Soccer Dad

Beethoven as Rapist

Wall Street Journal Online has a good current article about Beethoven's Ninth, including the following odd interlude:

Naturally, the Ninth Symphony has its critics, and chief among them is a new breed of musicologist who sees the organizing principle of Western art music -- its reliance on the gravitational pull of tonal centers, and the artful control of musical tension and resolution -- as a direct reflection of the male libido and its primal urge toward domination. One of the leading figures of this school of thought, Susan McClary, found in the opening movement of Beethoven's masterpiece the "murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release" (in her article "Getting Down Off the Beanstalk"; she subsequently toned down the language for a reprint in a published collection, but the sentiments remained the same).

The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.

The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music. The problem Beethoven has constructed for this movement is that it seems to begin before the subject of the symphony has managed to achieve its identity.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Qassam Brigades Info: "What if the Zionist entity executed its threatens and assassinated your leaders, How your response will be look like?"

This is from an interview-style article at Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades Information Office entitled "Abu Obaida, the English spokesman, answers important Questions about the Brigades." I'll just post some of the more interesting ones:

What is the justification behind the martyrdom operations against the " Israeli" civilians?

There is no justification for targeting civilians. It is against Islam to deliberately kill unarmed civilians during jihad. In addition, our doctrine is to target the enemies army, security services, and support apparatus. But it is known that Zionist society is a militarized society. Service in the army is mandatory; and reserve duty continues past the age of 40. Our determined stance is that unarmed persons on both sides of the conflict should be left out of the fighting. However, we will not accept giving the enemy a free hand against our civilians . . .

The politicians in the Zionist entity have plans to execute more bloody operations against the brigades and Hamas, what can you say about that?

They have been doing that for 20 decades. Nothing new here. They have failed to eliminate us; and their failure, Allah-willing, will continue till we attain all our rights.

What if the Zionist entity executed its threatens and assassinated your leaders, How your response will be look like?

We do not and will not discuss details. But let us compare Hamas before and after the assassinations of Sheikh Yassin, Eng. Abu Shanab, and Dr. Rantisi. We have gained strength from these painful losses; and our organization has become more powerful. We are not a figurehead organization; we are a resistance movement with deep roots in our Palestinian, Arab and Islamic culture. We are only the tip of the iceberg of a nation of hundreds of millions of freedom-loving Muslims.

What is your message to the Zionist entity?

Our message is clear. We will not give up a single right of ours; and we will continue the struggle till our rights are restored. Till then the sword will be the judge between us . . .

How does one become a Member of Al Qassam In Gaza?

Al-Qassam chooses its members. We do not have an open registration policy.

Why does Hamas stay silent about kouffaar regimes who make their support for Abbas and al-Fatah?

Our struggle is against the Zionist enemy. We are not in a war against non-Muslims or against Muslims who support parties that act against the resistance. However, we make it clear that we will defend our resistance project with all our strength. We will not allow any party to interfere or hinder our resistance action.

How come Ezzedeen al-Qassam don't punish these regimes?

We take actions, covert and visible. However, our main enemy is the Zionist occupation. We will not let this enemy rest by getting involved in other conflicts . . .

Will Hamas make the most of its weaponry and existing capabilities, by increasing the usefulness of its weapons? This can be done readily by adapting Qassam rockets to carry new warheads like smoke, teargas, anti tank, incendiary and cluster sub-munitions. It can also include the use of thermite warheads on rockets and hand grenades. Thermite will melt any Zionist armored vehicles and structures.

We are doing our best to upgrade our capabilities . . .

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Dissident Voice: Zahar "has saved more Jewish lives . . . than . . . Olmert. And how has he been rewarded?"

No good deed goes unpunished:

Hamas’s second in command, Mahmoud al Zahar, has saved more Jewish lives in his short tenure as Palestinian Foreign Minister, than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And how has he been rewarded?

Yesterday his son, Hussam al Zahar, was shot dead while defending a civilian enclave in the Palestinian territory by a roving band of Israeli troops. The young man was not connected to any terrorist action. He is simply got in the way of an Israeli bullet and now he’s dead. End of story.

18 other Palestinian men were killed in the attack which has been condemned by foreign leaders around the world. But not in the United States where such barbarity is considered laudable.

Even American stooge, Mahmoud Abbas, blasted the raid saying, “What happened today is a massacre, a slaughter against the Palestinian people. Our people cannot keep silent over these massacres.”

There are photos in Aljazeera of the elder al Zahar offering a final prayer over the corpse of his dead son. It is very sad. This is his second son to be killed by the Israelis. His eldest son was killed in a bombing raid two years ago that was aimed at him. Al Zahar still has not recovered.

As part of the democratically-elected government of the Palestinian people, al Zahar supported Hamas suspension of all suicide bombings within Israel.

How many Jewish lives have been saved by the directive?

At the same time, Israel’s vain and stupid Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert–whose public approval is a paltry 4%–is responsible for the deaths of 113 Israeli soldiers by his bloody and pointless invasion of Lebanon a year ago.

Consider the paradox: Hamas leaders are now saving more Jewish lives than Israel’s own Prime Minister. What bitter irony. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Al-Jazeera has contacts with Israelis because "the knowledge about the enemy's opinion would help the Muslim media to consolidate their position"

Al-Jazeera addresses Muslims concerns. From IRIB:

Aljazeera News Director Waddah Khanfar acknowledged that most of Arab media and television channels have proved little efficient to reflect the realities in the world of Islam, not least Palestine.

"In my opinion, there is a news vacuum regarding the Palestinian issue," he told Qodsna reporter Wednesday.

"News coverage is not enough. We must also analyze and examine the Palestinian developments," he added.

"The problem is that the Palestinian issue has undergone daily developments. This would make the audience fed up. We must renovate the issue by analysis and examination of the details," he encouraged.

Asked why the Aljazeera network keeps ties with the Israeli officials, the director general said that the knowledge about the enemy's opinion would help the Muslim media to consolidate their position.

"Interviews with Israeli officials never means normalization of ties and I don't think any one would read the interviews as that," he added.

"Israelis too has criticized us. In the recent war against Lebanon they refused to allow our reporters to operate," he added.

Asked about Aljazeera news policies about the Palestinian issue, Khanfar said the TV Network has provided its staff with news guidelines, called "professional media attitude manual," the main aim of which to teach the staff to cover news material responsibly.

"Our editorial policy recognizes the Palestinian dead as martyrs. It is fortunate that many giant media do not observe the idea," he added.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Bobby fischer square up

via memeorandum

Chess champion Bobby Fischer died

Bobby Fischer, the reclusive chess genius who became a Cold War hero by dethroning the Soviet world champion in 1972 and later renounced his American citizenship, has died. He was 64.

I first learned of Bobby Fischer when I was about 9 or 10 and someone bought me "The Jew in American Sport" that featured profiles of 3 chess players: Emanual Lasker, Sammy Reshevsky and Bobby Fischer. Given that Bobby Fischer first gained notice as a chess player when he was only a few years older than I was at the time, he became something of an idol. Of course my chess playing abilities were never championship caliber. But I don't think that I comprehended that at the time. (See Just One Minute too.)

(It did happen that I had the opportunity to play Sammy Reshevsky at a demonstration as a freshman at YU. He played 30 students at once and won 29 games and drew one. Needless to say he beat me with ease. Bill Jempty, though, got a chance to get drubbed by Fischer. Of course, he's also a more serious chess player than I am.)

In the Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer Bill Ordine writes about the state of sports and, I guess, detente at that time:

I was there for Fischer-Spassky. I was in the Navy, stationed at the NATO base in Keflavik doing pretty much what I still do. I was a Navy journalist. In between my normal duties, I occasionally got to go to the big city down the road. One of those days, I covered the chess match. I recall it went on forever and the hot dogs were made of lamb. And even with the confrontation being what it was -- the young, brash American genius from Brooklyn against the established Soviet champion -- it became increasingly difficult to root for Fischer as his eccentricities overwhelmed even an overwhelming sense of nationalism many of us felt at the height of the Cold War.

In short, Fischer was a jerk complaining about everything, making incessant demands. Spassky was gracious and urbane. Imagining what might happen to the Soviet back home if he lost, you could almost have some sympathy for him. In the end, Fischer prevailed and it was a great triumph for the U.S. But at the same time, the Summer Olympics were going on in Germany. The United States lost that controversial basketball game to the Soviets. And, of course, the Munich Massacre, where members of the Israeli delegation were killed, stunned the world and obliterated everything else going on in sports.

It's funny that he was there. We flew over Iceland one of the days the match was going on; though I don't know if a match was going at the time or if we even flew over Reykjavik. We were on our way back from Israel at the time.

A few years ago, amateur chess player and (one time) professional psychiatrist, Charles Krauthammer asked "Did Chess make him crazy?"

Why such proximity between genius and madness in chess? There are three possible explanations. One is that chess is a monomania. You study it intensively day and night from childhood if you are going to rise to the ranks of the greats, and that kind of singular focus constricts your reality and makes you more vulnerable to distortions of it. "A chess genius," wrote George Steiner, "is a human being who focuses vast, little understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. Almost inevitably, this focus produces pathological symptoms of nervous stress and unreality." Plausible, perhaps, but there are lots of folks who are monomaniacal in other "trivial" spheres and who come out psychically intact. Tiger Woods was raised from infancy to be a great golfer and is not just intact but graceful and charming. The ranks of great golfers, swimmers and Dominican shortstops are not more noticeably skewed to the deranged than the general population.

Well, then, this must be monomania of a certain sort. Chess is a particularly enclosed, self-referential activity. It's not just that it lacks the fresh air of sport, but that it lacks connections to the real world outside--a tether to reality enjoyed by the monomaniacal students of other things, say, volcanic ash or the mating habits of the tsetse fly. As Stefan Zweig put it in his classic novella The Royal Game, chess is "thought that leads nowhere, mathematics that add up to nothing, art without an end product, architecture without substance."

But chess has a third--and unique--characteristic that is particularly fatal. It is not just monomaniacal and abstract, but its arena is a playing field on which the other guy really is after you. The essence of the game is constant struggle against an adversary who, by whatever means of deception and disguise, is entirely, relentlessly, unfailingly dedicated to your destruction. It is only a board, but it is a field of dreams for paranoia.

However in Bobby Fischer's perfect death Gabriel Schoenfeld concludes not:

And while there have been several deranged grandmasters, whether the frequency of mental illness in this group is higher than the average rate among geniuses is doubtful.

But not before he recalls the contents of a disturbing letter that Fischer wrote to the Encyclopedia Judaica.

Two years later, he wrote to the Encylopedia Judaica asking for his entry to be removed (the underlinings are as in the original):

Gentlemen:

Knowing what I do about Judaism, I was naturally distressed to see that you have erroneously featured me as a Jew in ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA. Please do not make this mistake again in any future editions of your voluminous, pseudo-authoritative publication. I am not today, nor have I ever been a Jew, and as a matter of fact, I am uncircumcised.

I suggest rather than fraudulently misrepresenting me to be a Jew, and dishonestly abusing my name and reputation as a kind of advertising gimmick to improve the image of your religion (Judaism), you try to promote your religion on its own merits — if indeed it has any!

In closing, I trust that I am not being unrealistically optimistic, in thanking you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

Truly yours,
Bobby Fischer
The World Chess Champion

A passionate hatred of Jews was to stay with Fischer for the rest of his life.

Whatever the source of his madness, Bobby Fischer was once the best in his field.

Crossposted at Yourish.

chess, bobby fischer.

Feckless in the forward

I read the editorial "Reckless in Gaza" in today's Forward with a growing sense of disbelief. Then I reached this paragraph.

Now, however, the whole deal may be off, including Shalit’s freedom. Among the dead in the Gaza incursion was the 24-year-old son of Muhammad Zahar, a leader of the hawkish wing (yes, there is one) of Hamas. Zahar is now gaining stature along with sympathy, strengthening Hamas opponents of cease-fire and accommodation.

"[Y]es there is one"!?!?!? There's a "hawkish wing" to Hamas? Really? Why, I never knew.

I can't quite grasp the naiveté of that line. Do the editors mean to imply that there's a "dovish wing" to Hamas or are they assuming that such is true? And what does "hawkish" mean in this context. In the context of a legitimate government it would refer to those who would more readily resort to force. But given that Hamas is a terrorist organization, by definition it's "hawkish" in that it believes in the use of force against civilians.

What's the gist of the editorial? Israel ought not to fight back. Fighting back is counterproductive. Earlier the editorial informs us:

In the past two years, Israeli forces killed 810 Palestinians in Gaza, as the director of the Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, told a Cabinet meeting last week. Of the total, about 200 were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations — that is, bystanders. A separate study by the Ha’aretz newspaper found that the civilian toll was actually higher, totaling about 360, of whom 152 were under age 18, including 48 children under age 14.

Israel’s death toll from terrorism in 2007, reported this month by the human rights group B’Tselem and confirmed by the military, totaled 13, including seven civilians. That was the lowest toll since 1999. The toll that year, the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

For all that, the Palestinian war against Israel “is not being checked, but is actually intensifying,” the internal security minister, Avi Dichter, reported at the same Cabinet meeting. Dichter, a former Shin Bet chief, estimated that there are some 20,000 Palestinian fighters in Gaza, of whom Israel has killed about 5%. He said the army should shift gears and step up its efforts. It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

I find it fascinating that the editorial states that

the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

And it's interesting that 1999 was a year of no terror. For half the year Binyamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister. But terror started up again the next year, with a vengeance, when Ehud Barak was Prime Minister. Netanyahu was widely vilified (especially by folks sympathetic to this sort of mushy-minded thinking) as hurting peace. But under his leadership - when he actually had the gall to demand compliance from the Palestinians - terror actually dropped. It picked up when his successor, Barak tried to make peace. Hmm. Is there a correlation?

Let's go the last paragraph. Minister Dichter estimates that Israel has killed 5% of 20000 terrorists in Gaza. So how does the editorial respond.

It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

What shortsightedness! My guess is that if 95% of Gaza's terrorists survive, then there aren't nearly enough of them are scared of Israel yet. Need Dichter spell out an estimate? Or maybe we ought to just let Israel continue fighting Hamas as it needs to. Killing the significant leaders of the organization might also have a positive effect on terror as we've seen in the past when Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi as Elder of Ziyon observed.

I could go on, but the whole editorial is based on assumptions that have been disproved time and again. Israel must kill those who seek to destroy it. It's not a matter of bloodthirstiness, but of necessity.

Then there's a column by Markus Bouillon and Michael Shtender-Auerbach that argues Push for Peace Now, Before Bush and Abbas Step Down

Like no other Palestinian leader, Abbas has been committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and a negotiated, nonviolent end of the Israeli occupation. Reaching back to the 1980s, he was the first and most important proponent of negotiating with Israel. He was a key protagonist during the Oslo years, and in 1995 presented the first-ever draft of an Israeli-Palestinian final status accord with Yossi Beilin.

Abbas also spearheaded attempts to reform the Palestinian Authority as its first prime minister, but was pushed out of office by the self-serving Yasser Arafat. Still, when Arafat passed away, it was Abbas who inherited the mantle of the unifying Palestinian leader. There are simply no alternatives to him.

Even if Abbas was convinced to run again, in the absence of a true peace process or signaled agreement, he would most likely lose. Worse still, as of now it is entirely unclear who might succeed him.

Even assuming that this columns portrayal of Abbas as a moderate is correct, what does it say when even now, 14+ years since Oslo, he's the only Palestinian of political importance who is dedicated to coexistence with Israel. Clearly, he hasn't built a constituency for these views. If there's no one who could carry the mantle of coexistence in negotiations, there is also no one could do it maintain peace once Israeli concessions were agreed to and implemented. Even if Israel could come to an agreement with Abbas as head of the truncated PA, whose left to carry on those peaceful policies. When you're only choice with the necessary "street credibility and popular appeal" is a man convicted of multiple counts of murder, you realize that the problem isn't the failure to make peace but the absence of anyone to make peace with.

The Forward ought to be a bulwark against such dangerous nonsense, instead it promotes it.

In a different (but parallel) context, Asaf Romirowsky writes:

A disturbing variable in the equation, which complicates the situation further, is the unwillingness of many American Jews to take a strong stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In particular, rabbis and Jewish educators -- no matter where they stand on the political spectrum -- often behave in an apologetic manner when it comes to Israel, rather than make assertive arguments from a Zionist point of view.

This unwillingness to confront the pro-Palestinian propaganda being nurtured by Middle Eastern-studies departments is one of the major sources of confusion among Jewish students. For example, so long as liberal American Jews fail to speak up about the issue of post-1948 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, and instead, merely allow the discussion to center on a Palestinian "right of return," Jewish students will be on the defensive.

If pro-Israel advocates on campus are discussing the Jewish state only in terms of "Israeli oppression," rather than in debunking such notions, the result is always going to favor the anti-Israel forces. That is why college campuses today have become podiums for those who denigrate Israel, as is apparent from the different human rights, anti-globalization and anti-imperialism groups that have adopted the Palestinian cause.

