November 30, 2008
Council speak 12/01/08
The council has spoken.
This week's winning entry was The Colossus of Rhodey's.Hube's Culture of Whine (a rant) on the adventures of teaching honors. The two runners-up were Joshuapundit's - Zero Hour...Iran Now Has Material For First Nuclear Bomb and
The Provocateur's Some Perspective on PNC, Fraud, and the Bailout.
On the non-council side the winning entry was # Serendituous Altruism - American troops in Afghanistan through the eyes of a French OMLT infantryman, which was (appropriately) nominated twice. The three runners up, included my nominee, Israelly Cool's The despicable Lauren Booth
, along with National Review Online's - Party of Privilege
and a warning from Arthur Laffer, at The Daily Beast called No Stimulus From Government Spending.
Congratulations to all the winners!
watcher's councilShiny happy dhimmi - #3
Blogs to read while watching the crocodiles eat.*
1) As a root cause, "institutional discrimination", doesn't hold much water. Especially, when it was clear that the terrorists sought out the Chabad house. Two and an orphan.
2) We're all Chabadniks now. AM Rosenthal observed something similar 15 years ago.
3) Singing "Kumbayah" should solve terror. Or by ignoring it here and in Israel. Or just don't use the "t-word." Are the French coming around? Maybe if we actually threatened the bad guys it would dissuade them from violence. Or is that too sensible? Did the President-elect get the message? Tough talk from actors. Not in Hollywood though.
4) I guess the good news is that Iran's wasting its money. I'm sure she'd do their bidding for free.
5) Remember how the Saudis wanted to outlaw anything that might be regarded as Islamophobia? Maybe it's not a(n irrational) phobia. "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." You don't say. Sometimes the (misplaced) blame isn't spread so widely. Maybe the blame lies with the demonizers of the decent.
6) Thank Islam. Excellent timing.
7) If you don't shoot to kill the terrorists, make sure the terrorists aren't shooting and killing their hostages.
8) Some good news from the subcontinent.
9) Google Jihadi tools. Learning from Hamas. But they won't offend Jihadis.
* Winston Churchill
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last"
Targeting jews
I found this report from Arutz-7 heart breaking.
According to ZAKA emergency service, the body of the Rabbi's wife Rivka was found covered with a tallit (Jewish prayer shawl), which her husband had managed to cover her with.
Presumably Rabbi Holzberg knew he was threatened, and possibly that his time was short, but when he saw his murdered wife, he accorded her the dignity of covering her body. I can't imagine what he was thinking or feeling.
Israel Matzav observes that the terrorists clearly sought out the Chabad house. They intended to kill Jews.
(via memeorandum)
Treppenwitz who was in Mumbai just last week makes a similar observation. Plus read his two other posts on the outrage.
Aside from the fact that it is pretty clear that the terrorists sought out the Jews, according to this, they it accorded them "special" treatment.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.Corroborating the doctors' claims about torture was the information that the Intelligence Bureau had about the terror plan. "During his interrogation, Ajmal Kamal said they were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis," an IB source said.
(via Instapundit, memeorandum)
I'm assuming that Israeli and Jew are used interchangeably in this context.
CAIR hasn't had the opportunity to condemn this Islamic terror in Mumbai yet, but they did helpfully note that the Holy Land Foundation verdict was based on "fear mongering." So it took CAIR one day to condemn a legal outcome they disagreed with, but after four days they are silent about barbaric terror committed by their co-religionists. How does that fit in with CAIR's vaunted "anti-terrorism campaigns?"
I think that seeking out people not of your faith and gunning them down generates a lot more fear than carefully laying out a case showing the relationship between fundraisers and terror groups. Who really is fear mongering? The U.S. government or the terrorists that CAIR is, so far, (and tellingly) quiet about?
Crossposted on Yourish.
Evaluating How India's Dealt With The Terrorists In Mumbai--Errors Were Made (2 Updates)
On Thursday, Israel was offering assistance to India for combating the terrorists in Mumabai. Apparently, the help needed would have been minimal:The Israeli officials said that Indian counter-terrorist forces were well trained but failed to gather sufficient intelligence before engaging the terrorists.Fox News seems to back up the assessment that there was an intelligence failure:
While terrorism experts say Indian special forces performed with remarkable bravery and professionalism in their battle with the terrorists, they believe the attacks should -- and could -- have been thwarted by better intelligence.But there are also questions being raised on the training of the anti-terrorist unites and how they implemented the rescue:
From Let's Put DA:
Commandos are landing on the Nariman Building. They seem to be tip-toeing down. They are communicating to each other through hand signals. Secrecy & surprise are paramount. And NDTV is showing this live!!! With informative commentary on how many commandos have landed and so on. Perhaps NDTV's research has shown that terrorists only watch cartoon network during missions.From The Mumbai Mirror:
Sources said though the plane carrying NSG Commandos was ready by midnight, it could not take off due to the delayed arrival of a VIP, who wanted to accompany them to Mumbai, at the Delhi airport. Worse, the Commandos had to wait for a vehicle at the Mumbai airport until morning.From The Belfast Telegraph:
But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."The police and military were faced with an enormously challenging and dangerous situation, but they better do better next time--because there will be a next time.
UPDATE: Check out Neo-Neocon, who puts the refusal of the Mumbai police to shoot in context:
The problem in the Mumbai station could have been the presence of the crowd of innocents. The police may have been waiting for an opportunity to get off a clear and unobstructed shot, one with little likelihood of striking an unarmed traveler instead of a terrorist. Of course, when the terrorist in question is engaged in calmly murdering scores of people in the crowded station, it seems obvious that the policemen should have taken that chance. Even if a police bullet killed an innocent bystander, the action would end up saving far more people than it killed.Neo-Neocon backs this up, quoting from today's New York Times:
On Saturday afternoon, a sharpshooter who had spent over 60 hours perched outside the Taj Hotel said neither he nor his partner had fired a shot because they were not sure how to distinguish the gunmen from ordinary civilians trapped inside the hotel.Read the whole thing.Similarly, a commando told a private Indian television station, CNN-IBN, that the gunmen seemed to be firing from so many different parts of the hotel that security forces did not quite know where to strike without inflicting civilian casualties. "There were so many people, and we wanted to avoid any civilian casualties," he said.
India's forces faced the same dilemma as the IDF--would Israel have acted differently?
UPDATE 2: Apparently it's hard to find good security. Mark Steyn relates this story:
Somali pirates hijacked a chemical tanker with dozens of Indian crew members Friday and a helicopter rescued three British security guards who had jumped into the sea, officials said...Steyn comments:
So the Indian and Bangladeshi crew are now the hostages of the Somali pirates. But the high-priced "anti-piracy" elite (albeit unarmed) security team from London immediately jumped into the water and swam away. What "security" did the owners of the MV Biscaglia get for their money?
[Hat tip: India Uncut]
by Daled Amos
Bad news for rocky
via memeorandum
Rocky the Flying Squirrel that is.
Rachel Tolman, a naturalist at Long Branch, smeared a big glop of peanut butter on one of the nature center's trees. She grabbed handfuls of store-bought hazelnuts and placed them atop boxes to attract the tiny, nocturnal flying squirrels that tend to mass in the oaks every winter. Within seconds, the squirrels dive-bombed in from nearby trees, legs outstretched like fist-size silvery-gray sky divers. "They're so much more willing to be seen this year," Tolman said. "It's because they're so hungry."Tolman was the first naturalist to notice that there were no acorns or hickory nuts this year. Each fall, starting in September, she takes daily walks through the forest to collect nuts and acorns to feed the flying squirrels and other animals at the center through the winter. This year, she found nothing. "I'm hoping this is just some weird anomaly," she said.
Hazelnuts gone and peanut butter licked clean, the still-hungry flying squirrels scampered high into the tree canopy and chirped angrily for more.
No acorns in northern Virginia. There aren't many oak trees in my neighborhood, so I don't know if this also is the case in Baltimore.
In other bad news for squirrels, I took this pictures on a friend's front lawn the other day.
That's a hawk, I think. I don't know how clear it is but it was holding something. A squirrel. Breakfast I guess.
November 28, 2008
A little less talk, a little more action
Remember the warnings of Hamas, diplomats and self-styled experts?
The wisest policy would be to refrain from any intervention and leave Hamas and the Palestinian people alone. If Hamas' failure is self-inflicted democracy will live on and the people of Palestine will, should they wish, choose another party at the next election. However, if Hamas is not given a chance to implement its programme of reform in Palestine and its failure is imposed by external players democracy in Palestine will be no more. There will probably be never a second chance for a peaceful political process. There will be another Intifadah.
From Hamas via NPR:
WESTERVELT: But senior Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef, interviewed in Gaza, warns that the Israeli and Western policy of trying to isolate Hamas will backfire.Mr. AHMED YOUSEF (Senior Political Leader, Hamas): If I pressure you in the core, now, you have to do something. And they're going to keep squeezing Gaza. I don't know what - I can't predict what's going to happen here.
Analysts say the goal of Israel's policy of isolating Gaza seems to be to pressure Gazans to turn against Hamas, which has led the area since it wrested control from the Palestinian Authority in June. Other observers warn that the pressure is likely to backfire, creating more volunteers for militant groups and stirring sympathy for Hamas.
While the court rejected arguments that Israel's border closings amounted to collective punishment, U.N. officials contend that the tactic is empowering extremists who argue that talks with Israel have produced nothing good for Gaza."It creates more misery and frustration that feeds into the extremists who say there is no other way but violence," said the U.N.'s Ging.
The opinion poll by An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus found secular Fatah would take 31.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections against 14.4% for the Islamists Hamas.The remainder of those who specified a choice were shared among smaller parties.
In a presidential election, 31.4% of respondents said they would vote for the Fatah candidate and 13.4% said they would vote for the Islamist.
A full 15.9% of respondents said they didn't know how they would vote in either presidential or parliamentary elections. A total 19.9% of respondents said they wouldn't vote in a presidential election and 19.4% said they stay away from parliamentary elections.
Maybe that's why Abbas is pushing for elections.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, intends to call presidential and parliamentary elections for April, an aide said Tuesday, apparently in an attempt to head off a constitutional crisis and a further challenge to his authority by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
I'm no fan of Fatah, either, but it appears that (at least on this level) Israel's policy has had the effect of reducing Hamas's popularity. Not that it will change anyone's mind. The folks who believe that the only way to treat an enemy is to engage in talks with them will not have their minds changed by evidence to the contrary. In a different context Noah Pollak observed back in May:
The extent to which Israel's military victory in the intifada is simply not acceptable for discussion in enlightened quarters is amazing as a matter of cultural psychology.
The idea that enemies can be defeated with words alone is a belief of many in the foreign policy establishment, the media and academia. It seems this is one more indication that the truth is not so simple or that is idea is simply wrong.
Crossposted on Yourish.
November 27, 2008
Terrorists In Mumbai Target Chabad House (Update: 5 hostages killed)
Five hostages have been killed by terrorists holed up inside Nariman House, a Jewish centre, in Colaba (Mumbai) even as National Security Guard commandos have secured major parts of the building.It is not clear who those 5 hostages were.
Note: In addition to Life of Rubin, Israellycool and The Yeshiva World are also updating the story.
The Financial Times reports:
For thousands of Jewish travellers visiting Mumbai each year - ranging from Orthodox business people to young Israeli backpackers - the five-year old Chabad House was an important port of call, offering services that ranged from Kosher meals to holiday services to the sympathetic ear of a young rabbi.
But on Wednesday night, the Chabad House was one of the carefully-selected targets of the devastating terror attacks that rocked Mumbai. An Israeli rabbi connected to Chabad House was among at least three people being held hostage by gunmen. According to Reuters a woman and a child were released and one of the gunmen was killed. However, at least four armed men remained in the building by mid afternoon on Thursday Mumbai time.
The choice of the Chabad House as a target, heightening suspicions about the attackers' potential international links, or influences.
India's own radical Muslims have traditionally focused their wrath on the dominant Hindu population and has never previously targetted India's tiny and diminishing indigenous Jewish community, which number just a few thousand.
The founders of the Chabad centre, Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg, a young Israeli who also holds US citizenship, and his wife Rifka, were part of the Chabad Lubovitch movement, which is dedicated to deepening religious practice and observation among Jews - both faithful and secular. [emphasis added]
I highlighted the names of Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife Rifka because they have been taken hostage by the terrorists. I received the following email from the Rabbi of the Chabad in Cyprus:
Dear friends,
As you are all aware of from the news, yesterday morning there was a huge scale terrorist attack in Mumbai India.
The terrorists have been holding hostages in three locations. The targets were 2 Hotels and the Niramar house which is the "CHABAD HOUSE" in Bombay that serves business people who come to India and all the Israeli backpackers.
At the current moment Rabbi Gabriel (who was my classmate in the school) and his wife Rivky are being held hostage. According to the housekeeper who was released from the building last night holding their two year old child in her hands both were not conscious but alive.
Please take a moment today to give charity, do a good deed and recite a prayer and psalms for the safe release of Gavriel Noach ben Fridah Bluma, his wife Rivkah bat Yehudit and all hostages whose names we don't know.
Rabbi Arie Zeev and Sheindel Raskin
Life of Rubin has been following the story closely and has some updates on the situation vis-a-vis the Chabad House there and Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife.
UPDATE: According to Reuters:
The Israeli rescue service Zaka also said that Rabbi Gabriel Hertzberg's wife, whose name they gave as Rivka, had been released along with his two-year-old child.
Apparently she and her son are "woman and a child" referred to in the Financial Times article above.
Flaunting it
Back in 1988, Commentary magazine had a symposium of intellectuals discussing Israel. One of the contributors, Edward Rothstein, observed that when he drove by Judea and Samaria he was amazed by the number of TV antennas shaped like the Eiffel tower, a sign that the Palestinians were not suffering nearly as much as advertised.
More recently (March, 2007) Shiloh Musings photographed quite a few mansions going up in the Palestinian areas north of Jerusalem.
That not all Palestinians live lives of quiet desperation, is a revelation to quite a few people, especially "journalists." Karin Laub, for one, finds it amazing that Munib Masri has built himself a mansion.
Masri's villa sits atop Mount Gerizim, considered sacred by the Samaritans, an ancient sect that practices an offshoot of Judaism and whose descendants live nearby.The mansion is an exact copy of a famous 16th-century villa, known as "La Rotonda," built by Italian architect Andrea Palladio. It is capped by a rotunda and has temple fronts with columns on four sides.
Construction began in 1998, with most material imported from France in 200 40-foot shipping containers. The work continued after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, and at the height of fighting, Israeli tanks took up positions on his property for a while, Masri said.
But as Barry Rubin points out, Masri's wealth wasn't just the result of hard work. As the article mentions, without elaborating, Masri held a telecommunications monopoly. Rubin explains.
We are not told from whence this monopoly came--from the PA. The word corruption is never mentioned. Such a lack of curiosity about the sources of his wealth does not accord with journalistic practices in covering other stories.Indeed, the story of the telecommunications monopoly is one of the best-known stories of corruption among Palestinians. How PA and Fatah factions competed over the loot, how Arafat intervened directly into the issue.
(Indeed the best off among the Palestinians have benefited from monopolies, see The Man who Swallowed Gaza and How Important is the PLO. Michael Kelly's Investing in Yasser Arafat illustrates a similar point.)
Rubin's point is that Laub shouldn't be focusing on the contrast between Mr. Masri and other Palestinians, or between his success and the "occupation." Rather Laub - and other reporters - should be focusing on how Masri obtained his wealth and how that illustrates the failure of the so-called "peace process." Dr. Rubin includes some points to consider:
--The Palestinian upper economic and political class cares nothing for its own people.
--In its fourteen-year rule of the West Bank, the PA has focused on looting it rather than on raising living standards and providing good government.
--Billions of dollars in international aid donations have disappeared, probably paying for a large portion of Masri's mansion.
--The PA's failures are blamed on Israel both by the PA itself, Western governments, and the international media.
--Palestinian suffering is not primarily due to Israel but to their own leaders.
--A lot of Israel's success has been due to Jews around the world making both investments and donations. Palestinians have not been forthcoming in supporting their own "state," a point well-known in Palestinian circles. (An exception here, of course, is in backing Hamas's terrorist campaign in recent years.)
--Anyone who keeps their eyes open will see other huge, albeit less impressive than this one, mansions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Even other members of Masri's own family have been criticized for their ostentation. While this estate may be the most extreme case, it is hardly an exception in that regard.
--Wealthy Palestinians do not give charity to help their poorer cousins. The PA doesn't even have a comprehensive tax system. Thus, the international community is left to support the Palestinians, and their oversized security apparatus.
--Violence sponsored by the PA was responsible for destroying the chance for their people to work in Israel, hitherto a major aid to their economy; the destruction of infrastructure; and the hesitation of investors, who are also put off by the PA's corruption and incompetence.
--Intransigence and the failure to reach a compromise solution stem from the Palestinian leadership, including Masri's buddy, Arafat.
This isn't the first time that Barry Rubin has criticized Karin Laub's tendentious reporting. It unfortunately likely won't be the last either.
Daled Amos has commented on a related issue, illegal building by Palestinians.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Submitted 11/27/08
The Watcher's Council submissions are UP!
Obama's Top NSA And CIA Picks: Harsh On Israel, Sympathetic To Iran And Hezbollah - Mere Rhetoric writes about two of President-elect Obama's likely choices for significant posts General James L.. Jones and John Brennan. Brennan, as it happens, withdrew from consideration because of objections from the Left. However Jones is currently charged with overseeing the Palestinian Authority's police force and reportedly has written a report critical of Israel's policy of checkpoints and general mistrust of the PA.
Culture of Whine (a rant) - The Colossus of Rhodey writes about the honor of teaching an honors class. Not everyone is there on merit and many of them have a sense of entitlement.
Official History - The Glittering Eye demonstrates his knowledge of China and how it exaggerates the homogeneity of its populace.
Zero Hour...Iran Now Has Material For First Nuclear Bomb - Joshuapundit writes that the fear isn't just that Iran has fissile material, but that it's leadership doesn't fear the consequences of its use.
Sunday Scan - Cheat-Seeking Missiles writes about global "warming," the President-elects "green car," the guy who would fly over a canyon, Chavez's comeuppance, and the turkeys who won't leave Gov. Palin alone and more.
Some Perspective on PNC, Fraud, and the Bailout - The Provocateur writes about how one bank's misbehavior has led it to disaster. He uses it to illustrate a larger point about the folly of the bailout and also examines the economic consequences of the bailout.
Halting the Schism - Bookworm Room argues that Republicans need a recovery plan, not a "circular firing squad" of assigning blame.
Well, duh - I wrote about the admission of Mark Halperin that the media was biased during the election. I notice that JoshuaPundit also has a post on the topic.
My non-council submission was Israelly Cool's The despicable Lauren Booth about Tony Blair's "activist" sister-in-law. Given that she's effectively an Iranian agent why don't the same folks who got so upset about Rahm Emanuel's father the least bit concerned that Booth's antics might somehow compromise Blair's impartiality.
Read. Enjoy. Be informed.
November 26, 2008
Killing logic
Murders in Maryland from 1980 - 2007 - 13799
Murderer's executed since the late 1970's - 5
Ratio of executions to murders: ~ 1:2760
Odds of winning a 4 way box in Maryland's Pick 4 lottery: 1:2500 (A $1 bet returns $1200.)
Maryland's General Assembly and Governor are once again abdicating their responsibility to govern and ceding their authority rather than address a controversial issue on their own. First it was with slots where they threw a constitutional amendment to the electorate on the topic. Now to give them cover for abolishing the death penalty, Governor O'Malley constituted a commission to deem capital punishment a bad idea. As expected this past week the commission came to the foreordained conclusion.
The Washington Post, of course, hailed this conclusion, not because it makes any sense, but because the conclusion is consistent with the editorial position of the Washington Post.
So among the arguments the Post makes in support of the commission's foreordained conclusion is:
The death penalty appears not to deter murders.
Well, duh. (I've been saying that a lot lately.)
My guess is that if the chances of being executed within two years of conviction were somewhat closer to 1 instead of the chances of winning $1200 from the lottery, we'd see a pretty clear deterrent effect. (I should point out that the chances of being executed are at all, not within two years.) In other words if the chances of being executed for murder were more certain and not for some remote time in the future, I don't think that statement would be accurate.
Here's another problem according to the Post:
Application of the death penalty varies widely by jurisdiction. As The Post's Lisa Rein reported, prosecutors in Baltimore County are about 13 times more likely to seek the death penalty than are those in the city of Baltimore and five times more likely than those in Montgomery County.
Pillage Idiot attacked the allegations of bias in Maryland's application of the death penalty three years ago in a post that is still worth reading. (Using statistics like the commission and the Post uses them, given that Steven Okun was Jewish, one could say that the death penalty has been disproportionately applied to Jews.)
The Post, incidentally, had an excellent article on the death penalty and its application in Maryland. Alas though the URL still exists, the text has disappeared. Anyway, I excerpted a bit of the text in an earlier post.
One of the most common criticisms of capital punishment in Maryland is that the system disproportionately selects black killers of white victims for the ultimate punishment. All but one of the 13 men on death row was sent there for killing white victims, though 80 percent of the state's homicide victims are black. And nine of the 13 condemned men are black, the highest proportion on any death row in the nation.Of the Baltimore County killers, six are black, three are white and all nine had white victims.
Assistant Baltimore County State's Attorney Ann Brobst called the racial statistics "sort of meaningless."
The vast majority of murders -- and black victims -- are found in Baltimore City and Prince George's County, where prosecutors "don't seek the death penalty," Brobst said. The most aggressive death-penalty jurisdiction, meanwhile, is largely white and has mostly white victims, she said.
Brobst said her office seeks the death penalty in every case where there's "competent, credible evidence" to produce a guilty verdict for first-degree murder and to prove certain aggravating circumstances.
"Sandy O'Connor is committed to using all the tools the legislature gives her, and that includes, at times, seeking the maximum penalty for crimes the law designates as death-penalty cases," Brobst said. "Beyond that, we don't look to the race of anybody."
Brobst noted that there have been about 850 murders in Baltimore County since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. Of those, about 100 fit the legal definition of a capital crime.
"We have had 11 men on death row," Brobst said, including two who have been executed. "I don't think we can be accused of overreaching."
Even granting miscarriages of justice like the Kurt Bloodsworth case who was eventually acquitted after a ten year ordeal, I believe that the sentence of death is usually carried out with great care.
I'd rather see the the state government confront the unacceptably high murder rate in Baltimore City then trying to address some ill defined injustice in order to assuage its liberal conscience. Even with the recent decline in the murder rate under Mayor Sheila Dixon, Baltimore's murder rate is still way too high. I realize that to some making sure that the state doesn't kill abhorrent criminals legally is a priority, but when too many non-criminals are being killed, such conscience clearing is misplaced.
Oyyyyy, Me Matey!
On August 21st, 2008, the MV Iran Deyant, 44,458 dead weight bulk carrier was heading towards the Suez Canal. As it was passing the Horn of Africa, about 80 miles southeast of al-Makalla in Yemen, the ship was surrounded by speedboats filled with members of a gang of Somalia pirates who grab suitable commercial ships and hold them,, and their cargos and crews for ransom. The captain was defenseless against the 40 pirates armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades blocking his passage. He had little choice other than to turn his ship over to them. What the pirates were not banking on, however, was that this was no ordinary ship.Granted that there is reason to be skeptical of the report, seeing that Israel--as well as the US--would have the perfect opportunity here to make an issue of Iran's actions in the region in general and their accumulation of nuclear material in particular, yet did not. The whole thing is odd.
...Within a period of three days, those pirates who had boarded the ship and opened the cargo container with its gritty sand-like contents, all developed strange health complications, to include serious skin burns and loss of hair. And within two weeks, sixteen of the pirates subsequently died, either on the ship or on shore.
...Although American intelligence and government sources are maintaining a strictly observed silence, the same does not apply to the Russians and so it is that we learn the real story of the MV Iran Deyanat. She was an enormous floating dirty bomb, intended to detonate after exiting the Suez Canal at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and in proximity to the coastal cities of Israel. The entire cargo of radioactive sand, obtained by Iran from China (the latter buys desperately needed oil from the former) and sealed in containers which, when the charges on the ship are set off after the crew took to the boats, will be blasted high into the air where prevailing winds will push the highly dangerous and radioactive cloud ashore.
Not only do columnists and analysts openly accuse Israel of sponsoring acts of piracy that multiply off Somali waters, but they also do not hide their fears of an internationalization of security in the Red Sea, where Israel plays a decisive role.These "columnists and analysts" are not identified. Pity. Apparently, according to the article, Israelis are not the actual pirates--merely their sponsors. This is not to say that there have never been Jewish pirates. There were Jews who took up piracy in the 15th century, to make a better life for those Jews who were expelled from Spain or to take revenge for the Inquisition.
"What is happening in the Horn of Africa is not a simple case of piracy. These acts of piracy raise various questions about the capabilities and equipment of simple outlaws who are seeking ransoms," wrote Tuesday (November 25) Nawaf Al-Meshal Sabhan in the Saudi daily Al-Iqtissadia.
"These acts triggered statements on the internationalization of the Red Sea, in which the enemy state of Israel would be a crucial element," he adds.
The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib ("Land of Sunset"), denoting Islam's territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed's armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.
The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America's struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.
...The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.
The press mess, mcgirk quirk and the nissenbaum shuffle
I really could do without the sanctimony. Dion Nissenbaum writes about Israel's closure of the Gaza Strip to reporters.
This week, after filing a letter of protest, the Foreign Press Association (of which Mc Clatchy Newspapers is a par t) took the matter to Israel's Supreme Court and asked the judges t o overturn the ban."This blackout of the Gaza Strip is hurting Israel's image in the eyes of the world and undermines its standing as the only democracy in the Middle East," the FPA argues in the petition. "The defendants policies, in addition to being illegal and insufferable, hurt Israel and endanger its political nature. To put it plainly, one bad decision is worse than ten potential stories that may not be supportive."
I understand that there are reasons for Israel to open Gaza to reporters, but this false concern for Israel's image from a press association strikes me as utter hypocrisy. Nissenbaum's protests are particularly irksome. If I were convinced of his good faith as a reporter, maybe I'd feel differently, but Nissenbaum himself enjoyed an afternoon in the company of an unrepentant killer - and even apologized for that killer and insists - despite an investigation and readily available evidence to the contrary - that the Israeli army deliberately targeted a reporter.
Or consider Time's Tim McGirk on the recent unraveling of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Rocket fire from Gaza had largely stopped during a five-month cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by Egypt, but that unraveled on Nov. 4, when Israel raided Gaza to destroy a tunnel it accused Hamas of digging to conduct cross-border raids. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired at Israel, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have responded with land and air attacks and by halting supplies that were to enter Gaza. Israel has hoped to tighten the screws on Hamas by blocking all but a trickle of aid from reaching Gaza's 1.5 million stricken inhabitants, leading to what U.N. officials describe as a humanitarian crisis. For the past two weeks, the Israeli military has barred foreign journalists from entering the Palestinian territory to report on the siege.
