plate 1 through 3 reserved for the top state officials, single digit numbers are very much in demand.

Emmert sold the No. 9 plate in 1994 for a then-record $182,500 to Vassallo's father-in law, Anthony Fusco. This year, a plate in the low teens went for about $290,000 and there is a standing offer of $450,000 for any single-digit tag.

"If you are in this state, and you're a person of wealth and fame, 90 percent of those people have a low tag," said Emmert.

The roots of the tag craze date back almost a century, to the days when many cars were in the hands of rich families like the du Ponts.

"They had the majority of the vehicles and the low-digit plates," Vassallo said. "Everybody wanted to do like the Joneses, like the du Ponts."

Thoughts by Seawitch posted her photographs of the recovery efforts going one near her home in commemoration of 2 years since Katrina. She graciously used my suggestion for the musical accompaniment. And this isn't about Louisiana, but about the state that must not be named.

I appreciate the fine company that Yid with Lid places me in. However, I am no politician. The most you want me doing politically is sitting in an attic somewhere doing opposition research. Thanks a lot though!

View from a Height takes many great pictures out in Colorado. Once I saw a few of his pictures, I recommended Autostitch that someone at work had introduced me too. He use it to great effect during his recent vacation to create some wonderful panoramas. One of these I'll have to use it. When I was in Israel in June, I took 270 degrees around the Kotel (Western Wall) plaza and want to stitch them together. I really have to do it.

Finally many thanks to Don Surber for linking to my post about second careers for rock stars. That in turn led to a link from the Libertarian Popinjay who in turn was instalanched - not that there's anything wrong with that :-) - giving me the benefit of some spillover. You never know what will happen when you highlight someone else's post. But there's always a chance that it will bring them more attention than you thought. I really appreciate what they did for me. Thanks!

If ... you must 09/03/2007

If you haven't read Don Surber's Forgetting the actual victim; you must.
The campaign for the driver of the getaway car was successful and his sentence was commuted. The general point still holds. People who agitate for the lives of murderers usually do so to the exclusion of the victim.
If you haven't read Great Moments in Self Pity at Maryland Conservatarian; you must.
He uses the death of Richard Jewell to contrast someone who suffered from real injustice with someone who only sees himself as persecuted. It's worth noting that the obituary of Richard Jewell in the Washington Post was a tactless hit piece, bringing in every insult people tossed his way. The NY Times obituary was much better, focusing on a man who, when the need arose, was a hero.
If you haven't read Five Down at Futility Closet; you must.
Can you give away secrets if you don't know that they're secrets?
If you haven't read Bound for Glory at Big Lizards; you must.
You think you've seen the end of politicization in Washington with the resignation of Alberto Gonzales?
If you haven't read Gonzales Quits Bush Appoints Rove at ScrappleFace; you must.
If you haven't read Outside the Beltway's The Past is a foreign economy; you must.
For contrast read Greenness and its discontents. For all the efforts we make as a society to reduce pollution, there's often little acknowledgment that pollution is the price we pay for progress.
If you haven't read Bookshelf: Prince of Darkness at Contentions; you must.
I understand the praise of Novak, but only to a degree. Take the first item in this recent column. Do I believe that some Democratic politicians might worry that Hillary, if she's nominated will drag down other Democrats? Yes. Do I believe that it's a significant number? No. Because as unpopular as Hillary might be, it will be a rare state where her presence on the presidential ticket will affect local races. Sure more Republicans might come to vote against her, but I can't believe that she will be all that effective as a bogeyman.
If you haven't read Beldar Blog's Sen. Kerry permits last statute of limitations for defamation to lapse ...; you must.
It's an interesting observation, It's just not a conclusive proof that Sen. Kerry is scared to bring the suit.
If you haven't seen Psychedelic Murmur or Criss Cross at Not Quite Perfect ; you must.
If you haven't read Hamas growing into role as heavy at Daled Amos; you must.
If you haven't read PalArabs hate human rights organizations too at Elder of Ziyon; you must.
If you haven't read Hamas shows that it believes in freedom for, well, Hamas at Yourish; you must.

Od yeshama

From Alan and Andrea in Israel

I won't type out the verse of "Od Yeshama" in Hebrew, but the translation goes something like this:

May there be heard in the cities of Judea and in the streets of Yerushalayim, the sound of joy and the sound of celebration, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

I heard this yesterday, Shabbat morning, and it made me pause. I had one of those moments that hits every once in a while. These are moments that remind me why I (and the collective "we") are really here.