Here we have a Jewish newspaper, that instead of fighting the propaganda undermining Israel's right to defend itself (and to exist) contributes to the cause of its enemies in the name of phony humanitarianism.

Crossposted at Yourish.

israel.

Council speak 01/18/08

The council has spoken.

The winning entry among the council members was Colossus of Rhodey's Ed. Schools: They're Awful (for the most part) in which he describes an experience where students learn more about educational fads than real skills for the classroom. The runner up among Council members was WolfHowling's The Race Card, Liberal Guilt and Our Next President an examination of identity politics in the Democratic primary.

The winning non-council post was Ezra Levant's statement on being investigated for hateful speech: Kangaroo Court. The first runner up, Covenant Zone, Ashamed to be a Canadian was basically the same thing, framed by a paragraph or two. Barack Obama -- I'm Sure We've Seen Him Somewhere Before at Guardian Unlimited was about the ephemeral nature of Sen. Obama's substance. Finally, The Media Does It Again at Winds of Change was about another non-story that the NYT conflated into a trend.

My own nominee Ms. Magazine Refuses to Publish Ad About Israel's Most Powerful Women
at Yourish.com tied with Seraphic Secret's expose CNN reporter as Terror enabler tied for third.

Also the Watcher posted the Results of the Watcher of Weasels Awards for 2007 compiled from the winning (or tied for first before the tiebreaker) here.

If you're a blogger and you like what you see, please consider submitting your own post to the competition. Just followt the rules here. With only 2 first place finishes all year I was pretty far down in the rankings.

watcher's council.

If ... you must 01/18/2008

If you haven't read Irony is officially dead at Secular Blasphemy; you must.
If you haven't read Un-believable at LostINto2; you must.
h/t Wolf Howling - However I'm partial to #10.
If you haven't read An anniversary bumper sticker at Michelle Malking; you must.
If you haven't read The sky ain't fallin' at Don Surber; you must.
If you haven't read From One of the High School Asteroid Discoverers: at the Volokh Conspiracy; you must.
And see Now t hat is cool! too.
If you haven't read Jules Crittenden's Stupid Criminal; you must.
The students in the previous item were more impressive.
If you haven't read Cultural Immersion at Snapped Shot; you must.
If you haven't read Meryl Yourish's AP Equates bombing civilians with targeting terrorists; you must.
If you haven't read Idiotic lawsuit of the day at Oyvay Blog; you must.
It sounds a bit like the Incredibles, doesn't it?
If you haven't seen Mech Mosaic at Not Quite Perfect; you must.
If you haven't 14 years ago the Earth Shook at Jack's Shack; you must.
If you haven't read Michael Lerner on the "handful of unknown people who are bombing Sderot" at JudeoPundit; you must.
If you haven't read the Return of SoB at Israelly Cool!; you must.
I thought about blogging this. But he already did.
If you haven't Peace Now will have to publicize EU contributions at Daled Amos; you must.
If you haven't read What did the Syrian Mufti tell the UN Parliament? at Elder of Ziyon; you must.
If you haven't read Kurtzer on Egypt at Israel Matzav; you must.

Will a clinton nomination suppress the vote in november?

Maybe Charles Krauthammer's onto something with Black Dreams, White Liberals.

First Krauthammer notes the history:

The principal objection was that Clinton appeared to be disrespecting Martin Luther King Jr., relegating him to mere enabler for Lyndon Johnson. But it is certainly true that Johnson was the great emancipator, second only to Abraham Lincoln in that respect. This was a function of the times. King was fighting for black enfranchisement. Until that could be achieved, civil rights legislation could only be enacted by a white president (and a white Congress).

That does not denigrate King. It makes his achievement all the more miraculous -- winning a permanent stake in the system for a previously disenfranchised people, having begun with no political cards to play.

Here's where he finds fault with Sen. Clinton's remark:

In my view, the real problem with Clinton's statement was the implied historical analogy -- that the subordinate position King held in relation to Johnson, a function of the discrimination and disenfranchisement of the time, somehow needs recapitulation today when none of those conditions apply.

The analogy Clinton was implying was obvious: I'm Lyndon Johnson, unlovely doer; he's Martin Luther King, charismatic dreamer. Vote for me if you want results.

Forty years ago, that arrangement -- white president enacting African American dreams -- was necessary because discrimination denied blacks their own autonomous political options. Today, that arrangement -- white liberals acting as tribune for blacks in return for their political loyalty -- is a demeaning anachronism. That's what the fury at Hillary was all about, although no one was willing to say so explicitly.

Maybe he's reading too much into the statement. (Maryland Conservatarian, for example, didn't see things this way. And, frankly, I agreed with him.)

However consider other signs of black disenchantment with Hillary Clinton. Red State reports:

Mayor C. Jack Ellis, the recently term limited out of office Mayor of Macon, GA, called in the show. Mayor Ellis was the first black mayor of this racially charged city. And he is hopping mad at the Clintons. So mad, in fact, he's off to South Carolina to help organize the vote for Barack Obama.

He said this morning that the African-American community stood by the Clintons through eight years of everyone else abandoning them. After all (and this is me, not him), they took the Sister Souljah moment, they took welfare reform. Hell, they took Ginsberg and Breyer. How did the Clintons' pay them back?

They didn't.

Or looking at a larger sample, African-Americans in Michigan voted nearly 70% for uncommitted and only 25% for Hillary Clinton.

For all the talk of the problems Republicans are having and how each candidate might alienate a critical segment of the base who will stay home in November, there's been precious little speculation of what might happen to the black vote in November should Sen. Clinton win the nomination.

Finally, Krauthammer's closing is brilliant:

The nation has become inured to the playing of the race card, but "our first black president" (Toni Morrison on Bill Clinton) and his consort are not used to having it played against them.

Bill is annoyed with Obama. As Bill inadvertently let on to Charlie Rose, it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with entitlement. He had contemplated running in 1988, he confided to Charlie, but decided to wait. Too young, not ready. (A tall tale, highly Clintonian; but that's another matter.) Now it is Hillary's turn. The presidency is her due -- the ultimate in alimony -- and this young upstart refuses to give way.

But telling Obama to wait his turn is a tricky proposition. It sounds patronizing and condescending, awakening the kinds of racial grievances white liberals have spent half a century fanning -- only to find themselves now singed in the blowback, much to their public chagrin.

Who says there's no justice in this world?

UPDATE: WolfHowling doesn't think that the charges of racism will end with the Democratic nomination and sees the seeds of an even more divisive general election:

I can truly appreciate Krauthammer's enjoyment in this conundrum of our modern left, but I see in it a great potential for harm to our nation. As I stated in my post a few days ago, if Obama becomes the nominee and allows Republican's to be smeared with charges of racisim for any criticism they aim towards Obama, this portends to become a destructive and bloody Presidential campaign indeed.

hillary clinton, barack obama.

Scalder gets off lightly

From the Baltimore Sun:

The 9-year-old boy went outside without his godmother's permission. His punishment was to sit in a bathtub as the woman filled it with five pots of boiling water.

When he emerged from the scalding water, the lower half of his body was covered in severe burns. The woman waited four days to take him to a hospital.

The facts read into the court record during Shamia Lawson's plea agreement in November were horrific, making her punishment yesterday in Baltimore Circuit Court all the more shocking to city prosecutors and the boy's relatives: six months behind bars. Lawson, 25, had been caring for her godson for several years at her West Baltimore apartment. She also has a young daughter of her own - whom she may be able to keep in her home.

Adding insult to injury:

She temporarily lost custody of the girl after the boy was burned, but city child protective services "saw fit to return her daughter to her," Nicholas Comaromi, Lawson's defense attorney, said in court yesterday. Lawson had been out on bail until yesterday.

Why didn't the judge impose a more severe sentence?

Circuit Judge John M. Glynn called the case "troubling," "disturbing" and "bad," and said there had to be "serious consequences for this."

Then he sentenced Lawson to 10 years in prison, with all but six months suspended. Explaining why in court, Glynn said, "The real point of a sentence like this is to deal with the defendant into the future."

He said he didn't think putting Lawson behind bars for several years "would be helping the situation" and said it would be up to the state-run Department of Social Services, which oversees Baltimore's child protective services, to decide what to do with the boy and the woman's biological daughter.

What did she say in her defense?

But she maintained that the scalding was not a punishment for his behavior, saying that the apartment had hot water problems and that they routinely added boiled water to raise the bath temperature.

This explains nothing. An idiot can tell the difference between very hot and scalding. But even let's say - for the sake of argument - one pot of boiling water might be understandable. But five?

But even one pot of boiling water defies belief. Water at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit will be uncomfortably hot.

But here's what the CPSC writes about tap water scalding:

Most adults will suffer third-degree burns if exposed to 150 degree water for two seconds. Burns will also occur with a six-second exposure to 140 degree water or with a thirty second exposure to 130 degree water. Even if the temperature is 120 degrees, a five minute exposure could result in third-degree burns.

The article only describes "severe burns" not what degree they are. Still, the CPSC says that a burn can occur in an adult with a 6 second exposure to 140 degree water. It strains credulity past the breaking point to believe that this assault was accidental.

The judge is concerned about disrupting the defendant's life, but here's the consequences of her actions:

Fairley, the boy's grandfather, dismissed Lawson's resume, though he said he thought the judge was influenced by it.

"No matter how educated you are, child abuse is child abuse," he said.

Fairley said the boy is still undergoing treatment and rehabilitation. He has had several skin-graft surgeries, and doctors worry about permanent damage.

What was the judge thinking?

crime.

h/t Tom Marr

Thursday is monday ...

Thursday is Monday at Elie's Expositions.

Arabist apologia

via memeorandum

McClatchey's Washington Bureau provides an analysis of President Bush's recent tour of the Middle East, Bush departs Mideast with few apparent gains, experts say

President Bush wraps up a weeklong tour of the Middle East Wednesday, leaving many Mideast political observers mystified as to the purpose of the visit and doubtful that the president made inroads on his twin campaigns for Arab-Israeli peace and isolation for Iran.

Bush is heading back to Washington mostly empty-handed, said several analysts and politicians throughout the region. Arab critics deemed Bush's peace efforts unrealistic, his anti-Iran tirades dangerous, his praise of authoritarian governments disappointing and his defense of civil liberties ironic.

I guess the "experts" of the headline are "Arab critics." I'm not aware of any tirades the President threw on his trip. Are warnings about Iran's threat to the region so unreasonable?

And, since the Arab critics were the focus of the story we get this bit of nonsense.

The challenges were evident Tuesday. The Israeli military carried out an operation in Gaza that killed at least 18 Palestinians, including the 24-year-old son of Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, in the most violent day since the militant group seized control last year. Separately, a Palestinian sniper killed a young farmer from Ecuador who was working on an Israeli kibbutz near the border with Gaza.

Palestinians warned that the military raid could sour their talks with Israelis and undermine the momentum from Bush's visit to lead both parties back to the negotiating table.

"Skepticism on all sides is enormous," said Nicholas Pelham, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

What's missing? Well for one thing the constant missile attacks from Gaza into Israel. And to quote the Palestinian warning about Israel's self-defense is to credit the "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas when he is declaring his lot with the terrorists of Hamas.

I agree that President Bush's trip didn't accomplish much. But it's largely because the so-called pro-American Arab states are more interested in appeasing Iran than in cooperating with the United States. This analysis is less a criticism of Bush than an apology for America's Arab "allies."

UPDATE: Daniel Pipes essentially criticizes President Bush for the same things from the other side. He gives President Bush credit for having good ideas in 4 areas: Radical Islam, pre-emptive war, and the Arab-Israeli conflict and democracy. He finds the President wanting in all four areas despite some promising starts. The end result Pipes laments is:

I respect Bush's benign motivation and good intentions while mourning his having squandered a record-breaking 90 percent job-approval rating following 9/11 and his bequeathing to the next president a polarized electorate, a military reluctant to use force against Iran, Hamas ruling Gaza, an Iraqi disaster-in-waiting, radical Islam on the ascendant, and unprecedented levels of global anti-Americanism.

Crossposted on Yourish.

bush doctrine, middle east.

Assignment desk - 01/17/2008

Jeff Jacoby wrote The Death of the Bush Doctrine. A number of bloggers have taken electrons to CRT's to expound on Jacoby's essay.

Digital Irony writes:

I had high hopes for Bush's "you're either with us or against us" policy of terrorist sponsoring states. The palestinians are definitely against us all. And when Abbas whines about the elimination of his supposed enemies (Hamas terrorists), you know his lip service to Bush and Rice is nothing more than lies and wolves in sheep's clothing.

Elder of Ziyon writes:

It is clear that both Bill Clinton and George Bush have great affinity and feelings for Israel. But it is equally clear that it is a mistake for Israel to rely on any promises, letters, or understandings from a third party when the subject is Israel's security. In the end, countries act in their own interests, and in the case of the current administration the Arab world has fooled the White House into thinking that they would support the West against Iran if only the Palestinian Arabs get what they want, no strings attached. Since the Iranian problem is truly a geopolitical threat to the West, the false linkage to Israel turns into something that Washington needs to address.

Contentions.Eric Trager writes:

But as far as American credibility is concerned, Rice’s statements do not bode well. Indeed, if the sudden push for Israeli-Palestinian peace is really all about building a broad coalition against Iran, Rice’s dismissal of the Road Map—which was supported by the U.N., E.U., and Russia after much arm-twisting—is truly counterintuitive. Moreover, what kind of message does it send when the Secretary of State kills her own administration’s peace plan because she finds the first steps too challenging?

If you (as a blogger) have written a response to this excellent article please e-mail me with a link to your post. Or if you've (as a blog read) seen a worthy commentary on Jacoby's column e-mail me a link. In either case I'll add a link and a snippet here.

israel, bush doctrine.

Juggling carnival 01/17/2008

Incoming Carnivals

If you checked out this past Sunday's Carnival of Maryland at Annapolis politics you'd learn from West Virginian Don Surber that Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger is wrong when he seeks more federal funds to help the Chesapeake.

Thanks to “help” from earmarks, crab harvests in the Chesapeake Bay have fallen 41%. A few more billion and the crabs will be wiped out entirely.

And remember that entries for the next Kosher Cooking Carnival
are due soon.

Side Shows

blog carnivals

Arutz Sheva Challenges Haaretz's Editorial Policy

Until Haaretz can see to the rape of Israel, it appears it is satisfying itself with the rape of free speech.

Arutz Sheva Director of English Media, Baruch Gordon, wrote to the Haaretz Editorial Board on its policy for comments:

To:Editorial Board
Haaretz Newspaper
English Edition
Fax: 03-6810012
Email: contact@haaretz.co.il

Dear Sirs,

I found of great interest your list of guidelines for publishing talkback comments which appear at the end of the article: "I Voted for a War Criminal."

I commend you for guarding "openness of dialogue" and stating that "Political orientation will have absolutely no bearing on whether a comment is posted or rejected."

However, your last criteria for deletion of a comment was puzzling: "Use of the phrase: 'There are no Palestinians' or derivatives thereof." Such statements are beyond the pale of openness of dialogue, according to your editorial policy.

This historical truth of no distinct Palestinian people was articulated by none other than former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir who said:

"There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."
Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969; The Washington Post (June 16, 1969)

But your readers won't be allowed to consider Golda's remarks since her political orientation on the issue of Palestinian peoplehood is not considered legitimate at Haaretz.

But, it's not just Golda who made the point. Many Arabs admitted that the campaign to utterly destroy the Jewish State unites Palestinians and not aspiration for statehood.

Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said just that on March 31, 1977 in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Would Zahir Muhsein's comment be deleted from your talkback?

Lebanese American Sharon Nader Sloan, Esq. noted in her article "The Big Lie" from 2001:

"…Did you know that for 19 years Jordan occupied and ruled the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem? ...All this time, …did we hear anything about a Palestinian state? No, we did not. Why not?
Because their never existed a Palestinian state. And in the entire history of nations, Jerusalem was never the capital of any country other than that of ancient Israel and modern Israel. So how can there be a claim on Jerusalem as the capital of a state that never existed?

[Palestine] is the name of a region -- just like Siberia is a region, not a country. There is no Siberian country, nor is there a Siberian people…

Some may argue that Golda's statement from 1977 is irrelevant today, as she would most probably recognize "new political realities." Now, wouldn't that question be fertile ground for legitimate argument in a talkback between political rivals on Israel's left and right?

But your current policy has disqualified historical truths that would otherwise be voiced by those of a certain political orientation. This, despite your assertion that "Political orientation will have absolutely no bearing on whether a comment is posted or rejected."

Your rule of deleting derivatives of the statement 'There are no Palestinians' does not coexist with your "guiding principle of openness of dialogue." One of them must go.

I urge you to retain your openness, and allow the political right to freely express historical truths which support its agenda.

I await your reply.

Respectfully,

Baruch Gordon
Director of English Media
Arutz Sheva, IsraelNationalNews.com

The latest trend?

Update: UPDATE: When I was mentioned this to Baruch Who, he asked whether according to the Haaretz guidelines it would be permitted to leave a comment questioning the connection of Jews to the Eretz Yisrael.

What do you think?

D

Crossposted on Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Israel and Haaretz.