Now I can tell that in August, Israel suffered at least 11 Qassam strikes and 3 mortar attacks. I don't believe that I'd call 14 attacks in one month to fit "largely stopped." Israel's forbearance is quite a story, one that McGirk is unwilling to consider. And, of course, the description of Gaza in crisis is hardly new.
Nissenbaum and McGirk, of course, aren't the only reporters in Israel. And it's possible that their record is worse than most, but Nissenbaum's complaint is more than a little phony when the job he's doing is less reporter than propagandist.
And as far as the crisis in concerned it's interesting to note this:
Over the past few months of relative quiet rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel as a sporadic reminder of the threat and possible test of the truce. Our Gaza colleagues offered a different take: that those rogue firings were less about the resistance than the burgeoning underground economy. When a rocket is fired, Israel closes the cargo crossing which pushes up demand for smuggled supplies and therefore smuggling profits. Gaza has been known to work in curious ways.
"[B]urgeouning is not exactly how I'd describe an area in a state of "crisis." And the story raises the question of how strict the Israeli closure is if Janis Mackey Frayer got into Gaza to do this report. Did she go through Egypt?
Even going through Yahoo! News, I see a few items reported from Gaza, so it's not like there's a total absence of reporters in Gaza right now.
Like I wrote above, perhaps there is a case to be made for Israel allowing reporters in. But the lack of more reporters traveling to Gaza is hardly a crisis. And the FPA's and Nissenbaum's sanctimony is less than convincing. Maybe if more reporters tried actual reporting instead of propagandizing, Israel would be more sensitive to their mission to inform public's right to know.
UPDATE: Backspin and Elder of Ziyon follow up. The latter writes about the foreign media based in Gaza:
They censor themselves more than the Gaza reporters who live there! After all, who reported on the stories I listed above? Certainly not the foreign media!
I'd add that you should also check out this post from the Elder. Yesterday he blogged about Hamas having secret jails in Gaza, Hamas/Fatah clashes at a Gaza university and Israel's decision to send more goods into Gaza despite more missiles being shot into Israel. Then re-read Nissenbaum's complaint. Nissenbaum (and I suspect most of the rest of the foreign media) wouldn't report on these incidents. They only want to be in Gaza in order to write about Israeli mistakes, not about what goes on every day. That's why their concern for Israel's image is so hypocritical.
Crossposted on Yourish.
The miller's tale (again)
Coming off of his triumphant op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Aaron David Miller who has successfully participated in getting the Israelis and Palestinians come to agreements and have those agreements violated by the Palestinians, does a curtain call with a rehash in the Washington Post. As in the earlier op-ed (critiqued here, here and here. See memeorandum). First Miller argues, ignore the Palestinians:
The notion that trying and failing is better than not trying at all might be an appropriate rallying cry for a college football coach; it isn't a suitable foreign policy principle for the world's greatest power. The well-intentioned old college try, which was President Bill Clinton's mantra at Camp David in July 2000, reinforced by his advisers, myself included, proved costly. And we had much better conditions in 2000 (if still not the right ones) than the new administration faces.
Yes, the conditions were much better in 2000. Miller and company had been working furiously for seven years to build on the Oslo Accords (that were agreed upon without any American involvement). Of course if the push for peace in 2000 didn't work given those circumstances, it ought to make Miller wonder if his premises were wrong.
But Miller writes, don't ignore the Middle East!
For a president looking for a way to buck up America's credibility, an Israeli-Syrian agreement offers a potential bonus. Such a deal would begin to realign the region's architecture in a way that serves broader U.S. interests. The White House would have to be patient. Syria won't walk away from a 30-year relationship with Iran; weaning the Syrians from Iran would have to occur gradually, requiring a major international effort to marshal economic and political support for Damascus. Still, an Israeli-Syrian peace treaty would confront Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran with tough choices and reduced options.None of this will be easy. An Obama administration, and particularly the new president, would need to be in the middle of things. It would be excruciatingly hard, time-consuming and expensive to satisfy Israel and Syria's economic and security needs, and a final agreement would most likely involve U.S. peacekeepers. More important, the United States would need to push the two sides further than they are now willing to go, on the extent of withdrawal from the Golan Heights in Israel's case, on normalization and security in Syria's. But with Israeli and Syrian leaders who are serious, and with a new administration ready to be tough, smart and fair in its diplomacy, a deal can be done.
So the United States ought to get an agreement as a first step of weaning Syria out Iran's orbit. Given that Syria has shown no inclination to leave that orbit what makes Miller think this will work? The same pixie dust he was snorting making him think he'd get an agreement between Israel and Arafat in 2000?
But that doesn't mean that the United States should ignore the Palestinians.
So, Mr. President-elect, go ahead and try to buck up the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, train Palestinian security forces, pour economic aid into Gaza and the West Bank, and quietly nurture Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But don't go for the endgame -- you won't get there.
However, repeating bad ideas does not improve them or make them more viable.
But repeated past failures don't get Miller down:
Instead, invest in an Israeli-Syrian peace, and, afterward, you might find, with a historic success under your belt and America again admired for its competence, you will be better positioned to achieve the success you want in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, as well.
He's been involved in crap for so long he's sure there's a pony in there someplace. On the other hand, I'd be a lot more encouraged if I didn't see that Israel's enemies - like Syria and the Palestinian Authority - were not trying to undermine Israel's legitimacy at every opportunity. I'd think that a necessary prerequisite for peace is the Arab world coming to terms with Israel's existence. But what do I know? I'm not an experienced peace processor like Miller. Who has absolutely no successes to his credit.
Crossposted on Yourish.
I'd recommend visine
The captions reads...
Palestinian Muslim pilgrims and supporters of Hamas are seen
I see 3 eyes, I don't see pilgrims.
November 25, 2008
Middle Climate trashed
George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian, offers some metaphors about our President:
George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3,000.That rhetoric suggests that the buzzards are already circling around the Middle Climate--those Iraqis aren't coming back from the dead, after all. Later he concludes "Can we do it? Search me. Reviewing the new evidence, I have to admit that we might have left it too late." He goes on, of course, to affirm that we must try, but I think he fails to appreciate that we are approaching a policy consensus. Global Warming skeptics don't feel we need to do anything. Global Warming true-believers have grave doubts that anything can be done. So let's not do anything. We'll still have a motivation to develop alternate energy sources just to keep the world's wealth out of the hands of the Saudis, and most of the envisioned alternate energy sources involve less carbon emissions anyway. So let's concentrate on the economy.His backers - among them the nastiest pollutocrats in America - are calling in their favours. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble.
If it is too late to prevent runaway climate change, the Bush team must carry much of the blame. His wilful trashing of the Middle Climate - the interlude of benign temperatures which allowed human civilisation to flourish - makes the mass murder he engineered in Iraq only the second of his crimes against humanity. [...]
Crossposted on Judeopundit
Caroline Glick: 2 Things Left For Bush To Do In The Middle East
With just six weeks remaining to his tenure in office, much of what Bush will leave behind him has already been determined. But there are two things he can still do that will impact greatly both the world he leaves behind and how he is judged by history: He can take action against Iran's nuclear program, and he can embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists.The situation these 4 men find themselves in is due to a large extent not merely what they did, but for whom they did it. As Glick puts it, President Bush now has the opportunity to "embrace Israel as an ally by pardoning four men who have been persecuted for assuming the alliance exists":
On the surface, these two agenda items couldn't be more disparate. By neutralizing Iran's nuclear installations Bush would save the lives of millions of people. By pardoning Jonathan Pollard, Larry Franklin, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, he would save the lives of four people.
In 1985, when Jonathan Pollard was arrested for transferring classified information to Israel, he was not treated like a man who had transferred secrets to a US ally. He was treated like a man who had transferred secrets to al-Qaida. His sentence of life in prison was meant to serve as a deterrent for anyone who dared question the view that Israel is nothing more than an albatross placed around the US's neck by a powerful American Jewish lobby and by dimwitted politicians.Now we need to speak up for these 4 men. Today saw the launching of the campaign to request a Presidential Pardon for Jonathan Pollard.
Whereas Pollard's fate was sealed long before Bush entered the White House, Franklin, Rosen and Weissman's nightmare began under his watch.
In 2006, former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years in prison for seeking the assistance of two AIPAC lobbyists - Rosen and Weissman - in bringing the threat posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program to Bush's attention. By speaking with Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was behaving as countless government employees behave. He was prosecuted not for sharing information with the men, but for mistakenly assuming that his view of Israel as a US ally was shared by the powers-that-be in Washington.
Weissman and Rosen are in the midst of a long, costly, drawn-out trial and stand charged with mishandling classified information under a statute that has not been enforced since World War I. For more than four years they have been treated as criminals for doing nothing more than their job as lobbyists - for a lobby that was founded on the understanding that the US and Israel are strategic allies.
Montana vs. the lighthouse
I love this story. It starts ...
ACTUAL transcript of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. This radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on 10-10-95.
What I didn't know (until last week, that it had been made into a video!)
As great as it is, the story is not true!. And the Navy even has a page devoted to its debunking.
I don't care, it's still a riot.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Asking the arsonist to put out the fire
Israel's foreign minister has asked the UN to take a stand against the continued rocket fire from Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni demanded in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday that the world stop ignoring attacks on Israel by Gaza militants.Livni "demanded that the international community stop applying a policy of ignoring acts of terror aimed at hurting innocent people," her office said in a statement.
"The international community must sound its voice and influence more clearly and decisively," she said.
Yesterday the UN just commemorated International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People - as if having at least 12 organizations devoted to (perpetuating) the "Palestinian problem" isn't enough. Mahmoud Abbas recently elected "President of the Palestinian State" gave a speech at the event yesterday that included a graphic (.pdf) - in the upper right hand corner - portraying all of Israel as Palestine.
Let's remember of course that even if the UN and Palestinians complain about the lack of goods in Gaza, there's one commodity that doesn't suffer: rockets.
Inside this storage hold, the walls and windows had been decorated for our visit with the group's black flags emblazoned with emblems and Arabic script. The Al-Nasser Brigades are an armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, indoctrinated by generations of Gaza's Islamic resistance, and these days loyal to Hamas.The room bristled with rockets in varying sizes and stages of readiness that three faceless men in balaclavas quietly choreographed in a showcase of firepower. There was even a spotlight to afford better lighting for the camera. Large red warheads filled with explosives were screwed into place atop black metal tubes and hoisted onto their launching stands.
Each rocket was labeled by hand with white paint to identify its brandname and strength: According to the group, the al-Nasr 2 reaches a distance of four kilometres. The slightly better al-Nasr 3 rocket can go nearly three times as far. t is the al-Nasr 4 -- at a daunting two-plus metres in length -- that is the triumph of their development efforts.
The rocket has a range of 20 kilometers, proven last May when one of them careened into a shopping mall in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. It happened to coincide with a visit to Israel by US president George W. Bush.
The famous tradeoff of guns and butter has been altered to today's Gaza where the new paradigm is flour and rockets. From what I can tell, the rockets are winning.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Influence: the industry that never suffers
Change is in the air.
With all the talk about how things will be different; well there really will be change. The change will be in the players, not in the game. The influence game that is.
The starting salaries for former officials tell the story. An assistant department secretary leaving the Bush administration three years ago, with Republicans in control of the House, Senate and White House, might fetch as much $600,000 to $1 million a year in the influence business, recruiters and lobbyists said. But the same person might now expect less than half as much."Don't be the last guy off the train," said Peter Metzger, vice chairman of the recruiting firm CT Partners, recalling his advice to government officials considering other work in Washington.
But for Democrats, the bidding is fierce. Three years ago, a Democratic staff director for an important House or Senate committee might have earned about $130,000 a year on Capitol Hill, and jumped to K Street for an annual salary of about $250,000. Now, the same person might command as much as $500,000 to $800,000 a year, several recruiters said.
via memeorandum
The article does mention that the Obama administration may introduce certain rules to bar lobbyists from certain jobs in the administration, that doesn't mean that the influence peddlers will be shut out.
Too partisan
You know how media folks report that Republicans are too partisan and then quote Sen. Susan Collins of Maine as an example of a moderate Republican who is uncomfortable with GOP tactics?
How will the media deal with this?
Collins told colleagues at a small Senate prayer breakfast meeting last week that she still felt lingering resentment toward Democratic senators who campaigned against her in Maine.She confessed that she had "trouble forgiving colleagues" who traveled to Maine and told voters she was "a Bush clone and called into question her ethics," said a senator who attended the meeting.
Collins's lingering resentment could emerge as a snag for Democratic leaders who expect her to side with them on many important votes.
Who knew that Democrats could go too far? They even called her a "Bush clone!" How low could they go?
via memeorandum
November 24, 2008
Gasp, secretary clinton might a hawk pro-israel
The Washington Post is all atwitter because the Arab world - whose world view is marked by seriousness and rationality that Hillary is a "hawk!":
There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving.During the Democratic primary campaign, Clinton said the United States could "obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel. She said the United States should not negotiate with Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, unless it renounced terrorism. "The United States stands with Israel, now and forever," Clinton told AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, at its conference in June.
Yet Clinton is also the former first lady who famously broke with her husband's administration in 1998 and said Palestinians should have a state of their own. Ten years later, the comment seems unexceptional, but at the time it prompted the White House to make clear she was speaking only for herself.
Those are the contradictions of Senator Clinton. My suspicion is that she's changed, if, for no other reason, she found being pro-Israel was helpful to her politically. That's still something. It's one thing to say and vote all the right things. It's another to introduce someone like Itamar Marcus to the Senate. Her view of Hamas shouldn't be viewed as pro-Israel, but as the rational response to a terrorist organization.
I think Shmuel Rosner is on to something about the reticence the Arab world is starting to show towards the incoming administration.
However, it is also a sign that the post-election period is, indeed, also a period of reeducation. As shown here before the election, the "world" wanted Obama to win the election. This enthusiasm about Obama initially included the Arab world. However, the closer we got to Election Day, the warier the Arab world became. Part of it was an automatic reaction to pro-Israel statements Obama was making, but the other part was more rational. Suddenly, Arabs realized that Obama, all differences aside, would be an American president-with all the baggage such job carries with it.
The United States, as a country, is pro-Israel and the President and his policies will likely reflect that to some degree. Certainly, whatever hesitations I have about President-elect Obama and his policies towards Israel, they still will be found wanting by the Arab world.
Still there's another side that I find less than encouraging as Rosner notes:
And if Israelis get cocky about Clinton's friendliness, they'll learn their lesson, too: his name is Jim Jones).
Even now Gen. Jones is pushing to pressure Israel to make more concessions whether or not the Palestinian Authority shows that it is capable of governing and acting in good faith.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Iran's "blogfather" arrested
What surprised me about Hossein Derakhshan when I interviewed him in a café on Jerusalem's Emek Refaim Street two years ago was that the self-exiled Iranian, who was arrested this month during a visit to Tehran on suspicion of being an Israeli spy, favored a nuclear-armed Iran and a religious Islamic regime.
What isn't surprising is that Derakhshan has now been arrested. He was arrested for a most serious crime.
The object of his visit, Derakhshan said, was to show his countrymen Israel's human face and to detoxify relations between the two peoples after Ahmadinejad called for Israel's elimination."I want to humanize Israel for Iranians and tell them it's not what the Islamic propaganda machine is saying - that Israelis are thirsty for Muslim blood," he said. "And I want to show Israel that the average Iranian isn't even thinking about doing harm to Israel. I want them to see Iranians who don't look like Ahmadinejad."
Damn him, trying to humanize Israel.
Do you figure that the Committee to Protect Journalists will be as keen to protect him as they were to protect Bilal Hussein?
Unfortunately, Iran has just executed someone else for spying for Israel.
The agency reported that Ali Ashtari was executed by hanging on Monday. It said he was arrested in 2006 and confessed during his trial in June to spying for Israel through security and telecommunication equipment.Iranian news media reported in June that Mr. Ashtari, 45, had received a death sentence for spying. At the time, newspapers said he had been the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.
It's hard to know if Ashtari was guilty, but my suspicion is that he ran afoul of the regime for some other reason and they charged him with espianoge. It was never clear how Mr. Ashtari would have gotten knowledge of Iran's nuclear program. Even Al Jazeera sounds skeptical. Alas the Washington Post does all it can to make Iran seem reasonable by interviewing an Iranian counterintelligence official but not expressing much skepticism about the official's claims.
It's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for Iran, that its actions are being suspected.
The cleric, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is also a former president, said at Friday Prayer that a report released Wednesday by Mohamed ElBaradei, the atomic energy agency's director general, was ambiguous."Unfortunately, Mr. ElBaradei always talks ambiguously," Mr. Rafsanjani said. "We expect the agency to be fair and impartial." Dr. ElBaradei said in the report that Iran needed to provide the agency with substantive information to support its claims that the country's nuclear program was intended to produce only nuclear power, not nuclear warheads.
And I wish that Mr. Rafsanjani's regime had been "fair and impartial" to Mr. Ashtari. Maybe they'll show some of that to Hossein Derakhshan. Not likely.
Highly publicized executions and arrests might be one way to rally support when faced with falling popularity.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Musical monday #69
Elie and I switch off hosting Musical Monday. For those who are unaware, I didn't start this. A blogger - now retired who went by "A Whispering Soul" started Musical Mondays. It was slightly different. I once asked him if he minded if I could use his idea. He didn't mind.
Anyway, you know the drill. Guess the songs and the theme. No Googling.
This week some are real and some are not. I've mixed them up.
1) and we fly just like birds of a feather
2) Swing-swing-swinging to the cabaret
3) Like a fool I start grinnin' 'cause my head starts spinnin'
4) your Gall Is Never Ending
5) Now I'm calling all citizens from all over the world
6) Look at our life now, tattered and torn.
7) Some guy brought sadness into your happy world.
8) He's double-dealin' with your best friend
9) I fell in love with you before the second show
10) Cruisin' on thru the junction, I'm flyin' 'bout the speed of sound
11) Suddenly your sycophants, are chanting slogans at your door
12) A grip so tight, I couldn't tear it apart
13) Well it's all right, everyday is Judgment Day
14) So I made my mind up and made a sandwich
15) Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one
16) So let the wonder take you into space
17) She told me, It can break your heart, and leave you in misery
18) Everytime I find the nerve to say I'm leaving
19) There's a very strange vibration, piercin' me right to the core
20) she lost her home and her family and she won t be coming back
21) Orange birds and river cousins dressed in green
22) We can make it shine, we can take forever
23) The gentle, sweet singin' of leaves in the wind
24) Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much.
If you know the theme, you should be able to figure out the relationships among each group in the following
25) We could go walking through a windy park,
26) July is dressed up and playing her tune
27) No need to ever ask me twice oh no
28) I got six hundred miles to ride, To do one more show, oh no
These next two sets are double-dipping, I suppose
29) Shadows falling , baby , we stand alone
30) Make it shine, make it rain , baby I know my way
31) You feel you're not wanted anywhere
32) Your best friend wrote and told me, You had teardrops in your eyes
33) When I was 17, I did what people told me
34) But I learned somethin' from my blue eyed girl
35) She wanted her a real cowboy
Are these legal?
36) When you're crossing the ocean, I've got a boat to row
37) I had my world strapped against my back
Extra Credit:
EC1) If I could stick my pen in my heart
EC2) I'd have thought you'd have the decency to come and tell the truth to me
UPDATE:
Whoops 1) ... it didn't have much of a plot
Whoops 2) She took all my money, wrecked my new car.
UPDATE II;
Whoops 3) Just touch me and my troubles all fade
Whoops 4) Well I'm not braggin' babe so don't put me down
Whoops 5) I've got my back against the record machine
Congratulations to Benjie for figuring out that the theme last time was Grammy Winners. Specifically I chose the category of "Record of the Year."
# Nel blu dipinto di blu, - 1959: Domenico Modugno - "Nel Blu, Dipinto Di Blu (Volare)"Domenico Modugno
# A cement bag is dropping on down - 1960: Bobby Darin - "Mack the Knife"
# There are no gloomy skies - 1961 - Percy Faith and his orchestra, Theme from a summer place
# I'm crossin' you in style some day - 1962: Henry Mancini - "Moon River"
# I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan - 1963: Tony Bennett - "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"
# A door marked "nevermore" that wasn't there before - 1964: Henry Mancini - "Days of Wine and Roses"
# Tall and tan and young and lovely - 1965: Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto - "The Girl From Ipanema"
# I'll take with me the warmth of thee - 1966: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass - "A Taste of Honey"
# Love was just a glance away, - 1967: Frank Sinatra - "Strangers in the Night"
# We could float among the stars together, -1968: The 5th Dimension - "Up, Up and Away"
# candidate's debate - 1969: Simon and Garfunkel - "Mrs. Robinson"
# No more falsehoods or derisions - 1970: The 5th Dimension - "Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In"
# silver girl - 1971: Simon and Garfunkel - "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
# Or maybe we've just stopped trying - 1972: Carole King - "It's Too Late"
# Like the trembling heart of a captive bird - 1973: Roberta Flack - "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
# embarrassed by the crowd, - 1974: Roberta Flack - "Killing Me Softly With His Song"
# If we both were born in another place and time - 1975: Olivia Newton-John - "I Honestly Love You"
# Said it before and I'll say it again while others pretend - 1976: Captain and Tennille - "Love Will Keep Us Together"
# Are we really happy here - 1977: George Benson - "This Masquerade"
# steely knives - 1978: Eagles - "Hotel California"
# I don't want clever conversation - 1979: Billy Joel - "Just the Way You Are"
# She musters a smile, For his nostalgic tale 1980: The Doobie Brothers - "What a Fool Believes"
# The canvas can do miracles - 1981: Christopher Cross - "Sailing"
# Her hair is Harlowe gold - 1982: Kim Carnes - "Bette Davis Eyes"
# Not quite a year since she went away, - 1983: Toto - "Rosanna"
# on't wanna see your face, you better disappear - 1984: Michael Jackson - "Beat It"
# second hand emotion - 1985: Tina Turner - "What's Love Got to Do With It?"
# We are the ones who make a brighter day - 1986: USA For Africa - "We Are the World"
# Look inside your heart, Ill look inside mine - 1987: Steve Winwood - "Higher Love"
# Poorboys and Pilgrims with families - 1988: Paul Simon - "Graceland"
# You might want to sing it note for note - 1989: Bobby McFerrin - "Don't Worry, Be Happy"
# You always walked a step behind. - 1990: Bette Midler - "Wind Beneath My Wings"
# Its cold and Ive nowhere to sleep,- 1991: Phil Collins - "Another Day in Paradise"
# Like a song of love that clings to me, - 1992: Natalie Cole with Nat King Cole - "Unforgettable"
# Time can break your heart - 1993: Eric Clapton - "Tears in Heaven"
# And I hope you have all you've dreamed of. - 1993: Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You"
# They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks - 1995: Sheryl Crow - "All I Wanna Do"
# Won't you tell me is that healthy, baby? - 1996: Seal - "Kiss From a Rose"
# I would be the sunlight in your universe - 1997: Eric Clapton - "Change the World"
# She opened a book and a box of tools - 1998: Shawn Colvin - "Sunny Came Home"
# Love can touch us one time, And last for a lifetime - 1999: Celine Dion - "My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from 'Titanic')"
# Like seven inches from the midday sun - 2000: Santana featuring Rob Thomas - "Smooth"
# In the maze of her imagination - 2001: U2 - "Beautiful Day"
# And if your glass heart should crack - 2002: U2 - "Walk On"
# Instead of kneeling in the sand - 2003: Norah Jones - "Don't Know Why"
# Shoot an apple off my head - 2004: Coldplay - "Clocks"
# Any fool, any fool knows, That there's no, no way to win 2005: Ray Charles and Norah Jones - "Here We Go Again"
# My shadow's the only one that walks beside me - 2006: Green Day - "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
# I'm still mad as hell - 2007: Dixie Chicks - "Not Ready to Make Nice"
# I ain't got seventy days - 2008: Amy Winehouse - "Rehab."
November 23, 2008
Juggling carnivals 11/23/08
Incoming Carnivals
No crocs, Ima (on and off the) Bima hosts the latest Haveil Havalim.
Check out the latest Kosher Cooking Carnival at I'll call Baila.
And if I may self-promote, I'm hosting the latest Shiny, Happy Dhimmi.
Shiny happy dhimmi - #2
Last week I decided to start my own little blog carnival called Shiny Happy Dhimmi. Think of it as blogs to read while watching the crocodiles eat.*
1) If you dream it, it will still not be peace.
2) When the intolerant promote tolerance, there are limits to what they tolerate.
3) Moving soldiers out of harm's way, while hospitals are still targeted. And release more prisoners to build confidence! Sounds like a plan. Plan 9 that is.
4) The United States takes a principled stand against dialogue with dissidents. Iran takes a principled stand against talking with the United States. And the human rights professionals are silent. Nothing like a principled boycott of Israel to make everyone feel better.
5) His sin was visiting Israel. Outreach always works! 1500 lashes.
6) Reuters knows how to judge rationality. Is this rational?
7) Occupation for me but not for thee. How peace corrupts.
8) Maybe it would have been better if Israel didn't exist. Hard to argue when even "peace prize" winners seem to agree.
9) How often can you have imminent crises? Of course they lose their urgency when they are self inflicted. Or when it isn't really a crisis.
11) When Islamists need to rein you in, you've gone too far. Or when you hurl racial epithets at the newly elected President.
12) Maybe Arabs aren't Nazis, but that doesn't mean that they didn't aspire to be.
* Winston Churchill
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last"
Let's do away with constitutional niceties and get doggie bags
Thomas Friedman (via memeorandum):
Now you know why I don't get invited out for dinner much these days. If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day. Forget the inaugural balls; we can't afford them. Forget the grandstands; we don't need them. Just get me a Supreme Court justice and a Bible, and let's swear in Barack Obama right now -- by choice -- with the same haste we did -- by necessity -- with L.B.J. in the back of Air Force One.
I find even this troubling.
Unfortunately, it would take too long for a majority of states to ratify such an amendment. What we can do now, though, said the Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, co-author of "The Broken Branch," is "ask President Bush to appoint Tim Geithner, Barack Obama's proposed Treasury secretary, immediately." Make him a Bush appointment and let him take over next week. This is not a knock on Hank Paulson. It's simply that we can't afford two months of transition where the markets don't know who is in charge or where we're going. At the same time, Congress should remain in permanent session to pass any needed legislation.
If it was so important, why did it take President-elect Obama three weeks to find his Treasury Secretary? (Maybe the market drop is reflecting its lack of confidence in the President-elect.)
Friedman goes on to quote an economist:
"A great judgment has to be made now as to just how big and bad the situation is," says Jeffrey Garten, the Yale School of Management professor of international finance. "This is a crucial judgment. Do we think that a couple of hundred billion more and couple of bad quarters will take care of this problem, or do we think that despite everything that we have done so far -- despite the $700 billion fund to rescue banks, the lowering of interest rates and the way the Fed has stepped in directly to shore up certain markets -- the bottom is nowhere in sight and we are staring at a deep hole that the entire world could fall into?"