Background: On Friday night, the announcements included several mazel tovs for weddings last week, and the names of three couples who got engaged in the last week. There was extra singing and dancing at the Carlebach minyan as well.

I went to the early Shabbat morning minyan (7:30) at our shule. As I left, people were walking in for the 3rd minyan (9:15). Evidently, one of the girls who got engaged last week was walking to shule. Her friends saw her, and immediately surrounded her with singing and dancing in the street. They were singing "Od Yeshama."

I kept walking, and then the meaning of the words hit me. They were able to actually do what the words of the song meant. Here we all were, Jews in the cities of Judah (OK, technically, a yishuv in the Shomron), and the young ladies were singing and celebrating with the voice of the bride. This is what brings it all together here.

One year

Six years ago, on the Sunday of Labor Day, my parents took the children and we went out to eat. My wife didn't sleep that night and sometime, maybe 4AM I gave my mother the call for her to come over and babysit so we could go to the hospital.

About 7:30 AM Sept 3, 2001, Labor Day, we had a little girl.

(My mother tells how she came downstairs that morning to see all four children looking out the window - seeing our car gone - and waiting for the news.)

Last year on the Sunday of Labor Day my wife felt something going on. My parents took the children for a family dinner and we blew it off. About 9 PM we finally went to the hospital.

One thing about babies is that they take their time. For awhile, I thought that we'd have two children with the same birthday, Sept 3. But this one didn't cooperate. She arrived 1:15 AM - appropriately enough again on Labor Day - but it was Sept 4, 2006.

So a little more than 4 hours ago, she turned 52 weeks.

So today she is 1 year old minus one day, but that's close enough for our purposes.

I was looking back at my one month post and the differences are striking.

A newborn has nearly no qualities. She is either unhappy or she isn't. She is scrawny. Her movements are not deliberate. Activities that we take for granted - even something as basic as eating - have to be learned.

At a year a baby has progressed tremendously. She can occupy herself with activities, such as playing with toys. And if she's not entirely happy, she even knows how to manipulate others to get what she wants. If she's eating and we forgot to give her a drink she'll kvetch - something that might be described as a controlled cry - letting us know that service wasn't quite up to snuff and the we'd better bring over her sippy cup.

She can play games. "Beep" is when I touch her nose and (sometimes) in response she touches or grabs mine. "Peek-a-Boo" is when I hide my face and she pulls off whatever's covering it. Sometimes she'll hide her face in response. "High Five" means that she'll hit her sister's hand. When you sing "Happy Birthday" she might put her hands on her head.

She'll also wave when she sees someone she likes. She might clap - hit one hand onto the other wrist - or dance - swaying a bit - when she hears music.

She also loves baths. Wehn we're filling her tub she'll stand by the tub waiting. Sometimes, when we're nearby, she'll just make her way into the bathroom and stand by the tub waiting for us to fill it. Even if it isn't bath time.

So she's learned certain cues that she responds to or gives.

Not only does she know how to move now, she can crawl - sometimes, now, on her feet instead of knees, - cruise - walk holding on to something, - and uniquely, scoot - crawl in a seated position using one leg to push off, one to pull and a hand to help herself pull. That leaves a hand free to carry something. She climbs stairs and usually has the sense to stay away from the top of a flight of stairs.

She doesn't fall asleep in anyone's arms anymore, though, last week I took care of her in middle of the night and she was leaning against me. But now there's a whole world out there to distract her. She's not going to fall asleep like that. Still it's nice to bring back the days when' she'd fall asleep in my arms, even for a moment.

And while she hasn't always taken to me, I've made it to #2 or #3 on her list of favorites. She says "Abba" (Hebrew for "father") a lot, but it's not always clear that she's referring to me. It might just be an all inclusive word.

Her older sister informed us yesterday that skinny babies aren't cute, but "mushy" ones are, and she's certainly "mushy." We don't know how she got that way since she's not a great eater. But then I suspect we've seen this before with other children. She enjoys deserts a lot, especially chocolate.

Fortunately, she has a very easy-going temperament and is generally easy to please. At a year now, she continues to make us happy and occasionally crazy. (Try changing or dressing a baby who has other things on her mind.) She has 5 older siblings who would do anything for her.