Answers to musical monday #28

Here are the answers to Musical Monday #28 at Elie's Expositions. Since this was a joint project, I'm providing the answers.

As long as we're here, here's a trivia question with 3 parts.
Who was the original singer of 24?
What was his relationship to Fleetwood Mac?
What was his son's biggest (American) hit?

1) "It's just no good anymore since she went away"
One - Three Dog Night

2) "Why does what I'm saying hurt you?"
Breaking us in two - Joe Jackson

3) "...Can only be one, and one is a lonely number"
Two divided by Love - Grass Roots

4) "With the help, last night, of Daddy G."
Quarter to 3 - Gary U.S. Bonds

5) "Hey there fellow with the hair colored yellow"
Gimme three steps - Lynyrd Skynyrd

6) "You had no faith to lose, and you know it"
Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan

7) "It's only half past twelve but I don't care"
It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere - Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett

8) "Not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name"
500 Miles - Peter, Paul and Mary

9) "But I see his six strings laid against that wall"
6th Avenue Heartbreak - Wallflowers

10) "Flashing lights against the sky"
25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago

11) "There are stars in the southern sky"
Seven Bridges Road - C,S&N or Eagles

12) "But as soon as she said hello, I hung up the telephone line"
Just Seven Numbers - The Four Tops

13) "In Chicago, Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses."
7 O'clock News/silent Night - Simon and Garfunkel

14) "Hold me, love me, hold me, love me"
Eight days a week - Beatles

15) "It smelled like turpentine. It looked like Indian ink."
Love Potion #9 - The Searchers

16) "Pour myself a cup of ambition"
9 to 5 - Dolly Parton

17) "From a tenement window a transistor blasts"
10th Avenue Freezeout - Bruce Springsteen

18) "Today can last another million years, today could be the end of me"
11:59 - Blondie

19) "I'll love you 'till the clover has lost its perfume"
Twelfth of Never - Johnny Mathis

20) "Young girls are coming to the canyon"
Twelve-Thirty - The Mamas and the Papas

21) "Won't you tell your dad, 'Get off my back'?"
Thirteen - Big Star

22) "Your stupid girlfriends tell you that I'm to blame"
14 Years - Guns N' Roses

23) "Inside outside, nowhere is home"
Five-Fifteen - The Who

24) "You walked out of my dreams and into my arms"
You're Sixteen - Ringo Starr

25) "It was long ago and far away, the world was younger than today"
At Seventeen - Janis Ian

26) "Johnny and Eddie and me and Jimmy and Jack"
Sexy and Seventeen - Stray Cats

27) "I got a baby's brain and an old man's heart"
I'm Eighteen - Alice Cooper

28) "She don't remember the Queen of Soul"
Hey Nineteen - Steely Dan

29) "Your mother who neglected you owes a million dollars tax"
19th Nervous Breakdown - Rolling Stones

30) "She won't waste time on elementary talk"
20th Century Fox - Doors

Modo on the middle east

In her inimitable manner, MoDo comments on President Bush's recent trip to the Middle East, "Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East." This caught my eye.

Less than a week after the president arrived in the Middle East, three violent eruptions — an Israeli raid killing at least 18 Palestinians, 13 of whom were militants; an American Embassy car bombing in Beirut; and a luxury hotel suicide-bombing in Kabul — underscored how Sisyphean a task he has set for himself.

“This is one of the results of the Bush visit,” said Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader, as he went to a Gaza hospital to see the body of his son, a militant killed in the battle. “He encouraged the Israelis to kill our people.”

Granted she's an opinion columnist, but Israel didn't just decide to go shooting up "militants" (the dictionary definition for these people is "terrorists," euphemism doesn't change what they are) once President Bush arrived. As evidence by January's Qassam calendar, Israel has been under attack quite a bit this month, prior to the 15th. My guess is that they just got some actionable intelligence.

But that's more forgivable than the lapse of a news organization as Mere Rhetoric points out.

There is in fact no quote about the attack from any Israeli politician, and nothing linking the daily bombardment of Sderot to today's raid. The only explanation for the raid is Hamas's murder of a kibbutz worker - which the article goes out of its way beforehand to point out happened after the raid started.

Maybe CNN just ran out of room after filling the article with paragraphs and paragraphs about Israeli "massacres," "spies," and "aggression against our people." You'd think they could have taken out one of the four "aggression" or "massacre" quotes to see what the Israeli Defense Ministry or Foreign Ministry had to say about the raid.

Oh well, at least the Israeli victims suffered only "minor injuries" and "light wounds" - which the article emphasizes twice just to make sure the message sinks in. Israeli sources had a different view of the injuries. The girl, by the by, is 5...

BTW, the problem with Modo isn't whether she's liberal or conservative. (BTW, I think that she's pretty clearly liberal, though I'm sure I'll get some arguments on that.) It's that she has one weapon in her arsenal: snark. And if that's all you're bringing to the fight it gets tired, really fast.

UPDATE: This was picked up by Buzztracker and Blogrunner.

via Blogrunner, I came to a post by Don Singleton that links to a Washington Post article that portrays Ms. Dowd as a bit of an ingrate.

Once she arrived in Jerusalem last Tuesday (the day of the New Hampshire primary), Dowd fell sick - and started second-guessing her decision to leave the campaign trail for the presidential bubble abroad. She was suffering some kind of stomach bug that left her nauseous, weak and feeling feverish.

"I'm not sure it was a New Hampshire fever or Jerusalem food poisoning," Dowd said.

Presidential aides, including press secretary Dana Perino, made clear early on that Dowd could see Dr. Richard J. Tubb, the Air Force brigadier general who oversees the White House medical office and takes care of the president at home and abroad.

But Dowd declined. With no medication, she tried to soldier on by grabbing whatever rest she could in her hotel room--not easy to do in a trip of constant movements. By the time the presidential entourage moved to Bahrain from Kuwait on Saturday, she felt even worse. She was so sick, in fact, that she could not write her regular Sunday column.

Dowd finally decided to take up the White House on its offer.

I know that a columnist's job is not to be nice. But the article describes the President's staff as being solicitous of the stricken journalist. Might she have criticized the President in a less mocking fashion?

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, terrorism.

Submitted 01/17/08

The new Watcher's Council nominations have been submitted.

You Be the General - The Glittering Eye carefully considers the implications of raising troop strength in Afghanistan. This post inspired Wolf Howling to provide a synopsis of the in country situation in Afghanistan.
The Race Card, Liberal Guilt and Our Next President - In this first look at identity politics, Wolf Howling carefully examines the implications of the race card and how it's being used by Senator Obama.
Ed. Schools: They're Awful (for the most part) - So you want to learn how to become a teacher? "Control freak," The Colossus of Rhodey.Hube warns you that going to graduate school may not be the best way to do it.
Tribes With Gods - Done With Mirrors considers the conditions under which Islam and Christianity were founded and the effect it has the nature of those religions now.
500,000 Iraqis Did Not Die - Cheat Seeking Missiles reviews the consequences of the dishonest JHU/Lancet report that claimed that over 500000 Iraqis died as a consequence of the American invasion in 2003. Here's a related question: How many newspapers that blamed President Bush for relying on faulty intelligence picked up the story uncritically?
Identity Politics Then and Now - In the second identity politics entry of the week, Bookworm Room examines the historical background of identity politics and how it's been used to marginalize those outside the mainstream of liberal thought.
Bush In Ramallah -- The Road To "Peace In Our Time" - Illustrated with an excellent Photoshop, Joshuapundit asks (among other things) the essential question: If President Bush couldn't trust the PA to protect one man for one day, how can he expect Israel to gamble the safety of its citizens on a daily basis?
Paul of Mises; or How the New Republic Bewitches the Right - Big Lizards disagrees with James Kirchik's critique of Ron Paul.
A Solution for the Pop-Tart's Problems - Who's the "pop tart?" The Education Wonks has the answer and a suggestion.
Disenfrancisement Example Is Actually Vote Fraud Queen -- And a Tax Cheat To Boot! - When you want to demonstrate outrage, you better make sure that your example is one who is being outraged and not one who does something outrageous. Rhymes With Right writes about a Democratic legal case to show voter disenfranchisement where one of the disenfranchisees was overly franchised.
Those Who Live By Identity Politics... - Right Wing Nut House presents the third of the entries about the use of identity politics in the Democratic primaries and what it portends for the two front runners.
Shavit's Prescription - This week I looked at a recent column by Ari Shavit of Israel's Ha'aretz and why I'm disappointed that President Bush does not seem to be following his advice.

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.

Cooler ties in the middle east

Accompanying this headline:
Bush's brief Egypt visit shows up cooler ties

was this picture:

In typical news organization fashion, AFP got a major element of the story wrong. President Mubarak's tie is decidedly not cool. It appears to be brick red with some yellow and, perhaps, navy blue diamonds. Not cool at all.

There's someone in my shul (synagogue) who has the coolest ties. You know where he gets them? He gets them from Nordstrom Rack. So two weeks ago, when I was in Nordstrom Rack, I got myself a cool tie too.

I guess the moral of the story, is that if they want to get cooler ties in the Middle East they really need a Nordstrom's Rack. (Syms also has some pretty cool ties.) Maybe then cooler ties will prevail.

Crossposted at Yourish.

hosni mubarak, egypt.

In maryland all prices rise

Coming a little late to the party the O'Malley re-election committee Baltimore Sun finally discovered on Sunday that raising taxes wasn't a way to improve a politician's popularity in Taxes fuel discontent:

In one of the nation's most staunchly Democratic states, O'Malley's approval rating is just 8 percentage points above President Bush's rating in the same poll. O'Malley's job approval numbers are also close to 10-year lows in how Marylanders have felt about the work of their governors.

"He's given away all of his political capital on this special session," said Steven L. Raabe, president of OpinionWorks, the polling firm that conducted the survey for The Sun. "He probably needed to do it from a policy standpoint, but one could question the manner in which it was done because it has come at a great cost to his ability to lead the state."

The statewide poll, which was conducted Jan. 6-9, surveyed 904 likely voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

(In this poll the Governor ranks ahead of the President, unlike the Washington Times poll. And, by the way, more here.)

The way it was done? That's interesting.
Keep in mind a few things.
According to the Tax Foundation before the increase, Maryland was ranked #15 in taxes paid per capita before the.
Over the past 10 years Maryland's budget has averaged an 8% increase per year. (It's doubled from $15 billion to $30 billion.)
Some of the taxes were extended in an arbitrary fashion.

Unlike the fitness buffs who voiced strong opposition last week during rallies and testimony, these three industries do not have an active presence in Annapolis.

"There's no strong voice," said Barbara Hoffman, a lobbyist and former state senator, said of landscaping, computer services and arcade owners. "I think that's one of the reasons they got picked, I've got to tell you ..... But I'm sure they'll come out of the woodwork."

Once you hear something like that it's clear that Governor and Democratic legislature were hellbent on raising taxes, not on keeping spending in check. The choice of industries to tax was not based on some objective economic criteria, but whether or not they paid lobbyists to grovel at the feet of the legislature.

Another indication of ignoring economic criteria is mentioned back by the Sun.

Marguerite Bowman, 60, a registered Democrat and retired teaching assistant who lives on Kent Island in Queen Anne's County, said she buys appliances and furniture in Delaware to save on sales tax and has even considered moving there to avoid high income taxes.

"I have thought about it several times," she said. "If I'm buying an appliance, I got news for you, I'm going to Delaware. If I'm buying furniture, I'm going to Delaware. People do it all the time out here, and we do it because we don't have to pay the sales tax."

To what degree the rise in the sales tax will drive consumers elsewhere remains to be seen. Certainly, those living on the Eastern Shore will be inclined to go to Delaware for larger ticket items. Perhaps those living near the Pennsylvania border will be more inclined to cross it to purchase clothes, which are not taxed by our neighbors to the north.

When I contacted one of my representatives and pointed out that $1.7 billion is less than 6% of the total budget and that the difference could be accounted for by some belt tightening, he responded that no one considered that an option, not even Republicans. (I believe some Republican legislators would disagree with that.) The impression I got was that my concern meant little or nothing to him. (Admittedly I've written some harsh things about and to him.) I wonder how many other Marylanders felt that their concerns were simply ignored by the Governor, legislature and their promoters in the media.

Given that Comptroller Franchot argued against the special session, it seems odd, but I think he was the voice of reason in this tax grab. That is a frightening thought.

I just notice this. Even though Governor O'Malley has had no problem raising taxes, he hasn't been able to accomplish one of things he campaigned on.

Not only has the O’Malley PSC allowed rates to continue their upward spiral, now they have approved another rate hike for … compact fluorescent bulbs.

I just hope the citizens of the PRoM remember all this when the governor and his rubber stamp legislature run again in 2 1/2 years.

maryland politics.

Paul Grubach at Press TV (Iran): "Holocaust revisionists and the hypocrisy of the French government"

If Holocaust denial were not criminalized, then the following vile piece of trash, "an open letter to France's Ambassador to the US, Pierre Vimont" by Holocaust denier Paul Grubach, could not exploit its criminalization:

Dear Ambassador Vimont

It has been reported that revisionist historian Robert Faurisson will face trial on charges that he made statements at the Iran Holocaust Conference in December 2006, which cast doubt on the d Holocaust.

As you know, the Gayssot Act of 1990 prohibits any public doubt in France about the Holocaust. This legal action was apparently initiated by former President Jaques Chirac. The duplicity, hypocritical double standards, and intellectual impotence of the French government are appalling. Offend Zionist Jews and the French government erupts in indignation.

Yet, if someone makes public statements that are offensive to Muslims, this is depicted as an expression of “free speech.”

The case of the high school philosophy teacher and author, Robert Redeker, illustrates the hypocrisy and double standard most clearly. In a commentary in the center-right daily Le Figaro, he made a scathing attack upon the Prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion.

[Press TV is obliged to omit a certain Robert Redeker's quote from the original text.]

The French government labeled his statements as “expressions of free speech.” He was not put on trial or dismissed from his job. After receiving death threats, including one from an online Islamic forum, Redeker went into hiding under police protection.

In a show of support, the French government came to the defense of Mr. Redeker. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called the threats "unacceptable." He then added this most blatant falsehood: "We are in a democracy. Everyone has the right to express his views freely, while respecting others, of course." (See The New York Times, 30 September 2006, p. A 3)

That this is an outrageous lie is demonstrated by the plight of Dr. Faurisson. In 1991 he was removed from his university chair on the basis of his Holocaust revisionist views under the Gayssot Act. Many years later he was given a three-month suspended jail term for Holocaust revisionist remarks he made on Iranian television in October 2006.

The double standard here is blatantly obvious. The French government defends a man who insults the Islamic religion, despite the fact that his statements are offensive to millions of Muslims. Indeed, not only did they defend his right to freedom of speech in a well publicized statement, but they offered him police protection as well.

Yet, this same French government allows a French professor to be removed from his university chair, orders criminal probes into his comments, and gives him a suspended jail sentence because of his Holocaust revisionist beliefs. This clearly falsifies Prime Minister Dominque de Villepin's hypocritical claim that France is a democracy “where everyone has the right to express his views freely, while respecting others." One has the right to insult and attack the Islamic religion and deny the existence of God, but Holocaust revisionists are not allowed to freely express their viewpoints. The free speech rights of revisionists like Dr. Faurisson are routinely violated.

Furthermore, it appears as though the policy of the French government to prosecute Holocaust revisionists is simply a reflection of the wishes of influential French Jews. It was reported in the February 4, 2006 issue of The International Jerusalem Post (p.10) that filmmaker Claude Lanzmann wants Holocaust revisionism to be outlawed. In his own words: “How do you fight against Arab denial of the Holocaust? Certainly not like in Western countries. But I don't know, I'm not Sephardic…It has to be outlawed, like in France, that's all.”

If you do prosecute Dr. Faurisson, this will not only demonstrate the French government's hypocrisy, but it will also help to show that the Holocaust legend really is a weak and flimsy ideology that cannot be defended with reason and science. In a word, the Holocaust is a false doctrine that needs oppressive laws and prison sentences to protect it from rational criticism.

Sincerely, Paul Grubach

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Shaky

Israeli PM Olmert's coalition might look a lot less solid at the end of the day. OneJerusalem reports that the 11 seat Yisrael Beiteinu faction is likely to leave the government, leaving the Kadima led coalition with 67 seats.

The Jerusalem Post has more:

At the start of Monday's Knesset plenum session, Israel Beiteinu showed its displeasure with the government by walking out on a no-confidence motion regarding Israel's negotiations with the Palestinians on core issues.

Sources close to Lieberman said the party head had received the impression that Olmert concluded that Labor and Israel Beiteinu could no longer exist in the same coalition and that he chose to keep Labor at Lieberman's expense.

They cited Olmert's statements to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Monday about the need to negotiate the core issues of the conflict and his statements Sunday to Kadima ministers about outposts remaining being a disgrace.

While One Jerusalem speculates that this would increase pressure on the religious Sephardi party, Shas, to leave and bring down the government, the Jerusalem Post looks at the effect Yisrael Beiteinu's departure will have on Labor.