Friedman clearly wants us to believe the latter. But given that Friedman still goes out to eat, maybe he doesn't really believe that the situation is all that bad.
Daniel Gross writes about the differences between our current crisis and the Great Depression:
Ironically, the differences between the two eras can be summed up in a few sound bites. The world of 1929-33 was one that lacked shock absorbers such as Social Security and deposit insurance to insulate people from economic disaster. In the 1930s, some of the world's largest economies--Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Italy--were run by leaders hostile to the very notion of market capitalism. Today, U.S.-style market capitalism is under assault from self-inflicted wounds, and Germany, Italy, and Japan (Russia, not so much) are working with the United States to cope with a common problem. Back then, we were cursed with a feckless Federal Reserve, and a wealthy Treasury secretary, Paul Mellon, saw the downturn as a force for good. "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate," he said. "People will work harder, live more moral lives." By contrast, today's Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, is a student of the Great Depression, and the wealthy Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, wants to provide liquidity to stocks, farmers, and real estate. A final difference: After the 1929 crash, the nation had to wait more than three years for a president who simply wasn't up to the job to leave the scene. This time, we've got to wait only two more months.
(via memeorandum)
Aside from the cheap shot at the end this is a lot more sober (and responsible) than Friedman's column. In fact Friedman's column seems a lot more like a thinly veiled call to start era of Obama two months early.
UPDATE: The Corner thinks that change - in the economic sphere - may be more subtle than Friedman and other "let's do away with the 20th amendment" enthusiasts will acknowledge. Say Anything says, that the problem with the markets isn't the uncertainty - it's the anticipation President-elect Obama's.financial plan that has the markets worried. Ann Althouse doubts that Friedman is correct in supporting the view that the worst thing to do is to underestimate the problem. Macs Mind reminds us that the problem wasn't so urgent for Friedman and other liberals back in 2004.
Well, duh
via memeorandum
Mark Halperin from Time says that the media bias this election was unprecedented.
"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.
"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."
The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.
At the conference this was one of the defenses:
"The biggest bias in the press is towards effectiveness," said Heilemann, who is authoring a book on the 2008 race along with Halperin."We love things that are smart."
Because Obama's campaign was generally so well run, he argued, the press tended to applaud even his negative tactics.
"We'll scold you for being negative," Heilemann said, "but if it seems to be working, the tone of your coverage becomes more positive."
So when someone makes a gaffe, that would not be smart, right? So where was the media after the Vice-Presidential debate? Part of the Obama campaign's effectiveness lay in the fact that the media wasn't at all curious about its mistakes.
Four years ago during the campaign Evan Thomas of Newsweek claimed that the media bias then was worth 15 points (!) to Kerry/Edwards. (He later revised that figure down to 5 points.) How much do you figure the media was worth to Obama/Biden this year?
Flopping Aces:
These people twisted stories, disregarded stories, and lied about stories in their campaign to get Obama elected and NOW....now they realize the error of their ways?
Jammie Wearing Fool adds:
Forget about criticizing him. That'll never happen, unless he appoints a token Republican who isn't a media darling.
Obama's stimulus plan to destroy jobs
Does the following sound good to you?
President-elect Barack Obama signaled on Saturday that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than anything he outlined on the campaign trail, setting the tone for a recovery effort that could absorb and define much of his term.You might want to read this on HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada):In the Democrats' weekly radio address, Mr. Obama said he would direct his economic team to craft a two-year stimulus plan with the goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs.
A basic understanding of economics, however, is necessary to grasp that there is no free lunch. For every job "created" by government, an unidentifiable job will, tit-for-tat, be destroyed in the private sector.Perhaps Obama should emulate Bill Clinton.
The images of earnest men and women put to work allegedly by HRDC flood the propagandist Canadian national broadcaster, the CBC. The multitudes thrown out of work because private economic activity have been crowded out by taxing or borrowing to finance job programs remain invisible. So, too, does the destruction of jobs and reduction in investments, purchasing and overall wealth that ensues when money is taxed away from Canadians and funneled to the HRDC's patronage playground. Investors suffer the same fate and are much less likely to take employment-generating risks with their capital. Government borrowing simply serves to reduce capital available to the private sector. A further diminution of assets occurs when government expands the money supply and causes inflation in order to finance job creation schemes. [...]The reason government job programs destroy jobs also lies in the fact that much of the money extracted from taxpayers does not go to the wages of job recipients, but to the elaborate bureaucracy of consultants and planners who administer the programs . . .
Crossposted on Judeopundit
Council speak 11/23/08
This week's winning council entry was JoshuaPundit's The Afghanistan Blues reminding us of the challenges still facing the West in Afghanistan. The runner up was Colossus of Rhodey's very enjoyable "Oh the musical memories ..."
On the non-council side the winner was the American Thinker's How the academic Left elected Obama. The runner up was John Kass's Obama and the Chicago Way reminding us that the President-elect is not as new and fresh as advertised.
Congratulations to all the winners!
November 21, 2008
Pirates face Islamists, high overhead
Business seems to be booming, but is there a piracy melt-down on the horizon? From Reuters:
Dozens of Somali Islamist insurgents stormed a port on Friday hunting the pirates behind the seizure of a Saudi supertanker that was the world's biggest hijack, a local elder said. [...]Maybe they could use some bailout money to retool and go green.The Sirius Star -- a Saudi vessel with a $100 million oil cargo and 25-man crew from the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Croatia, Poland and Britain -- is believed anchored offshore near Haradheere, about half-way up Somalia's long coastline.
"Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country and hijacking its ship is a bigger crime than other ships," Sheikh Abdirahim Isse Adow, an Islamist spokesman, told Reuters. "Haradheere is under our control and we shall do something about that ship." [...]
A pirate identifying himself as Jamii Adam told the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that negotiations were taking place with the ship's owners, saying the ransom demanded was not excessive but declining to give a figure.
He said it had cost the pirates $500,000 to seize the vessel. "We bore many costs to hijack it," he said. [...]
Crossposted on Judeopundit
Scowcroft and Brzezinski See Another Unique Opportunity For Peace In The Middle East
What Rosner points out in particular is their conclusion that:
in many ways the current situation is such that the opportunity for success has never been greater, or the costs of failure more severe.Naturally, since we are talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Scowcroft and Brzezinski are short on facts to back up their claim.
Maybe their writing is simply a result of how they see the Middle East.
Last year Brzezinski spoke at the America in the World Conference, where he spoke about the need to address
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it is poisoning the political atmosphere in the Middle East. It is generating more and more hostility towards the United States. And only people in a state of denial would disagree with that because the fact is anyone you talk to in the Middle East finds that to be one of the reasons for this more pervasive anti-Americanism which al Qaeda and groups like it can exploit. [emphasis added]But in contrast, at February's 5th Annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum, Tamara Cofman Wittes noted:
The lack of a fire-breathing Amr Moussa or Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi on the program certainly made a difference. But changes in the region and in U.S. policy also help explain the slackening of the resentment that has accompanied our past years' discussions on America's role in the Muslim Middle East.More bizarre is a discussion noted in The Washington Post in October 2005:
Scowcroft, in his interview, discussed an argument over Iraq he had two years ago with Condoleezza Rice, then-national security adviser and current secretary of state. "She says we're going to democratize Iraq, and I said, 'Condi, you're not going to democratize Iraq,' and she said, 'You know, you're just stuck in the old days,' and she comes back to this thing that we've tolerated an autocratic Middle East for fifty years and so on and so forth," he said. The article stated that with a "barely perceptible note of satisfaction," Scowcroft added: "But we've had fifty years of peace." [emphasis added]Fifty years of peace in the Middle East?
Now let's see. Between 1953 and 2003, here are the Mideast wars we can think of off the top of our head: the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, the two Palestinian intifadas against Israel, the Algerian Civil War, the Yemen Civil War and two Sudanese civil wars. That doesn't even count acts of terror against non-Mideastern countries, from the Iranian invasion of the U.S. Embassy to the attacks of 9/11.But let's go a step further and put aside wars involving Israel. Raphael Patai, in an updated chapter in his bookThe Arab Mind has his own list of Arab conflicts--not including Israel--taking into account just during the 13 years from 1970 to 1983:
What do you call someone who describes this as "50 years of peace"? A "realist."
1. Intermittent disputes involving border warfare and assassinations between South Yemen on the one hand, and North Yemen and Saudi Arabia, on the other since the early 1970's. A brief but fierce border war between the two Yemens took place as recently as March, 1979.Scowcroft and Brzezinski share a worldview that appears to be based more on what they would like to see done in the Middle East than on the way things actually are. Or maybe their optimism for a unique opportunity for change in the Middle East is merely a case of Obama fever.
2. A major and bloody, albeit brief, conflict between Jordan and Palestinian guerrillas in 1970, complicated by Syrian intervention.
3. Fighting between the Kurds and the Iraqis, which lasted several years.
4. A bloody conflict between Northern and Southern Sudan, 1956-1972.
5. Clashes between South Yemen and Oman, linked to the Dhofar rebellion, 1972-1976.
6. A tripartite conflict between Algeria on the one hand and Morocco and Mauritania, on the other, over the control of the former Spanish Sahara, beginning in 1976 and subsequently transformed into guerrilla warfare against Morocco by the Polisario, the freedom fighters of the Western Sahara, supported by Algeria and Libya, which was still in progress in 1982.
7. Intermittent hostility, and actual border fighting, including air attacks, between Egypt and Libya in 1977.
8. The Lebanese civil war, which began in 1975, involving two outside parties, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization, still unresolved in early 1982.
9. The invasion of Chad by Libya in 1980.
10. The war between Iraq and Iran, which began in the fall of 1980, in which Iraq is supported by Jordan and Iran by Syria, making it in effect, an inter-Arab conflict. It was still in progress in early 1982.
11. In February, 1982, a conflict flared up between the Syrian government and Muslim fundamentalists in the Syrian city of Hama, in which several thousands were killed and major parts of Hama were destroyed. [p.357-358]
Madly for mahdi
The NYT reports on the extent of Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon in Generation Faithful.
There is a network of schools-- some of them run by Hezbollah, others affiliated with or controlled by it -- largely shielded from outsiders. There is a nationwide network of clerics who provide weekly religious lessons to young people on a neighborhood basis. There is a group for students at unaffiliated schools and colleges that presents Hezbollah to a wider audience. The party organizes non-Scout-related summer camps and field trips, and during Muslim religious holidays it arranges events to encourage young people to express their devotion in public and to perform charity work."It's like a complete system, from primary school to university," said Talal Atrissi, a political analyst at Lebanese University who has been studying Hezbollah for decades. "The goal is to prepare a generation that has deep religious faith and is also close to Hezbollah."
Young women are taught their place:
Again and again, the girls were told that the hijab was an all-important emblem of Islamic virtue and that it was the secret power that allowed Hezbollah to liberate southern Lebanon. The struggle with Israel, they were told, is the same as the struggle of Shiite Islam's founding figures, Ali and Hussein, against unjust rulers in their time.Through it all, Ms. Halawi was the presiding figure on the stage, introducing each section of the evening and reciting Koranic verses and her own poetic homages to the veil.
"Our veil is a jewel-encrusted crown, dignified and lofty, that God made to make us blossom," she said at one point, gazing out into the darkness with a look of passionate intensity. "He opened the door of obedience and contentment for us."
Everyone is taught how to understand Jews.
Another difference from most scout groups lies in the program. Religious and moral instruction -- rather than physical activity -- occupy the vast bulk of the Mahdi Scouts' curriculum, and the scout leaders adhere strictly to lessons outlined in books for each age group.Those books, copies of which were provided to this reporter by a Hezbollah official, show an extraordinary focus on religious themes and a full-time preoccupation with Hezbollah's military struggle against Israel. The chapter titles, for the 12- to 14-year-old age group, include "Love and Hate in God," "Know Your Enemy," "Loyalty to the Leader" and "Facts About Jews." Jews are described as cruel, corrupt, cowardly and deceitful, and they are called the killers of prophets. The chapter on Jews states that "their Talmud says those outside the Jewish religion are animals."
(I'd point out that "sons of pigs and monkeys" is not Talmudic in origin.)
And the main point of this illustrative article.
In the West, the image of Hezbollah is often that of its bearded, young guerrilla fighters, dressed in military camouflage and clutching AK-47s. But Hezbollah's inner core of fighters and employees -- its full-time members -- is a far smaller group than its supporters. This broader category, covering the better part of Lebanon's roughly one million Shiites, includes reservists, who will fight if needed; doctors and engineers, who contribute their skills; and mere sympathizers.
To read the article is very disillusioning. It would suggest that there is little Israel can do to make peace with its northern neighbor. The influence of Hezbollah seems pretty extensive. However,
Hezbollah's influence on Lebanese youth is very difficult to quantify because of the party's extreme secrecy and the general absence of reliable statistics in the country. It is clear that the Shiite religious schools, in which Hezbollah exercises a dominant influence, have grown over the past two decades from a mere handful into a major national network. Other, less visible avenues may be equally important, like the growing number of clerics associated with the movement.
And Hezbollah's influence is presented at once as somewhat tolerant but pervasive:
But there is a limit to Hezbollah's flexibility. All young members and supporters are encouraged to develop a hiss amni, or security sense, and are warned to beware of curious outsiders, who may be spies.After Mr. Sayyed had been talking to a foreign journalist in the coffee shop for more than an hour, a hard-looking young man at a neighboring table began staring at him. Suddenly looking nervous, Mr. Sayyed agreed to continue the conversation on the cafe's second floor. But he seemed agitated, and later he repeatedly postponed another meeting planned for the next week.
Finally, he sent an apologetic e-mail message explaining that he would not be able to meet again.
So what does this mean for the future of Lebanon and the Middle East. Is the Arab country that was once the most Western being inexorably drawn deeper into Iran's orbit? Or are there countervailing forces resisting Hezbollah's (and Iran's) creeping annexation of Lebanese society?
Crossposted on Yourish.
Pop goes the 80's
The Lede notes that a lot of 80's pop stars have been in the news lately. (Nothing about whether Boy George is still cleaning up Central Park.) He mentions, Axl Rose, Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna.
It reminds me a cute movie Music and Lyrics starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore (two actors I usually do not like). The movie did a great sendup of an 80's MTV band from England (of which Alex Fletcher - played by Hugh Grant - was a member.)
Anyway, I notice that the article doesn't mention that Bob Geldof has been praising President Bush.
No boos for moose
Early in Mike Mussina's career, a co-worker asked me why it was that the Orioles fans booed him. It took me a moment, but then I realized that they weren't booing him. They were calling "M-o-o-o-s-e."
From 1991 - 2000, Mussina was a fan favorite and when he bolted to New York, many fans and broadcasters wouldn't forgive him. But it wasn't his fault he left Baltimore.
Here's what still irks me.
While ace pitcher Mike Mussina begins weighing offers from other teams, starting with the New York Yankees' opening bid on Tuesday, the Baltimore Orioles continue holding on to hope that they can keep him, pointing to Mussina's promise to give them the last bid.
Instead of bidding seriously to re-sign Mussina they fell back on "... well he promised!"
Of course the Yankees would have none of that. They were serious about signing Mussina while the Orioles were passive. The Yankees offered Mussina a generous deal on the condition that he not shop it around and that he respond in short order. What should Mussina have done? Gone to the Orioles and lost the Yankees offer? Would anyone have done that?
Ken Rosenthal has more on the Orioles passivity in the face of their star's possible departure in a withering column in which he describes the Orioles (mis-)management of that era.
Under owner Peter Angelos, the Orioles have lost one of the game's top broadcasters (Jon Miller), one of the best managers (Davey Johnson) and the man who almost single-handedly transformed the franchise (Frank Robinson).They've lost many of the game's brightest executives, from Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt to Padres president Larry Lucchino, Mariners general manager Pat Gillick to Rangers G.M. Doug Melvin.
And now they've lost Mike Mussina, their latter-day Jim Palmer.
When will it end? By now, the answer should be obvious: When Angelos, 71, no longer is owner.
His team is a laughingstock. His tenure is a flop. But he isn't likely to sell, not when the team's value is uncertain because of the threat of a competitor moving to northern Virginia--and not when his sons, John and Louis, are in position to assume control.
The Orioles under new GM Andy MacPhail might finally have started turning things around, but they still haven't had a winning season since 1997. We'll see how long Angelos will stick with MacPhail if the Orioles don't improve fast.
Regardless the villain of Mussina's departure wasn't Mussina, but Angelos (and the wreck of a front office the team had back then.) So I wish Moose the best. I wouldn't boo him. And I hope in five years or so he will be elected to the Hall of Fame. I'd love it if he wore and Orioles hat for that occasion, but if he doesn't, I certainly understand.
Baseball Crank makes the HOF case for Mussina. And Rob Neyer (via Baseball Musings) notes that Mussina is in select company: one of only 5 Major League pitchers to win 20 games in his final season. One is Sandy Koufax, you probably haven't heard of the other three.
For me there will be no boos for Moose.
Crossposted on OTB Sports.
MPAC-UK on a certain ethnic group
This one is called "Muslims Busy Sleeping While Political Power Slips Away." And to what is this due?
This is due to the fact that the President, the politicians, the businesses, and anyone high up in the political and business system know that AIPAC (or the Jewish Lobby) has so much influence on their careers and businesses.Ah yes, the unity, nay UNITY, of the Jewish Ummah . . .
The Muslims, on the other hand, are insignificant in comparison.And why shouldn't the up and coming politicians fear the Jewish Lobby?
While Muslims were busy sleeping, shouting "no-voting", "khalifah", "kaffir laws", etc, etc, for the last 50 years or so, Jewish people were busy consolidating their positions from World War 2 in the political arena, the banking systems, and the businesses, to the extent they have become so powerful that they can bring businesses and politicians down.
They are UNITED in preserving the state of Israel and their faith irrespective of the costs - unlike Muslims. [...]
Crossposted on Judeopundit
Predictable prescription from poobahs past
In today's Washington Post Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft serve up perfectly predictable "Middle East Priorities For Jan. 21"
After expressing their glee with the election of President-elect Obama, they tell us the advantage his election presents at this time:
In perhaps no other region was the election of Obama more favorably received than the Middle East.
I would argue that that the region where his election most favorably received were the editorial offices of most American newspapers. Still, as I recall, Ayman Al-Zawahri did not have the most enthusiastice greeting for the new President.
So guess what the priority of Scowcroft and Brzezinski is?
Immediate attention to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would help cement the goodwill that Obama's election engendered. Not everyone in the Middle East views the Palestinian issue as the greatest regional challenge, but the deep sense of injustice it stimulates is genuine and pervasive.
And what the rewards be?
Resolution of the Palestinian issue would have a positive impact on the region. It would liberate Arab governments to support U.S. leadership in dealing with regional problems, as they did before the Iraq invasion. It would dissipate much of the appeal of Hezbollah and Hamas, dependent as it is on the Palestinians' plight. It would change the region's psychological climate, putting Iran back on the defensive and putting a stop to its swagger.
This is interesting. In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon and it had the effect of strengthening Hezbollah - Hezbollah, of course, changed its demands of Israel to inlcude a withdrawal from Shebaa Farms too - a client of Iran. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza and that ended up strengthening Hamas, a client of Iran.
In mathematics, one way of solving a difficult problem, is to break it up into smaller problems. In the past Israel's smaller steps towards making peace with its neighbors have strengthened Iran (through its clients). Now we're to believe that if Israel carries out more withdrawals it will weaken Iran? If Israel's small steps exacerbated rather than solved the problem doesn't if follow that a complete withdrawal from Judea and Samaria will only increase the demands on Israel?
And how will this be accomplished?
The major elements of an agreement are well known. A key element in any new initiative would be for the U.S. president to declare publicly what, in the view of this country, the basic parameters of a fair and enduring peace ought to be. These should contain four principal elements: 1967 borders, with minor, reciprocal and agreed-upon modifications; compensation in lieu of the right of return for Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as real home to two capitals; and a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.
In other words it needs to be solved in a way that meets the demands of the Saudi ultimatum. (It's not a peace plan, it's a list of Saudi demands with a very nebulous promise about normalization in exchange for Israel's complying with demands.) The only clear difference between Brzezinski and Scowcroft and the Saudi plan is that the former National Security Advisers call for a "nonmilitarized Palestinian state."
Of course that brings up a number of problems of its own. If the Palestinians can't be trusted to be militarized, why should the Israelis trust them with any level of independence. But given the weapons that Fatah already has - courtesy of the United States and Israel - and that Hamas has - courtesy of Iran with the implicit cooperation of Egypt - how exactly would this future state be non-militarized? On the first question, Brzezinski and Scowcroft suggest an answer.
Something more might be needed to deal with Israeli security concerns about turning over territory to a Palestinian government incapable of securing Israel against terrorist activity. That could be dealt with by deploying an international peacekeeping force, such as one from NATO, which could not only replace Israeli security but train Palestinian troops to become effective.
I would point out that the CIA has, in the past, trained Palestinian troops to be effective. They were quite effective in using those skills against Israel. So the effectiveness of "Palestinian troops" is, at best, a mixed blessing. Good perhaps for the Palestinians; not so good for Israel.
Things are tough, but there's reason for optimism.
To date, the weakness of the negotiating parties has limited their ability to come to an agreement by themselves. The elections in Israel scheduled for February are certainly a complicating factor, as is the deep split among Palestinians between Fatah and Hamas. But if the peace process begins to gain momentum, it is difficult to imagine that Hamas will want to be left out, and that same momentum would provide the Israeli people a unique chance to register their views on the future of their country.
I'm sorry. Israel ceded the Gaza Strip in 2005. That allowed Hamas to declare victory and parlay said victory into electoral success. Foreign aid and electoral success, did not make Hamas pursue peace. Their newfound political power was translated into the building of a terror infrastructure and sustained rocket attacks against Israel. Given Hamas's "unique chance" then to "register their views," Hamas chose to continue the armed struggle against Israel. Explain why Hamas would be more committed to peace after reconciling with Fatah.
Soon they conclude:
To say that achieving a successful resolution of this critical issue is a simple task would be to scoff at history. But in many ways the current situation is such that the opportunity for success has never been greater, or the costs of failure more severe.
What an ending! Why is the opportunity for success greater now than ten years ago? Well Arafat's gone. But Hamas is in charge. Ahh. But Hamas will reconcile with Fatah and then, not wanting to miss out on this historic peace thing, will suddenly see the light and reject its history and ideology. Been there; done that. In 1993. It was Fatah then, but subsequent years have shown that the thrill of peace did nothing to disabuse Fatah of its terrorist past. "Peace negotiations" simply became another tactic it could use to attack Israel. And unlike terror attacks, talking peace offered Fatah protection against those inconvenient revelations that it never abandoned terror or its goal of destroying Israel.
As always, the likes of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft are clear about what Israel must do, but not so clear about what's expected of the Palestinians, or the Arab world for that matter.
One of the unsurprising aspects of this op-ed is that - except for the beginning - it could have been written any time in the past decade. Brzezinski and Scowcroft offer no new insights and really just throw a lot of platitudes at the situation in the Middle East. Yes, Iran will lose its swagger. Really? I would think that the drop in oil prices would have made Ahmadinejad drop his swagger, but he's just as cocky as ever.
Nothing here is remotely original. All it is, is another way of saying: there won't be peace until the United States pressures Israel to make risky concessions despite fifteen years of broken Palestinian promises of peace.
UPDATE: Daled Amos reminds us that Scowcroft has a - shall we call it - unique definition of peace. The Spine points out that the NATO idea is a non-starter. Solomonia is skeptical and links to the American Thinker, where the oped gets a pretty complete treatment.
Crossposted on Yourish.
November 20, 2008
Netanyahu Takes The Lead
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's opposition right-wing Likud party pulled ahead of Israel's ruling centrist Kadima party in opinion polls on Thursday, three months before a parliamentary election.Apparently, Netanyahu's lead is attributable in part to his campaign strategy:
"Bibi is taking off," read a headline in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, using Netanyahu's nickname.
Its Yedioth/Dahaf survey gave Likud 32 seats in the 120-member parliament to 26 for Kadima, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
A poll in the Haaretz newspaper predicted Likud would win 34 seats to 28 for Kadima in the Feb. 10 election forced by the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a corruption scandal and Livni's failure to form a coalition government.
Commentary accompanying the polls attributed Likud's lead to its recent recruitment of several widely respected figures in Israel, including the son of the late prime minister, Menachem Begin, and a retired chief of staff of the armed forces.And to his presenting a new way to pursue peace with the Palestinian Arabs:
Netanyahu also has been increasingly vocal about his future approach to peace talks with the Palestinians, saying he would focus on ways to build up their economy rather than on territorial issues.This would be a return to a policy that had been pursued with the Palestinian Arabs years ago. As recounted by Ephraim Karsh:
The larger part, still untold in all its detail, is of the astounding social and economic progress made by the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli "oppression." At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.The question then is whether Netanyahu would be able to replicate this kind of success. Based on his success in turning around the Israeli economy, if Israelis back the approach--they are likely to back Netanyahu as the one to carry it out.
In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.
During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440).By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the better off Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.
No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.
Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.
All this, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres [emphasis added].
The Peres Guarantee!
Today he has a post about Peres who talks favorably about the Saudi peace plan--and all we need to make it work are guarantees for Israel's security. You know, so we don't have a repeat of the disaster of The Disengagement.
Richman notes:
It is not clear what "guarantees" Peres has in mind: perhaps a "binding" UN resolution (like Res.1701, which required all UN members to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon); or a "robust" international force (like the one that watched Hezbollah not only replenish but redouble its arsenal); or an explicit U.S. commitment (like George W. Bush's April 14, 2004 Gaza disengagement letter, promising U.S-led efforts to "prevent areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means").
The Logic Of Getting Israel To Get Rid Of Its Nuclear Weapons
Israel initially developed nuclear weapons out of the fear that its army could be overrun by the vastly larger Arab armies in the region. Today, Israel also faces the prospect of a nuclear-armed regime, Iran, that has openly called for its destruction -- a critical reason to maintain a nuclear deterrent. But if strong pressure on Iran could succeed in reversing its nuclear program, Israel would have much less need for its nuclear weapons. Israel's peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, for all of their disappointments, have largely eliminated any conventional military threat to Israel's existence, and Israel's own conventional forces, with significant and continuing help from the United States, are now dominant in the region. Israel has also consistently stated -- as recently as this year -- that it favors an agreement that would make the Middle East a zone free of all weapons of mass destruction. As with Pakistan, if Israel can be assured that it will not face any nuclear threat from another state, it should prove possible to convince it to see the merits of joining a global effort to eliminate nuclear weapons and thus deny terrorists any opportunity to get the bomb.
Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.just how effective would pressure be now?
2. Even if Egypt and Jordan do not pose a conventional military threat to Israel, what about Hamas and Hizbollah. I mean, seriously--the article does not even mention Syria, where traces of uranium were found at the site of the facility where Israel bombed.