So her it is her (almost) birthday. She's been with us for a year. And we couldn't be happier.

Previous related posts: One month, two months, three months, four months and five months, six months,seven months,eight months, 9 months, 10 months, 11 months.

Greenness and its discontents

All around the world people are thinking globally and acting locally. But something seems to be going wrong: Nothing global is actually getting accomplished. The New Republic sums up a number of articles that deal with this phenomenon:

There seems to be a surge lately in counterintuitive stories about green living. First the London Times claimed that taking the train in England may burn more oil than busting out the family car. Soon after, another Times piece declared that merely walking to the grocery store uses up more energy than driving. (This one cited the work of Chris Goodall, "the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.") Then The New York Times and Boston Globe followed suit with articles suggesting that eating locally, the holy grail of crunchy types the world over, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

TNR goes on to assert that it really is possible to decrease that "carbon footprint," despite all this stuff, but the bad news just goes on and on. The LA Times casts doubt on the efficacy of buying "carbon offsets" and notes that the effort to make the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" "carbon neutral" "has not led to any additional emissions reductions." Worse still, Green-types writing for the Dissident Voice have woken up to the slow horror of being co-opted by Big Business:

It’s obvious now: Severe damage is caused by humanity’s penchant for treating the planet as our storehouse, and all living beings as our personal stock. As public awareness grows, companies sense a need to adjust. But they’ve managed, perversely, to use the need for change as a means to avoid it. Thus the rise of “greenwashing” — the appearance of cultivating ecological awareness in hopes of getting a higher profile for whatever they happen to be selling us.

Most recently, the BBC notes that "Green taxes 'are making billions'":

The government is raising billions of pounds more in green taxes than it needs to remove the UK's "carbon footprint", a report says.

The Taxpayers' Alliance said emissions in 2005 had done damage worth an estimated £11.7bn, but green taxes and charges in that year had made £21.9bn.

It claimed ministers were "cynically" raising revenue rather than using the money to improve the environment.

What is the moral to all this? Think locally and act locally. Why not look for bargains when you shop for food, make healthy food choices, try to exercise, and try to boost your individual prosperity? Why not choose conservation efforts that will reduce your own personal utility bill? Isn't the global level comprised of the sum total of everything on the local level anyway?

Was the above not idealistic enough? Here's a thought for Rosh Hashanah: I recently heard a speaker who declared "What does it mean to think globally and act locally?" Follow the dictum of Maimonides (Hilchos Teshuvah 3:4) that if a person performs "one mitzvah, he tips the scales for himself and for the entire world to the side of merit . . . "

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Two ways to tell dictatorships ...

Those governments that regulate you when you enter the world and those that regulate you when you re-enter the world too.

tyranny, venezuela, china.

Standards, what standards?

Last week Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Nancy Grasmick, proposed an alternative to testing for High School seniors to graduate.

Backing away from her insistence that students pass four state tests to graduate, Maryland schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick said yesterday that those who repeatedly fail the exams should be allowed to do a senior project instead.

Grasmick made the proposal as state officials acknowledged that at least 2,000 to 3,000 students in the Class of 2009 are in jeopardy of not getting a diploma because of their poor performance on the state's High School Assessments.

In response to critics that this would dilute the graduation requirement, Grasmick is defending her proposal saying that the project would have to be "substantial".

The details of how the senior project would be administered will be worked out by a task force over the next year if the state school board adopts Grasmick's plan.

The project would have to be substantial, done over the course of a year and approved by teachers and school administrators, she said.

Of course, if the goal is to ensure that everyone will graduate, regardless of merit, then the teachers and administrators might be inclined to define "substantial" somewhat liberally.

The Washington Post has it right in "Never Mind"

Pardon our skepticism, but how hard will a project be if it is tailored to students unable to pass tests that, quite frankly, are just not that demanding. They test subjects at the ninth- and 10th-grade levels. Local school systems, under tremendous pressure to pass students, would be allowed under the plan to design and administer the projects. That Mrs. Grasmick, a fierce champion for standards, backed down is testimony to the intensity of this pressure. It's no coincidence that her action comes as lawmakers, much to their discredit, threatened legislation to undercut the tests.