Olmert's associates said he had not intended to push out Lieberman but privately they admitted that if Israel Beiteinu left, it would give the diplomatic process a boost and make it more likely that Defense Minister Ehud Barak would keep Labor in the coalition.

Sources close to Barak said Israel Beiteinu's departure would indeed increase pressure for Labor to stay, but that Lieberman would not impact Barak's decision about whether to keep his promise to remove Labor from the coalition upon the Winograd Report's publication on January 30.

Channel 1's Ayala Hason reported Monday that if the Winograd report ended up being extremely critical of Olmert, Barak would give Kadima six weeks to elect a new leader. If Kadima would refuse, Barak would bring down the government and force an election.

Even if Shas stays, the result of the Winograd commission could leave Kadima severely weakened.

On his way out of Israel, President Bush urged Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas to stay in support of PM Olmert. This probably didn't help as it cast those critical of PM Olmert and Kadima as being against peace.

Israelis aren't against peace. But they aren't in favor of dangerous - not just painful - concessions. They've seen an increase in terrorism and radicalism since the Oslo process began. Now they see a an unpopular Prime Minister trying to boost his own fortunes by adopting policies that appeal to the American president but not to his electorate. President Bush's appeal to Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas was a slap in the face of the Israeli people.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, ehud olmert.

All nied up

via memeorandum

from Bothersome Intel on Iran by Michael Hirsh, Newsweek

Israeli and other foreign officials asked Bush to explain the NIE, which concluded with "high confidence" that Iran halted what the document describes as its "nuclear weapons program." The NIE arrived at this finding even though Tehran continues to operate uranium-enrichment centrifuges that many experts believe are intended to develop material for a bomb, and despite the CIA's assertion that it had, for the first time, concrete evidence of such a weaponization program. Most confusing of all, the document seemed to directly contradict a 2005 NIE that concluded—also with "high confidence"—that Iran did have such a weapons program. Bush's national-security adviser, Stephen Hadley, told reporters in Jerusalem that Bush had only said to Olmert privately what he's already said publicly, which is that he believes Iran remains "a threat" no matter what the NIE says. But the president may be trying to tell his allies something more: that he thinks the document is a dead letter.

The final sentence is written in such a way as to indicate that President Bush has, for political reasons, ignored the professional analysis of his intelligence community. Of course the rest of the article, describing the Israeli displeasure with the conclusions of the NIE, suggest that Israel's intelligence community came to different conclusions from the United States.

Connect the Dots points out that what President Bush is disavowing is not the NIE itself:

The NIE may be perfectly sound, but the declassified summary of it, produced at the last minute after the White House decided to release the document, is something else. By relegating to a footnote the fact that Iran has a continuing uranium-enrichment program, and by declaring flatly that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, without so much of an indication that a crucial aspect of that program — the development of fuel for a nuclear-bomb core — continues apace, the public — including America’s allies and adversaries — were baldly misled.

If Schoenfeld's speculation is correct, then, the NIE represents less of a departure than the president's critics, such as Hirsh portray it.

Israel Matzav looks at the implications for Israel.

There are two issues here and the only way Bush can quell that 'rising chorus of voices' is to resolve one of those issues and see to the resolution of the other issue. The issue Bush can resolve is the view here that the NIE shut the door on US action against Iran. Most people here believe that the NIE took the US military option against Iran off the table. If there still is a military option that the United States is prepared to use in the event that - as seems almost inevitable - sanctions will fail, that will go a long way towards quelling the 'rising chorus of voices' for unilateral Israeli action. A second - not nearly as satisfactory scenario - would be for Bush to make it clear that the US will support or at least not hinder Israeli military action against Iran if and when that becomes necessary.

From what I can gather, only the second option really remains. The summary of the NIE took the American option out of consideration.

Crossposted on Yourish.

iran, israel.

Put yourself into jeopardy

Like 2 years ago, Jeopardy is again having online tryouts.

Last time I took it and estimate that I got about 40 of the questions right. Given that moving up to the next level was dependent on how others in my geographical area, that wasn't good enough. Regardless it was fun.

Peace processing mirage

Still Waiting to Seize the Moment - Editorial from the New York Times.

Despite longstanding pledges, the Israelis are refusing to stop expanding settlements while the Palestinians aren’t doing enough to halt violence against Israel.

So far U.S. prodding has failed to induce Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas to take initial confidence-building steps they have repeatedly promised, such as the dismantlement of illegal Israeli outposts in the West Bank or a campaign to stop incitement against Israel by Palestinian media and schools.

It's come to the point where this hackneyed boilerplate passes for analysis. The halting of terror was a premise of the whole peace process. There is no equivalence between terror that is encouraged and perpetrated by the PA and Israel building more homes for its citizens. The former violates every premise of peacemaking and yet it's treated as a "confidence building measure." On the latter, I'm reasonably certain that if Israel stopped building everywhere else but continued building in places like Gilo, Ramot and French Hill, that these august newspapers would still fault Israel.

Getting back to the NY Times:

For the first time, Mr. Bush did say that Israel must compensate Palestinians who left or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel. He also warned both sides that they are going to have to make difficult compromises on their borders.

Why is Israel responsible for Palestinians who left their homes? And why is there no mention of Jews who were driven from their homes? And as Amb. Dore Gold pointed out yesterday in a conference call of bloggers, Israeli territorial compromises are not just difficult but, based on past experience, dangerous too.

As bad as the NY Times editorial is, the Washington Post's is worse.

In 2001 he disparaged and quickly abandoned President Bill Clinton's personal attempt to broker a final peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians during his final months in office. Seven years later, ending his first visit to Israel as president, Mr. Bush set a goal of finishing that peace treaty during his own final months; said he would personally involve himself in pressuring both sides; and, like Mr. Clinton before him, laid out his own parameters for a deal.

The only significant difference between the two sets of presidential ideas was that Mr. Bush was unwilling, unlike Mr. Clinton, to discuss a solution for Jerusalem, where the largest concessions will have to come from Israel. Instead, he mainly sketched the painful sacrifices required from Palestinians, including the surrender of some West Bank territory and the payment of compensation rather than the "return" of Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948. Still, none of what the president said was novel. Mr. Bush's statement merely confirmed that seven years of bloodshed, unilateral actions and diplomatic stasis, during which both Israelis and Palestinians sought to change the terms suggested by Mr. Clinton, have been a tragic waste of lives and time.

I won't disagree that the past seven years there has been a tragic waste of lives, but it isn't due to the president's disengagement. It's worth noting that the terror war waged against Israel that was going on when President Bush took office, occurred in the wake of the some of the most intensive diplomatic efforts ever undertaken in the Middle East. In fact it's incredible that the editors don't acknowledge that the the violence of seven years ago took place despite the Clinton parameters. This shows that the terror war was not a function of the lack of an agreement.

It's also an amazingly ignorant argument given that during President Bush's term in office Israel withdrew from Gaza. That led not to greater compromise and understanding but strengthened Hamas and put Israelis living in "non-occupied" Israel at risk from Qassam missiles. There hasn't been "diplomatic stasis" over the past seven years, diplomatic progress has been made; it just has produced the exact opposite results that the Post's editors assumed that it would.

In Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Barry Rubin lays out a summary of the past seven years based on observation not wishful thinking.

In 2000, a seven-year-long peace process was due for completion. The Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank had been turned over to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Yasir Arafat. The PA had been given billions of dollars and military equipment, becoming a virtual client of the United States. Despite these efforts, there was anarchy in the PA-ruled territory, constant incitement to violence against Israel on the official news media, no psychological or ideological preparation of the Palestinians by their leadership for peace, and a massive wasting of funds.

Later, some analysts would explain away the failure by saying it was a mistake to force Arafat to the negotiating table for a decision. At the time, though, all one heard was how Arafat needed progress or he would lose control of his people and that the window of opportunity was closing. The U.S., Israeli, and European governments also wanted diplomatic progress for interests of their own. The result was not only the Camp David summit but also, and in some ways even more important, the Clinton plan that followed. The Palestinian leadership rejected both and instead opted for war.

Bush's new policy may be a big change for him but, after all, he is merely making the same analysis and offering the same terms as his predecessor. It was an understanding of what went wrong with Clinton's thinking and his generous bid--in part taught them by Clinton itself--that explains the Bush administration's lower level of effort for most of its time in office.

The problem then isn't the lack of American involvement, but the lack of a Palestinian commitment or ability to make peace.

Even if there was a Palestinian leader able to transcend all those pressures he would still restrained by knowing that to make a deal might not only be personally fatal but--far more certain--would destroy his reputation and career. Nobody will act like Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in making peace with Israel because look what happened to him (reviled, boycotted by the Arab world, and assassinated).

Nor do Palestinian leaders feel a need to run such risks. A far easier, successful policy is to take billions of Western aid dollars while doing nothing and blaming everything on Israeli intransigence and U.S. mistakes.

Calls for more American involvement in the peace process are based on a false belief that American pressure can help make peace. American involvement, instead, seems to have accomplished just the opposite. It has created an atmosphere that rewards (Palestinian) intransigence in the chimerical belief that enough foreign aid can somehow change deeply held beliefs.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, palestinian authority.

Tabula Gaza

One of the impediments to the creation of a Palestinian state is something that Israel cannot be expected to concede:

A senior US official acknowledged on Saturday that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal would depend on the fate of Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

Hamas which evicted moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction from Gaza in June after a week of bloodshed, meanwhile, dismissed US President George W. Bush's vision of a Palestinian state.

The US official, who declined to be named, said the fate of Bush's targeted peace deal by the end of this year depended on Abbas taking back control of the Gaza Strip.

"I don't think in the long term that an agreement is going to work if Hamas continues to control Gaza," he said.

"That's why we repeatedly said that the Palestinian Authority should resume its responsibility for the government in Gaza as well," he said. "Exactly how that is going to work I don't know, I can't predict the future."

But seriously--just imagine that this is true, and the Israeli assassination of these men make possible the triumphant return of Abbas to Gaza: will Palestinian Arabs have any greater respect for Abbas having required both the US and Israel to give him back what he managed to lose so easily on his own?

And is Gaza, which is reputed to be home to elements of Al Qaeda and Fatah Al-Islam, going to be more or less unstable with Abbas 'in control'?

D

Crossposted on Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Gaza.

Michael Lerner on the "handful of unknown people who are bombing Sderot"

From Daily Kos--Where else? The title is "A Rabbi in the Mosque":

[...] In a subsequent dinner with the leaders of the mosque and the Imam I heard many stories of frustration as they described to me various interfaith activities with the Jewish community in which they had participated, only to find that the friendly atmosphere closed down totally when they tried to get Jewish community leaders or lay people to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinian people. Several of the participants in this discussion were Palestinians themselves, others were from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. They told me that they truly hoped that inviting me to speak would be a first step toward creating a deeper kind of dialogue that was open to hearing and acknowledging the pain of the Palestinian people (for example around the collective punishment currently being inflicted on the entire population of Gaza in response to the vicious and unjustified violence of a handful of unknown people who are bombing Sderot . . .

Here are the entities mentioned in the various items that come up in the first page of results:

Hamas
Al-Aqsa Brigades
Hamas again
Islamic Jihad
PRC
PRC again
Islamic Jihad again
Al-Aqsa again (That's Fatah)

Update: Hamas just took responsibility for Tuesday's qassam attack on Sderot. Hamas is led by two of the robed gentlemen pictured above.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

On the care and feeding of autocrats

Shibley Telhami, who has made a career of interpreting polling data from totalitarian regimes, tells us today that "It's not about Iran."

(If your leader, through the media and other apparatuses of state, makes clear that the Israeli "occupation" of Palestine is of utmost importance to his regime, you're not going to tell a person of uncertain affiliations that you think that the restrictions of freedom of assembly is a more pressing matter.)

In truth, I don't disagree much with the conclusion of the article: that the Arab world isn't really focused on the Iranian threat, I'm just skeptical of how Telhami reached that conclusion.

And even though Gulf Arab governments need the U.S. military umbrella for their security, their publics view the United States as a far greater threat than Iran. It is a challenge for these governments to have to continually depend on an America whose foreign policy is rejected by their own publics and whose record in recent years has been more of failure than of success.

Their own publics? The Arab world is not populated by regimes who abide by the consent of the governed. It's the other way around.

While America's policy in the Middle East hasn't been perfect, even now there appears a bit of the American push for democratization in the Middle East. Whether or not it ill take hold is uncertain, but would the president's outreach to democratic elements in the Gulf be possible if Saddam were still in power? It's not as if President Clinton's appeasement of Arafat led to better results.

The Arab/Muslim world indeed seems to be embracing Iran. But it's disingenuous to attribute it to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The conflict is real, but even if it were resolved, the Arab world would be no more friendly to the United States and its interests than it is now. Right now Iran seems to be have the certainty of purpose so it will have more friends in the Arab world. And the Iranian path, frankly, is the path to take for despots who wish to hold on to their power.

It's also ironic the Telhami focuses on the conflict, because a recent poll of Palestinian shows that the "occupation" is far down the list of their concerns.

The focus on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a way of allowing rulers who care nothing about the views of their own subjects to pretend to respect democracy. It's perverse, but this is what Prof. Telhami promotes. His CV says that he's "Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at University of Maryland." What he promotes isn't "peace and development" but extended terms for tyrants.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, middle east.

On the radio

As noted on Friday, yesterday Shalom USA graciously interviewed Seraphic Secret and me.

Jay and Larry were extremely gracious hosts and went easy on us. No questions that were too tough.

I try to listen in as much as possible and am always impressed with Jay's interviewing ability. I got to the station a little early and got to hear the end of the previous topic. with notes in front of him Jay elicits some information and some evasions from the guest. It's much more impressive in person.

After the 9:30 break it's our turn. I wasn't nervous at all. According to Robert I no longer have any trace of New England or New York in my voice. Pure Baltimore apparently. Hopefully there wasn't much stutter either. (I think that I only stumbled once.)

The first major bit went to Robert. He explained why he didn't hold President Bush responsible for the peace process and possible concessions. He said that it was coming from Israel. He makes his case well. (I know that Robert said that people would rather read him write about Hollywood than politics, but if you read him you know the name of the actress who jumped off the Hollywood sign or what language Katherine Hepburn was not allowed to speak. You do get plenty of fascinating Hollywood too.)

I get a question about blogging. That's easy. I used to write letters to the editor, now I blog. True not as many people read a blog as a newspaper, but I do have certainty in this medium that I'll be published. (I didn't express that last bit explicitly.)

I also get to talk about Ari Shavit. Did I really compare him to Natan Sharansky? Yes. Both believe that there needs to be a fundamental change in Palestinian ideology before there can be peace. (I kept on name dropping too.)

Finally, my last question is about the role of blogging based on a contribution of Daled Amos. I get distracted and credit my co-blogger. After a gentle nudge, I'm responding to the question that I enjoy my role as gatekeeper and mention that blogging is as much editing as writing. Jay mentions that good bloggers point their readers to great information. (Yep, that's exactly what makes Instapundit great.)

The time flew, but I really enjoyed it. I have to find out if the show was recorded. It appears not. I didn't have the foresight to try to set up my computer (if possible.) Oh well.

I also wish that Mere Rhetoric had been to join us.

Thanks Jay and Larry for the chance to air my experiences.

shalom usa.

Kristol clear

Clark Hoyt gives his support to the hiring of William Kristol as on op-ed columnist at the NY Times, He may be unwelcome but we'll survive.

Kristol would not have been my choice to join David Brooks as a second conservative voice in the mix of Times columnists, but the reaction is beyond reason. Hiring Kristol the worst idea ever? I can think of many worse. Hanging someone from a lamppost to be beaten by a mob because of his ideas? And that is from a liberal, defined by Webster as “one who is open-minded.” What have we come to?

How's that for full support? I believe that Mr. Hoyt was a lot more enthusiastic about giving space to someone who did believe that hanging people from lampposts was a good idea.

Needless to say, Bill Kristol didn't get off unscathed in the Times, as the paper published Father and Sons a review of Jacob Heilbrunn's recent book about "neo-conservatives."

While the Nazis herded Jews into the gas chambers, Kristol, then a 24-year-old Trotskyist, held fast to his conviction that the Allies were no different from the Axis in their imperialism. Kristol took this view because he was “indulging in an abstract crusade for a better world.”

Sound familiar? In March 2003, Kristol’s son, William, the editor of The Weekly Standard (and now a New York Times Op-Ed columnist), cheered on the United States invasion of Iraq while bin Laden remained at large. Hussein, Kristol wrote with Lawrence F. Kaplan, was “a threat to civilization” and defeating him would kick off a glorious campaign to spread freedom and democracy across the globe. Although William’s argument was precisely opposite to Irving’s 59 years earlier, it sprang from the same crusading myopia.

Well when something's "precisely opposite" it's hard to say that it sounds familiar. What Timoth Noah's brief history lesson shows is that neo-conservatives are capable of assimilating new information and adjusting their views accordingly.