By all means, lets strive to get rid of all nuclear arms--but let's at least keep our eyes open to the current realities. Logic of Zero, indeed.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad
[Hat tip: Shmuel Rosner]
Rule of law in egypt
There's an observation in this article, Court in Egypt Annuls Deal With Israel on Gas Supply, worth mentioning:
The case has raised difficult political issues for Egypt. Officials must walk a tightrope between maintaining relations with their neighbor and mollifying public opinion, which is often hostile to the Jewish state.
No doubt public opinion in Egypt is driven by the vilification of Israel in the official press. Maybe if the government would promote a more positive view of Israel, there wouldn't a tightrope.
via Daily Alert.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Practice, practice, practice ...
Or what do Bill Gates and the Beatles have in common?
There's an old joke about a man who sees a policeman on the sidewalk* in New York and asks him how to get to Carnegie Hall. The policeman replies, "Practice, practice, practice."
That seems to be the gist of Malcolm Gladwell's new book excerpted here:
Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.
Gladwell looks at a number of success stories and shows how their triumphs can be tied to the fact that they gained extensive experience at something they loved to reach the top of their fields. Not just the Beatles and Bill Gates either. It's a fascinating read.
(h/t Rubicon3)
In other arts and entertainment postings.
Also via Rubicon3, Life Magazine's photo archive is now online!
Seraphic Secret has an alphabet of movies described in loving detail. I've only seen "Vertigo." The descriptions make me want to watch more than a few of these.
Daled Amos has some interesting notes about the James Bond movie franchise.
Finally, Marvel Comics founder Stan Lee wins the Medal of the Arts.
(h/t Instapundit)
Finally, Ross Douthat writes about something that I think about sometimes.
When I first started listening to the radio there was a (somewhat) popular remake of "Smoke gets in your eyes," a song originally written in 1933. Well if someone would remake a Beatles song now, it would have to be about the same age.
Or that songs that were considered oldies when "American Pie" was on the radio, were fewer years in the past than "American Pie" is now. It makes me feel old.
*Not to be confused with the fellow who approaches a policeman in the middle of Broadway and asks him how to get to Bellevue. to which the policeman responds, "Keep standing where you are."
Note: This post has been updated from its original form.
Unintelligent sharing
Deja Vu observed the other day:
Never mind, Miliband holds a joint news conference with the Syrian FM who blames Israeli bombs for the processed uranium UN inspectors uncovered. Miliband assures reporters that Syria is a good country, a true force for stability in the Middle East.Why? He and Sarkozy dream of driving a wedge between Iran and Syria. The Syrian FM was not silly enough to disabuse him of the dream.
According to the Telegraph he's gone a step further (via Daily Alert).
Britain re-established high-level intelligence links with the Syrian authorities as David Miliband made his landmark visit to Damascus yesterday, according to senior Syrian officials.
Further on in the Telegraph, it points out that this thawing could be a result of the American election.
Washington has long insisted on isolating Syria but with a change of administration - and attitude - looming, Britain and France are leading efforts to lure Damascus out of the solitude it has found itself in since it was implicated in the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, three years ago.
And Joshua Landis is quoted:
Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, said the visit was "a message from the British to Obama. Like the French, they want the US to push Syrian-Israeli peace. Negotiations between Syria and Israel began last May, but the Bush Administration was unhappy about the dialogue and refused to support them."
According to this, the Israeli negotiations with Syria, have been effectively protecting Syria from international pressure. But the naive premise of that Syrian-Israeli peace is that - as Deja Vu noted above - it would have the effect of drawing Syria out of Iran's orbit. More likely Syria, seeing how much the West values peace with Israel, will use that as leverage to generate more pressure and continue its ties with Iran.
Mere Rhetoric on Miliband last year concluded with:
This is almost identical to what Hillary said in April - complete with the "obviously this won't work but we should do it anyway." Because engaging Syria feels good. Just like fiddling with Israeli security because it might tangentially maybe be connected to AQ's popularity feels good. And what's the worst that could happen?
Martin Peretz has more on MIliband's pedigree.
via Daily Alert.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Submitted 11/20/08
The Watcher's Council submissions are UP!
Intolerant Gays Attacking Religion - Rhymes With Right writes about three instances where gay activists resorted to protesting against religion and asks where has freedom of religion gone and why have these episodes not received much coverage?
The Coming Mortgage Class War - When I was applying to college there was a story about two families who had identical income. One family was frugal and saved for their children's college education. The other went on nice vacations every year and got a new car regularly. So when it came time for college which one would get the government aid? The Provocateur - and later see the Glittering Eye - writes about how the government fix to the mortgage crisis will have the effect of helping those who were reckless and have a possible effect of causing resentment among those who were responsible. Related see here. (via memeorandum)
The Afghanistan Blues - Joshuapundit writes about the challenges facing the United States in Afghanistan. I especially liked this observation:
Back when Musharraf was in power, the Pakistanis leaned a bit more towards looking the other way when we bombed the North West Frontier Provinces. But he's gone now, and the President-elect had a part in his demise. Hearing an American presidential candidate from a major party talking about invading part of Pakistan helped undermine Musharraf, who was seen by the people now in control of the country as a US stooge.
Yes loose lips.
Oh, the musical memories ... - Most submissions to the Watcher's Council are political, but every once in a while there's a personal reflection.The Colossus of Rhodey.Hube recalls a trip he took at the end of high school to Europe as part of a school jazz band. It's a great story.
Perpetually Selfish Anger and Victimhood - Bookworm Room writes about the groundbreaking work of Martha Gellhorn in profiling the Palestinians. She notes that Gellhorn observed that what motivated the Palestinian refugees was not their displacement - which could be solved by resettlement - but hatred of Israel and the West that's endemic to their culture - a quality not given to a solution. Elder of Ziyon has written about Martha Gellhorn's article before here and here. He also noted that an award was named in her memory though the people associated with the award, clearly have little understanding of what he she had written.
COIN of the Realm -
The Razor writes about the lesson to be taken from Iraq and suggests that the same counter-insurgency strategy be implemented in Afghanistan. It would appear, that the United States is at least doing something similar in opening schools on the Afghan border with Pakistan.
Names will never hurt me - the double standard - I wrote about the stark contrast in the reactions of Israel's critics to the comments of Rahm Emanuel's father as opposed to their silence when Israel's actual "peace partners" say (or don't say) things that call into question their commitment to peace.
Winners and Losers- Like the Provocateur above, The Glittering Eye is concerned with the government supporting the losers and the possible ramifications of such actions.
Detente In Our Time - Obama Prepares To Sell Out Poland In The Face Of Russian Aggression. Again. (Plus: By The Way, Missile Defense Works) - Mere Rhetoric writes about President-elect Obama's failure to back up Poland on the subject of cooperation on missile defense. I wonder if Anne Applebaum, whose husband is a former defense minister in Poland is starting to regret her endorsement.
On the non-council side I nominated Time for a Culture Change at Laz-a-Fare about his observations in a Baltimore courtroom,
Read. Enjoy. Be informed.
November 19, 2008
Eric Holder--Obama's Pick For Attorney General--On Jonathan Pollard In 2001
But, on the other hand, Holder might have a positive impact in another case - the AIPAC trial. The accused AIPAC officials relayed - to the press, to other AIPAC officials and to an Israeli diplomat - information US government officials gave them (in a sting operation), regarding anti-Israel operations in Iraq. The AIPAC guys argue that they had thought they were permitted to speak of the information they had been given.Fair enough, but is there any way to know which way Eric Holder might be leaning in a potential pardon for Jonathan Pollard?
As noted a couple of days ago in The Forward, Holder is known to be strongly in favor of First Amendment liberties, including free speech. This may help the AIPAC defendants.
"It is widely thought that opposition to the Rich pardon is nothing compared with the defense and intelligence opposition to letting Pollard go. But read this interchange between deputy attorney general Eric Holder and House Government Reform Committee chief counsel James Wilson during the Feb. 8 hearings:Read the whole thing.
Holder: "I am opposed, for instance, to a pardon for Jonathan Pollard," Holder said, trying to explain why he was swayed by Barak's endorsement of the Rich pardon.
"And yet if...the granting of the pardon had somehow led to Middle East peace, something that the Israeli government had requested, that might be something to take into account."
Wilson didn't object. "That I understand, and that's fair enough," he said.
Makes you wonder why no one advanced that argument.
As far as the Pollard clemency is concerned, it is known and it is documented that I have consistently opposed it. Perhaps if it had been proposed in a different context, such as contributing to peace in the Middle East which would then be in America's foreign policy interests, I would have changed my position
"Karin in Saudi Arabia": A Look Into What Life In Saudi Arabia Is Really Like
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Annotation/Editorial ReviewMy friend who forwarded this to me mentioned that Dr. Alrabaa had difficulty finding someone to publish his book because of fear of Saudi Arabia. Fortunately for us, he was finally able to find someone.
"Karin" is a real story of a German woman, who lived in Saudi Arabia for a while and fell in love with a Saudi. Later, this love turned into a devastating nightmare. The Saudi "Morality Police", notorious for their bestial brutality, raped Karin and threw her in prison. Her crime was, she was driven alone downtown by a taxi-driver. Her German-Saudi baby son was taken away and she was deported to Cyprus without passport and money. Muna, a young Moroccan woman was luckier. She managed to smuggle herself and baby after one-night marriage with Sultan, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
In Saudi Arabia, you can marry and divorce a woman in her absence. All you need is a religious man and two male witnesses. This is exactly what happened to Karin; she was married in her absence. Muna never saw any marriage or divorce papers.
Mimi and Najat were brutally stoned to death. Najat, a deaf-dumb was caught by the "Morality Police", suspected of being a prostitute. In reality she was waiting for her brother to pick her up in front of shop window.
The Morality Police Chief quickly passed sentence on Najat. He wrote, among other things: "Najat was working as a prostitute and was caught in the very act of picking up a client. We advise that she be stoned to death..." Two muttawas (Morality Police) delivered the document to Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh. He jotted down a verdict to match the suggestion, then signed it. Najat was to be publicly stoned to death the following Friday.
Mimi, a house-maid from the Philippines, was denounced by the wife of Karin's lover. She was picked up by the "Morality Police" and also stoned to death. These stories happen very often, and people are defenseless towards them. There are no courts in Saudi Arabia, and the princes there possess absolute power.
Nisrin, a Bangladeshi woman, who married a Saudi, was deported and the marriage was annulled. Before that she was raped by one of those "Morality Police". A Saudi who belongs to an important tribe, cannot just marry anyone.
Mohammed, a Syrian truck-driver had both hands amputated for allegedly stealing the truck he was driving.
Very few atrocities like the ones I'm reporting reach the international media. In March, 2002, the Saudi Morality Police prevented school girls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing the correct Islamic dress. As a result 15 girls were burned alive." My stories are a pattern that happen day in day out.
When you study Islam; the Quran and Shari'a, and live in Saudi Arabia for a while, you find out that the Saudis are in fact applying the Islamic law. "The woman who commits adultery must be stoned to death."(Quran, 36:18). "And (as for) the man who steals and the woman who steals, cut off their hands as a punishment for what they have earned, an exemplary punishment from Allah; and Allah is Mighty, Wise." (Quran 5:38). For more details, check out http://europenews.dk/en/node/13862and "Understanding Muhammad" by Ali Sina.
The book also shows that not only the Saudi regime and its religious fanatic establishment are oppressive, but also other groups in society: Saudi men oppress and ill-treat women, and Saudi men and women oppress abuse foreigners.
When I delivered the manuscript of this book to friends outside of Saudi Arabia, asking them to read it over, their response was uniform: they shook their heads in disbelief. Nobody in the civilized world seemed able to fathom the extent of the arbitrariness and atrocities to which victims in Saudi Arabia are subjected. To them, it was incredible. Some remarked that I was telling stories about the actions of monsters from another planet. They could not believe that any human could act as a Saudi corrupted by power does.
In which don feder agrees with ira forman
via memeorandum
If there was ever a year in which Jews should have been forced to reconsider their robotic loyalty to the Democratic Party, 2008 was it.The Democratic presidential candidate should have set off alarm bells in the head of the average Jewish voter - from his whack-job pastor's anti-Israel ravings, to his multiple ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, to his Middle East donors, to his terrorist cheering section, to his refusal to condemn Jimmy Carter's meeting with Hamas - Jews should have broken out in a cold sweat at the thought of this ideologue directing U.S. military and foreign policy.
That they didn't reflects the triumph of the heart over the head.
If Israel is a primary concern of American Jews, then, on the face of it voting for Barack Obama was a vote against one's interests. But as Feder notes later, Israel is not a major issue for most American Jews.
Ron Chusid takes strong exception to Feder:
Feder then resorts to the same McCarthyist tactics we have seen from the Republicans (and some Democrats). The attacks based upon distortions of Obama's relations to people such as Reverend Wright have long been debunked, and those who resorted to such repulsive tactics were justifiably the ones that lost support, but in the primaries and the general election. As long as the Republicans continue to practice McCarthyism of this type they will have considerable difficulty receiving the support of Jewish and other educated voters.If we are considering associations, Obama's associations with people whose political views he has denounced is irrelevant. The choice of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff provides far more meaningful evidence of the actual policies to be expected from an Obama administration.
What was debunked? That Barack Obama wasn't in church when Rev. Wright gave one of his more outrageous sermons? Barack Obama attended the church for twenty years, it strains credulity to believe that he didn't hear at least one or two outrageous sermons in the time, or didn't notice that the church was honoring Farrakhan. There's no McCarthyism to questioning someone's ties to the pastor of the church he chose to go to for twenty years. And given that President-elect Obama only denounced Rev. Wright, after the pastor became an issue, I hardly find the denunciation convincing. Maybe he won't govern as Wright would have, but that doesn't mean that the views he heard in church won't influence his decision making or his worldview.
The most charitable explanation of President elect Obama's ties to the likes of Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers was offered by David Bernstein.
In short, Obama's ties to Ayers and Wright suggest to me NOT that Obama agrees with their views, but that he is the product of a particular intellectual culture that finds the likes of Wright and Ayers to be no more objectionable, and likely less so, than the likes of Tom Coburn, or, perhaps, a Rush Limbaugh. Not only that, but he has been in his particular intellectual bubble so long that he was unable to recognize just how offensive the views of a Wright are to mainstream America, or how his ties to Ayers would play with the public, especially post-9/11..
In short he doesn't necessarily accept their (most extreme) views, but this is where he's from and this is the nature of the political discourse in Barack Obama's political world. I think that Mr. Chusid would be more accurate if he's at least acknowledge that Rev. Wright's connection to the President-elect ought to be troubling to Jews and explain that other factors mitigate - or more factors than just a single appointment - instead of dismissing it as a fabrication.
But I can't disagree with Feder or Chusid or Ira Forman, much as it galls me, Jews - except for Orthodox Jews - are mostly liberal. That isn't likely to change anytime soon.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Redneck orthodox jews
Rabbi Reuven Tradburks as "Are we Jewish rednecks?" - referring to the Orthodox Jewish community - and effectively answers "yes." His point is that Orthodox Jews, overall, did not vote for President-elect Obama and he attributes that to a simplistic world view.
Gary Rosenblatt addressed an issue in his column in the Jewish Week, which we don't like to admit. In both the lead up to the election and the aftermath of the election of Barack Obama, orthodox Jews expressed opposition to Obama that had little to do with his policies or his political ability. He is a muslim, he will be terrible for Israel, he doesn't like Jews, I am suspicious, who knows what he will do.
I reject this premise. Yes there were e-mails that President-elect Obama was a Muslim, but how many people in the Orthodox Jewish community didn't support him on that basis? From what I can tell not many. For the most part Orthodox Jews are politically conservative and President-elect Obama is, perhaps the most liberal - or leftist - politician to run for President.
There is a tendency, I believe, in our world to paint the world in the paradigms of Yaakov and Esav - good versus evil. But we often paint the wrong people with the Esav label.There are Esavs in the world. There are people who display principles and attitudes that are dark and evil. Arafat, Hamas, Hizbulla, Aryan Nation, Ahmenidijad.
But Obama is not one of them.
I'll agree with that. But I also see that President-elect Obama doesn't quite see 4 of those 5 in through the same prism as Rabbi Tradburks. For example he was quoted as referring to the "legitimate claims" of Hamas and Hezboallah. Did he mean that? Or is it just reflective of his thinking that there might be reasonable elements in either organization? Even if the latter, such thinking indicates that he would not oppose these terrorists with the necessary toughness that I think is required.
"I am concerned about a leader with insufficient experience". That is a fair statement. "He will be terrible for Israel" is totally speculative and unjustified.
Why is the latter unjustified? I am familiar enough with periodicals like "The Nation" or "The New York Review of Books." It's pretty clear that President-elect Obama's worldview is consistent with the one presented in those publications. Those publications are relentlessly critical of Israel. I would go so far as to call them hostile to the Zionist enterprise. So yes, while it's speculative, I believe that the available evidence shows that President-elect Obama would not be very sympathetic to Israel. Taken together with his statement in Cleveland that he doesn't see being pro-Israel as being the same thing as being pro-Likud - using a code word that Israel's critics use - and advisers who have been hostile to Israel in the past and I think a pretty strong case can be made that Israel is in for a rocky relationship with the United States for the next four or eight years. That's especially true if Binyamin Netanyahu is elected PM and isn't as flexible in making what the Obama administration considers to be reasonable compromises.
Obviously we can't know the future, but we make our decisions to vote based on the best available evidence and that tells me and apparently many in the Orthodox Jewish community that John McCain was the better choice for President if the standard was which candidate would be better for Israel.
I am not going to address other issues but on an issue by issue basis, I can think of few if any that I preferred the views of President-elect Obama to those of Sen. McCain. I know I wasn't a redneck. And from conversations with similarly minded friends, I found their opposition to President-elect Obama to be based on being informed on the issues not based on some simplistic notion of good and evil in which he ended up on the side of evil.
Finally, there's something about the historic nature of President-elect Obama's win that's troubling. Well I can tell you that I proudly voted for the first female governor of the state of Maryland twice - in 1994 and 1998 - and the first African American senator from the state two years ago. The problem was the historic nature of their candidacies were barely mentioned in the media. It certainly wasn't a major part of the media coverage of those campaigns. That's because Ellen Sauerbrey and Michael Steele are Republicans and, so, it seems, the former isn't really female and the latter not really a minority, at least not for electoral purposes. There's something perverse about the idea that only Democrats can be pioneers.
Throughout the campaign I've seen statements from Obama's supporters or in the media suggesting that only someone who's mentally deficient or bigoted could possibly consider not voting for Barack Obama. Unfortunately, I don't find Rabbi Tradburks' analysis was any more convincing than those dubious charges.
I see from Dr. Helen, that the urge to marginalize those who did not support President-elect Obama, is not limited to Orthodox Jews. (via memeorandum)
Crossposted on Yourish.
November 18, 2008
Why Aren't JBloggers Weighing In On A Jonathan Pollard Pardon?
The Press Release from Justice for Jonathan Pollard is typical of the renewed effort:
J4JPnews release - November 17, 2008
* On Friday Nov 21st Jonathan Pollard will enter his 24th year in prison.
* On Sunday Nov 23rd Ehud Olmert will be meeting with President Bush for the last time.
* On Thursday Nov 27th the American people will celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday - a holiday traditionally associated with Presidential clemencies.
Now is the time to call upon the President:Ironically, Bush might be in a unique position to grant such a pardon:
Free Jonathan Pollard!
Call: 202-456 -1111 or 202-456-1414
(Monday to Friday 9AM to 5PM - Eastern DST)
Every phone call is important. Everyone is encouraged to start calling the White Houseand to call daily, repeatedly, until Jonathan is home in Jerusalem, alive and well.
Presidential clemencies are traditionally signed precisely at this time and prisoners are freed in advance of the holiday to go home to their families for Thanksgiving.
What finer gesture could President Bush make to the People of Israel when he meets with the PM this coming week?
Freedom for Jonathan Pollard!
Mr. Bush has but 2 months left in office. These two months are a time of grace, when the out-going president traditionally grants clemencies to prisoners. There is no legal or moral reason that requires the president to wait until his last day in office to grant clemency. Call the White House today! Please, Mr. President, send Jonathan Pollard
home!
Dialing from Israel:
Add your long-distance service provider code to the start of the USA number for example: 0121-202-456-1111. (Israeli codes: 001, 012, 013, 014, 018, etc.)
Hours for Israeli Calls:White House telephone lines are manned from 4 PM Israel time to Midnight, from Monday to Friday. Be sure to call before candle-lighting
today [To ensure a faster response, follow the instructions for "Rotary" telephones regardless!]
--
JUSTICE FOR JONATHAN POLLARD
Website: http://www.JonathanPollard.org
RSS: http://www.JonathanPollard.org/rss.htm
Requests to pardon the former U.S. Navy analyst, sentenced in 1987 to life for spying for Israel, are routine, but these pleas come as Bush prepares to leave office at a record low popularity - a condition that has paradoxically in the past free presidents to make unpopular pardons.Margaret Colgate Love, the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, notes that with this final opportunity to exercise this unique power, Bush can send a unique message and correct problems in the justice system--not just in the case of Jonathan Pollard, but in general as well:
History teaches that the demand for clemency increases when the system lacks other mechanisms for delivering individualized justice, for recognizing changed circumstances, or for correcting errors and inequities.
...A series of final pardons could highlight flaws in the justice system that would be instructive to the next administration. The Framers considered the pardon power an integral part of our system of checks and balances, not a perk of office. Judicious grants of clemency can signal to Congress where rigid laws should be amended and give policy guidance to executive officials. The president's intervention in a case through his pardon power benefits an individual but also signals how he wants laws enforced and reassures the public that the legal system is capable of just and moral application.
The choice is clear:
Walkin' blindly on j-street
In a poll this past summer pro-Palestinian lobbying group, J-Street, found (MS Word file):
Jews want America to be much more aggressive in its Middle East peace efforts than it is today. We conducted an extensive exercise in the survey, first asking people whether they supported the United States playing an active role in helping the parties resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Initial support for this general statement was a remarkable 87 percent. Then, we asked if they would still support America assuming an active role if it meant the U.S. taking tough positions such as publicly disagreeing with both the Israelis and Arabs or exerting pressure on both parties to make compromises. Support remained very strong after these harder tests that gauged reactions to public disagreement (75 percent) and pressure (70 percent). "Firm support" - that is, the number of people who supported all three statements - was 66 percent and represents an extraordinarily strong base of people who seek active American engagement. After we presented a mixture of hawkish and pro-peace messages, we re-asked this series of questions and the "firm support" number was unchanged. In other words, when the debate is engaged by both sides, Jews strongly support America taking major steps to pursue peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Hmm. Well a new poll shows something else.
In addition, 66 percent said America should be a supporter of Israel, with just 6 percent saying America should be a supporter of the Palestinians. Some 80 percent of those who called themselves Republicans and 59 percent of Democrats said America should support Israel.
Not that the United States should be even-handed as J-Street's poll supposedly says, but that the United States should support Israel.
Ron Kampeas of the JTA has taken to doing J-Street's work for them and quotes the organization's Jeremy Ben Ami without responding.
Why does the Israel Project insist on asking Americans to choose sides between the Israelis and the Palestinians in a conflict that the United States is uniquely positioned to help resolve?The right question is what percent of Americans support active U.S. leadership to resolve the conflict in order to provide both sides with security and peace. Perhaps knowing that that number would have been above 80 percent, the Israel Project chose not to ask that question.
Now you know the problem. Ben Ami's premise is false. If he were right we'd have had peace by the end of President Clinton's second term. President Clinton did what J-Street's ancestors advocated and applied political pressure to Israel when Netanyahu was Prime Minister. For nearly his entirely two terms President Clinton was actively involved in the peace process, even pushing negotiations once the "Aqsa intifada" had started at the end of his term. If Ben Ami were correct, we'd be living now in Messianic times.
The current machinations of Fatah should be enough to disabuse J-Street of their faith that American involvement will automatically bring peace. In the end the Palestinians need to accept Israel's presence in the Middle East and recognize that they are not going to get everything they - or the Saudis - claim. No amount of American money, encouragement or cajoling is going to change Palestinian resistance to Israel. And pretending that it's "settlements" and not Palestinian rejectionism that is the primary obstacle to peace only serves to justify that very same rejectionsim and the accompanying violence.
See more at Israel Matzav, who (more or less) correctly predicted J-Street's response. Daniel Pipes wrote about a similar divergence 11 years ago.
UPDATE: I've added a bit to the original post.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Who are going to believe the ap or your own eyes?
At least now they're a little more careful than they were two months ago. They actually bothered to empty the shelves before this picture was taken.
The crisis persists. Doesn't it? Elder of Ziyon reports the un(der)reported:
It appears that despite being under constant rocket barrages, Israel allowed some 33 truckloads of food to Gaza, including "15 trucks of dairy products and frozen meat destined for the private sector and 18 others shipping aid for UNRWA and international organizations."Rafah, however, seems to be enjoying a bazaar atmosphere as the starving Palestinian Arabs are freely selling food, clothing, ...
Backspin gives some background that explain why Israel has tried to limit supplies into Gaza. 15 Grads hit Ashkelon!
So when the Israel haters and reporters write about the crisis in Gaza, they are believing the Hamas propaganda so willingly promoted by news organizations and ignoring the real threats to Israel as well as Israel's surprising mild response to the terror.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Half blood prince trailer
h/t Instapundit.
It's noted that this is the time that the movie was originally supposed to be released. Now we have seven or so months to wait. I'm still skeptical that the delay was a good idea.
Barack obama: kryptonite to terrorists
Back in May, David Ignatius wrote about how the United States ought to continue its counterinsurgency war against Al Qaeda.
This evidence from the field suggests two conclusions:First, al-Qaeda isn't a permanent boogeyman; it's losing ground in Iraq and Afghanistan because of U.S. counterinsurgency tactics, especially the alliances we have built with tribal leaders and the aggressive use of Special Forces to capture or kill its operatives. These anti-terrorist operations require special skills -- but they shouldn't require a big, semi-permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. Local security forces can handle a growing share of responsibility -- perhaps ineptly, as in Basra a few weeks ago or in Kabul last weekend, but that's their problem.
Second, the essential mission in combating al-Qaeda now is to adopt in Pakistan the tactics that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means alliances with tribal warlords to bring economic development to the isolated mountain valleys of the FATA region in exchange for their help in security. And it means joint operations involving U.S. and Pakistani special forces to chase al-Qaeda militants as they retreat deeper into the mountains.
Apparently there was a third element that he just added since Nov 4, elect Barack Obama (via memeorandum):
The upsetting news for our imaginary jihadist is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. This wasn't supposed to happen, in al-Qaeda's playbook. Its aim was to draw the "far enemy" (meaning America) ever deeper onto the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Instead, the jihadists must cope with a president-elect who promises to get out of Iraq and whose advisers are talking about negotiating with the Taliban. And to top it off, the guy's middle name is Hussein.