It helps no one to graduate students who can't read or compute sums. Exit exams, which have been enacted by 26 states, ensure that students have the skills a diploma signifies. They send a message to students that a diploma is something to be earned, and they force schools to do a better job of preparing students. Maryland politicians worried about the consequences of large number of students, who are likely to be minority or come from low-income families, not graduating should study states such as Massachusetts, which faced similar fears. By standing firm that state managed to increase the number of students passing the tests year by year. In Maryland, districts that are taking the tests to heart and providing support and resources are beginning to reap results.

Changing the standards won't mean that students who haven't achieved will be able to accomplish the basic skills they need to function in the world. Diluting standards is no kindness.

nancy grasmick, education, maryland.

Where have the children gone?

I read this article

Israeli fire killed three Palestinian children and wounded one of their cousins on Wednesday as they played in a field in the northern Gaza Strip at the tail end of their summer holidays.

Yahya Ramadan Ghazal, 12, and his cousin Mahmud Mussa Ghazal, 10, were killed when Israeli artillery fire from across the border slammed into a field east of Jabaliya refugee camp, witnesses and a medical official said.

A nine-year-old cousin, Sara Suleiman Ghazal was critically wounded in the incident and rushed to the Kamal Radwan hospital in nearby Beit Lahiya where she died later, a medical official said.

and wondered why Israel seems to kill so many children. Would we find out confirmation of what Israel charged in the article?

Elder of Ziyon had shown this in the past.

The Washington Post's Scott Wilson, surprisingly, reported confirmation of the Israeli charges.

A member of the Abu Ghazallah family who witnessed the airstrike said a rocket launcher was near the area where the children were playing. The relative, who declined to be named for fear of reprisal, said the launcher belonged to Islamic Jihad, an armed movement responsible for much of the rocket fire into Israel.

"I hold the Islamic Jihad responsible for the killing of these children," the relative said.

.

Bookworm Room engages in an exercise of Here's how the story could have been reported. While it's been confirmed that those killed were children, she shows how selecting what to report or emphasize greatly affects the way a news report sounds.

israel, terrorism, media bias.

O's woe is me

Ever wonder how much that 30 - 3 loss affected the Orioles?

Hardball times gives the Pythagorean effect for both teams.

Hardball Times also finds a reason that Erik Bedard has been more effective this year. Alas he's now out indefinitely.

Allowing the other team 30 runs was historic. Now less than two weeks later the O's are in the history books again. A pitcher no-hit them in only his second start. Who was the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter in only his second start? Wilson Alvarez. In 1991. Against the Orioles.
(BTW that's a great pun - Clay-nation!)

It's quite often that baseball writers write about the importance good clubhouse chemistry. Well guess what, apparently the Orioles have it. Even after firing a manager and losing 9 straight.

Trachsel said. "I'll keep all my doors open. You never say no to anything. I certainly enjoyed it and liked this clubhouse."

That's on a fourth place club fading fast.

Peter Schmuck is glad that Andy MacPhail got to see the real Orioles.

The Orioles' record under Trembley at the time of his extension was 29-25, which was quite in contrast to the club's 29-40 mark when Sam Perlozzo was fired. The difference also was apparent in the team's demeanor between June 18 (when Trembley took over) and Aug. 22 (when the extension was announced). That's all well and good, but the only fundamental change was the new manager's increased emphasis on fundamentals.

That 54-game span of modestly winning baseball is not some dynamic statistical anomaly. Over the course of a 162-game season, almost every team - no matter how hapless - has an extended run of respectability.

Want proof? The Kansas City Royals, the yardstick by which baseball measures pain, went 29-24 from June 1 through Aug. 1. The Washington Nationals, the other MASN partner that entered the weekend mired in a long losing streak, went 29-26 from June 6 through Aug. 7.

In other words, it happens. Don't get carried away.

I'd write more but this is just getting depressing. There's always next year. Or 2010.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad and OTB Sports.

baltimore orioles.

Should I believe this happened?

I don't live in Israel. The story's central claim, that a child was not allowed to attend a Chareidi school because the presence of one Sefardi grandfather in his lineage was regarded as a taint, sounds unlikely to me. I notice that the story starts out using phrasing that indicates that it is only presenting a claim made by the mother, abandons the phrasing after a few paragraphs, and then presents a conflicting claim by the school's principal at the end. The title and summary make it clear what Ynetnews.com wants you to believe: "Haredi school rejects 'Sephardi' child--Talmud Torah school rejects four-year-old due to Sephardi grandfather. Principal says child has ‘stain’ in genealogy." Here is the article:

Anyone who thinks that racist rules are a thing of the past is wrong, according to the mother of a four-and-a-half year old child who was rejected from a Talmud Torah school because of his grandfather’s ethnicity.