And Noah's dismissal of the war against Iraq, might be overstating the case a bit. Roger L. Simon responds:

Needless to say, Noah ignores such inconvenient truths - and others including the fact that Iraq is a functioning (albeit limping) democracy with people in the streets and growing businesses, that it is one of our least violent wars (less than five percent the US fatalities of Vietnam) and at the very least we will be left with bases inside Mesopotamia to help control the expansionist fascisms in Iran and Syria. It could be better than that. Who knows? The Iraqis could turn into real allies for freedom, just like those dreaded neocons hoped.

Of course the recent gains in Iraq have been a result of President Bush's dismissal of Secretary Rumsfeld and the start of the surge, which, I believe was consistent with William Kristol's recommendations over a number of years.

But it was nice that that Times balanced their views of Bill Kristol. Had they only had Clark Hoyt's faint praise, I'd have been worried that the world was threatened to be overcome by chaos through some disturbance in the space-time continuum. The Noah review restored order.
(via memeorandum)

bill kristol.

Not that hillary

During this primary season, one of the things that candidates do is define themselves. No candidate is perfect and some are more flawed than others.

Among the Democrats, my favored candidate is Sen. Clinton. It's not because I support most of her policies, but because my foremost concern is the war on terror. For all of her faults, Sen. Clinton is the one Democrat who might take that struggle seriously.

Of course, among the many weaknesses Sen. Clinton has is her artificiality.

The recent death of Sir Edmond Hillary brings up an example of that. Edward Rothstein recently celebrated Sir Hillary's accomplishment and wrote:

In contemporary exploration near disasters and traumas are not an expected part of the project, the way breaking ice formations and dwindling oxygen are in Sir Edmund’s account. They are the failures, best passed over. The goal is for a safe routine, as if exploration could resemble the contemporary playground, with its rubber pads and redesigned play equipment, explicitly discouraging enterprising ventures and the testing of boundaries, eliminating all “monkey bars” and “seesaws.”

Of course that's not the point of this post. The point is that once upon a time Sen. Clinton claimed that she was named for Sir Edmond. Snopes investigated the claim and the controversy and concluded.

We still find this explanation rather incredible. In order to accept it, one has to believe that only after Hillary Clinton was nearly 60 years old, and only after she had been pilloried in the press for more than ten years for claiming she had been named after someone who was virtually unknown in the U.S. at the time of her birth, and only after her husband had unknowingly presented the fictitious story as true in his own autobiography, did her mother finally confess that the "sweet family story" she told her daughter wasn't the truth. (Hillary Clinton doesn't have the excuse that other people were spreading a falsehood about her, as she herself was the one who initiated the claim back in 1995.)

As we noted back in 2003, this story was likely a little white lie concocted for a special occasion back in 1995, and even if it really was a "sweet family story" Dorothy Rodham told her daughter Hillary many years ago, the latter has almost certainly known for quite a long time that it was just a story.

Using the name of the famous explorer didn't bother her. If it built her reputation, she wouldn't deny it. All politicians embellish, but there seems to be a different - slightly disturbing - aspect to her embellishments.

hillary clinton.

Musical monday #29

Wow we're nearing #30. Last week's collaboration with Elie's Expositions was a lot of fun and we plan to collaborate again for #31. Elie and I enjoyed working together. Did that make for a better quiz? Let us know!

You know the drill, no cheating and using Google or some other search engine, (even though your not-so-humble servant may indulge such crutches) and figure out the songs and the theme of the week. No prizes except the satisfaction of knowing that you can still remember the songs of your youth.

As is sometimes the case, the gaps are significant.

1) She said she believes in Robin Hood
2) If there was A grand canyon, She could fill it up with the lies he's told her

3) His bow tie is really a camera
4) For this is not a miracle

5) Your mommy don't mind, If we have another dance
6) Don't you even try tellin' me that you really don't want it to end this way

7) Til the stars fall from the sky
8) that's when she told me a story 'bout free milk and a cow

9) (Silly boy) then she said to my surprise
10) Misjudged your limits, Pushed you too far

11) Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
12) Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat

13) He's in love don't stand in his way
14) I ain't talkin' no high heel

15) You're the nearest thing to heaven that I've seen
16) Because I come from the land of plenty

17) We could float among the stars together, you and I
18) I used to drive you to work in the morning

19) Anything you want...we can make it happen
20) Each moment with you, Is just like a dream to me

21) Why do birds suddenly appear
22) Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?

23) If you wake up and dont want to smile
24) But this time before you run to her

25) Here come old flattop
26) I get so shaky and I feel so weak

27) But Ive never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker
28) You always won every time you placed a bet

29) You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
30) Seasons change and so did I

31) My suitcase and guitar in hand
32) Wednesday morning at five o'clock as the day begins

33) When I'm with you, it doesn't matter where we are
34) Ride the king's highway, baby

Solutions for Musical Monday #27 - Courtesy of Apollo C. Vermouth
"Send them looking out for their woman send them reaching out for their dollar" Mr Skin--Spirit
"I can bite like a turkey/I can slam like a drake" Please, Mrs Henry--Dylan
"We were at a policy meeting/They were planning new ways of cheating" Miss Gradenko--Police
"Oh it don't mean a thing/When the leader's singing" Hey Mr. Bass Man--Johnny Cymbal
"Over my window, they'd written my name" Mr. Spaceman--Byrds
"Maybe shes a devil in disguise" Little Miss Strange--Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Someone is spending my money for me" Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde--The Who
"I'm off the beaten track." Dr. Jimmy--The Who
"I'd rather give my love to a poor guy that has a love that's true" Mr. Big Stuff--Jean Knight
"We never had the love that every child oughta get" Gee, Officer Krupke--Berstein/Sondheim
"Say goodbye in the wind and the rain in the back street." Madame George--Van Morrison
"He's just here from Alabama" Sister Ray--Velvet Underground
"You vanish with the night" In dreams I kiss your hand, Madame--Sinatra
"I'm gonna tell everybody that I'm down in misery" Lawdy Miss Clawdy--Lloyd Price et. al
"Would you pardon me if it's a nineteen carat golden thing" Good Golly Miss Molly--Little Richard
"Because believin' and deceivin', it's drivin' me to grievin' now." Miss Ann--Little Richard
"We gotta be extra careful that we don't build our hopes too high" Me and Mrs. Jones--Billy Paul
"But nobody seems to understand/What make a man can feel so blue." Mr. Pitiful--Otis Redding
"A splendid time is guaranteed for all" Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite--Beatles
"My friend works for the national health." Dr. Robert--Beatles
"Do anything take us out of this gloom" Dear Mr. Fantasy--Traffic
"I'm tired of being told what to think/I'm tired of being told what to do." Mr. Suit--Wire

Theme: Titles that include titles

Rubicon3 came closest to guessing the theme. (She guessed Mr. and Mrs. songs.)Thanks also to Fiery Spirited Zionist, Elie's Expositions.

Previous editions:

Musical Monday #28
Musical Monday 27
Musical Monday #26
Musical Monday 25
Musical Monday 24
Musical Monday 23
Musical Monday #22
Musical Monday #21
Musical Monday #20
Musical Monday #19
Musical Monday #18
Musical Monday #17
Musical Monday #16
Musical Monday #15
Musical Monday 14
Musical Monday 13
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.

The Bush Family & The Nazis--Not

Jack Kemp has a short post at The American Thinker, quoting from Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism on the claim that the Bush family helped finance the rise of the Nazis:

"As for the charge that George W. Bush's grandfather was a Nazi collaborator of some sort, put forward in Phillip's book "American Dynasty," Peter Schweizer demonstrates why this is such a bad-faith slander:

One of Phillip's most attention-grabbing chapters posits the theory that the Bushes were involved in the rise of Adolf Hitler. While he correctly notes that Brown Brothers Harriman, an investment-banking firm employing Prescott Bush and George H. Walker (George W. Bush's great-grandfather), investing in Nazi-era German companies, Phillips fails to note that it was Averell Harriman, later FDR's ambassador to Moscow and Truman's commerce secretary, who initiated these investments (and some in Soviet Russia) before either of the Bushes joined the firm. Prescott Bush did not oversee these investments: the reality is that he was involved almost exclusively in managing the firm's domestic portfolio. It was Harriman who largely managed the foreign investments and, accordingly, it was he who met German and Soviet leaders. (Peter Schweizer, "Kevin Phillip's Politics of Deceit," National Review Online, March 30, 2004,
www.nationalreview.com/comment/schweizer200403300907.asp
[accessed Jan. 23, 2007])'

Besides The Nation, the only sources he uses to make the case of the Bushes' secret CIA links is the Adamson Report (cited four times), a newsletter produced by one Bruce Adamson, a geologist who runs a crackpot website called ciajfk.com. Adamson apparently believes that the Bushes are implicated in the assassination of JFK "and tied directly and indirectly to the Diana accident and the crash of September 11, 2001."

...[For other claims,] Phillips also relies on J. H. Hatfield's Fortunate Son, a now-discredited book about George W. Bush which was pulled by its publisher. He also accepts the reporting of Victor Thorn, writing in Babelmagazine.com, concerning the Bushes' relationships to Saudi Arabia. (Thorn's other credits include the books, The New World Order Exposed and The Real Reason Jesus Was Crucified.)

D

Crossposted at Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: President Bush and Nazi Germany.

Final Status talks timed to coincide with Pappe-Finkelstein Continued Existence talks

According to the AP:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the most serious peace talks in seven years would begin on Monday and the final deal must address all the sensitive issues including Jerusalem.

Abbas said his chief negotiator, former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, would meet his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, as part of U.S. President George W. Bush's push for a statehood agreement before leaving office.

"All the issues will be discussed ... We told Bush that we will not accept delaying any of the final-status issues," Abbas said in a speech, referring to state borders, the future of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees, and Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Dissident Voice on the origins of Ashkenazi Jewry

I sometimes link to items in the Dissident Voice, a blog-like self-styled "radical newsletter" that currently features a contribution from Cindy Sheehan. Recently it has been running a multi-part series called "Defining Israeli Zionist Racism," written by Dissident Voice "co-editor" Kim Peterson and a collaborator named B.J. Sabri. Part 12 addresses the topic of Jews who became refugess from Arab countries following the founding of Israel. According to Peterson (who "enjoys scuba diving, working out, and advancing the struggle for a world based on principles of peaceful and equitable sharing and respect for the environment and life") and Sabri

the total number of Arabs of Jewish faith from Egypt, Syria, Libya, etc. that Britain (again with the complicity of Arab rulers under its control) managed to send to OCCUPIED PALESTINE so the newly formed Zionist state would not collapse because of lack of population, could not have exceeded at best the 200,000. Any number beyond this is falsification.

the expulsion of Arabs of Jewish faith including a genuine minuscule minority of descendents from the ancient Hebrews (not to be mixed with European converts to Judaism), did not happen automatically, but was, again, engineered by Britain, France, and the United States.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

A brother could love

According to the New York Times:

Given the international uproar that unfolded after the bombing, “we can assume it’s not a reactor,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that has analyzed the Syrian site.

If international inspectors eventually get to the site, he added, they will have a more difficult time looking for nuclear evidence. “The new building,” he noted, “covers whatever remained of the destroyed one.”

is it clear from this statement what Dr. Albright thought about the previous Syria site? Here's how the Washington Post reports Albright's statements. (These statements are more complete, though he apparently offered different quotes to each newspaper.):

"It would be very unlikely for this to be a reactor, and we would be very surprised if they tried to put a reactor inside this building," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, who analyzed the images and provided a copy to The Washington Post.

Albright said the new facility appears significantly different from the earlier one, having slightly larger dimensions and a vaulted roof. There are no visible signs suggesting a nuclear purpose, he said.

The new construction could complicate future efforts by outsiders to determine the purpose of the original building, Albright said. He added that it is possible that Syria might have constructed the facility to allow the country to secretly excavate all traces of the original building out of the view of spy satellites.

Getting back to the New York Times, it's pretty clear that they skimped on presenting Dr. Albright's full views (and I believe that he's somewhat skeptical of the charge) about the Syrian site and then the reporter adds

Skeptics have criticized the nuclear accusation, saying the public evidence that has so far come to light was ambiguous at best. They noted, for instance, that at the time of the attack the site had no obvious barbed wire or air defenses that would normally ring a sensitive military facility.

So Syria didn't seem to protect the site. Still why bolster the doubts but why play this up when Syria's whole approach to the bombing has been somewhat suspicious? Now Syria's building a new structure that is clearly unlike the first one and will make it that much harder to discover what's underneath. If it was an agricultural facility that Israel bombed (and even the NY Times reporter seemed somewhat skeptical of the claim) why didn't the Syrians complain louder? Why did the North Koreans complain at all? It's wrong for the Times to play up the doubts without giving a full accounting of the reasons to suspect the Syrians of playing nuclear games.

The Astute Bloggers (astutely) point out:

Transparency is central to International Security. Assad's tyrannical terrorist-enabling regime has no transparency, and this is why we must act preemptively: better safe than sorry.

(via memeorandum)

In other words, despite the Times effort to play down the threat because of uncertainty, the uncertainty is all the reason to be more concerned.

At the end of a disturbing post about Syria efforts to rebuild in the area of the structure that was destroyed in September by Israel (covered by the Tank at NRO), Daled Amos asks of Nobel Laureate Mohammed El Baradei:

Is El Baradei is equally chummy with Iran?

The answer, I think, comes from a recent news report:

In an unprecedented meeting, Iran's top leader told the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday that the UN Security Council had no remaining justification for focusing on the country's nuclear program, state-run television reported.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, told Mohamed ElBaradei that the IAEA should exclusively handle Iranian nuclear questions, saying resolution of the controversy would be a "great success" for the UN nuclear watchdog.

My guess is that if Iran is seeking the jurisdiction of the IAEA over its nuclear program(s), it must feel awfully brotherly towards El Baradei too.

For more background on the shattered Syrian nuclear ambitions see Mere Rhetoric.

Crossposted on Yourish.

syria, iran.

Detecting lung cancer

I don't often write about medical advances. But here's one that I heard about at the Shabbos table a couple of weeks ago. A Maryland company has developed a test for detecting lung cancer in its early stages.

LC Detect(SM) is a simple blood test to facilitate the identification of lung cancer, even among individuals with early-stage disease. Panacea Laboratories, a division of Panacea Pharmaceuticals, is certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA). The blood sample can be ordered by any physician and sent to Panacea for testing; sample and shipping requirements are available at www.panacea-labs.com.

Lung cancer accounts for the highest number of cancer deaths worldwide, in both men and women. An estimated 213,380 new cases of cancer involving the lung or bronchus are expected in the U.S. in 2007, accounting for about 15 percent of total cancer diagnoses. An estimated 160,390 deaths, accounting for about 29 percent of all cancer deaths, are expected to occur in 2007. Since 1987, more women have died each year from lung cancer than from breast cancer. Lung cancer was the third most common cancer for men and the fifth most common cancer for women in Japan in 2000. The five-year survival rate for lung cancer is only 15 percent. Survival rates for individuals in whom lung cancer is detected at an early stage while it remains localized are as high as 50 percent. Current screening and detection methods rely on imaging modalities, primarily chest x-ray and CT scanning. However, chest x-ray is not sufficiently sensitive and CT scanning is expensive with only a moderate improvement in sensitivity. Newer tests, such as low-dose spiral computed tomography scans and molecular markers in sputum have not proven to be useful to date.

This was a significant enough discovery that Time Magazine named it one of the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2007.

No I don't usually discuss medical breakthroughs at the Shabbos table. Except that one of the scientists who helped develop the test was visiting with his family. Nice to know when one of your friends changes the world.

cancer detection.

Syria Rebuilding It's Nuclear Reactor

The National Review's military blog, the tank, has a post about the New York Times article on Syria rebuilding the apparent nuclear plant bombed by Israel last year.

The Tank notes that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Mohammed El Baradei seems pretty chummy with Syria:

Most interestingly, however, is how El Baradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his alleged contributions to a more secure world, characterizes the Baathist regime in Damascus:

“So far, we have not received any information about any nuclear programs in Syria,” he said, according to a transcript posted on the newspaper’s Web site. Dr. El Baradei said he had asked for the Syrians’ permission “to allow the agency to visit the facility and to verify that it was not nuclear.”

He added: “The Syrian brothers did not allow us to visit and inspect the location.”

Syrian brothers? Is the supposedly neutral IAEA chief showing his true colors?

D

Crossposted on Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Syria and Mohammed El Baradei.

Haveil Havalim #149 is UP! (with an announcement)

Haveil Havalim #149 is UP! at Life in Israel.

This also is a good bye of sorts. After 3 years and 150 editions (more or less) I plan to transfer administration of Haveil Havalim to Jack's Shack after next week. It's been wonderful. But it's also been demanding. Right now, I don't have the energy to keep up with HH any more. I'm a bit fatigued. I know that a number of you aren't happy with the way I ran Haveil Havalim, most others were happy though. In addition to next week, I do hope to host in the future. And I plan to promote Haveil Havalim every week. (If I inadvertantly left you out, please send me an e-mail.)

For those of you who have had a hand in making Haveil Havalim a success by hosting, promoting, contributing or reading, I'd like to thank you. Haveil Havalim is one of the longest running blog carnivals around, and it wouldn't be so without your contributions. I expect that in Jack's capable hands it will success will be even greater.

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.