I figured that the jihadists would be more wary of the President who would persist in fighting them, but Ignatius clearly knows better. And actions like negotiating with the Taliban, well that actually can't be expected to work according to Col David Kilcullen one of the formulators of the America's current counterinsurgency strategy:
Rather than talking about negotiations (which implies offering an undefeated Taliban a seat at the table, and is totally not in the cards) I would prefer the term "community engagement." The local communities (tribes, districts, villages) in some parts of Afghanistan have been alienated by poor governance and feel disenfranchised through the lack of district elections. This creates a vacuum, especially in terms of rule of law, dispute resolution, and mediation at the village level, that the Taliban have filled. Rather than negotiate directly with the Taliban, a program to reconcile with local communities who are tacitly supporting the Taliban by default (because of lack of an alternative) would bear more fruit. The Taliban movement itself is disunited and fissured with mutual suspicion--local tribal leaders have told me that ninety per cent of the people we call Taliban could be reconcilable under some circumstances, but that many are terrified of what the Quetta shura and other extremists associated with the old Taliban regime might do to them if they tried to reconcile.
(via Contentions)
So it would appear according to someone who knows a thing or two about counterinsurgency that negotiating with the Taliban is a non starter. My guess that in reality, unlike Ignatius's unfounded suggestion, Al Qaeda and co. prefer the more conciliatory candidate winning. Blackfive is dismissive:
Damn that sounds easy, just "turn a page" and wipe out thousands of years of religious hatred. Just gaze upon the lands OBAMA and they will heal under your gaze. Oh and fix the global economy because the only reason anyone hates us is that we have Play Stations and they are eating steam soup. What a freakin' maroon. Our economy is fine and has been fine and there are Korans full of reasons those bastards think they can and have to beat us you simpleton. I relish the thought of The Obama and his legions of do-gooders waving wands and healing the planet. Clowns.
Hebrew Is Alive And Well--Among The Arabs
An article in Haaretz about Hebrew Renaissance notes thatHebrew is alive and well. At least in the Arab and Druze communities. For students from those sectors, the Hebrew language has become the new business administration - a social and professional catapult to get ahead and succeed in life. The sticklers add Hebrew literature, too. It's a triumph of practicality over ideology. The traditional attitude that language is part of national identity and that to study Hebrew is to cross the line, has given way to the quiet conquest of the Hebrew Language Department - at the University of Haifa by Arabs from the north and at Ben-Gurion University by Bedouin from the south. The graduates are almost always assured of a teaching job, which brings with it a livelihood, honor and prestige, relatively speaking. Hebrew is obligatory in every Arab and Bedouin elementary and high school, and good teachers are in high demand.We are not talking about a casual understanding to Hebrew either--the article mentions Masters theses being done by Arabs on topics such as "connective clauses in spoken Hebrew discourse" and "predicative complements."
This is a general overall trend among Israeli Arabs as a whole. Back in May, an article in The Forward mentioned another article in Haaretz that indicated that while Israeli Arabs might not accept the idea of a Jewish state, they were slowly absorbing Hebrew words--possibly unconsciously--into their everyday speech:
What are the Hebrew words that creep most commonly into the speech of Israeli Arabs? They seem to divide between everyday expressions of social intercourse on the one hand, and words for things or situations that are associated by Arabs with Israeli culture on the other. Haaretz lists some words that belong to the second category, such as ramzor (traffic light), mah.som (checkpoint), g'lidah (ice cream), lah.maniyah (bakery roll) and sulamit (the hash sign on telephone dials). Belonging to the first category are words like b'seder (all right, okay), b'vakasha (please) and me'anyen (interesting).The Forward article suggests the possibility of the linguist assimilation by Israeli Arabs of the Hebrew language--but while that appears to be a positive development, what are we to make of the opposite trend manifesting itself among Jews?
Hillel Halkin wrote in Commentary Magazine back in June about The Translator's Paradox:
Here, then, is a great historical irony. As long as Hebrew was the first language of no educated Jew in the world, it was the second language of every educated Jew; now that it has become the mother tongue of millions of Jews in the state of Israel, it has largely ceased to be studied by Jews elsewhere. It has in effect been demoted to a Judeo-Israeli, a new Jewish regional speech. In both relative and absolute numbers, far more Israeli and Palestinian Arabs now have a working command of it than do American Jews.As an example of how the status of Hebrew has declined, take a look at the book How the Hebrew Language Grew
,written in 1960 by Edward Horowitz. On the back cover, there is a bioof the author that indicates how popular the study of Hebrew in New York City public schools used to be:
Edward Horowitz was one of the pioneer teachers of Hebrew in the public high schools of New York. He was influential in spreading the study of Hebrew within the junior and senior high schools. Dr. Horowitz was president of the American Association of Teachers of Hebrew and served for twenty years as Chairman of the Hebrew Department at Thomas Jefferson High School. He is the author of Sippurim Kallim and Sippurim Latalmid, collections of simple Hebrew stories widely used throughout this country.I find the fact that Hebrew was taught in public schools, and in New York City starting in 1930--before the re-establishment of the state of Israel--pretty amazing. Even today, the American Association of Teachers of Hebrew is still around, but I don't know if there are any public schools in New York--or in the US--that still teach Hebrew.
We Jews are spoiled by success. Who needs Hebrew when you have Artscroll and even when in Israel everyone speaks English.
Actually, Hebrew is not doing so well in Israel either. According to the Hebrew Renaissance article in Haaretz quoted earlier:
At all the country's universities, Hebrew studies are in decline. "The humanities are in a bad way," says Prof. Chaim Cohen, head of the Hebrew Language Department at Ben-Gurion University, "and the departments of Bible studies and Hebrew language are at the top of the list." But it's the same at all the country's universities. These departments are rapidly shrinking, with enrollment standing at less than 1 percent of all humanities students, at most, as in Haifa. They are surviving as best they can.This is all part of a developing disdain for studying the humanities in general. Prof. Chaim Cohen, head of the Hebrew Language Department at Ben-Gurion University laments:
Everyone wants biotechnology, business administration and economics, and this is something new. But I cannot imagine that a department of Hebrew language or Bible will be shut down. It is inconceivable that people should complete a first degree in Israel without knowing anything about their heritage.From the article, it appears there is a realization of the negative trend and an attempt in Israel to reverse it--assuming Israelis can deal with the stiff competition from Israeli Arabs.
The remaining question is what will be the future of Hebrew--and of Jews--here is Golus.
by Daled Amos
November 17, 2008
There's a perception that water is wet
Deborah Howell writes about Remedying the Bias Perception (via memeorandum)
But some of the conservatives' complaints about a liberal tilt are valid. Journalism naturally draws liberals; we like to change the world. I'll bet that most Post journalists voted for Obama. I did. There are centrists at The Post as well. But the conservatives I know here feel so outnumbered that they don't even want to be quoted by name in a memo.
Talk about a hostile work environment! In any other context this kind of bias wouldn't be countenanced by an organization like the Post, but here it's just a "perception." Kind of like the perception that water is wet.
I really enjoy Tom Rosentiel's non-sequitir:
Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter who directs the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said, "The perception of liberal bias is a problem by itself for the news media. It's not okay to dismiss it. Conservatives who think the press is deliberately trying to help Democrats are wrong. But conservatives are right that journalism has too many liberals and not enough conservatives. It's inconceivable that that is irrelevant."
If the perception of bias is not irrelevant, then it is real and then it is obvious that the media is deliberately helping Democrats. Howell doesn't mention one of the more egregious examples. In the week before the election the Post reported on the Obama campaign's acceptance of undocumented donations on page A2. If it had been the McCain campaign, it would have run on page A1 above the fold with an accompanying editorial about the corrupting influence of money on campaigns.
And here's another corrosive aspect of media bias: the much vaunted "wall" between the editorial staff and the reporting staff does not exist. Assignments are doled out on the basis of what supports the editorial positions of the newspaper (with few exceptions) not what's news.
Howell adds:
Combine these with the drumbeat of polling stories saying Obama and the Democrats were likely to win, a few Tom Toles cartoons and TV critic Tom Shales's debate reviews -- both are liberals who are paid to offer opinions -- and conservatives decided that The Post was cheerleading -- especially since they felt the paper hadn't sufficiently scrutinized Obama.The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama. It's not hard to see why conservatives feel disrespected.
As I noted in my critique of the Post's endorsement of Sen. Obama, the Post's editors listed a number of hesitations about Sen. Obama the candidate. Some of them, from the paper's perspective, should have been substantive. Instead the editors waved off those concerned and expressed hope that a President Obama would act differently from the pronouncements of the candidate and the record of the politician. So yes, the Post did record some criticisms of Sen. Obama, but they have to be considered ritual rather than substantive, as they didn't seem to cause the Post's editors any second thoughts.
Finally, Howell's "feel disrespected" is as meaningful as if I'd fallen into a swimming pool and she wrote that I "felt wet." The bias isn't a perception; it is very real. For all of her apologetics, it's clear that Howell still doesn't get that.
James Lileks (via Ed Driscoll)
The first question in any J-school application ought to be "do you want to change the world?" And anyone who answers yes gets kindly turned away. Your job is to describe the way the world changes. Not pretend you're there to nudge it along towards utopia.
More background at Newsbusters and Town Hall.
Murdoch to media: miscreants
Instapundit quotes Charles Cooper quoting Rupert Murdoch.
"With newspapers cutting back and predictions of even worse times ahead, Rupert Murdoch said the profession may still have a bright future if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers."
More Cooper quoting Murdoch (via memeorandum):
"Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone," he continued. "A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let's be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves."
When you have that, bias becomes "perception of bias."
Charles Johnson, rightly adds:
The media are still defensive about this incident. Not a single major news source has unequivocally admitted that those Rathergate documents were obvious, proven fakes; when they refer to the incident, it's always phrased like this: "Right-wing bloggers alleged that the memos were forged," or "Conservative pundits cast doubt on the authenticity of the documents."
And as if to reinforce his point, here's how the NYT portrays Rather's lawsuit:
Rather's Lawsuit Shows Role of G.O.P. in Inquiry
via memeorandum
Amen on the "complacency and condescension." This is a familiar story to Media Blog readers. The first time I heard a newspaper colleague refer to non-journalists as "civilians," it was obvious that something is wrong with the culture of the news media. And the more reporters and editors think of themselves as a specialized elite with access to esoteric knowledge, the worse the problem will get.
So it's interesting that today the New York Times devotes some attention to Rupert Murdoch (via memeorandum)
All this from a charter member of what conservatives deride as the biased liberal media, right? Not quite. This take on Barack Obama comes from The New York Post, the feisty, generally conservative tabloid that is, like the Fox News Channel, part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, the News Corporation.So has Mr. Murdoch gone soft on liberals -- or perhaps just reacted pragmatically to Mr. Obama's sizable victory? The answer, according to people who have watched him operate at close range, is that Mr. Murdoch is a less predictable, less doctrinaire character than his critics imagine.
"[L]ess doctrinaire," there was a time when the New York Times might have deserved that description. Maybe instead of being rigidly liberal, the Times ought to be following stories and see where they lead instead of trying to shape the conclusions of its readership. Maybe instead of observing Murdoch with detachment the folks at the Times should be trying to learn from him.
Crossposted on Yourish.
The bunker mentality
I bring your attention to the following three recent news summaries from the NYT as visible through Bloglines.
November 14, 2008
Deadly Gaza Border Clash Threatens Truce
Four Hamas gunmen were killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border, testing a shaky truce.
November 16, 2008
Hamas Fires Rockets Into Israel
By By ETHAN BRONNER and TAGHREED EL-KHODARY
on Olmert, Ehud
Hamas officials said the attack was revenge for the deaths over the past 11 days of 11 militants and the recent increased Israeli closing of Gaza crossings.
November 17, 2008
Israel Kills 4 Militants in Gaza Strip
Israel's leaders ratcheted up their rhetoric Sunday after an Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinian militants in Hamas-run Gaza, leaving a five-month truce in tatters.
Notice that the one action that's described as leaving the "truce" in "tatters" is Israel's response. But let's not forget that Israel didn't target or kill innocents as Elder of Ziyon observes. (Warning graphic photo.)
No matter how many mortars or rockets were fired into Israel, the usual MSM report would be that it "endangered" - never "violated" - the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. It's important to remember what Hamas sought to achieve with the Tahdiya:
The cease-fire grants Hamas a golden opportunity to expand its military build-up for the next round of terror and violence. Emulating Hizbullah's strategy, Hamas is striving to acquire longer-range and more destructive missiles to be used for deterrence and as a sword on Israel's neck.Israel has acknowledged Hamas, albeit unwillingly, as the de facto ruling power in Gaza. Israel's acceptance of the cease-fire is a blow to the international war on terror and gives immunity to Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza, including al-Qaeda affiliates.
Another diplomatic consequence of the tahdiya will be increasing pressure on Israel to accept a reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah in the future. That could lead to increasing demands on Israel to negotiate a permanent status arrangement with the joint Hamas-Fatah government, while Hamas remains committed to its political program for the elimination of Israel. It is important to recall that the entire Israeli-Palestinian negotiating track since the convening of the Annapolis conference was premised on the exclusion of Hamas and the ultimate achievement of an agreement between the Israeli government and the government of Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah alone.
Another important point to recall is that the ceasefire was for six months. Given that Hamas was using the opportunity to build its fortifications, build up its armaments and shore up its supplies. Israel is striking now, not to end the ceasefire, but because the ceasefire is about to end and the threat from giving Hamas six months to prepare mostly unharassed, making the threat of attacks from Gaza imminent.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Names will never hurt me - the double standard
Recently a number of bloggers got bent out of shape by comments made by incoming Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel's father,
"Obviously, he'll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House."
But that does not mean that Rahm Emanuel, or Barack Obama for that matter, can easily ignore the fact that Benjamin Emanuel recently said a nasty thing about Arabs in the Israeli press. This is from the Jerusalem Post's account of an interview Benjamin gave after news of his son's appointment to the Obama administration was announced:
Samir Kuntar's friend, Dion Nissenbaum:
Emanuel's appointment upset some in the Middle East who fear that Obama's new gatekeeper and White House alter-ego will be unquestioning in his support for questionable Israeli policies.And his dad's comments only aggravated things.
Worst of all, Helena Cobban's Just World News, used the opportunity to accuse Rep. Emanuel, not so subtly, of dual loyalty.
But what I as a US citizen want to be assured of at this point is two things:1. At any point that the interests of the US and the current government of Israel might diverge, can we be assured that all members of our president's staff are acting 100% in the interests of the United States? and
2. Can we be assured that the president is getting the widest range of excellent, relevant, and fact-based advice from all his advisers in the tricky and very sensitive realms of Mideast policy?
The ensuing firestorm ended when Rep. Emanuel apologized for his father's remarks.
While I was originally jarred by what he said, I'm in agreement with Daled Amos and In Context, I don't think that Dr. Emanuel's comments were intended the way the AADC and its apologists alleged. He wasn't suggesting that Arabs ought to be washing floors, but that his son had influence (he wouldn't be washing floors) and that he'd be pro-Israel (he's not an Arab.) The two statements were conflated by the anti-Israel crowd who were already suspicious of Rep.Emanuel because he was born in Israel.
But what to make of these following incidents.
Meryl notes that at least week's Saudi sponsored Interfaith conference Western educated, liberal Palestinian PM, Salam Fayyad was guilty of an omission.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, yet another so-called moderate, managed to speak at the UN interfaith conference about how holy Jerusalem is to the world's major religions--and utterly leave out Judaism.
In Context points out (not for the first time) that the Palestinians under the jurisdiction of "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas, sentenced one of their own to death for helping Israel fight terror attacks.
And finally there's the moderate, Abbas himself who took to threatening Israel this past weekend. But as Elder of Ziyon points out, this ought not to be so casually dismissed:
Which goes to show that the PLO letter to Israel at Oslo that solemnly promised to abandon violence was not worth the paper it was written on. And brings up the question that people are afraid to ask: what is to say that any "peace agreement" will not be torn up as well?
I'll admit, that I'm happy that the Washington Post and New York Times, as far as I can tell ignored Dr. Emanuel's remarks. They were, at worst, clumsy. But even if they were meant as (mis)construed, Dr. Emanuel is not a person of influence in the new administration. Absent compelling evidence, It should have had no bearing on his son's ability to do his job. The outpouring of outrage is more a reflection of the sentiments that only Helena Cobban was honest (and vile) enough to express openly: that somehow support of Israel is de facto proof of dual loyalties.
This is especially apparent when those in authority in the PA continually express their support for conflict with Israel and deny Israel's basic right to exist. That doesn't upset the likes of Helena Cobban, Jake Tapper, Michael Scherer or Dion Nissenbaum at all. Denial of the very premises of a peace settlement by the Palestinians is a matter of course, not worthy of comment, but the slightest hint - no matter how specious - of pro-Israel leanings is a matter of overblown concern. This isn't simply a matter of being critical of Israel, but of anti-Israel, if not antisemitic feelings.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Juggling carnivals 11/17/08
Incoming Carnivals
Incoming carnivals
West Bank Mama hosts the Mama Rachel edition of Haveil Havalim with lots of wonderful post about Israel, Judaism and the Jewish world.
The 46th carnival of Maryland is up at administrator's Pillage Idiot. (I usually use the blog name, not the blogger name. Sorry Attila.) If you're a Maryland blogger and you'd like to host/ess contact Pillage Idiot.
Upcoming Carnivals
Get your submissions in for the next Kosher Cooking Carnival at I'll Call Baila.Sideshow
Test you knowledge of musical trivia at Musical Monday #68 to be posted later today at Elie's Expositions.Council speak 11/17/08
The winning council entry for the week was Bookworm Room's Reaching new demographics about why the Republican message should resonate with more minorities. The runner up was the Glittering Eye's very funny A prospective Obama administration.
On the non-council side, the winning entry was Big Lizards, the Great Leap forward: How we can win again which was similar in theme to Bookworm Room's entry. The runner up was Air Force Officer's guest post Israel: the one bomb state, nominated by both Bookworm Room and me. It's a reminder of something that Charles Krauthammer wrote ten years ago, Israel is a small country.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Does Obama Really Support The Saudi Peace Plan? (Updated)
I suppose that depends on what you think of Uzi Mahnaimi's article in The Sunday Times. Mahnaimi writes:Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America's president-elect.Uzi Mahnaimi has written a number of such newsbreaking articles--a number of which have had their accuracy questioned.
Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace...
In May 2006, Mahnaimi wrote:
A HAMAS plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.A spokesman for the Al-Qassem Brigades denied the report and a representative of the Palestinian Legislative Council denied the report did as well.
Hamas's military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.
Well, I guess you'd expect them to deny the plot.
But in July 2005 there was an article entitled "Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out" which quoted Mahnaimi as one of its sources. In response, Yigal Carmon, head of MEMRI, called Mahnaimi's part in it 'not credible.'
In another article for the Sunday Times, Mahnaimi wrote in July 2004 about Israel's impending attack on Iran:
Amid growing concern in the US government over Iran's apparent determination to build a nuclear bomb, the official said he believed Israel would attack the plant, on the Gulf coast, if it appeared fuel rods were about to be shipped there.In December 2005, Mahnaimi wrote a similar article entitled Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran:
Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.Three years later, and so far--nothing.
In 1998, Mahnaimi wrote what may be his most controversial article (scroll down):
Israel Planning 'Ethnic' Bomb as Saddam Caves InWinds of War discredited that report based on the fact that
ISRAEL is working on a biological weapon that would harm Arabs but not Jews, according to Israeli military and western intelligence sources.
The weapon, targeting victims by ethnic origin, is seen as Israel's response to Iraq's threat of chemical and biological attacks. Yesterday Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, backed away from the brink of war and agreed to resume co-operation with the inspection teams seeking his suspected chemical and biological weapons plants.
a significant proportion of the Jews in Israel ARE ethnic Arabs. They fled there from Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and other countries where their families had lived for many hundreds of years.All of which lead Noah Pollak to discount this latest piece by Mahnami, just as Meryl Yourish and Joe's Dartblog have discounted Mahnami's articles in the past.
That's all well and good...but just keep in mind that in September 1997, just a few weeks after Israel's enigmatic (at the time) bombing in Syria--it was Uzi Mahnaimi who correctly reported:
Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raidAs the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day--so the question is whether this is Mahnaimi's time again.
A senior adviser to Barack Obama on Sunday denied reports that the U.S. president-elect plans to throw his weight behind the 2002 Arab peace plan, which calls for Israel to withdraw from all territories captured during the 1967 Six-Day War in exchange for normalized ties with the Arab world.
The British Sunday Times said Obama expressed this sentiment during his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories last July.
Dennis Ross, Obama's adviser on Middle East policy, issued a statement Sunday, saying "I was in the meeting in Ramallah. Then-senator Obama did not say this, the story is false."
by Daled Amos
November 16, 2008
Gaza gun glut
This is from a BBC story entitled "Questioning the ceasefire in Gaza," one of those stories from a journalist who has just dropped in on Hamas for a chat. Here are some paragraphs about the tunnel business:
[...] I was winched down into one of these tunnels last month. It is much more sophisticated than the one I was in less than a year ago where sand kept crumbling onto my head, provoking worries that the whole thing could collapse at any time.And I don't think they are counting those tax revenues by candlelight.These days there are no air holes poked through with small tubes to the surface. Air is simply pumped in mechanically and the roof of the tunnel is solid enough. This time they have burrowed through hard clay.
Some of the passages are equipped with thick plastic pipes that allow businessmen on the Egyptian side to deliver cheap petrol, a commodity in short supply on the Gaza side, which fetches a good price . . .
There is also a roaring trade in cows, sheep and goats. But Kalashnikov rifles and bullets (once the most popular of imports) are no longer coming in.
A tunneller told me there were so many of these weapons in Gaza now that there was no longer much demand.
The tunnel owners who have invested large sums in paying the diggers and supplying the equipment for construction work, make their money back after just two or three runs of merchandise. They say they have to pay a large tax to Hamas, but it is worth it. [...]
Crossposted on Judeopundit
No wonder gore wasn't interested
Gore says no to 'Climate Czar' role
Mr. Podesta authored a white paper calling for an Energy Security Council within the White House to oversee climate change and clean energy initiatives. The czar and the council would coordinate agencies, including the Energy and Interior departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.The obvious choice to lead the council is Mr. Gore, whose campaign to address climate change earned him the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But the former vice president is taking a pass.
"Former Vice President Gore does not intend to seek or accept any formal position in government," Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said. "He feels very strong right now that the best thing for him to do is to build support for the bold changes that we have to make to solve the climate crisis."
via memeorandum
I wonder if this has anything to do with his decision.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
via memeorandum
UPDATE: Fausta sees an eerie resemblance in the latest James Bond movie. Gorefinger?
In other transition news - Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles
Mark Gitenstein, one of the 12 transition board members who will play a significant role in shaping the Obama administration, worked on million-dollar lobbying contracts with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and promoted legislation for giant defense contractors Boeing and General Dynamics. Until this fall, he was registered to petition Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission on behalf of AT&T, Merrill Lynch, KPMG, Ernst & Young and others.Gitenstein has blue-chip credentials for the volunteer role on the Obama team. He was chief Democratic counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings for controversial Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork; was a close adviser to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s White House bid; and served as counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But his presence is also a reminder that Obama's campaign pledge to keep his distance from the Washington lobbying culture may be tougher to fulfill than he anticipated.
"Nothing is going to change," said Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton who did lobbying work for a range of companies after leaving the White House.
I like the Lanny Davis quote. However it's third paragraph quoted above is probably true: a significant number of people who are qualified to help with the transition are or have been lobbyists. The promise to ensure that lobbyists wouldn't unduly influence his administration was one that President-elect Obama couldn't keep. Whether he was cynical or naive, is likely in the eyes of the beholder.
Instapundit comments:
...it's a backslide to go from saying that "they won't work in my White House" to saying that they won't "dominate" it.
via memeorandum
The msm and their superior fact checking ability
via memeorandum
A number of outlets (traditional and not) fell for a guy who claimed to be in the McCain campaign. The New York Times used the opportunity to suggest that the fraud gained credibility largely due to credulous bloggers.
But most of Eisenstadt's victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet.
This guy was especially bad.
Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn't realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.
But he's not a blogger. That's Nicholas Kristof. A columnist for the New York Times.
I realized he qualified his charge by crediting the information to Fox News (who bought into the Martin Eisenstadt hoax) but he certainly seems to be treating it as true. (His first column after the hoax had been exposed, did not address his gullibility.)
It didn't take that much to figure out what was wrong with some of the claims, but such an exercise was too much for Kristof, who was exulting that Americans had just elected an intellectual to be president. Nice display of intellectual curiosity.
Related thoughts at Maryland Conservatarian.
Shiny happy dhimmi - first edition
With Dr. Sanity on hiatus, I thought I'd try at an interim version of Carnival of the Insanities. This is something I've thought about for a while.
If you like it and would like to see this every Sunday (or most Sundays) until Dr. Sanity returns, leave a comment or e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com. Similarly if you have items that show excessive deference to Islam or other exercises in PC-ness, e-mail me with your suggestions.
1) Talking about Taqqiya
2) Interfaith for me but not for thee. That's a funny way to normalize Zionism. Methinks Tony has it exactly backwards. Maybe he's taking his cues from Charles.
3) A Rudd awakening for Israel?
4) With the nasty Bush-hobbits out of the way, maybe now the terrorists will respect us and lessen their hostility. Or maybe not.
5) Frodo Mickey Mouse lives!
6) Rahm as in "Rahmbo" or "rhymes with calm?"
7) This makes some sense, if you recall that Bill Clinton ws America's first black president: Barack Obama will be the first Jewish president! These ethnic claims can be so hard to figure out.
8) The obligation to feed and clothe - those who are trying to kill you. How long will they insist that these guys are moderates?
9) It may not be the religion of peace, but it can cure cancer.
10) One less terror supporting professor walking free.
11) If the world knew why didn't it act? I'm sure he (and others like him) would have done something but would it have been enough?
Canning spam ^ 2
A tale of two meanings.
This spam is canned.
Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide. E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.Spamcop.net, another spam watch dog, found a similar decline, from about 40 spam e-mails per second to around 10 per second. (See their graphic representation here.)
(via memeorandum)
This is undoubtedly good!
More Spam is canned - and sold!
Through war and recession, Americans have turned to the glistening canned product from Hormel as a way to save money while still putting something that resembles meat on the table. Now, in a sign of the times, it is happening again, and Hormel is cranking out as much Spam as its workers can produce.In a factory that abuts Interstate 90, two shifts of workers have been making Spam seven days a week since July, and they have been told that the relentless work schedule will continue indefinitely.
(via memeorandum)
But is this a good sign or a bad one?
Crossposted on Yourish.
The clown who is sick does the trick of disaster: Neil Young dictates his terms to the auto industry
Neil Young blogging on "How To Save A Major Automobile Company" at Huffpo is certainly an interesting development. Here's the plan:
[...] The big three must reduce models to basics. a truck, an SUV, a large family sedan, an economy sedan, and a sports car. Use existing tooling.Is there a mini-van in there somewhere? This won't go over well with my crowd.