"They are alive and kicking in all their ugliness in Ashkenazi haredi educational institutions," the mother said.

The child was denied admission to a Talmlud Torah school in Beit Shemesh because of what its principal called a "stain" in his genealogy.

"Tell the child’s dear father that although he himself is completely Ashkenazi, his wife’s father is Sephardic, and we therefore cannot accept his son into our institution. We have to maintain a certain standard," the principal said.

"The mother said" a few paragraphs ago meant to the journalists. "The principal said" here means to the mother according to the mother?

The child’s mother made several attempts to change the principal’s mind, to no avail.

She claimed?

"I begged the principal. I explained that my child is truly Ashkenazi and looks exactly like his father. Our son also speaks Yiddish, but nothing helped," the mother said. "They explained to a friend of ours that they didn’t want to ruin their Talmud Torah with ‘damaged goods’."

"Damaged goods"? It seems likely that he used that exact phrase, doesn't it?

The Talmud Torah school had previously given the same explanation to several other frustrated parents who petitioned MK Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) for help.

Several rejected parents made the same claim? That would count for something. The story still isn't clear.

The Knesset member tried several times to convince the principal to allow the rejected children admission to the school, but the principal insisted there was "no room" in the institution.

"This is a complicated problem. I don’t deal with condemning these things, just like I don’t condemn kibbutzim, which sometimes select who to accept as a member. There are communities that wish to be strict about their religion or social character. It’s not simple," Porush said.

The school’s principal, who had previously said he only wanted "100% Ashkenazim" at his institution, told Yedioth Ahronoth he had no idea how many, if any, Sephardic children were enrolled in the school.

Who was reported as saying that he only wanted "100% Ashkenazim"? Why would anyone beg to be admitted to a school with such a weird policy?

"There is no clause in our educational institution’s regulations about this. We only make sure that our students are good children from explicitly haredi families. Whether someone is Sephardic or Ashkenazi makes no difference to me," the principal said.

In a statement, the Education Ministry issued a statement saying, "The ministry takes any attempt to discriminate against students because of their ethnicity or their sex very seriously."

"The claims will be looked into, and should investigations show that the students were rejected because of their ethnic group, the ministry will take steps to force the institution to accept them."

That's nice. Don't you hate journalists?

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Haveil Havalim #132 is UP!

Haveil Havalim #132 is UP at Life in Israel. He's done a great job and it's well worth your time to go there and check out (at least) 3 or 4 links as you'll surely learn something new!

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

September 9 - #133 - Rubicon3
I haven't made a decision how many we'll have during the High Holiday and Sukkos season. The 23rd will definitely be a vacation week, but if anyone is interested in hosting the 16th (Tzom Gedaliah) or the 30th (Chol Hamoed) 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

Iran: New Islamic Revolution Guard Corps Leader Appointed by Supreme Leader Decree

This event illustrates exactly where the power lies in Iran. From IRIB:

Islamic Revolution Leader and Chief Commander of the Armed Forces, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in a decree issued Saturday appointed a new commander for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Jafari was appointed as the new commander of IRGC. He was also promoted to Major General by the Islamic Revolution Leader. General Jafari was commander of IRGC's ground forces.

IR Leader, in his decree, pointed to General Jafari's brilliant background in the armed forces in different stages.

In a separate decree, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed Brigadier General Yahya Rahim Safavi as his senior advisor and assistant in military affairs. General Safavi was the commander of IRGC.

Blogger Kamangir also offers a report which is revealing about power in Iran:

Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 688-page memoir was just confiscated and collected from all bookstores . . . . The reason is a quote in the page 173 of the book where Rafsanjani writes “an MP suggested quiting the slogan ‘Death to America and USSR’, I said, we have already made that decision and Imam [Khomeini] supports it as well. We are waiting for the proper time.” The book, which carried the title “Towards Fate”, is banned a few days after Ahmadinejad stated “Complete freedom exists in Iran and all individuals and groups can express their ideas”. . . . When a person like Rafsanjani is shut up, no wonder others are imprisoned.

Crossposted on Judeopundit