Use Blog Carnival's handy dandy Blog Submission Form to submit your entries and have a great week!

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.

Listed at the Truth Laid Bear Ubercarnival.

Technorati Tags: Blog carnivals, haveil havalim, Israel, Judaism.

Nasrallah: "Victory shall be ours by blood and will"

"Blood and will"--that has a nice Nazi sound. The source is Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. This kind of rhetoric goes over well in Iran evidently:

Secretary-General of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement, Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah slammed US President Bush for trying to force Lebanon to acknowledge Zionist regime and Palestinians to give up on right of return.

Nasrallah said Friday that "President Bush is forcing the Palestinians to give up on the right of return and accept refugees settling in other Arab nations."

Nasrallah spoke at a rally honoring the Muslin New Year, which was held at the Sayyed Al-Shuhada mosque in Beirut. "The Zionists would take their pick out of the '67 territories, Beit Ul Moqaddas and the settlement, and will give the Palestinians whatever crumbs they'll have left over."

"He (Bush) will demand the Lebanese accept reality and acknowledge Israel_ that is Bush's testament, which he feels like he can dictate to us," said Nasrallah.

Resistance, he continued, is the only way: "We will not emigrate_ We will stay on our land, in our cities and villages, even if our homes are destroyed and our soldier captured."

"The only way to deal with the Israeli plan for our region in through resistance... As I have promised you before _ we are going from victory to victory, and it shall be ours by blood and will."

"If he goes back 60 years, who started the killings? The Palestinians didn't do it, and the Jews who lived in Arab states lived peacefully. The ones doing the killing were Zionist gangs."

Nasrallah also slammed American media outlets and their pro-American-Zionist allies for presenting Zionist regime as a symbol of democracy in the region. His comments were met by chants of "Death to America and to Israel" from the crowd.

Bush, warned Nasrallah, views Israel "as a Jewish state, that is, racist...its existence is premised on race. Israel aspires for a racially pure existence." [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Council speak 01/11/08

The council has spoken and wow! Two blowouts. In my time on the council I haven't seen anything like this. One blowout I expected, on the non-Watcher's side, Maj Andrew Olmsted's final post, Andy Olmsted, at Obsidian wings was the going away favorite. Out of a possible maximum of 8, the entry earned 6 2/3. That's huge. The runner-up on the non-council side was Dr. Sanity's Orchestrated Circuses and Clowns, a melancholy meditation on the field of candidates we have this year.

On the council side the winning post was Wolf Howling's Britain's Prosecution of The Blogger Lionheart for Criticism of Islam a comprehensive introduction to a disturbing attempt of the British government to stifle improper thought. Since the runner up was mine, let me give you some other runners up. First there was the Cotton Candy Candidacy by Right Wing Nuthouse, an enchanting look at the past of the primary system and a cynical look at one of the current front runners. Cheat Seeking Missiles explored the way the media ignored the "honor killings" of two Texas sisters in Honor Killings? What Honor Killings? JoshuaPundit's touching, personal tribute to Maj. Andrew Olmsted R.I.P. was the other second runner up.

Congratulations to all winners.

If you're a blogger and you like what you see, please consider submitting your own post to the competition. Just followt the rules here.

UPDATE: I added some content to the original posting.

watcher's council.

What The UN And The Palestinian Authority Have In Common

Is there a reason they delayed the investigation until after Kofi Annan left?
Did they think that would make their workload lighter?

U.N. probes allegations of corruption, fraud

A U.N. internal investigative unit has found an unexpected amount of fraud and abuse at the United Nations and is currently investigating 250 cases, including alleged sexual and financial offenses.

"Our caseload has been very steady over the last three months, around 250 cases," Inga-Britt Ahlenius, head of the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), told reporters. "We found mismanagement and fraud and corruption to an extent we didn't really expect."

Ahlenius said two-thirds of the cases being reviewed related to peacekeeping missions. Around 80 involved possible sexual exploitation and abuse.

The former chief auditor of Sweden held the news conference in response to media reports suggesting that there has been widespread fraud related to U.N. peacekeeping contracts.

She said investigators have already confirmed that contracts worth around $600 million involved fraud at some level. The total U.N. peacekeeping budget for 2007-2008 exceeds $5 billion.

D

Crossposted on Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: United Nations.

Will blogging make a radio star?

The good folks - Larry and Jay - at Shalom USA have agreed to do blogging roundtable with me and two mystery bloggers Sunday morning at 9:30 AM. If you live in the Baltimore area tune in from 9AM - 11AM this (and every) Sunday morning for topnotch Jewish radio. Or you can listen to broadcasts on the web here, wherever you are.

I wonder if Jay remembers that nearly 30 years ago we shared a radio studio?

blogging, radio, shalom usa.

Arun amok

Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, gives pacifism a bad name.

Here's a roundup of responses.

Shira bat Sarah (who brought this swill to my attention) writes in Family Tradition:

Why no calls from the Ghandis of the world for Arabs to lay down their arms? Why is there the implication that Jews and Israelis should not be allowed to defend themselves? Why do their words imply it is okay to have an open season on Jews?

In Arun Gandhi, disgrace of the third generation Solomonia writes:

Gramps suggested the Jews sacrifice themselves to the Nazis in the hope of exciting the sympathy of the world. Grandson apparently thinks the Jews of today should do the same, but goes further in blaming them for the state of the world. Amazing. Jewish identity doesn't depend on violence, but Jewish survival does. It's an inconvenient world.

Blog-o-fascists puts it simply:

Ignorance, bigotry...yes, anti-Semitism...thy name is Gandhi. How much dining out can you do on one famous last name?

Infidel Bloggers Alliance similarly observes Arun Gandhi: fruit doesn't fall far from the tree:

And to sum it up, let me pose this question:

Gahndi says,"the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife." So, how exactly does his philosophy differ, in practice, from that of Hitler?

Sometimes a picture says it best, and Force Duo does it with the Photoshop illustrating Gandhi's grandson, making his gramps proud!

Blogs of Zion writes:

It is apparent that Gandhi's legacy continues with his grandson Arun. Arun Gandhi ignores the real perpetrators of the "culture of violence" and excuses their behavior by using the Jews, Zionism, and Israel as scapegoats.

Reformed Pastor did a very serious fisking of the whole essay, in No one's fault tub their own:

Israel puts its faith in its military for an obvious reason: having been invaded by its neighbors on several occasions, been the object of almost daily bombardment for decades, been told by Hamas and others that there is no place in the Holy Land for Jews, seen Israel and Jews demonized on a virtually round-the-clock basis by its enemies, threatened with annihilation repeatedly, and condemned on a regular basis by the United Nations simply for defending itself, Israel knows what fools like Gandhi refuse to recognize, that it can depend only on itself and its own strength if it is to survive.

Backspin provides a short version of the fisking.

Shadow Warriors apply scorn liberally:

This from a guy who doesn't want to get a real job, and instead finds it more lucrative to go on the lifelong speaking-tour, lecturing everyone else about their moral inferiority to him.

Accusing the Jews of wanting the world to feel guilty about the Holocaust. Stating that Jews "repulse" friends. Calling Israel and the Jews the "biggest players" in creating a culture of violence.

I've got two words for you: anti-Semitism.

Barking Moonbat Warning System demands that we explain this:

Israelites get blown to bits for what, existing, and it's THEIR fault? I don't know what's more of a barf alert on this piece, the content or the source of this crap.

PoliGazette assigns some blame to the Washington Post:

Giving a voice to people who hold different opinions is all fine and dandy, but perhaps American news outlets could make an exception for anti-Semites? I can't see how drivel like this helps the debate.

Little Green Footballs looks beyond the younger Gandhi's words to the words of the commenters. What he sees is beyond the pale:

And the reader comments for this repulsive article are absolutely vile; the antisemites crawled out of the woodwork for this one.

Contentions.David Hazony spawns an excellent conversation on the topic of the Gandhis and mindless pacifism. It makes you wonder if Commentary might make Richard Grenier's "The Gandhi Nobody Knows" available. Powerline provides Grenier's summary.

Rubicon3 points out one possible consequence of such nonsense:

As if the Israelis wouldn't have jumped at the chance to be friends with their neighbors, coming off the horror of the Holocaust.

Such statements are damaging and do not help the cause of peace. On the contrary, they just encourage Islamic fundamentalist violence.

Gandhi has now issued an apology:

I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.

The ADL has weighed in.

I'd go much further. First of all the original implied nothing. It consisted of clearly stated beliefs. What Dr. Gandhi wrote is that Judaism is too rooted in the past and that the Israeli government in its actions, reflects that. So his response that not all Jews support Israeli actions, does nothing to contradict what he wrote in the first place. What he gives no consideration to - as many critics noted - is that Israel is responding to threats, not arbitrarily attacking innocents.

There is nothing unintentional in Gandhi's controversial entry. He meant every word. The ADL is wrong to ask him to apologize. He won't and he can't because he truly doesn't believe that there's anything wrong with what he wrote. He is only concerned with the way his words were (correctly) interpreted.

His morality is just as warped as his grandfather's.

Crossposted on Yourish.

arun gandhi, israel, judaism.

Pre-shabbos bake shop

She also cracked the eggs, put in all the ingredients and mixed the batter for the Matzo balls.

As you might be aware, her big sister's the house's dessert chef. This week the Shabbos treat is a Glazed-Cinnamon-Chocolate Ribbon Cake. (See Kosher by Design for Children Entertains.) She made a double recipe (one to be frozen for later.)

So as she completed baking first one:

You could see what the second one looked like in batter form.

Here's the chocolate glaze. Oooh. Chocolate!

Now the glazed masterpiece side by side with one of the sections.

Now you know why I can expect to lose weight in two years when she plans to study at seminary.

baking, shabbos.

North Korea produces "appealing poems," nuclear subterfuge

The collectivization of artistic endeavors always produces such Songun results!

Poets of the Central Committee of the Korean Writers Union created dozens of poems calling upon the people to turn out in the general advance for this year.

The poem "May the sea of single-minded unity meander" fully represents the faith and will of servicepersons and the people to single-mindedly uphold the ideology and leadership of Kim Jong Il and resolutely defend Korean-style socialism despite any ordeals and hardships.

Among them are such poems as "Storm of general advance arises," "Call of the country" and "Let's advance faster for higher goal on swift horse of Songun," which vehemently call upon the people to accelerate the all-out drive for building an economic power in the same spirit and vigor as was displayed when they built socialism on the ruins.

There are also "We will further glorify our mother Republic," "Before the motherland" and other poems fully reflecting the firm determination of the army and people to proudly greet the grand festival in September with signal labor achievements this year.

[...] In the aftermath of the Feb. 13 agreement, North Korea had to develop a cover story for its uranium-enrichment activities, as well a way to conceal its stock of plutonium and actual nuclear weapons. And yet -- despite the seemingly active and continuing collaboration by the U.S. State Department in coming up with a convincing line of patter -- Pyongyang still insists it never engaged in uranium enrichment, producing as evidence melted-down tubes. Melting the tubes was curious in and of itself, suggesting that in their original form they appeared much more like centrifuge equipment than artillery barrels. The regime made a fatal mistake, however, because the metal showed unmistakable traces of highly-enriched uranium (HEU).

Perhaps even the State Department's East Asia Bureau was shocked at this evidence of North Korean duplicity. In any event, the "dual use" dodge was now out of play, and Pyongyang had to be persuaded to come up with a more convincing cover story. Even this they have now refused to do.

The timing is important, because elements within the U.S. intelligence community were questioning the community's 2002 assessment that North Korea had launched a production-scope procurement effort for enrichment equipment. This effort, similar in origin and intent to the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program, may well have been sidetracked by the findings of HEU, which at least in part reinforced the 2002 conclusions.

Moreover, whatever the North Korean declaration says about its nuclear activities -- assuming just for sport that we actually get a declaration -- it was always only a first step in a long process of verification, and not even the most important one. If North Korea and the State Department, working together, can come up with something they think will pass the public smile test once it is released, we still need to verify the accuracy and completeness of the declaration. Here is where State has failed most obviously: There has yet to be, 11 months after the Feb. 13 agreement, even a hint of what specific mechanisms will verify a declaration. Unless and until this vacuum is filled, we are going nowhere fast in denuclearizing North Korea. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Taking care of business - legally or not

Social Security for Bernie

When Virgilio Cintron, 66, died at his apartment at 436 West 52nd Street recently, his roommate and a friend saw an opportunity to cash his $355 check, the police said.

They did not go about it the easy way, the police said, choosing a ruse that resembled the plot of “Weekend at Bernie’s,” a film about two young men who prop up their dead employer to pretend that he is alive.

“Hell’s Kitchen has a rich history,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman, “but this is one for the books.”

There was no sign of foul play in Mr. Cintron’s death, he added.

The roommate, James P. O’Hare, and his friend, David J. Dalaia, both 65 and unemployed, placed Mr. Cintron’s body in the chair and wheeled it around the corner, south along Ninth Avenue on Tuesday afternoon, the police said. The men parked the chair with the corpse in front of Pay-O-Matic at 763 Ninth Avenue, a check-cashing business that Mr. Cintron had patronized.

He's a crack employee

The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation terminated Lynch's disability payments and declared payments after Jan. 1, 1994, an overpayment. Lynch contested this, eventually taking it to the Supreme Court with the argument that his drug dealing income couldn't be considered because it was illegal.

"We disagree. Lynch cannot use the illegality of his pursuits as a shield," the Ohio Supreme Court said in a unanimous opinion.

Can this marriage be saved?

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

It kind of reminded me of the Moshe and Bernie joke. (Originally I heard it as two Frenchmen, but the punchline's the same.)

offbeat news.

Shavit's prescription

One of the most consistently interesting Israeli columnists, is Ari Shavit from Ha'aretz. Though a member of the Left and of the peace camp, he has consistently demonstrated an intellectual honest that makes him readable even if I don't agree with everything he writes. But today's "On a Divine Mission" is just about perfect. At first he sounds a bit condescending.

The man standing at the window this morning is a very lonely man. He is vilified in his own country and almost a leper in the international community. The America that he tried to save has turned against him, and the West that he wanted to defend is dismissive of him.

But Shavit comes back by dismissing that superficial judgment.

But George W. Bush is not deterred, nor does he bend to public opinion, to the media and to trendy thinging.

Unlike some of his friends, he is not an opportunist who changes his stripes. He conducts his dialogue with history and with God. And since he is a man of moral clarity and simple principles and character, he does not tend to give in. Even when the current turns against him he remains faithful to his truth.

What must President Bush do?

The right formula is the Bush vision. To act with determination in order to create Palestinian capability before precisely defining the borders of the Palestinian territory. To promote Paris before devoting ourselves to Annapolis. To help the Palestinians bring about their conversion rather than pretending that the conversion has already taken place. In short: to return to George W. Bush's fundamental truths.

The contrast between Shavit's reading of the president and Bush recall 1998 trip to Israel by Michael Abramowitz in the Washington Post is stark.

Those close to Bush believe the trip made a very strong impression on the future president and would bond him to the future Israeli prime minister -- and, in the view of Bush's critics, would ultimately tilt the United States away from its role as a more independent broker of Middle East peace.

The Washington Post article portrays an easily convinced rube. The notion that Israel has legitimate security concerns is negated by the unchallenged comments of unspecified critics of the president.

Still it appears that the President is ignoring Shavit's advice and pushing for a Palestinian state ready or not. Still that hasn't exactly made him popular among the Palestinians.

Jericho, a relatively tranquil town of about 25,000 Palestinians north of the Dead Sea, was on the short list of West Bank Palestinian Authority destinations for the presidential visit, with Bethlehem and Ramallah, the site of the Palestinian authority headquarters. The governor of Jericho, Arif Jaabari, said that American security and diplomatic staff had been to his compound twice and checked the area where Yasir Arafat’s helicopter used to land.

But Jericho was not included in the president’s final schedule, causing little disappointment among residents. “He’s the worst, Bush,” said a 64-year-old man who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Muhammad. “He supports Israel and mocks and deceives us.”

What's remarkable is how much aid - financial and political - the United States has given the Palestinians during the Bush administration and how little these contributions have helped. They haven't made the Palestinians more receptive to Israel or even to fulfilling American conditions. Still the president pushes for them to have a state. And they keep demonizing him.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, george w bush.

Submitted 01/10/08

The new Watcher's Council nominations have been submitted.

My usual approach is to offer my synopses of the Watcher's Council nominations right away, but this week is different. Being a member of the council is not hazardous, but a former member undertook hazardous duty. The posthumous musings of former council member Maj Andrew olmsted are up. Additionally Obsidian Wings offers How to help remember Maj. Olmsted - by supporting the fund established for the children of the soldier who was killed along with him. The Watcher took a break from his administrative duties and offered his thoughts too.

The Cop on the Beat - The Glittering Eye considers America's role in the world.

Even if the cop on the beat is fat, lazy, sometimes unfair, and even occasionally corrupt, he’s better than turning the city over to the criminals.

But I think George W. Bush proves that there is a little time and room, at least. He confounded me; I expected him to grow into the job, but, for better or worse, he seems to be exactly what he was in 2000.

Read, Enjoy. Be Informed.

watcher's council.