Keep building these models to keep the workforce employed but build them without [italics in original] engines and transmissions. These new vehicles, called Transition Rollers, are ready for a re-power. No new tooling is required at this stage. The adapters are part of the kits described next.Will people buy these things when the alternative is, say, a Toyota? Neil asserts "People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with." OK, Neil, I guess if you put the words "will" and "real" in italics it must be true. Of course, a southern man don't need you around anyhow.At the same time as the new Transition Rollers are being built, keeping the work force working, utilize existing technology now, create re-power kits to retrofit the Transition Rollers to SCEVs (self charging electric vehicles) for long range capability up to and over 100mpg. If you don't think this technology is realistic or available, check out the Progressive Insurance Automotive X prize. Alternatively, check out Lincvolt.com or other examples.
A bailed out Auto manufacturer must open or re-purpose one or more factories and dedicate them to do the re-power/retrofit assembly. These factories would focus on re-powering the Transition Rollers into SCEVs but could also retrofit and re-power many existing vehicles to SCEVs. These existing vehicles are currently sitting unsold at dealerships across America.
Auto manufacturers taking advantage of a government bailout must only sell clean and green vehicles that do not contribute to global warming. No more internal combustion engines that run exclusively on fossil fuels can be sold period. [...]
Crossposted on Judeopundit
Update: Young isn't the only blogger with ideas about the automotive future.
Obama to force terrorists to seek "new symbols"
This LA Times article speculates that an Obama presidency could "inspire an Internet-based revolt" against Middle East dictatorships and have all sorts of other possible effects:
[...] Religious devotion is growing in the Middle East, and Islamic puritans worry that the widening intrusion that the telegenic Obama personifies threatens their hold on society. Muslim rappers scat about women's rights and tolerance; sitcoms are embracing romance and sexual allure; and a new generation of TV preachers, the Islamic version of their Christian counterparts, are dynamic speakers, less rigid in their interpretations of holy texts. Tailored suits have replaced beards and tunics.Or maybe not:The Obama presidency will intensify the influence of American culture, but that dynamic can't appear to diminish the permeating role that Islam -- be it moderate or conservative -- has on Arab society. Yet even Obama's facial characteristics emblazoned on T-shirts seem more a reflection of the region than a foreign-imposed graphic. Islamic militants probably will be forced to search for new symbols in rallying followers to blow themselves up in their war against the U.S. . . .
Skepticism, however, can spin like a desert storm, and even the most effervescent poster-sized smile can dim quickly in the Middle East. Arab newspapers are already criticizing Obama for his postelection comments and decisions, especially regarding the Arab-Israeli divide. Obama's campaign statements about Israel and his naming of Rahm Emanuel, a Jew whose father once had links to a militant Zionist organization, as his chief of staff have Arab commentators warning of an Israeli bias . . .Bummer. Anyway, "it's a fascinating Bluetooth moment":
But for now, it's a fascinating Bluetooth moment; cyberspace is abuzz from North Africa to Damascus, Syria, to the white sands of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The Arab world is about respect, saving face; you can cut a man, but you give him his dignity. Arabs say the Bush administration seldom understood this; they're hoping Obama's does . . .Or the dignity part, anyway.
Crossposted on Judeopundit
November 14, 2008
Rahm Emanuel...Apologizes?
Upon hearing of his son's new gig, the father of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ma'Ariv, saying, "Obviously, he'll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab?He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House."With all due respect, what is the big deal? Look again at what Emanuel's father said:
This has prompted a letter from American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee heads Kareem Shora and former Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, D-Ohio, to the junior Mr. Emanuel, congratulating him and President-elect Obama, saying they are "deeply disappointed by comments made by your father, Mr. Benjamin Emanuel."
The ADC, they write, "views this characterization of an Arab as an unacceptable smear. One can readily imagine the justifiable outcry if someone made a similar remark about African-Americans, Jews, or Hispanics, concerning cleaning the floors of the White House. Do the normal standards of decency and civility not apply when talking about Arabs? ADC asks you to disavow and repudiate these remarks publicly. We sincerely hope you will distance yourself from any demeaning characterization of any ethnic, religious, or racial group."
Obviously, he'll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House.Isn't his father just giving 2 unrelated cases for why his son is going to to be a pro-Israel influence?
o He is going to be a pro-Israel influence, because after all--Rahm Emanuel is Jewish, not an Arab.I suppose you could argue that I am reading too much into this, but I don't think so. On the contrary, I think these representatives of the Arab-American community are taking advantage of the situation and jumping in to score points.
o He is going to be a pro-Israel influence, because after all--Rahm Emanuel is going to be the White House Chief of Staff, not mopping floors.
A spokeswoman for Emanuel writes: "Today, Rep. Emanuel called Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and apologized on behalf of his family and agreed to meet with representatives of the Arab-American community at an appropriate time in the future." [emphasis added]I would like to think that "at an appropriate time in the future" is Rahm Emanuel's way of saying "when pigs fly."
Now that is an example of reading to much into a statement.
What me worry?
Here's a gloom-inducer - as of Election Eve in 2004 it became obvious that Bush would get a second term and we would elect a new President in November 2008. That gave Al Qaeda (and anyone else who likes long lead times) four years to plan a transition or inaugural surprise.
I'm encouraged by what CIA chief Hayden says:
Osama bin Laden is alive and "putting a lot of energy into his own security," the director of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, said today.He also claimed, without providing details, that the US intelligence community had disrupted an attack "that would have rivaled the destruction of 9/11." A senior intelligence official said Hayden was referring to the 2006 liquid bomb on airliners plot that was foiled in London.
"American and its friends have taken the fight to the enemy," Gen. Hayden said in a broad roundup of efforts to fight al Qaeda.
I'm more worried about what will happen a few years down the road, because I don't believe that President elect-Obama or his team fully appreciates the danger still out there. Especially if this is the debate they're having.
According to ABC, a debate has broken out among the Obama transition team about Hayden. They like his performance and his efforts to rescue the CIA, and they want to retain some continuity in the war effort. Others on Team Obama feel that they cannot have Hayden remain, though, because of his connections to the warrantless surveillance and controversial interrogation techniques, even though those haven't been in play since 2003. Since Obama himself voted to support the surveillance compromise, that doesn't seem like as big a hurdle as this report paints it.
If they're convinced that Hayden is correct and has been effective, there should be no debate. But politics intrudes.
via memeorandum
Crossposted on Yourish.
Krauthammer on bailing
Kimberly Strassel explains (or here) how the Big 3 automakers get included in the financial services bailout bill.
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin: "As Treasury implements this new program, it is clear to me from reading the definition of financial institution that auto financing companies would be among the many financial institutions that would be eligible sellers to the government. Do you agree?"Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd: "Yes, for purposes of this act, I agree that financial institution may encompass auto financing companies."
The elastic clause, I guess.
Charles Krauthammer explains (or here) why that shouldn't be allowed.
First, the arbitrariness. Where do you stop? Once you've gone beyond the financial sector, every struggling industry will make a claim on the federal treasury. What are the grounds for saying yes or no?
The criteria will inevitably be arbitrary and political. The money will flow preferentially to industries with lines to Capitol Hill and the White House. To the companies heavily concentrated in the districts of committee chairmen. To clout. Is this not precisely the kind of lobby-driven policymaking that Obama ran against?Second is the sheer inefficiency. Saving Detroit means saving it from bankruptcy. As we have seen with the airlines, bankruptcy can allow operations to continue while helping shed fatally unsupportable obligations. For Detroit, this means release from ruinous wage deals with their astronomical benefits (the hourly cost of a Big Three worker: $73; of an American worker for Toyota: $48), massive pension obligations, and unworkable work rules such as "job banks," a euphemism for paying vast numbers of employees not to work.
The point of the Democratic bailout is to protect the unions by preventing this kind of restructuring. Which will guarantee the continued failure of these companies, but now they will burn tens of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's the ultimate in lemon socialism.
If .. you must 11/14/08
If you haven't read Alaska is turning a page at the Hedgehog Report; you must.
Fascinating history as families who have long been associated with the state continue to hold sway. Palin as governor is remarkable in how she changed all that. Also do you know who the daughter of Hale Boggs is?
If you haven't read Brian's Photo Tips: On Power Shortages at Snapped Shot; you must.
Remember the emergency session of Hamas with candles when sunlight was visible through the curtains? Yes we're talking about that level of obvious.
If you haven't read Great moments in Palestinian sourcing at Media Backspin ; you must.
Did the media learn anything from the Mohammed al-Dura case?
If you haven't read Just being Marines at Lake Forest at Cheat Seeking Missiles; you must.
Great story of bravery not on the battlefield.
If you haven't read The Afghanistan Blues at JoshuaPundit; you must.
Related, see here.
If you haven't read Winners and Losers at the Glittering Eye; you must.
If you haven't read The coming mortgage class war at the Provocateur; you must.
These two cover different angles to the same theme: Why should the government bail out losers?
If you haven't read Strongest evidence that it's about the unions at Bookworm Room; you must.
Suggesting why the Democrats are pushing for an auto industry bail out.
If you haven't read So Eleanor Rigby was ... at My Right Word; you must.
Apparently she wasn't lonely.
If you haven't read Dick Morris: Of course Palin was a great pick at the Hedgehog Report; you must.
I'm not a big fan of Morris's ability to predict correctly, but here he seems to have been correct. Of course there are those who still disagree.
If you haven't read Obama's win; seven silver linings at Elie's Expositions; you must.
I still might respond, but haven't had the chance yet. Still they're fun, even if I'm not in total agreement. #2 is very similar to James Taranto's argument here.
If you haven't read The sad state of the conservative blogosphere at Solomonia; you must.
Part of this argument is what I've noted before, that "pure" bloggers are getting pushed out by professional bloggers. But perhaps all bloggers have little to do with swaying the political conversation and despite our best efforts the MSM are still what determines what's news, and bloggers (left and right) are slugging it out on the sidelines. So the question is how to get the conservative blogosphere have a greater role in setting the agenda.
If you haven't read A nifty example of Democratic fiscal management at Hot Air; you must.
The record breaking sums were not enough.
If you haven't read In the belly of the beast; no bias here at NRO's media blog; you must.
An illustration is here.
If you haven't read Status Quo: Jews lived in all quarters of the Old City at Elder of Ziyon; you must.
I know that all "sensible" arrangements for Arab-Israeli peace are predicated on Israel ceding control over parts of the Old City of Jerusalem to the Palestinians. But does history matter at all?
If you haven't read Change, well not really at Seraphic Secret; you must.
Working off of the excellent Daled Amos analysis Obama's Blueprint For 'Change' In The Middle East, Seraphic Secret suggests that maybe the Palestinians ought to demonstrate the ability to govern, before giving them responsibility to actually govern. Too sensible, no wonder he's not a diplomat.
If you haven't read Princeton's selective progressivism at Likelihood of Success; you must.
Remember when Yale turned down a $20 million endowment because the donor wanted it to fund study of Western Civilization? The New York Times praised Yale at the time,
"No self-respecting educational institution can allow an outsider -- no matter how well-meaning or generous -- to dictate its education priorities." I wonder how they feel about a prestigious college - in this case Princeton - ceding its control, not to a generous donor but to a government that seeks to stifle free inquiry? My guess is that if the Times editorializes, it will ignore the restrictions the partnership with Saudi Arabia will impose on Princeton and praise the university for being open to new ways of thinking.
If you haven't read Short Takes at Deja Vu; you must.
About Syria. America's oil. And more.
If you haven't Our low life expectation at It's almost Supernatural; you must.
The ANC is failing.
If you haven't read Farewell to the world's oldest blogger at Oyvay Blog; you must.
Even though the item's a few months old, it's interesting. And I must thank the Oyvay blogger for convincing me to do If ... you must again.
November 13, 2008
Obama's Blueprint For 'Change' In The Middle East
I got an email from Jerusalem One--a copy of a post entitled Obama, Israel and The Muslim World.Obama, Israel, and the Muslim WorldRead the whole post.
Change was the central theme of President-elect Obama's successful campaign for the presidency. Unfortunately, neither candidate presented the American public with their positions on issues facing the American Republic. Now, the question that begs for an answer is "What Change will President Obama advocate when he formally takes office"?
While there has been some speculation of what new foreign policy initiatives may be in store The Center For American Progress is systematically making public the policy prescriptions that Obama's brain trust is presenting to the President. The Center For American Progress is an invaluable resource for people interested in what policies an Obama Administration will promote. The Center was founded and is presided over by John Podesta who is heading up the Obama transition team. On Sunday, Podesta told Chris Wallace of Fox News that he believes that Obama was given a real mandate for change.
Now Podesta and Obama's think tank have posted chapters of a book they have compiled for the Obama transition team. It is titled Change For America.
Here is what the actual document says about Israel:
Engage the Middle East Peace ProcessNeutral location? How about Annapolis?
During the first year of the new administration, the new president should go to the Old City of Jerusalem and give a speech reaffirming America's commitment to the absolute security of Israel and to the creation of a viable Palestinian state that can be home to millions of Palestinians willing to live in peace with their Israeli neighbors. With support from European and Arab governments, the new president should announce his willingness to engage personally in serious political, economic, and diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching agreement between Palestinians and Israelis that will result in a viable state for the Palestinians and genuine security for the Israelis. This affirmation should be accompanied by a pledge to convene, during his first six months in office, an international summit in a neutral location.
The problem with the above paragraph is that it describes a situation that does not exist:
With support from European and Arab governments, the new president should announce his willingness to engage personally in serious political, economic, and diplomatic efforts aimed at reaching agreement between Palestinians and Israelis that will result in a viable state for the Palestinians and genuine security for the Israelis.This assumes that Europe and the Arab governments have any interest in "genuine security for the Israelis": based on the reaction in Europe to the Security Fence, checkpoints, and cutting off supplies to Hamas terrorists which are then used against Israel--it is clear that what Israel considers security and Europe considers security are two very different things.
Even if there was an agreement on Israel's security, what will Europe's reaction be when Palestinian terrorists start firing Kassams at Israel?
Can you say Sderot?
Bottom line, when it comes to Israel's security, Europe is unreliable--and let's not even start talking about those Arab 'governments'.
This document continues:
This effort should be seen as beginning in the early days and weeks of the new administration and at its inception should involve the president personally. Responsibility for following up should lie with the secretary of state, the national security advisor, and the assistant secretary for Middle East affairs. Given the various other demands on the president's foreign policy team, the president should consider appointing a senior American diplomat who is experienced, knowledgeable, and known to the region as a full-time presidential envoy with the authority to speak for the government of the United States, and routinely to interface with all the interested parties, including with members of a support group of outside governments.Not much here that is new--or successful in the past. Again, the Secretary of State will be involved, and we all know how highly the State Department thinks of Israel.
The section concludes:
This envoy should be supported by an interagency team tasked to provide the diplomatic, economic, military, and aid support needed to achieve success. The new administration cannot wait until the seventh or eighth year to make progress on this front.Yeah, that sounds about right: 'economic, military, and aid support' for the Palestinian Arabs; diplomacy to make sure that Israel goes along with it. And of course, the admonition not to wait--why wait to get a feel for the situation when you can just continue the previous artificial solutions that can be imposed on Israel?
The post by One Jerusalem notes that the document suggests that the President:
should give a speech in a major Muslim capital - perhaps in Cairo or Beirut or Jakarta - that rejects the clash of cultures, that pays respect to mainstream Islam, and that calls for a new era of dialogue, understanding and tolerance.This smacks of trying to be all things to all people in the region--how is the US supposed to call for "a new era of dialogue, understanding and tolerance," while at the same time securing real security for Israel, when the Arabs will call for putting pressure on Israel as counterweight to years of Bush's alleged favoritism for Israel?
I especially like the idea of President Obama making such a speech in Beirut--while in Lebanon maybe he can meet with the terrorist head of Hezbollah, Nasrallah.
If this document really reflects what Obama's people are intending for the Middle East and Israel, these people are intent on making the same mistakes as previous administrations--with a president whose true feelings about Israel are unknown.
So much for Change.
by Daled Amos
The jihad against blasphemy begins with interfaith understanding
Irony pervades this lead paragraph:
Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Islamic kingdom that forbids the public practice of other religious faiths, will preside Wednesday over a two-day U.N. conference on religious tolerance that will draw more than a dozen world leaders, including President Bush, Israeli President Shimon Peres and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
If I were writing the next paragraph I'd change "agreed for the first time" to "deigned."
The event is part of a personal initiative by Saudi King Abdullah to promote an interfaith dialogue among the world's major religions. The Saudi leader agreed for the first time to dine in the same room with the Israeli president at a private, pre-conference banquet Tuesday hosted by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. But Ban hinted that the two leaders -- whose governments do not have diplomatic relations -- were not seated at the same table.
While the Washington Post quotes a number of critics of Saudi Arabia, it doesn't mention what the real game is:
Saudi King Abdullah, who initiated this week's special session, is quietly enlisting the leaders' support for a global law to punish blasphemy - a campaign championed by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Conference that puts the rights of religions ahead of individual liberties.If the campaign succeeds, states that presume to speak in the name of religion will be able to crush religious freedom not only in their own country, but abroad.
As President Bush and other world leaders convene for the farce, King Abdullah's plan will move steadily along and his image as peacemaker will be broadcast far and wide. He can back off of whatever lukewarm peace initiative he's laid out once he's made his case for global blasphemy.
Yes. Irony is not dead.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Not learning from mistakes - diplomacy in the middle east
Crossposted on Yourish.
The new abbas is the same as the old boss
The guy being promoted as the great "moderate" hope of the Palestinians remembers his maximum leader quite fondly.
During the memorial, held at Abbas' Mukataa compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian president said, "The path of the shahids - Arafat, George Habash (founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and (assassinated Hamas spiritual leader) Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - is the path that we cherish; it is aimed at upholding the Palestinians' nationalist and sovereign resolutions."
Elder of Ziyon notes that Abbas's hankering for dead terrorists, is nothing unusual.
But Ynet also notes:
The memorial underscored the growing divisions between the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is ruled by Arafat's successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Gaza is run by the Islamic militant Hamas which seized the territory in 2007.
You could say that. It was illegal to commemorate Arafat's passing in Gaza.
The first event was scheduled for Monday in Rafah and was supposed to combine three issues: Arafat's memory; a protest over the siege of Gaza and the closing of the border crossings; and support for rapprochement talks between Hamas and Fatah being held in Cairo. Officially, all the canceled demonstrations were not under Fatah auspices but were being arranged by a coordinating committee of all PLO member organizations. In any case, the organizers of the Rafah rally were summoned by the police, held for a few hours and then asked to sign a statement they would not organize any activities or they would be fined. Some signed and others refused. The organizations have canceled all their demonstrations, though Fatah made no official announcement.Printers were also ordered not to print any material related to Arafat or his pictures without approval.
When will the international Palestinian sympathizers start protesting this blatant effort to stifle the nationalist feelings of the Palestinians?
Other cherished memories of Arafat are at Israelly Cool, Elder of Ziyon, Scrapple Face (h/t Elder of Ziyon), and Boker Tov Boulder.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Submitted 11/13/08
Watcher Council submissions for the week are up!
But first of all I'd like to welcome new Watchers, The Provocateur and Mere Rhetoric to our ranks. I first noticed the Provocateur through LGF's linkviewer and found his posts on economics very enlightening. I've been following Mere Rhetoric for a lot longer and enjoy his takes on the politics behind events in the Middle East.
That 'ol "kindred spirit" argument - The Colossus of Rhodey points out the logical fallacy behind Ward Connerly's detractors.
A Prospective Obama Administration (Updated) - It rarely happens but this The Glittering Eye made me laugh. He used movies to illustrate the different possibilities of how the Obama administration might operate.
Reaching new demographics - Bookworm Room points out the difficulty Republicans have reaching blacks and Hispanics. I know that there are those who are pushing for Michael Steele to run the RNC. In 2006 he ran against Ben Cardin for Maryland's Senate seat and lost. The most striking aspect of this loss was that he lost the black vote 74 to 25. While blacks will overwhelmingly support a Democratic black candidate, they don't support Republican black candidates with the same intensity.
Noted Democratic Shill Begs Nutroots Not To Viciously Attack Emanuel For Being Too Jewish- Mere Rhetoric points out the antisemitism that pervades a significant portion of President-elect Obama's supporters.
The Great GOP Civil War - Hillbilly White Trash outlines the battle lines for control of the Republican Party.
Overcoming idiocy - I wrote about Timonth Noah's column arguing that the election results still show that whites have a racial problem with voting for a black man.
From The Beginning- Joshuapundit argues that despite his comforting words, President elect Obama will most likely govern from the extreme Left rather than make any real attempt at bi-partisanship. I agree. When you have a candidate who hews to the politics of the Nation, I don't believe that you can expect him to govern from the Center. Obama didn't simply adopt discrete policy positions, he subscribes to a complete political philosophy.
Valor and Patience- Cheat-Seeking Missiles writes about an impressive grass roots efforts to help the citizens of Iraq and one dissenter who questions those good works.
Return to First Principles - The Razor also has policy prescriptions for the Republican. He advocates a less intrusive government.
Fraud, Corruption, and Power: What Our Bailout Tax Dollars Are Really Going To - The Provocateur outlines some other disturbing aspects to AIG's corporate behavior.
Something That Must Be Said - Rhymes With Right senses an effort to silence political speech.
Outside of blogging what do us watchers do? Well a number of us were included in a National Journal survey of political bloggers. Among others, fellow Watchers, Bookworm Room, Colossus of Rhodey.Hube JoshuaPundit and I were asked for their takes on the election.
Polling results are not yet final pending the final results from Minnesota. Overall my predictions were quite off, reflecting an irrational optimism on my part. I still think that my comment was on target.
Read. Enjoy. Be informed.
November 12, 2008
Will Obama's Playbook Work For Livni?
Emanuele Ottolenghi asks Where Is Kadima Heading?--noting that the Second Intifada has disproved both Peace Now and Greater Israel, leading to the strategy of withdrawal even without the promise of peace.What made Israelis buy into this notion? First, the relative quiet that had characterized the northern border with Lebanon since May 2000, when the first instance of Israeli unilateralism had been carried out. Second, the demographic argument that made relinquishing the Gaza Strip a logical conclusion. And third, the personality of Ariel Sharon, whom Israelis felt -- after he had vanquished the Palestinian Second Intifadah -- they could blindly trust on security.All three of these points have disappeared--and Olmert will soon no longer be around to act as if the first two are still in force and as if he were the successor to the third.
That being the case, what will Livni do, since it was the idea of unilateral withdrawal that formed Kadima's underlying appeal?
The answer may be from a post by David Hazony in reaction to Arkady Gaydamak's political problems:
In this sense, Jerusalem's voters have given voice to a deep revulsion over what feels and smells like political corruption, (of which the case of Ehud Olmert is merely the tip of the iceberg.) My guess is that in the upcoming national election, many voters will be abandoning the old questions of peace and borders, and putting their votes where their gut tells them the parties are in terms of ideological vision. The downfall of Gaydamak just might signify a new beginning for Israeli politics.Imagine that: vision instead of issues? That approach seemed to work pretty well for Obama--and a connection between Obama and Livni has been noted. Livni still has her image going for her as the newcomer, the clean newcomer. In the current environment of Israeli politics, that may be all that she needs to win in February.
by Daled Amos
Belated straight talk
Yeterday the Wall Street Journal stated that John McCain owed Sarah Palin some straight talk. (via memeorandum)
In Mr. McCain's moving concession speech, he wished "godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president." He asked his fellow Americans to join him in helping President-elect Obama bridge our differences and build a better, more hopeful nation.It will be instructive to see whether Mr. McCain will now extend the same level of graciousness to Mrs. Palin that he has to Mr. Obama, by giving a public slapdown to the very public smears emanating from his own campaign team. We have no idea what Mr. McCain will do when he sits down with Mr. Leno tonight.
But there's no doubt what a man of honor would do.
I didn't see it, but it appears that Sen. McCain took that advice to heart (via memeorandum).
"I'm so proud of her and I'm very grateful she agreed to run with me. She inspired people, she still does," McCain told Jay Leno during a "Tonight Show" interview taped for broadcast Tuesday night. "I couldn't be happier with Sarah Palin."In an interview that mingled flashes of humor with political analysis, McCain did little to deflect responsibility from himself. He alluded to the difficult political environment for Republicans nationwide and conceded, "I could tell you a lot of things that we may have made mistakes on." He never listed them.
"So, that's the way it is," he added.
And as far as those rumors:
Asked by Leno to address griping about Palin from unidentified McCain operatives in the days following the election, the Arizona senator said, "These things happen in campaigns."I think I have at least a thousand, quote, top advisers," he scoffed. "A top adviser said? ... I've never even heard of ... a top adviser or a high-ranking Republican official."
When the media uses anonymous sources one problem they encounter is inflating the standing of its sources. McCain certainly seems to be implying that the folks whose complaints about Palin got such attention were pretty insignificant in his campaign. Maybe that's why he didn't defend her right away. While it's good that he did eventually stand up for Gov. Palin, Sen. McCain really owed it to her to speak up sooner.
Haveil havalim #190 is up!
Whoops I've been remiss, Haveil Havalim #190 is up at Jewlicious. It's the Jewish blogging carnival with a 'tude. Check it out.
My name is msm and i'm biased
But the media resists this interpretation, straining to come up with other rationales. They love a "good story," or they are attracted to the "newest star." But these justifications falter with minimal scrutiny. (Sarah Palin is the newest politician, and certainly the rise from college basketball player to VP nominee is "good copy.") They really can't admit they are in the tank for ideological reasons. If so, their entire self-image as objective guardians of "truth" would collapse. And, moreover, they might have to hire different people-ones who thought differently and could balance their coverage.
It hasn't just been they're political coverage. Earlier this year a French court found in favor of Philipe Karsenty who essentially questioned the way the media - not just France 2 - covered the Middle East. Other than the NY Times in The Lede section, no major MSM outlet carried the story. The early coverage of the "Aqsa intifada" was appalling and it could be argued that the media had a hand in inciting the violence. And even the finding of the French court didn't occasion any introspection on the part of the media.
So if an event where the media were destructive didn't make them rethink their assumptions, why would they start on the road to recovery after they've just accomplished what they set out to do and convince their readers to elect Barack Obama president and make history?
Crossposted on Yourish.
Giving dean his due
I'm not happy about it, but as he recently announced that he would not seek a second term as chairman of the DNC, I think he really deserves his due. He took over the DNC after the 2004 election. Not only did many of us think that he was too liberal and that he'd move the Democratic party too far to the left to be viable, he was also viewed as a veritable gaffe machine.
Or as Instapundit put it:
Howard Dean is pretty much a one-man ScrappleFace full-employment guarantee.
I'm not making fun of Instapundit, he reflected the thinking of a lot of us.
We were right about the first. He was too liberal and he did more the Democratic party to the left. He also oversaw the takeover of both houses of Congress and, now, the presidency. Gaffes or no, Dean's tenure as DNC chair has to be viewed as successful.
Republicans ought to analyze Dean's role in the Democratic comeback and identify someone who has the temperament and strategic vision that will allow him (or her) to do the same.
Right now it appears that the race is between Newt Gingrich and Michael Steele. I like Steele. He was the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland for one term and two years ago, unfortunately, he lost in his bid to succeed Paul Sarbanes as senator. That's a problem. True he was running in Maryland, but he hasn't yet won statewide office on his own, how can he be expected to provide the GOP a path back to power? Steele might be a symbol of the new Republican constituency, but I'm not sure that he's ready to lead the party back to power. So while he may be old news, I think that Gingrich is the better choice.
Bike ride 11/09/08
Sunday, a week ago, I went for a bike ride with my 7 year old. She really enjoyed it. This week, we went for another ride. This time with one of her friends. It was also quite nice. With the fall colors, I decided to take along my camera.
It was about here that we saw a dead raccoon. Or maybe it was possum. Whatever it was it wasn't playing. I thought of taking a picture of it, but then I thought better of that.
I loved the contrast between the red and yellow leaves.
The apartment we lived in when we first got married.
Apparently some road work will be done soon.
Strike!
One of our typical Sukkos activities is bowling. The Pikesville AMF lanes have been redone with computer scoring. The neatest part about the computer scoring is that it also measures the speed of the ball. Most of the time I rolled it in the low 20's. I wonder if I bowled more frequently, if the speed would increase. The one time I consciously tried to roll it harder, I had no control and I gained maybe 2 mph. I also wonder if throwing the ball harder would improve my scores or do location and angle mostly determine the success of a roll.
My 7 year old rolled the ball at about 5 mph.
Yes, that's a strike.
BTW, if you're not familiar, those are duckpins.
Serious about syria II?
Back when there were the initial reports that Israel had struck a Syrian nuclear facility, I was skeptical. I didn't doubt that Israel had struck inside Syria, I just doubted that the target was nuclear.
But as more details emerged, I grew convinced that the target was nuclear. When reports emerged that Syria was cleaning up the site and that there were satellite photographs of the site, it became that the target was likely nuclear. Throughout it all, though, the IAEA seemed awfully incurious about the bombed site.
Now as a number of bloggers have noted, the IAEA is getting interested.
Syria has a rudimentary declared nuclear program revolving around research and the production of isotopes for medical and agricultural uses, using a small, 27-kilowatt reactor, and the uranium traces might have originated from there and inadvertently been carried to the bombed site. But taken together, the uranium and the other components found on the environmental swipes "tell a story" worth investigating, said the diplomat.The second diplomat said the findings would figure in a report on Syria that will be presented to the IAEA's 35-nation board next week ahead of a scheduled two-day board meeting starting Nov. 24.
What's fascinating is that all along the IAEA seemed to be avoiding any sort of confrontation with Syria, now they've reached a point of concern. (This concern isn't shared by the MSM. The Washington Post hasn't covered this at all and the NYT only published an excerpt of the AP article cited above.)
Noah Pollak argues that those who have been proven wrong ought to pay the price in a loss of credibility. Like Seymour Hersh has any shame.
Crossposted on Yourish.
November 11, 2008
Dismissing crichton
I have to admit that I wasn't overly familiar with Michael Crichton. When I was younger I read "The Andromeda Strain." I was also aware that he was a skeptic about global warming. A critic at the New York Times uses this to accuse Crichton of violating an understanding a writer of science fiction has with his fans.
"State of Fear," in 2004, was a thriller about unlikely allies (including an environmental lawyer and a researcher turned undercover agent) who find an ecoterrorism group staging natural disasters to exaggerate the effects of global warming. But it was also a platform for Mr. Crichton to dismiss scientific concerns about climate change.Mr. Crichton included many footnoted references to a selection of actual data -- rates of sea-level rise, frequencies of hurricanes -- as well as bibliographies and direct comments to the reader ("the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are," for example). All of this advanced a thesis: that global warming isn't as drastic as the scientific community says, that its man-made origins can't be proved and that the debate around it has become too politicized. This argument earned Mr. Crichton invitations to visit the Bush White House, and to testify before the Senate. It also elicited harsh judgments from research and policy groups that said he had misinterpreted or misused data, and had politicized the debate himself.
But here's how Crichton described the nature of the global warming movement:
As the twentieth century drew to a close, the connection between hard scientific fact and public policy became increasingly elastic. In part this was possible because of the complacency of the scientific profession; in part because of the lack of good science education among the public; in part, because of the rise of specialized advocacy groups which have been enormously effective in getting publicity and shaping policy; and in great part because of the decline of the media as an independent assessor of fact. The deterioration of the American media is dire loss for our country. When distinguished institutions like the New York Times can no longer differentiate between factual content and editorial opinion, but rather mix both freely on their front page, then who will hold anyone to a higher standard?And so, in this elastic anything-goes world where science-or non-science-is the hand maiden of questionable public policy, we arrive at last at global warming. It is not my purpose here to rehash the details of this most magnificent of the demons haunting the world. I would just remind you of the now-familiar pattern by which these things are established. Evidentiary uncertainties are glossed over in the unseemly rush for an overarching policy, and for grants to support the policy by delivering findings that are desired by the patron. Next, the isolation of those scientists who won't get with the program, and the characterization of those scientists as outsiders and "skeptics" in quotation marks-suspect individuals with suspect motives, industry flunkies, reactionaries, or simply anti-environmental nutcases. In short order, debate ends, even though prominent scientists are uncomfortable about how things are being done.
When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?
To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.
Overall the speech from which those paragraphs are taken, is a history of mistaken science and how non-scientific concepts are used to prove scientific "fact." It's a fascinating read. While he didn''t provide particulars of how global warming got "proven," Crichton did show the path it took to acceptance and illustrated his argument with other examples of scientific "consensus" from history.
In fact, what Crichton did wasn't so much "dismiss scientific concerns" as show that in the global warming debate, science takes a back seat to politics.
I did not read State of Fear, but as we are now in an unpredicted ten year break from global warming after which, we are assured, global warming will resume with a vengeance color me skeptical too about those "scientific concerns." They may be concerns, but they're not scientific.
What Is It About Rabbis And Obama?
During the presidential campaign, among the groups that organized itself in support of Barack Obama for President was a group calling itself Rabbis for Obama--with a membership list of 577 rabbis. One of those members is Rabbi Michael Lerner, who has already criticized Obama for his selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, claiming that Emanuel will stiflethe peace voices that believe Israel's security would be better served by the U.S. putting pressure on Israel to end the Occupation, move the Wall to inside the pre-67 boundaries, and remove the settlers from the West Bank or tell them to live there as Palestinian citizens.Looking at the list of liberal rabbis on that list, it is clear that they think along similar lines--favoring land for peace, a Palestinian state, and concessions on Jerusalem.
That being the case, it is interesting to see that a second--very different--group of rabbis has approached Obama as well:
A group of hundreds of prominent Israeli rabbis this week urged President-elect Barack Obama to "implement the will of God" during his upcoming presidency by ensuring the entire state of Israel remains under Jewish sovereignty.These Orthodox Rabbis make it clear where they stand in the English summary of their ruling:"According to media publication of the prayer you recently placed in the Western Wall, you asked God: 'make me an instrument of your will.' Consistent with your focus on the will of God we trust that you are aware of the will of God when it comes to Jewish sovereignty in the entire Land of Israel," wrote the Rabbinical Congress for Peace in a letter delivered to Obama.
The Congress is a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and over 850 rabbis from abroad, including in the U.S.
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One of those groups is going to be very disappointed.
I'm guessing they both will be.
by Daled Amos
Playing with fire
Something bothered me about this picture of a Palestinian girl in Gaza protesting the latest Hamas imposed blackout.
How old is she? Two?
Crossposted at Yourish.
Overcoming idiocy
Now imagine for a moment, a presidential contest between an African American Democrat with decades of experience and a telegenic white Republican without much experience. And imagine then that 96% of the white population in this country voted for the less qualified Republican. It would be reasonable to assume that a significant proportion of whites were racists.
You know where I'm going with this. As you know last week 96% of blacks voted for the less experienced black candidate and that proves that ... whites are racist. Well sort of. Timothy Noah thinks that the fact that Barack Obama only garnered 43% of the white vote is a sign that we still have a serious racial problem.
As a white person, I accept with gratitude Coates' warm feelings. But I fear they may be a tad premature. While it's certainly true that enough white people voted for Obama to put him in the Oval Office, the blunt fact remains that a majority of white people did not. Although Obama beat John McCain in the popular vote by an impressive seven-point margin, McCain beat Obama among white voters by an even more impressive 12-point margin. Obama got 53 percent of the broad electorate to vote for him but only 43 percent of the white electorate. When I say "white electorate," I don't mean the white working class, or white Southerners, or any other subgroup whose capacity for racial tolerance has long been held suspect. I mean all white voters.
Later, after he allows that some white voters may have rationally chosen to vote for McCain - this is very generous of him given that the contributors to Slate, where he works supported Obama by a ratio of about 50 to 1 - he writes:
But in a more complex and indirect way, the stubborn refusal of a majority of whites to vote Democratic is all about race.
It has nothing to do with race. Or at least race played a much smaller role in the white vote than it did in the black vote. To suggest otherwise, as Noah does is simply idiotic.
An inconvenient secretary
Richard Cohen today considers an absolutely essential accessory for President-elect Obama's cabinet: Al Gore for State:
If there is a single appointment Barack Obama could make to signal how dramatically things will change in Washington, it would be to name Albert Gore Jr. -- former House member, former senator, former vice president, former presidential nominee and current Custodian of the Planet -- as secretary of state. For all the other aspirants to the job, sorry -- this is an inconvenient truth.Can you imagine a bolder statement about a new direction when it comes to global warming and the general care of our abused planet? Gore has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this area (and an Oscar, to boot), and his appointment would signal a dramatic shift from the indifference of the Bush era with its cold shoulder to the Kyoto treaty. In one stroke, the United States would emerge as the leader of nations in the effort to save the planet from ourselves -- and could prepare for the consequences of a changed world.
Yes, that Oscar really clinches it for me.
And that award winning film is legally required to carry a warning that it contains some inconvenient errors.
We are already seeing early cold and snow in the northern Rockies and Plains and even in the UK. Cold weather appears to be in the cards for eastern Asia the next week or two. Blocking high pressure seen above in first figure in the North Atlantic is what will keep northwest Europe and the eastern United States cold. Snow should be heaviest relative to normal from the northern and central Rockies, northern and central Plains, Ohio Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern New England. Snow to north should be less than last year but snowcover will be most persistent there.
I mean when is Global Warming going to be more urgent when we're in middle of a ten year hiatus and we're headed into a colder than usual winter (and summer in the southern hemisphere)?
Cohen's two other choices are actually reasonable, assuming that there's a need for a federal Department of Education. But Al Gore?
November 10, 2008
In Germany: You Can't Deny The Holocaust--And You Can't Call Someone An Anti-Semite
Indeed, Hecht-Galinski accepted the anti-Zionist label, but she obtained a temporary court order forbidding Broder from describing her statements as "anti-Semitic." The letter currently appears on Die Achsen des Guten site with the word "anti-Semitic" replaced by "xxxxxxxxxxxxx".The case was due to come before a court in September. As Rosenthal pointed out at the time, there are very real consequences should a court find against Broder:
A ruling against Broder would mean that in Germany one could speak in general of "anti-Zionist anti-Semitism," but it would, in effect, be forbidden to point to any concrete instances.
In a tortuous ruling that threatens to have a chilling effect on discussions of "new" German anti-Semitism, the District Court of Cologne recently upheld a restraining order that forbids author Henryk Broder from describing the discourse of a virulent critic of Israel as "anti-Semitic" in a post on a popular German blog.The court gives an indication of just what kind of criteria will go into its consideration of what constitutes 'abusive criticism':
...Thus the court's own press release underscores that, "by virtue of this ruling, the statement that the plaintiff makes anti-Semitic remarks has not been prohibited outright. A similar statement that is sufficiently well grounded [mit dem erforderlichen Sachbezug] would be permissible." It then goes on to specify, however, that whether a charge of anti-Semitism is sufficiently sachbezogen -- literally, "objectively oriented" -- is up to the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis.
From the perspective of the average reader, the application of the concept "anti-Semitic" is especially grave and like hardly any other well suited to depreciate [the person] connected to it in the eyes of the public. This has to do with the terrible consequences that anti-Semitism has brought about precisely in Germany.Besides implying that the issue of anti-Semitism can only be addressed abstractly and not in concrete cases, the court indicates that charges of anti-Semitism by academics is less serious an issue.
More than that, there is a topsy-turvey turn to the court's decision:
But it is, above all, the court's transformation of the well-known ravages wrought by German anti-Semitism into grounds for affording Germans, so to say, "special protection" against the charge of anti-Semitism that gives cause to pause and represents a second point of note.The issue comes down to freedom of speech being regulated by the courts on a case-by-case basis.
Apparently the issue is far from over, since Broder came back with a new letter, claiming that Hecht-Galinski makes
anti-Semitic anti-Zionist statements ... inasmuch as she compares the situation of Palestinians in the "ghetto" of Ramallah or Gaza with the situation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, inasmuch as she speaks of a worldwide "Jewish-Israel lobby" and thereby resurrects the classical anti-Semitic cliché of the Jewish world conspiracy, and inasmuch as she defames everyone who does not share her opinions as agents of an "Israel lobby."Read the entire article.
by Daled Amos
Thomas friedman's love train
The next stop that we make will be soon
Tell all the folks in Russia, and China, too
...
All of you brothers over in Africa
Tell all the folks in Egypt, and Israel, too
- Love Train, The O'Jays
We want to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Thomas Friedman knows how: with a Love Train.
That's why I want all those people in China, France, Russia, India and Germany who are smiling for Obama to go out and demand that their governments use their tremendous economic leverage with Iran to let the Iranians know that if Tehran continues to move toward a nuclear weapon, in opposition to U.N. resolutions, these countries will impose real economic sanctions. Nothing -- and I mean nothing -- would more help President-elect Obama to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran than having a threat of biting Chinese, Indian and E.U. economic sanctions in his holster.
Yes I can see those protests in Tianeman Square, with signs reading "Support Hussein, Iran Sanctions Now" by the thousands. I'm sure that will make a huge impression on the Chinese regime.
And if those governments have interests in Tehran and don't support sanctions will they really listen to their citizens. After all it was the financial interests that Germany, France and Russia had that led them to undermine "real economic sanctions" against Iraq.
Once again Thomas Friedman demonstrates that he's less a savvy observer than a partisan cheerleader. Does he really think that the world will rally 'round Obama and stand up to Iran? This is just silly.
Musical monday #67
You know the drill by now. Guess the songs and figure out the theme. No Googling.
My guess is that someone will figure this out very quickly. Elie hosted Musical Monday #66. The answers are now posted. Check it out, OR else. :-)
1. Nel blu dipinto di blu,
2. A cement bag is dropping on down
3. There are no gloomy skies
4. I'm crossin' you in style some day
5. I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
6. A door marked "nevermore" that wasn't there before
7. Tall and tan and young and lovely
8. I'll take with me the warmth of thee
9. Love was just a glance away,
10. We could float among the stars together,
11. candidate's debate
12. No more falsehoods or derisions
13. silver girl - 1971: Simon and Garfunkel
14. Or maybe we've just stopped trying
15. Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
16. embarrassed by the crowd,
17. If we both were born in another place and time
18. Said it before and I'll say it again while others pretend
19. Are we really happy here
20. steely knives
21. I don't want clever conversation
22. She musters a smile, For his nostalgic tale
23. The canvas can do miracles
24. Her hair is Harlowe gold
25. Not quite a year since she went away,
26. Don't wanna see your face, you better disappear
27. second hand emotion
28. We are the ones who make a brighter day
29. Look inside your heart, Ill look inside mine
30. Poorboys and Pilgrims with families
31. You might want to sing it note for note
32. You always walked a step behind.
33. Its cold and Ive nowhere to sleep,
34. Like a song of love that clings to me,
35. Time can break your heart
36. And I hope you have all you've dreamed of.
37. They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
38. Won't you tell me is that healthy, baby?
39. I would be the sunlight in your universe
40. She opened a book and a box of tools
41. Love can touch us one time, And last for a lifetime
42. Like seven inches from the midday sun
43. In the maze of her imagination
44. And if your glass heart should crack
45. Instead of kneeling in the sand
46. Shoot an apple off my head
47. Any fool, any fool knows, That there's no, no way to win
48. My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
49. I'm still mad as hell
50. I ain't got seventy days
Here are the answers for Musical Monday 65. Congratulations to Clayton for guessing the theme of New York.
For those of you who are interested here's Doing Fine Now by the one hit wonders: New York City.
Musical Monday 65
1 I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep
New York, New York, Frank Sinatra
2 I'm taking a greyhound on the Hudson river line
New York State of Mind, Billy Joel
3 To the left and to the right, buildings towering to the sky
Back in the New York Groove, Kiss
4 ... have they given up and all gone home to bed
New York Mining Disaster 1941, Bee Gees
5 I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
New York's not my home, Jim Croce
6 Fly down to mexico
The Only living boy in New York, Simon and Garfunkel
7 When you're sleeping on the 4th floor up
Central Park n' West - Ian Hunter
8 Voices leaking from a sad cafe
Bleecker street - Simon and Garfunkel
9 You'd rather see me paralyzed
Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan
10 They say there's always magic in the air
On Broadway - The Drifters, George Benson
11 The Movie-Palace is now undone,
The lamb lies down on Broadway - Genesis
12 It only comes out when the moon is on the run
Spanish Harlem - Ben E. King
13 Hello lampost
59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) - Simon and Garfunkel
14 Straight, straight through the heart of you
Empire State - Fleetwood Mac
15 Up and down Park Avenue
Puttin on the Ritz - Irving Berlin and many more
16 And I nearly died from hospitality
Couldn't get it right - Climax Blues Band
17 Ya know the movement seems to soothe me
New York City Rhythm - Barry Manilow
18 Asking only workman's wages
The Boxer, Simon and Garfunkel
19 Can you tell me now, Before I'm leaving you
American City Suite, Cashman and West
20 Not even the chair
I am, I said, Neil Diamond
21 This guy's the one that makes you feel so safe, so sane and so secure
The worst that could happen, Brooklyn Bridge
22 Silence please, listen to the words I say
Heaven Knows, Donna Summers and Brooklyn Dreams
23 She made me stop and get ahold of myself
I'm Doin' Fine Now, New York City
24 ... when you're short on your dough.
YMCA, Village People
25 And he keeps his pockets full of spending loot
Boy From New York City, Manhattan Transfer
26 Baby when we touch, Love you so much
Shining Star, Manhattans
Invest. invest. invest.
Paul Krugman isn't shy about advocating the course that President elect Obama ought to follow in Franklin Delano Obama.
Suddenly, everything old is New Deal again. Reagan is out; F.D.R. is in. Still, how much guidance does the Roosevelt era really offer for today's world?The answer is, a lot. But Barack Obama should learn from F.D.R.'s failures as well as from his achievements: the truth is that the New Deal wasn't as successful in the short run as it was in the long run. And the reason for F.D.R.'s limited short-run success, which almost undid his whole program, was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious.
(emphasis mine)
And if you read this Financial Times article, it appears that caution likely won't be one of the features of an Obama administration.
US President-elect Barack Obama intends to push a comprehensive programme of social and economic reform beyond an immediate emergency stimulus package, Rahm Emanuel, the next White House chief of staff, indicated on Sunday.Mr Emanuel brushed aside concerns that an Obama administration would risk taking on too much when it takes office in January. He said Mr Obama saw the financial meltdown as an historic opportunity to deliver the large-scale investments that Democrats had promised for years.
(via memeorandum)
Calling them "investments" rather than "spending" is a simple way of packaging and it will allow the Obama administration to spend more freely. I know it's controversial, but a couple of economists have recently argued that the Depression actually became great because of, not despite, FDR's intervention.
"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."
(h/t Q and O)
Ironically, then, John McCain was likely right when he said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, but that statement may well have doomed his candidacy. As Charles Krauthammer observed, the financial meltdown had a secondary effect:
This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.
This will give the new administration the political cover it needs to carry out its ambitious plans.
Schoolyard taunting
Nicholas Kristoff celebrates the election of Barack Obama with "Obama and the war on brains."
Barack Obama's election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.
Certainly he did not come across in the campaign as an intellectual and my suspicion is that if he had he wouldn't have won. Why not? Here's a story that Kristof tells about another intellectual who ran for President.
At least since Adlai Stevenson's campaigns for the presidency in the 1950s, it's been a disadvantage in American politics to seem too learned. Thoughtfulness is portrayed as wimpishness, and careful deliberation is for sissies. The social critic William Burroughs once bluntly declared that "intellectuals are deviants in the U.S."(It doesn't help that intellectuals are often as full of themselves as of ideas. After one of Stevenson's high-brow speeches, an admirer yelled out something like, You'll have the vote of every thinking American! Stevenson is said to have shouted back: That's not enough. I need a majority!)
If Stevenson projected that attitude, as even Kristof admits, it would have turned off a lot of people who don't disdain intellectualism as much they disdain arrogance. But of course he isn't simply insulting the current resident of the White House, but those of us who actually voted for President Bush. I'm no intellectual but I can appreciate one, but that doesn't mean that I want one governing.
Still the idea that President Bush is "incurious" or as Kristoff put it is "uninterested in ideas" is unfair. While he can be criticized for the way he implemented it, President Bush was inspired by Natan Sharansky's "The case of Democracy." And while he was a candidate, Bush disparaged the idea of "nation building," his success or failure as President will be measured by how much nation building the United States accomplished during his term in office. Surely, though Kristoff wouldn't hear of it, President Bush has had successes, especially in Afrrica.
Kristoff writes:
As for President Bush, he adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can't think of anybody I've ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas.
Of course the Middle East experts Kristoff wanted the President to listen to, told him to withdraw. Instead the President went with the surge. I'm not sure why the President's rejection of this advice is a negative.
But consider a counter argument. David Ignatius wrote last week how wonderful it was that Barack Obama was seeking advice from Zbigniew Brzezinski. Gordon Chang wrote in response, "...arter's national security advisor has not been right in years..."
(A related comment is at Daled Amos)
More important that seeking out all sorts of information is making sure that the information is good. Using Dr. Brzezinski as a source, I suppose, is good from the standpoint of an intellectual, but knowing how much (or little) to value his advice is even more important. President Bush could have withdrawn and Iraq would not now be winnable. By going against the experts whom Kristoff likes, President Bush did the right thing.
This is hardly an endorsement of intellectualism:
Mr. Obama, unlike most politicians near a microphone, exults in complexity. He doesn't condescend or oversimplify nearly as much as politicians often do, and he speaks in paragraphs rather than sound bites. Global Language Monitor, which follows linguistic issues, reports that in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level.
A ninth grade reading level versus a seventh grade reading level doesn't reflect well on President-elect Obama. For public consumption a seventh grade reading level is ideal. (I know a little bit about this. When the language checker tells me that I've written higher than a seventh grade level it's an indication that my writings was unnecessarily complex.) A leader needs to reach his constituents, not talk above them.
Finally, what really sinks this op-ed is:
Almost half of young Americans said in a 2006 poll that it was not necessary to know the locations of countries where important news was made. That must be a relief to Sarah Palin, who, according to Fox News, didn't realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country.
In order to promote the value of intellectualism, Kristof brings up an unsubstantiated charge against Governor Palin as contrast. Yes, intellectualism is great, nyah, nyah, nyah. He's promoting deeper thought among our leadership by resorting to a schoolyard taunt.
Classy. And convincing.
November 9, 2008
Huffpo hopes for change from World Arrogance
This piece is called "Ya Hussein!" Isn't emphasizing Obama's middle name supposed to be a Republican trick?
[...] Iran has long wished for a real detente with the U.S.; a detente that recognized Iran's legitimacy as an Islamic Republic, as a sovereign nation with its own concerns and interests, but above all, a detente based on mutual respect and recognition of Iran's legitimate rights under international law . . .That "legitimate rights" rhetoric, coming from the Iranians themselves, usually refers to nukes.
While Iranians are under no illusions that the distrust and antagonism that exists between their country and the United States will disappear overnight, they are also hopeful that American foreign policy towards them will, at the every least, be re-directed towards understanding and reconciliation rather than demonization, hegemony, and military threats. [...]As Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani recently put it:
"Other nations also expect war-oriented policies, occupation, bullying, contempt of nations and imposing discriminatory policies on them to be replaced by advocating justice, respect for human rights, friendship and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs."The greatest human right of all: The right of every dictatorship to operate free of outside interference.
Crossposted on Judeopundit
The rabin legacy. revised?
A number of senior Israeli officials have been warning about "settler" violence. Ehud Barak
Earlier on Thursday, at a memorial ceremony for assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Barak warned of further political murders in Israel by "cancerous" groups of religious right-wing extremists.
Yuval Diskin:
On Sunday, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, whose agency's bodyguard unit is the equivalent of the U.S. Secret Service, warned that settler fanatics could resort to "live weapons - in order to prevent or halt a diplomatic process."
I remember the last time we heard such an outpouring of fears: It was in advance of the evacuation of the Jewish residents of Gaza. In the wake of the "disengagement" there were precisely zero assassinations. I don't think that anyone was arrested for such a plot either.
In a similar vein, Treppenwitz scolds Shimon Peres:
You are a fraud, Shimon Peres. You took office with a promise to heal old wounds and bring about a national reconciliation. From that time until this, you have barely even given lip service to that admirable goal. Instead you have studiously ignored every violent act by leftists and anarchists and branded every misdeed from the right as the harbinger of 'the next inevitable political assassination'.You have never been interested in a national reconciliation, so it puzzles me why you would bother even mouthing the words at this point in your career.
In your famous Haaretz interview with Daniel Ben Simon following your loss in the 1996 elections, you divided our people neatly into two camps; 'Israelis' and 'Jews'. According to that interview, the Jews are those who don't have "an Israeli Mentality". You counted yourself then among the Israelis, and sneered down your prominent Semitic nose at the Jews.
Tell me President Peres... what has changed since then? Have you and your friends come to a new way of reckoning our people? Have you arrived at some new formula for doling out legitimacy? If not, why would you think that 'the Jews' would suddenly come to your party?
With all these public figures appropriating the memory of Yitzchak Rabin to marginalize part of the Israeli population it makes it all the more remarkable the recent rapprochement of Yitzchak Rabin's son Yuval to - Binyamin Netanyahu.
Yuval Rabin met today with none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, who was widely branded by Rabin's supporters as bearing indirect responsibility for the murder -- for having created what was called a "climate of incitement" that seemed to legitimize and justify the crime. Rabin's widow Leah famously refused to shake Netanyahu's hand. But now her son not only appears to be making peace with Israel's opposition leader, but also apparently lending him public support in advance of the coming elections. When confronted by reporters (according to the Hebrew-language site NRG), Rabin said that he was "unwilling to live only in the past, but also in the present and future . . . reality has changed. Just look at who else is running in the elections."