Greenland to melt and drown Alexandria

Sort of reminds you of the interconnectedness of things, doesn't it? From Islam Online:

[...] Alexandria hosts the biggest harbor in Egypt. It is an important economic and trade hub and contributes nearly 40 percent of the country's industrial activities. According to projections from computer climate models, a large part of the city may be inundated due to climate change.

"Projections depend on lots of things," said Dr. Piers Forster, a Roberts Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. "You get a whole lot of different scenarios and you put them into your climate computer and it produces several models." [...]

"We can predict quite accurately how sea level will rise by thermal expansion – and this could be anywhere between 20 cm to 60 cm by 2100, or half this by 2050," explained Forster. "This won't be too bad, but some scientists are predicting that Greenland could melt very fast - and there is an extra 600 cm of sea-level sitting on top of Greenland."

This could easily lead to Alexandria – and several other coastal cities in Egypt – completely disappearing under water. "However, there are big arguments between the experts as to whether Greenland will melt fast." Some think it could happen in 50 years, while others say it may take up to a millennium. [...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Morning colors

The clouds picked up a really eerie shade of pink this morning.

I've gotten some nice morning shots before. And then there was a sunrise just recently.

Here's an explanation of "Red sky at night ..."

Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning. A red sunrise reflects the dust particles of a system that has just passed from the west. This indicates that a storm system may be moving to the east. If the morning sky is a deep fiery red, it means a high water content in the atmosphere. So, rain is on its way.

The clouds this morning were taken in the E/SE sky. Eventually an short storm blew through, though it appeared to be traveling to the west as the eastern sky cleared while the ominous blue clouds remained in the west. In fact I thought we had a chance for a rainbow with the sun in the east and the storm apparently passed to the west. But none appeared.

weather.

Crossdressing clifford

My six year old decided to dress Clifford up.

In a skirt and blouse.

Who knew?

Maybe he found Emily Elizabeth's clothes.

Maybe it's a John Ritter thing.

Crossdressedposted on Yourish.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Polls

With apologies to Mark Twain, when US foreign policy in Israel is dictated not by common sense but by opinion polls, then it behooves the US to do their homework. Condoleeza Rice has consistently claimed that both Israeli and Palestinian Arab public opinion back up whatever US policy De Jure she is pushing that day.

It may be that the election of Hamas was due in part to the US believing polls indicating that Fatah was going to win big--particularly the polls of one particular person:

The problem with [Khalil] Shikaki lies in another realm altogether: his polls of Palestinian opinion. Shikaki runs something called the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which gets money from foreign governments and foundations to conduct opinion surveys. They've earned Shikaki the moniker of "respected pollster," and he's always running off to Washington or a European capital to present his findings.

Shikaki conducted three crucial polls that affected perceptions in Washington, in the early parts of June, September and December 2005. They showed Fatah well ahead of Hamas, by a comfortable and growing margin:

June 2005: "Findings show that the level of participation in the next legislative elections will be 77% and the outcome of those elections will be as follows: 44% for Fateh, 33% for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, 3% for the left, and 8% for independent lists. 12% are undecided."

September 2005: "Findings show that 74% of the Palestinians will participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections in January 2006. Voting intentions among the likely participants indicate an increase of Fateh’s support from 44% last June to 47% in this poll and a drop in Hamas’ support from 33% to 30% during the same period. 11% will vote for other factions and groups and 11% remain undecided."

December 2005: "If elections are held today, findings show that 78% of the Palestinians would participate (compared to 74% last September). Among those intending to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections, 50% will vote for Fateh, 32% for Hamas, 9% for other factions and groups including independents, and 9% remain undecided."

With each new Shikaki poll, U.S. policymakers grew more lax when it came to setting conditions for Hamas participation. Robert Satloff and Dore Gold both sharply criticized the U.S. drift that allowed entry of a gun-toting, terrorist-talking Hamas into the electoral arena. They were disregarded because of certainty at the State Department and the White House that Fatah would win anyway, and that Abu Mazen would be in a stronger position to discipline Hamas after the victory. A lot of that certainty derived from Shikaki's polls.

Shikaki's polls have become a font of conventional wisdom. Whenever you hear someone say that a majority of Palestinians accept a two-state solution, or a majority of Palestinian refugees don't really want to return to Israel proper, or the Palestinians hate corruption more than Israel, it's a remote echo of one of Shikaki's polls. Complicating the picture is the fact that Shikaki isn't only a pollster. He's a political analyst, and even a political activist, which is why Americans for Peace Now have rallied to him in the Brandeis row. From Peace Now to the State Department, Shikaki is admired and feted because he tells peace processors what they want to hear--not just with emotion and analysis, but with numbers. [emphasis added]

This makes Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall look like amateurs.

D

Crossposted at Daled Amos

[Hat tip: Noah Pollack]

Technorati Tag: Khalil Shakaki and Polls.

No gaza = more terror

I generally like Max Boot. (In fact I even have relatives who like reading him.)

However his take on the withdrawal from Gaza, More on the decline of Terror is mistaken for a number of reasons. Boot writes:

I wrote in this Los Angeles Times op-ed in August 2005 that the withdrawal was the right move even though it would undoubtedly turn Gaza into a “Hamastan.” I argued that the evacuation would regain the initiative, strategically and morally, for the Jewish state, and that Israel would actually be more free to respond to terrorism from Gaza if it were no longer under “occupation” but the territory of a sovereign state.

But by withdrawing Israel allowed a terror infrastructure to develop. Last week we saw an escalation in the technology used against Israel. And as Backspin noted, the moral initiative was rather fleeting.

Hebrew University researchers studying thousands of news articles found that Israel's image in the MSM deteriorated after the Gaza disengagement.

Remember how the World Bank blamed Israel for closing Gaza and further hurting the Palestinian economy?

Boot writes further:

The growing number of rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel has led me recently to start wondering whether I was wrong. But the figures Hazony cites suggest that the rockets are much less deadly than the suicide bombers of old. Moreover, Israel is starting to respond more effectively to those provocations, with, for instance, targeted strikes on terrorist masterminds.

Until now, the rockets have been less deadly than suicide bombers. But given the porous border with Egypt the possibility of an escalation of rockets is a frightening possibility.

I also figure that another thing that has helped Israel is that in the wake of the 2006 war in the north, Israel's defense minister has been replaced with someone who, despite his limitations as a politician, knows how to operate an army.

If Israel still had a military presence in Gaza those targeted strikes would be easier and the infrastructure could have been disrupted. Rather the terror infrastructure has been able to grow due to a lack of an Israeli military presence.

Think back to the terror attacks of early 1996. What led to that escalation? Israeli withdrew from 6 Palestinians cities in late 1995 and when the PA took over it gave Hamas a free hand.

Even last year's war with Hezbollah could be attributed to the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon.

Seraphic Secret quotes Israeli Nobel Laureate Prof Aumann

“The expulsion of Jews from Gaza was stupid, venal, and barbaric. The expulsion of Jews from Gaza led directly to the war with Hizbullah, and now to the rain of missiles on S'derot.”

The decline in terror is due to factors other than the withdrawal from Gaza, which only encouraged terror.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, terrorism.

Wrong again

Contentions.Daniel Casse writes Another Loser: Frank Luntz. This has nothing to do with Luntz's plant.

Frank Luntz, the pollster who has been conducting focus groups on air after debates on Fox News, has just had the nerve to show up on Fox and declare that “turnout models are broken” by way of explaining how pollsters got the New Hampshire results so wrong.

Casse notes further that Luntz himself was projecting big wins by Sen. Obama and Gov. Romney.

My question is this: Are there serious flaws in polling methodology? Are news organizations somehow skewing their results to give us a better story? We saw a "Kerry comeback" in Iowa four years ago. Now we're seeing a "Hillary comeback" and "McCain surprise" in New Hampshire this year. (McCain seemed to be the pollster's favorite going in, though not by as much.)

I figured that campaigns' internal polls are probably more accurate than the public ones done by news organizations. But then Clinton had that staff shake-up yesterday.

Gary Langer of ABC writes:

In the end there may be no smoking gun. Those polls may have been accurate, but done in by a superior get-out-the-vote effort, or by very late deciders whose motivations may or may not ever be known. They may have been inaccurate because of bad modeling, compromised sampling, or simply an overabundance of enthusiasm for Obama on the heels of his Iowa victory that led his would-be supporters to overstate their propensity to turn out. (A function, perhaps, of youth.)

If the problem was the youth vote, Zogby overstated its importance in November 2004. But still I wonder, did any campaign get its internal polling correct? That's where the news organization should be looking.

UPDATE: Casse gets some points for prescience writing Hillary: not dead yet yesterday.

But don’t forget that she still has more money than anyone in the campaign and deep, embedded support in key states. If, after Tuesday, the race comes down to just Obama and Clinton, we might see a real contest of “new versus experience.”

I still believe that money (and organization) is the major factor. Remember Obama-Clinton and Romney-Giuliani will be the four left standing. If I'm right, you can start ignoring polls and start paying attention to FEC filings.

election 2008, john mccain, hillary clinton.

4 + 1 on president bush in the middle east

Bush's last year: The best, one hopes, is yet to come by Barry Rubin

The gap between the real Middle East and how it is perceived by all too many people in Washington and in the academic-journalistic elite is far too wide.

Three quick examples are useful to underline this point. First, the Annapolis summit was widely hailed throughout America and the West as a big success, even by Bush's biggest enemies. (That means, of course, it achieved the main goal, which was not primarily about the Middle East itself.) In the region, however, less than one-fifth of Israelis and Palestinians thought it had done any good. People in the region knew better.

Second, many in the United States have hailed what seems to be a de-escalation of U.S. pressure on Iran over the nuclear issue. The response by Gulf Arab states, though, has been to conclude America is weak and retreating, followed by their escalated efforts to make their own appeasement deal with Tehran.

Third, the same is true for Syria, where American efforts at conciliation have emboldened Damascus and demoralized the Lebanese moderates resisting Syrian domination.

One can only hope that Bush and his administration consider the effect of what it does on the Middle East.

The Bush Visit and Tensions in the U.S.-Israel Relationship by Gerald Steinberg

* The December "surprise" resulting from the publication of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate disrupted fifteen years of Israeli policy based on working with the international coalition to pressure Iran to drop its nuclear weapons program through sanctions and the threat of military action, and has reminded Israelis of the limits of American security guarantees and strategic cooperation.
* Within two weeks following publication of the NIE report, China signed a major contract on energy development and supply with Iran, and Russia quickly dispatched two shipments of nuclear fuel for the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Egypt moved to improve relations with Iran, and Saudi Arabia welcomed Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Mecca for the Haj.
* Prime Minister Olmert had explained the logic of the "Annapolis process" in terms of the coalition to stop Iran, but two weeks after Annapolis, with the release of the NIE report, this rationale has lost much of its relevance.
* Another source of stress comes from differences over renewed U.S. efforts to forge a quick agreement with the Palestinian Authority at a time of continued terrorism, the violent conflict between Fatah and Hamas, the failure to develop functioning Palestinian institutions, and the PA's ongoing incitement and rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish state.
* In addition, the overall decline of U.S. influence, as reflected in Iraq, the return of Russia as a world power, the chaos in Pakistan, and other developments, has highlighted the limits of Israeli reliance on American assistance, and the need for Israel to maintain an independent capability to act when necessary.

Bush of Arabia by Fouad Ajami

Suffice it for them that George W. Bush was at the helm of the dominant imperial power when the world of Islam and of the Arabs was in the wind, played upon by ruinous temptations, and when the regimes in the saddle were ducking for cover, and the broad middle classes in the Arab world were in the grip of historical denial of what their radical children had wrought. His was the gift of moral and political clarity.

In America and elsewhere, those given reprieve by that clarity, and single-mindedness, have been taking this protection while complaining all the same of his zeal and solitude. In his stoic acceptance of the burdens after 9/11, we were offered a reminder of how nations shelter behind leaders willing to take on great challenges.

We scoffed, in polite, jaded company when George W. Bush spoke of the "axis of evil" several years back. The people he now journeys amidst didn't: It is precisely through those categories of good and evil that they describe their world, and their condition. Mr. Bush could not redeem the modern culture of the Arabs, and of Islam, but he held the line when it truly mattered. He gave them a chance to reclaim their world from zealots and enemies of order who would have otherwise run away with it.

Mr. Bush in the Middle East - the Washington Post

The patrol boat incident was part of a confusing mix of signals from Iran, where Mr. Ahmadinejad's hard-line position may be weakening even as Iranian-sponsored violence against American forces in Iraq has diminished. Mr. Bush's confrontational regional strategy may make it difficult to exploit these conditions. That's one reason the president would be better off to return to the themes of Middle East policy he pursued before last year: the stabilization of Iraq and the promotion of democratic reforms. The focus on Iran and the peace process has stripped energy and attention from these causes; Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been allowed to continue boycotting the Iraqi government and jailing their own proponents of liberalization. Iraq's own political leaders still dither on desperately needed political accords. There is speculation that Mr. Bush will make a surprise stop in Baghdad; whether or not he does, the stabilization of Iraq should be his top Middle East priority during his last year in office.

These four views on the President's trip to the Middle East highlight certain differences in perception but seem to have a common theme: The President was correct to emphasize democratization and would be stronger if he continued his policy of confronting Islamic extremism.

Steinberg's analysis doesn't quite say that, but laments its absence especially as evidenced by the NIE that played down the Iranian threat.

Steinberg's essay is echoed in a recent report from the Washington Post.

But some Arabs suspect the Bush administration may decide it has to work with Iran to preserve security gains in Iraq. Khalid al-Dakheel, a political scientist at King Saud University in Riyadh, said "some people here think, or have the jitters, that this administration or the next administration . . . might find themselves in a position to reconcile themselves with the Iranians."

While there's a lot of tendentiousness in the article, casting President Bush in the worst possible light, what comes out is concern among the Arab world that the United States isn't committed to facing down the Iranians.

Ajami credits the president with changing the nature of the Arab/Islamic world. Perhaps he overstates the case with the recent accommodation seen among Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Hamas and Iran. Still he correctly credits the president for trying to show that the Israeli-Palestinian is not the central issue in the Middle East as the Arab world claims. (Or at least he did until now.)

Rubin seems consistent with Ajami, at least in terms of what President Bush needs to do. However Rubin isn't nearly as positive about the current situation as Ajami.

Even the Washington Post which is congenitally condemned to bring up "illegal settlements" at every turn concedes that stabilizing Iraq is a more important goal than Arab-Israeli peace.

While these others have analyzed President Bush's actions, Fiery Spirited Zionist as analyzed his words and found them wanting. It's well worth reading.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel, president bush, middle east.

6% martin

It must be disconcerting for a politician to look at his numbers and discover that he's even less popular than President Bush. WJZ reports O'Malley Has Lower Approval Rating Than Pres. Bush

A Washington Times Rasmussen poll gives President Bush a 36 percent approval rating. O'Malley got a 33 percent approval rating.

"Martin O'Malley is going to be very popular. He had a great year as governor, very progressive year. He moved forward on education, healthcare and the environment...His approval ratings are going to go nowhere but up," said Senate President Mike Miller.

In the poll, six percent of participants ranked the governor's performance as excellent, 27 percent good, 27 percent fair, 37 percent poor and 4 percent not sure.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski is the voice of reason.

"I think what people are responding to is that their own pocketbook is shrinking and they are frustrated with anyone they think may have shrunk it more," said Barbara Mikulski, U.S. Senate.

That makes sense. The governor and his rubber stamp legislature convened a special session in November to close the state's budget shortfall. In short order they passed a tax increase to close the gap that, among other things, raised the sales tax and arbitrarily extended it to services too.

Worse, the very first order of business was to increase spending on health care for the poor. The budget shortfall was the emergency that necessitated the session, so raising spending as the first order of business was a poor way of demonstrating that the budget crisis was that severe. I can see why Marylanders might think that the governor and legislature were not looking out for their economic interests. (The so-called structural deficit amounted to less than 6% of Maryland's $30 billion budget. I bet enough legislators have enough pet projects that could have been cut, if they'd had the will.)

(Courtesy of Pillage Idiot)

Remarkably the results of this poll don't appear to have made it into the Baltimore Sun, however one of the paper's blogs mentions the poll. Maybe it's because the poll was commissioned by a different newspaper.

It's too early and too close to the special session to read too much into the polls but Gov. Ehrlich consistently polled with over 50% approval ratings.

martin o'malley, maryland.

Anne Frank: The Musical?

From The New York Times:

Anne Frank Musical to Open in Madrid

A musical based on “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank is to open next month at the Calderon Theater in Madrid. Its star will be Isabella Castillo, 13, whose mother fled with her from Cuba to Belize, where they lived in hiding before immigrating to Miami, The Guardian of London reported. The newspaper said the production, developed by Rafael Alvero, has been given the support of the Anne Frank Foundation, which holds the rights to the diary. It is adapted from the account written while Anne and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Jan Erik Dubbelman, who heads the international department of the foundation, said: “This production respects the message of tolerance, within the tragedy, that we want to keep alive. Being in Spanish, it can also help to take the message of Anne Frank to Latin America.”

Back in 1985, Frank Rich wrote an unfavorable review for The New York Times of the first attempt at a musical about Anne Frank, "Yours, Anne":

If there is any story that does not call for such prissy abstraction, stylization and symbols it is Anne Frank's. Her diary was truth, not fiction; her temporary haven in Amsterdam was in a real building, not in an interior decorator's imagination; her murder by the Nazis at Bergen-Belsen was a real murder, not a cue (as staged here) for a symbolic stage effect. If the heroism and tragedy of Anne Frank are to speak loudly to new generations, as they must, her words cannot be muffled and diminished by the archpoetic conceits and pious generalizations of "theater" like "Yours, Anne."

At least, better than when The Diary of Anne Frank was published in North Korea

North Korea is using the Diary of Anne Frank, the moving account of the Amsterdam schoolgirl forced into hiding from the Nazis for two years, to brainwash schoolchildren into believing that President George W Bush is as evil as Hitler.

Secondary schools throughout the Stalinist state are teaching pupils that the experience of their country - which is almost completely cut off from the outside world - is directly comparable to that of the Franks family during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Schools use the diaries to teach pupils about Hitler, and then teach that America is the modern equivalent of the Nazis.

The extraordinary use of a book which, after the Bible, has sold more copies worldwide than any other work of non-fiction, emerged from a Dutch television company's visit to the reclusive state to meet pupils studying the diaries.

It was with great pleasure that the AFF supported plans to publish a North Korean edition of the Diary. It is a matter of considerable regret that there is still no Arabic edition of the Diary.

Perhaps it is just better to let Anne Frank speak for herself.

D

Crossposted at Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Anne Frank.

Palestinian Chronicles backs Ron Paul

Put on your tin-foil keffiyeh:

[...] Ron Paul is the only candidate to openly question support to Israel. US support of Israel was and is one of the main reasons behind the 911 attacks and subsequent “jihad” against American Imperialism and Missionary Democracy, attacks not against American’s or our way of life, but war waged against failed foreign policy which is contrary to America’s core ideals; (2) an Israeli, US endorsed policy that supports war crimes, murder of innocent children and political opponents, land theft, the collective punishment of a people while violating US and International law, ignoring clear UN mandates such as UN Resolution 242.(3) There is no conflict between Israel and Palestine, that was resolved by UN 242. All are usurpations of the Constitution, yet only Ron Paul dares to speak out.

Only Ron Paul has clearly defined “terrorism.” No candidate has done this. Terrorist acts are a war tactic, not insane actions of “extremists.” There is no hate of our way of life, America is not indiscriminately attacked by extremists, we are attacked because of our governments failed foreign policy decisions that do not reflect American ideals. Israel’s domination of American Middle Eastern Foreign Policy must end, Ron Paul is the hope for that tomorrow that will come.

Israeli oppression of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq must end, but out of the myriad of web sites and organizations, even among governments that oppose such actions, there is no centralized effort to effectuate political change which creates strategic results. Though unintentional, this incongruence becomes political apathy, the only benefactor being Zionism. Patriots against tyranny must become active politically in America’s never ending saga against tyranny and usurpations of its constitution.

The American ideal of government will always be on the defense against usurpations, even internally; “We The People” was a revolution that is alive once again today, through “The Ron Paul Revolution.” The Palestinian 50 year struggle against occupation will possibly become a continued distant long shot unless the groups that call for an end to this saga unite, overcome political apathy, quell infighting and begin positive involvement in this 2008 Presidential Election. Collectively they must support the only viable solution to this travesty, America’s long shot, Ron Paul.

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Insecure security

I wondered how secure the President's security detail felt with the Palestinain police and who knows how many other "security" organizations in charge of making Ramallah safe. (Shira bat Sarah wondered too.)

Well apparently, the Secret Service felt that the Palestinians needed some help.

US snipers will take up positions on rooftops and local traffic will be barred from some downtown districts as part of unprecedented security precautions during US President George W. Bush's visit this week, Palestinian security officials said Tuesday.

Bush is expected to travel to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Ramallah headquarters, known in Arabic as the muqaata, by helicopter on Thursday.

Apparently not even a number of show arrests alleviated American anxiety over the state of Palestinian security.

Nine top Fatah gunmen from Nablus on Tuesday surrendered their weapons to the Palestinian Authority security forces out of fear of being targeted by Israel.

And it is the PA security forces that Israel will once again be asked to trust its own security to, even though they can't even secure a single building in advance of the President's visit.

Crossposted on Yourish.

george w. bush, israel, palestinian authority.

Well intentioned damage

At the end of 1998, then-President Clinton visited Gaza to oversee the fictional revocation of the clauses in the Palestinian Charter that call for the destruction of Israel. It's not surprising that on the eve of President Bush's to the Middle East some people recall his predecessor's trip a little more than nine years ago.

Clinton, who felt (and probably still feels) everyone's pain and he didn't miss an opportunity when he visited the Middle East to commiserate. The International Herald Tribune recounts:

Nihad Zakout was 11 when she met Clinton in 1998. She was one of four Palestinian youngsters with fathers in Israeli jails who had been selected to deliver a plea to the U.S. leader to seek the release of Palestinian prisoners, one of the most emotionally charged issues in the conflict.

Today, Zakout is a cynical 20-year-old, deeply disappointed in the U.S. as her father remains locked up... She says she has few expectations of Bush.

"There is nothing he can do," she said.

A day after meeting Zakout and the other Palestinians, Clinton also met with young Israelis whose fathers had been killed by Palestinians.

Clinton said at the time that both groups of children brought tears to his eyes, and that "we have to find a way for both sets of children to get their lives back and to go forward."

I edited something out of the quoted article. The full sentence should read "Today, Zakout is a cynical 20-year-old, deeply disappointed in the U.S. as her father remains locked up for killing an Israeli."

It's bad enough that the reporters consider the jailing of convicted murderers as an "emotionally charged issue." How is it for the other side? If Zakout's father was released, how would the relatives of his victim feel? That's not explored.

But the then-president of the United States equated a child of a murderer with the children of murder victims! "Get their lives back?" Again, what about the victim of Zakout's father? Would he ever get his life back?

At the Spine Martin Peretz (or, if Bloglines is correct, James Kirchik) writes

And the fact is that most Israelis knew Bill Clinton as a lover -- but as an unfaithful lover. They go back in memory to the fall of 2000 when Clinton steamrolled Ehud Barak into concessions that were unwise and perilous but nonetheless did not entice Arafat into a deal but into starting the Second Intifada. Since I've been here I've spoken with three top security veterans who actually were terrified that, if Hillary were president, she'd send her husband as a mediator in the Israel-Palestinian conflict where, at best, he'd do well-intentioned damage.

When, in the name of peace, you conflate the murderers with their victims, there is no surer way to inflict well intentioned damage.

Crossposted at Yourish.

israel, terrorism, bill clinton.

Pssst, buddy want a tip.

Israel's economic classification is due to change this year and is expected to be included as a developed market rather than an emerging market.

Times Online writes:

"British investors have tended to ignore Israel, but its stock market will be thrust into the limelight this year when it is promoted from emerging to developed market status." This is referring to the fact that Israel is up for OECD membership, and if accepted -- and it looks like it will happen -- Israel will join the prestigious organization and be considered a "developed country."

Some pundits have argued that admission into the OECD will actually hurt Israeli stocks as Israel is about 2% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, and its share in the global investment pie would fall to 0.2% if Israel is admitted to the developed markets index. What they neglect to mention is that there is a heck of a lot more money under management in developed markets than in emerging markets. So Israel's weighting may drop, but the amount of money available to invest will be substantially more.

Despite the conflict Israel's economy continues to boom.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel.

An o-turn

The hiring of Andy MacPhail last year brought hope to Orioles' fans that the end of the team's 10 year drought may soon be over. Of course any turnaround effected by MacPhail will be complicated by the fact that the Orioles play in the same division as two of the best run and richest franchises.

Making matters worse is that any turnaround will almost certainly necessitate the Orioles getting worse (relative to the competition) before they get better as the Rays seem ready to improve.

Matters were complicated by the fact that even as the Rays were gradually moving in the right direction the Orioles were moving in the wrong one.

Since then we've run through some real crackerjack front office types, from the absurd Syd Thrift to the nice-but-overmatched Mike Flanagan, who has been paired up with Jim Beattie and Jim Duquette. Too many cooks, maybe. Or maybe it was that all the cooks weren't any good to begin with. I mean, we hired the guy that traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano, you know? Then we wound up with Zambrano on our team this year.

But I'm getting sidetracked now by silly Jim Duquette decisions. MacPhail has said all the right things so far, and done a few of them, too. Like getting rid of Victor freakin' Zambrano, and recognizing that Tejada had to be dealt, and at least paying lip service to offers for Bedard and Roberts.

(And the Orioles made matters worse by taking some of the sting out of the Kazmir deal for the Mets by repeating the error and trading the Mets John Maine for Kris Benson!)

Now certain things seem to be getting better though. For one thing, John Sickels believes

This system is underrated. While some of the more-heralded guys like Brandon Snyder look overrated to me by other analysts, there is some growing depth here, and several of the Grade C+/C guys have the potential to move beyond those grades.

The Orioles still have work to do getting their farm system to the level of the Yankees, Red Sox, or Devil Rays. But they are making progress.

And it appears that now the Mariners are showing increased interest in Erik Bedard according to Ken Rosenthal.

The Mariners are continuing their aggressive pursuit of Bedard, major-league sources say, and there are growing indications that the teams could be moving closer to a deal.

The Reds also remain interested in Bedard, but the Mariners are willing to trade their top outfield prospect, Adam Jones, while the Reds will not part with their best minor-league outfielder, Jay Bruce.

Maybe waiting to deal wasn't so much a matter of indecision but carefully biding time.

The A's strong returns for right-hander Dan Haren and outfielder Nick Swisher in recent trades seemingly has increased the Orioles' leverage. The addition of Bedard, meanwhile, would give the Mariners a potentially dynamic rotation to compete with the Angels in the American League West.

Getting off of the O's for the end, this is a fascinating observation. We usually read about how the earlier free agent signings "set the market" for later players of similar ability. It never occurred to me that the same market principle could work for teams making trades.

This is reflective of two trends in baseball. The first (more basic) trend is the greater attention being paid to talent and its worth to a team. (This is likely bad news for the kinds of players that the Orioles have acquired recently who were valued more for their "veteran leadership" than their on field talent.) And the other related trend is the increased visibility of the GM. Since judging, acquiring and developing talent is becoming more important, the GM's role (and the organization he puts together) has become more important too.

Crossposted at OTB Sports.

baltimore orioles, baseball.

Decay Deficit in Deutschland

As a current Der Spiegal article explains, the deceased in Germany have been overstaying their welcome. Germany evidently likes to reuse those graveyards, but the dearly departed are refusing to cooperate. I doubt they'll be able to hold out long against the modern technological tools wielded by the living:

[...] Corpses are no longer decaying in many German cemeteries. Instead, the deceased become waxen, an uncanny process that has become so rampant it can no longer be ignored.[...]

A high moisture content in the subsoil combined with low temperatures and a lack of oxygen are the main culprits. These conditions transform the soft tissue of many bodies not into humus, but rather "a gray-white, paste-like, soft mass," says soil expert Rainer Horn from the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany.

As time passes, the remains of the departed coagulate to form "a hard, durable substance." When knocked with a spade, the wax-like bodies sound hollow.

This "grave wax" buildup has disturbed the natural cycle of decay -- and created a horror scenario for burial authorities. When bodies don't decompose, their graves can't be reused -- a common practice in Germany. Contrary to many other countries, where final resting places are traditionally maintained in perpetuity, Germany recycles cemetery plots after a period of 15 to 25 years. Experience has shown that the earthly remains of the deceased rot away almost entirely in this amount of time, but only under favorable soil conditions.

Many German cemeteries today have far from ideal conditions. To make matters worse, the problem appears to be a homemade one: "Huge blunders committed over the past few decades" are to blame, says engineer Heinrich Kettler, who specializes in reconditioning soils that have become unsuitable for decomposition. [...]

This widespread problem has given rise to an entire industry that aims to save the day with new methods of rot. The latest innovation on this morbid market is the Swiss-engineered Linder reconditioning system -- a severe method that involves deep incursions into cemeteries. After excavating the unusable soil, Linder fills the area with a "custom mixture of topsoil, woodchips and gravel." Finishing touches to the burial place include a drainage system with additional filter and seepage layers. [...]

The city of Cologne has ordered a total of 5,000 concrete vaulted chambers and the nearby town of Herne has purchased 3,000. Many wealthy private individuals order these sarcophagi, made of pre-fab components, as a final resting place. [Salesman Bernhard] Ufer delivered three of them recently to Kürten in the Rhineland for relatives of the late composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

These barren chambers are meant to offer the rot-friendly atmosphere that graveyard soils can no longer provide . . .

Some manufacturers have fine-tuned their product and installed filters in the concrete crypts. Now the funeral trade has pinned its hopes on another Swiss invention called "Rapid Rot," a fungal extract designed to accelerate the decomposition of wooden coffins.[...]

Crossposted on Judeopundit

Are Democratic Candidates Afraid To Mention 'Islamic Terrorism'?

That is the impression Investor's Business Daily seems to get from Saturday's debates:

We scanned the transcripts of Saturday's debates hosted by ABC News and tallied up the references to Islamic terrorism. The rhetorical divide between Democrats and Republicans on that score alone — ignoring the yawning gaps in policy — is stunning.

None of the four Democrat presidential candidates — despite running for an office that demands they lead the ongoing global war against Islamic extremists — could bring himself or herself to define the enemy we face as Islamic.

Their combined references to "Islam" or "Islamic" totaled zero — even though moderator Charles Gibson prompted them with a question about "Islamic radicals" threatening the U.S. with nuclear terrorism.

But Democrats refused to go there. Out of respect for their constituency, there was a complete blackout regarding Islamic jihad.

Instead, Hillary Clinton defined the enemy generically as "stateless terrorists," while Barack Hussein Obama complained about the "politics of fear" that he thinks accurately defining the enemy has created.

John Edwards, meanwhile, continued to wage his own personal jihad against a phantom enemy of "irresponsible" corporations — from pharmaceutical and insurance companies to oil giants and multinational corporations.

Republicans, on the other hand, called the enemy by its proper name.

The candidates referred to terrorists and terrorism as "Islamic," while also citing radical "Islam" as the problem, no less than 22 times.

If the surge in Iraq was not successful and the war was a bigger issue--would these same Democratic candidates then be talking about Islamic terrorists? Probably not, since acknowledging their existence would mitigate against a pullout.

So what are Democrats afraid of?
Acknowledging that despite errors in conducting the war, Bush was right??

And if they are afraid of talking about it, how can they be expected to deal with it?

D

Crossposted at Daled Amos

Technorati Tag: Democrats and Republicans.

Think tanks

Following on Backspin's recent listing of the 18 Most Asked About Israeli Sites let's go over some of the best pro-Israel think tanks out there. (Before I get to the think tanks, here's one more Israeli government site that's probably worth being familiar with: MASHAV, where you can learn about the good works Israel does for countries who routinely condemn Israel in the UN.)

Part of the impetus for listing the think tanks is the recent re-design of GLORIA. GLORIA or Global Research in International Affairs (Center) is run by Prof. Barry Rubin and is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya. Also affilated with the IDC is the ICT or the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

I highly recommend the GLORIA site for up-to-the-minute papers on current topics concering the Middle East. I am not as familiar with the ICT website, but I've occasionally found good material there as well.

There is also the The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which is affiliated with Tel Aviv University. Its output appears to be very much within the mainstream of Israel's political world.

The Saban Center looks like it produces pretty standard leftist research. Like the INSS it appears to have strong ties to newsmakers, though not geared as exclusively to Israel as the INSS.

Another think tank that I rely on is the Jerusalem Council for Public Affairs. Run by Dr. Dore Gold, a former advisor to PM Netanyahu, it produces papers by academic and military experts. It also runs Daily Alert a daily report with "clippings" from major news stories regarding Israel. Daily Alert is available by e-mail.

The Middle East Forum is run by Daniel Pipes and features a number of related organizations. It's experts are mostly academic and they produce essay for the Middle East Quarterly as well as op-eds for the media. A number of its offerings - including weekly columsn by Dr. Pipes - are available via e-mail.

The one final think tank that I'll mention is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It's run by Robert Satloff and its most famous member is Dennis Ross, advisor to presidents. It features a wide array of experts and its members often contribute op-eds or magazine length essays.

It's probably unfair to refer to these thank-tanks as pro-Israel, although most of them do produce work is considered pro-Israel. They do, however, focus on the Middle East. They all produce work that can be useful in supporting your work.

Crossposted on Yourish.

israel.

If .. you must 01/07/08

I really should do this regularly

If you haven't read Fun O'Malley Factoid at Maryland Conservatarian; you must.
For a guy who's supposedly so politically in tune, his choices have been bewildering. At least this time his choice was defensible.
If you haven't read Crablaw's Games Club of Maryland; you must.
If you haven't