This would mark a huge departure for Rabin. Here's a profile from eight years ago:
Yuval joins in the criticism, suggesting that Barak, and the Israeli public, had all along disparaged the hardships the Palestinians endured."I don't understand the disparity between Barak's declarations and his actions," he says. He challenges Barak's claims to having gone "further than any previous Israeli prime minister," saying Barak conceded no new territory to the Palestinians, and only carried out the Wye accord withdrawals already agreed to by Binyamin Netanyahu. He goes on to say that no one can be sure if Barak's concessions to the Palestinians at Camp David and afterward - none of which were written down officially - were really made.
If the media reports are correct - that Barak offered Yasser Arafat all of Gaza, 90-odd percent of the West Bank, at least a good chunk of east Jerusalem, and an end to Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount - then, Rabin says, "I can't understand why the Palestinians refused."
He is asked to clarify: Does he mean that Arafat evidently didn't trust Barak's offer because, on the basis of the prime minister's execution of the Oslo accord up to that point, Arafat had good reason not to trust it?
"That could be," Rabin replies. He faults Israeli society for failing to part with land when the Palestinian Authority was delivering peace - during the PA's wholesale crackdown on terror during the two years leading up to the al-Aksa intifada, a period when, Rabin notes, "Israel was safer from terror than it had been, possibly, at any time in its history. Did this encourage us to move further in the peace process? I have my doubts." While objecting to violence as a political tool, he conversely raises doubts that Israel would have signed the Oslo accord without the intifada, or that it would have signed the Camp David Accord with Egypt without the Yom Kippur War.
"All the people who are now saying 'I told you so' should consider whether the situation would have been better had there not been an Oslo accord," he says.
I'd have to guess that something convinced the younger Rabin that the Palestinians did not act in good faith in response to overtures from Israel. I wonder what changed his mind.
Crossposted on Yourish.
No denying
Ynet and the Jerusalem Post reported on the recently found plans for Auschwitz.
Elder of Ziyon emphasizes what it implies about the Germans.
These are utterly ordinary architectural drawings, complete with cross-hatchings to symbolize where brickwork would be. People drew up these plans, consulted with their superiors about details, asked questions about the dimensions and uses of the buildings so they could be designed more efficiently and modified the blueprints accordingly. They were meticulously drawn with pride and a sense of accomplishment.The draftsmen went home to their families after a day of drawing exacting representations of gas chambers and crematoria, they ate hearty meals and told jokes about their workday.
These are only a small number of the many who knew quite well what was happening during the Holocaust, and they all deserve a special place in hell.
Meryl notes that this shows the mendacity of "respectable" Holocaust denial.
This evidence contradicts directly Patrick Buchanan's claims that it was the intervention of Britain that caused the Germans to start murdering the Jews.
Israel on Level Ground remembers Kristallnacht. The NYT mockup is priceless. Smooth Stone notes that German libraries still hold stolen books.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Obama's likudnik
Rather, since the Iraq War, critics of the Bush Administration's policies have been promiscuously throwing the term "Likudnik" around to describe any person of Jewish origin who happens to disagree with their views and is generally perceived as "right-wing." This has included plenty of "dual loyalty by association" arguments, including, for example discussing which Bush Administration Jewish officials married women of Israeli origin, have Israeli relatives, or other Israeli connections. By contrast, liberals who ave such connections will be exempted from such arguments because they are liberals, and certainly won't be called "Likudniks."
Some folks aren't all that subtle, take left wing pacifist (who seems unbothered Arab aggression against the West) Helena Cobban in assessing the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as president-elect Obama's chief of staff:
There is a good question as to whether anyone occupying such a sensitive position in Washington ought to also hold the citizenship of a foreign country-- or whether, in the circumstances, Rahm Emanuel should lay down his foreign citizenship.
How could president elect Obama counteract the nefarious designs of his Zionist chief of staff?
Hey, how about my old Oxford class-mate-- and natural-born US citizen-- Dr. Rashid Khalidi for one of those posts?
Yes, like Arafat's former spokesman would have America's best interests in mind.
My objection to Emanuel is not his stand on Israel. Given the president-elect's past associations, I find it encouraging that he would place his administration's policy in the hands of someone who put himself on the line for an ally in 1991. But the folks who seem most upset that someone pro-Israel would have any say in an Obama administration are Sen. Obama's more extreme supporters on the left, who have few inhibitions about tossing around charges of dual loyalty.
More thoughts on Rahm Emanuel from Daled Amos.
UPDATE: Looking at the list of potential Secretaries of State for president elect Obama, Mere Rhetoric doesn't think that Cobban and her fellow travelers need worry that Rep. Emanuel will put Israel ahead of Democratic party interests. One name not mentioned in that list is Dennis Ross, who was last seen virtually applying for the job. If Kerry gets the nod, how will Martin Peretz handle it?
Crossposted on Yourish.
The role of media bias
Tim Graham following the 2004 election:
There are two brakes on the arrogance of liberal media bias: One is declining ratings; the other is liberal politicians' losing and conservative politicians' winning. The message of popular resistance to the liberal media has been sent once again. We may be optimistic about the new makeup of Washington, but it makes no sense to be optimistic about the liberal media's recognizing their arrogance. We can only be optimistic that their meltdown continues.
I had figured that the 2008 would finally end the liberal media bias. I would have thought that $4.00 a gallon gas, the cost of environmentalism - one of the key platforms of today's media - would have made the electorate more skeptical of media reports on other topics. However media bias prevailed and the Republicans lost more seats and the presidency.
Jennifer Rubin writes:
As bad as the media bias was, I think it is incorrect to ascribe John McCain's loss to the MSM. Worse, it prevents Republicans from taking responsibility for their errors and from devising a more effective media plan in the future.
I agree to a point. But media bias persists as does its influence. (You figure with declining circulation afflicting the Washington Post and the New York Times contrasted with Rush Limbaugh's recent new deal, that Rush would be more influential.) Fighting media bias will be an essential part of future campaigns.
It's nice of Deborah Howell to kind of acknowledge acknowledge her paper's - the Washington Post - bias (via memeorandum) But as Hot Air notes:
Where was Howell during the last three months? Why wait until the election is over to speak up? That's an answer in itself.
But even as Howell acknowledges that her paper was tougher on Palin than on Biden, most of the rest of the column has a self congratulatory tone about all the things Howell claims that the Post did correctly.
(Clark Hoyt, BTW, didn't even acknowledge the bias of his paper, the New York Times, so I suppose this is progress. The Politico justified the bias arguing that because Sen. Obama's campaign was more successful than Sen. McCain's it got better coverage. Newsbuster threw some cold water on that.)
But one thing that was missing from Howell's column was an acknowledgment that a number of polls reported that most of the electorate sees the bias. (For example, this one.)
Maybe I should be glad when journalists tell us that the bias they feed us is for our own good.
A word of advice
When you make a claim like this:
Republicans are still idiots. They are countering the announcement with whispers that Emanuel's father was a terrorist.
as DovBear does, make sure that what you're linking actually supports the charge.
I waded through some of the bilge that he linked to, and found only one source that could possibly be Republican. He was Ron Paul guy, not exactly mainstream. And of course StormFront also trafficked in that meme. The one respectable source discussing the Irgun background of Rahm Emmanuel's father was Johathan Mark, a self-described Barack Obama voter and Mark was mostly making fun of Ali Abunimah, not taking the charge all that seriously.
BTW, I first saw the association in the blog of terrorist pal Dion Nissenbaum, who, in no way is a Republican.
If you're going to make a charge at least support it.
Council speak 11/09/08
The council has spoken.
Joshuapundit's National Security Rears It's Ugly Headwas this week's winning Council entry. In particular it pointed to the possibility that one of candidate Obama's statements may have helped bring down an (imperfect) ally. The runner up this week was The Colossus of Rhodey's The real worry about an Obama presidency. It's the courts.
On the non-council side, the winning entry was Obama Victory the GOP's Best Hope at Real Clear Politics/Cross Tabs Blog. The runner up was my submission, Mere Rhetoric's Israel:
70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say 'We Didn't Know' When Obama
Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know).
I'll admit that this election proved me wrong. I expected that the first African American or female President would be a Republican, because I thought that the Democrats would continue putting up symbols rather than candidates. President elect Obama, despite his lack of experience and extreme leftist ideology, was an excellent candidate.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Though I'm skeptical, Best of the Web Today, uses history to argue that the election of Obama makes it more likely that there will be a blacks will start to support Republicans in greater percentages. And Instapundit linked to this prediction about the first black President - written in 1958.
"You're converted"
Remember a few years ago when there were two Orthodox Jews on the Apprentice? Dan and Lee were trying for a position with the Trump organization? (Lee didn't win, but did get an offer from Trump anyway.)
Maybe the Donald was trying out too. To be a father in law. His daughter, Ivanka is planning to convert to Judaism to marry her boyfriend.
Judaism is getting a boost from a surprising direction - Ivanka Trump, daughter of business tycoon Donald Trump, has decided to convert to Judaism in honor of her engagement to her boyfriend Jewish businessman Jared Kushner.
This is also in the article but there's no indication if it's in any way related to the engagement.
Trump has successfully joined her father's real estate empire and announced on Wednesday that she would be heading a project to build a Trump luxury hotel in the Israeli Red Sea city of Eilat.
Crossposted on Yourish.
The origin of moon bats
The founder of the recently shuttered NY Sun, Seth Lipsky, reviews a book about an earlier incarnation of the newspaper whose name he appropriated. The book focuses on an incident from the early days of the original New York Sun, where it scooped everyone else on the existence of strange creatures living on the moon.
The Sun was in business for two years when Day brought in as editor a Briton, Richard Adams Locke. Locke was perusing the premier issue of the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, Mr. Goodman tells us, when he came across an article called "The Moon and Its Inhabitants." It inspired the Sun's series, written anonymously, about how the operator of a powerful new telescope directed it at the moon only to discover vast forests and fields of poppies and lunar animals.First to be sighted was a herd of quadrupeds and then an animal that the Sun said "would be classified on earth as a monster," a bluish-gray thing about the size of a goat but with a single horn in the center of its head. The details were run out in the Sun over several days, culminating in a report of how Dr. John Herschel, the operator of the telescope, and his team spied what Mr. Goodman calls "four flocks of large winged creatures." The creatures were seen "descending in a slow, even motion from the cliffs to the plain, where they landed and, their wings disappearing behind them, began walking, erect and dignified, toward a nearby forest."
Mr. Lipsky notes at the end of his review that newspapers have their own fanciful tales nowadays, though not nearly as exotic.
It's easy to laugh at all this. Today newspaper circulation gimmicks tend to be tamer -- global warming, say, or the threat of immigration, or the miracle balm of higher taxes. But then, circulation has been falling.
Speaking of the Sun, I had wanted to blog about when it closed, but I didn't so let me use this opportunity to acknowledge the Sun.
When the Sun closed, I forgot that it too played a role in my becoming a blogger. In the few years before it launched, Lipsky's partner, Ira Stoll ran a website called Smarter Times devoted to criticism of the reporting and bias in the New York Times. It was sort of like Best of the Web Today, but with a focus only on the New York Times. I sent a few entries that Stoll used.
Also here are some appreciation of the Sun, from Jewish Current Issues, Best of the Web Today and Baseball Prospectus.
November 7, 2008
Ahmadinejad Should Have Called...
President-elect Barack Obama spoke to nine world leaders Thursday, returning their congratulatory calls.For the record:
Mr. Obama spoke to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown.If only Ahmadinejad had called instead of sending a letter! Apparently, Obama will speak to Ahmadinejad with at least one precondition.
Despite this message, the conservative hard-line camp in Iran is worried about the overwhelming enthusiasm and support for the U.S. that Obama's election has created around the world. A popular American president who talks about peace and wants to negotiate with Iran would take away their justification for leading the anti-American front in the Middle East. Furthermore, increased international support and credibility for the United States represents a more serious challenge to Iran, especially if the international community initiates new sanctions against Tehran. All this while oil prices are falling.Is it possible that Obama's being elected will keep Ahmadinejad awake at night?
This is why efforts are already efforts underway in the Iranian press to tarnish Obama's image.
We can only hope.
Iran's youths would back Barack Obama over Mahmoud AhmadinejadNebuch.
What Does Obama's Selection of Rahm Emanuel Mean? (Updated)
Others see him as representing Big Money in the White House:
Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton was moving into the White House, good-government liberals were disheartened that the President-elect named his campaign's top fundraiser, Rahm Emanuel, as White House political director. They read this as a sign that cash would be king in the Clinton Administration. They were right.Few seem to see him as a nice Jewish boy whose selection is a nod to the Jewish community to reassure them on Israel. Yesterday, Jonah Goldberg wrote:
Four elections later, after getting rich in a brief stint in finance, Emanuel is the favorite congressman of Wall Street, measuring by campaign contributions. In the midst of a financial crisis that President-elect Barack Obama blames on Wall Street's greed and excessive influence in Washington, Emanuel is once again headed to a perch of power in a Democratic White House, this time as chief of staff.
The Jewish angle completely escaped me, and I have to wonder whether it escaped Obama as well. I certainly think that if Emmanuel were an Epsicopalian but in all other ways the same guy, Obama would still want him. But, it's an interesting point.That was actually the angle I first wrote about, considering that Rahm Emanuel's father was a member of the Irgun, Emanuel's volunteering in Israel in 1991 during the Kuwait War, and his involvement in choreographing the Rabin-Arafat handshake during the Oslo signing.
In an interview with Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. "Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel," he was quoted as saying. "Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."Except with his enemies, of course.
President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com.Unlike Obama's connections, Emanuel's connections may become an issue.
According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.
Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint (click here to read) but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) (click here to read) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention."
by Daled Amos
Nothing to fear ...
But Phobos
This moon is doomed. Mars, named for the Roman god of war, has two tiny moons--Phobos and Deimos--whose names are derived from the Greek for fear and panic. These Martian moons may well be captured asteroids originating in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or perhaps from even more distant reaches of the solar system.The larger moon, Phobos, is a cratered, asteroid-like object in this stunning color image from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Phobos orbits so close to Mars that gravitational tidal forces are dragging it down. In 100 million years or so, Phobos likely will be shattered by stress caused by the relentless tidal forces, the debris forming a decaying ring around Mars.
Source: NASA Image of the Day
A perfect 10
Just a few days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.This image scores a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty, demonstrating that the camera works exactly as it did before going offline.
The two galaxies are oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10. The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation.
The blue ring was most probably formed after the galaxy on the left passed through the galaxy on the right. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates an outwardly moving circular wave, a propagating density wave was generated at the point of impact and spread outward. As this density wave collided with material in the target galaxy that was moving inward due to the gravitational pull of the two galaxies, shocks and dense gas were produced, stimulating star formation.
The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28, 2008. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, more than 400 million light-years from Earth.
Source: NASA Image of the Day
Astronomical Dextre-ty
What's the world's most complex space robot doing up there? In June 2008, Dextre was moved atop the Destiny Laboratory Module of the International Space Station (ISS), completing tasks prior to the the STS-124 mission's deployment of Japan's Kibo pressurized science laboratory.Dextre, built by the Canadian Space Agency, has arms more than 9 feet in length and can attach power tools as fingers. Behind Dextre is the blackness of space, while Earth looms over Dextre's head. The Kibo laboratory segment that was deployed during space shuttle Discovery's trip to the ISS can be pressurized and contains racks of scientific experiment that will be used to explore how plants brace themselves against gravity and how water might be inhibited from freezing in cells under microgravity, as well as other experiments.
Source: NASA image of the day.
Officially known as 1E 0657-56, the Bullet Cluster was formed after the violent collision of two large clusters of galaxies. Llocated about 3.8 billion light years from Earth, this image combines an image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Magellan telescope in Chile. The cluster has become an extremely popular object for astrophysical research, including studies of the properties of dark matter and the dynamics of million-degree gas.In this latest research effort, the Bullet Cluster was used to search for the presence of antimatter leftover from the very early universe. Antimatter is made up of elementary particles that have the same masses as their corresponding matter counterparts -- protons, neutrons and electrons -- but the opposite charges and magnetic properties.
Source: NASA image of the day.
No deal
The Washington Post reports that the White House now acknowledges that there will be no Israeli-Palestinian deal before the end of the Bush administration. The Post describes some of what went on during the past year:
After the summit, Rice made nearly monthly trips to Israel and the Palestinian territories to encourage the two sides in their efforts, though she never appeared to be a hands-on negotiator. She also appointed three U.S. generals to assist with building up Palestinian security forces, to assess whether the two sides were meeting their commitments and to consider long-term security needs in a peace deal.But the results were fairly opaque. Israeli and Palestinian officials said the talks were frank and open, but a written outline of an agreement never emerged. The work of the generals remained largely hidden from public review; one report said to be highly critical of Israel was never released.
Yes, the generals never like it when Israel keeps checkpoints. But they work! Nor do generals much care about how the PA encourages its citizens to live peacefully with Israel. Not.
The New York Times presents a slightly different perspective.
The Bush administration now seems reconciled to the idea of a less ambitious legacy."It is our expectation that the Annapolis process has laid groundwork which should make possible the establishment of a Palestinian state when the political circumstances permit," Ms. Rice said.
Further the article notes:
At a joint news conference at the residence of the United States ambassador, both noted that when Mr. Bush entered office eight years ago, the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, was raging. The importance of the Annapolis process lies not only in the political negotiations, they said, but in the efforts to build the institutions of Palestinian statehood as well."I think we need to remember that Annapolis came after seven years of intifada and terror, and after Hamas took control of Gaza," Ms. Livni said.
If there's a need to build Palestinian institutions, that doesn't require Israel. But how well the institution building is going isn't mentioned. So what does the future hold?
Ms. Livni is embarking on a campaign to replace Ehud Olmert, the departing prime minister. Mr. Olmert was forced to resign as the result of a growing corruption investigation. As leader of the centrist Kadima Party, Ms. Livni is likely to run on a peace process ticket.Her main challenger is Benjamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the leader of Likud, the right-wing opposition party. Mr. Netanyahu does not favor the model of negotiating a two-state solution, arguing instead for building an "economic peace" between Israelis and Palestinians from the bottom up.
In other words Netanyahu does not trust the "top down" model of negotiating peace with the corrupt and ineffective PA. This would be consistent with what we saw from Netanyahu when he was PM, when he tried to advance the economic fortunes of the Palestinians. Whether or not President Obama will cooperate with this approach is unclear.
Finally there's this:
Fatah and Hamas are supposed to start talks under Egyptian auspices aimed at reconciliation this weekend. A successful conclusion would probably mean some form of power-sharing, which could further complicate peace efforts; in the past, Israel has refused to deal with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. But on Thursday, a top Hamas official said the group might boycott the talks because too few of its proposals were on the agenda, Reuters reported.
There's another way to present that, "... Hams remains committed to Israel's destruction so it's hard to see how its cooperation with Fatah improves the chances for peace."
See more at Daled Amos.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Krauthammer's inquest
In "Campaign Autopsy,"Charles Krauthammer writes:
The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 -- caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) -- although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.
This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system -- a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.
This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.
For the most part Krauthammer argues that there was little McCain could have done but that he made two major errors from which he couldn't recover.
1) His selection of Sarah Palin.
Krauthammer argues as does Elie that choosing her undercut the "Obama is inexperienced" theme of the campaign. Perhaps it blunted the mesage, but Palin was running for Vice President, not President. And my guess is that he made the calculation that she would bring excitement to the ticket. Would Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty or anyone managed to energize the base like Palin did?
2) His decision to suspend his campaign to work on the bailout bill.
At the time I thought it looked gutsy and showed that McCain wished to solve problems instead of simply speaking about them. Todd Zywicki explains why McCain's idea went bad:
Had McCain suspended his campaign and acted decisively and forcefully to oppose the bailout, and Obama remained "cool," I think that the politics of the situation would have been very different. The way in which the bailout was presented to Congress was outrageous and it would've been nice for someone to have said so. Had McCain opposed the bailout, in retrospect he could have been seen as independent and decisive (rather than merely impulsive) and Obama might have been seen as weak, indecisive, and just going along with the Wall Street-Washington establishment. It was the substance, not the style, that made this a turning point in my opinion.
At the end he gives three reasons why McCain didn't succeed, but my favorite was the first:
First, McCain simply does not understand economics, did not understand the problem that the bailout was trying to address, nor how the bailout was supposed to address it. And, I've I opined previously, he is not that good at faking it when he doesn't know something. I suspect Obama had no idea what the bailout was all about either, but he came up with some good, empty talking points that were enough to bluff him through.
Still despite these mistakes (and if you'd like 30 mistakes McCain made, there's a list of those too) I wonder if he'd handled the end of the campaign differently, if that might have been enough.
One thing struck me as well, though this opinion is probably tainted by hindsight bias: since 1960, it might well be that the campaign staff that ran the better campaign won each election, though I don't remember a few of them (eg, 1984) well enough to be certain of that. Of course, a great candidate makes a campaign look good, especially in retrospect.
So the two Davids registered millions of voters in states the Obama campaign picked as battlegrounds, especially where there were many heretofore-disinterested African Americans and younger Democrats. Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod understood that over the last 28 years only 11 of 20 eligible Americans on average cast a presidential ballot. They focused on registering and motivating the other nine who don't usually vote. This decision, perhaps more than any other, allowed Mr. Obama to win such previously red states as Virginia, Indiana, Colorado and Nevada. It forced Mr. McCain to spend most of the fall on defense, unable to take once-reliably Republican states for granted.
Yet, as far as I can tell, the campaign failed in fulfilling the second essential requirement of its Pennsylvania-centric strategy: producing a top-notch "ground game," i.e., a well-organized volunteer effort for getting voters to the polls. In Philadelphia, the Obama campaign is absolutely dominating: on every couple of blocks, groups of volunteers are going from door-to-door, clipboards in hand, making sure that registered Democrats have voted. It's been going on since Saturday - Obama folks have rung the doorbell of my politically mixed household at least five times (!), twice leaving colorful door-hangings containing polling site information. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign reminded its local supporters of their polling sites via e-mail - the type that is typically directed to your spam folder.
Taking Lindgren, Rove and Trager together, I wonder if it's possible that McCain could still have won if he had simply done the organizing on the ground. Maybe advertising wasn't as important as reaching people personally.
In any case, whatever reason McCain lost and that's something that I regret. Krauthammer does too:
But before our old soldier fades away, it is worth acknowledging that McCain ran a valiant race against impossible odds. He will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize.
November 6, 2008
What's she been smoking?
Every once in a while Secretary Rice does or says something that makes me wonder, "What's she been smoking?" It looks like I have my answer (via screenshot from Bloglines):
(Click to expand.)
In case you can't read that it says:
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holds a joint ...
By (AP)
(AP)
- United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holds a joint press
conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, not seen, at the
U.S. ambassador to Israel's residence in Herzliya, Israel, Thursday,
Nov. 6, 2008. The Bush administration conceded Thursday that an
Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by a year-end deadline is no longer
possible.(AP Photo/Pavel Wolberg, Pool)
Crossposted on Yourish.
Why Israel Will Have To Be A Priority For Obama (Updated)
Regardless of the priorities that Obama may face as President, he is likely to be forced to address the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--according to Mitchell Bard of Myths and Facts Online.Among the factors pressuring Obam to take action:
- The general view of the Democratic Party is that President Bush neglected the 'peace process' and US involvement is necessary to see it through.
- The EU has also called for the US to get more involved--possibly leading to more demands for Israeli concessions and giving a larger role to the EU.
- Arab allies of the US will look for an early indication of just where Obama stands
- The State Department--and Obama's own advisers--think they know how to bring peace to the region and are eager to pursue diplomatic efforts (again, focusing on Israeli concessions--including Jerusalem).
- Jews who were active in the Obama campaign will pressure Obama to fulfill his promise to ensure Israel's security.
- Congress is still friendly towards Israel and will try to limit the pressure Obama might put upon Israel.
There are going to be a lot of high expectations from Obama and different interest groups are going to want to see their agenda put into action. The politician of few accomplishments will be expected to make up for lost time.
· Obama wants to make an early push on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, despite political turmoil in Israel. He has learned from watching Presidents Clinton and Bush that you can't wait until the eleventh hour to be an active mediator.If that is the main lesson Obama learned from Clinton and Bush vis-a-vis Israel, then Israel is in big trouble.
The blair sewage project
Yesterday's Qassam attack against Ashkelon didn't yet make it into the NY Times report about the fighting between Israel and Hamas, but this did:
Military officials said that the initial army raid was a "pinpoint" operation aimed at thwarting a specific threat, and that Israel remained committed to the truce.The truce has largely held so far, despite some sporadic rocket and mortar fire by Gaza renegades and complaints from Hamas that Israel has not gone far enough in easing the economic embargo on the area.
Note how the violations of the "truce" are attributed to "renegades." It's as if Hamas couldn't stop the attacks if they wanted to. And then without qualification there's the mention of Hamas's complaint against Israel, with no context.
How about this:
Hamas, the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, is building its military capacity in the Gaza Strip, constructing tunnels and underground bunkers and smuggling in ground-to-air missiles and military-grade explosives, senior Israeli officials say.The officials, including a top military commander who spoke in an interview on Friday, said that Hamas had learned tactics from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, which brought in and stored thousands of rockets in bunkers near the northern Israeli border before its war with Israel last summer.
So that was before the truce? Fine, this example have been since the truce.
Everything that goes into Gaza, either from Egyptian tunnels or from Israel, gets taken by Hamas. Hamas takes everything it needs first and then places the rest on the market, heavily taxing it to ensure that the "international boycott" against that terror organization is meaningless.Cement is a major item that Hamas covets. As the Shin Bet's Yuval Diskin testified yesterday, Hamas is using the cement it is receiving to build fortified bunkers and tunnels to transport and store weapons.
And why is this relevant? The end of the Times's report tells us:
On Tuesday, a World Bank delegation opened a sewer project, long delayed by the standoff between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza to prevent raw sewage from spilling into residential areas, The A.P. reported.The $63 million project is the initiative of Tony Blair, the international envoy for the Middle East, and the opening brought the highest-level World Bank delegation to visit Gaza in three years.
The delegation met with representatives of the Palestinian Water Authority, but not with members of Hamas, which has run Gaza since it seized power in June 2007.
But it doesn't tell us the rest of the story. Backspin though, didn't forget.
Israel's blockade of Gaza is neither capricious nor arbitrary. It may not be airtight, but it is designed to prevent Hamas from building up its capacity to attack Israel. Hamas has shown that it will use anything to build up its fortifications or to attack Israel. The "truce" has simply been downtime as Hamas prepares to attack Israel again. What's remarkable (if somewhat unwise, in my view) has been Israel's forebearance.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Codifying condi
One senior diplomatic official in Jerusalem characterized Rice's upcoming visit as one of "stock-taking" a year after the Annapolis Conference. "She understands that she can't reach an agreement, but wants a summary."According to this official, Rice would likely produce a paper documenting where things stood before she took office, where the situation stood now, and what her recommendations were for pushing the process forward. The purpose of such a paper, the official said, would be to leave the next administration with terms of reference so "they won't have to start from scratch."
An assessment like this does not help Israel. Likely it will set a floor on what Israel must do and demand little of the Palestinians. It won't just be the basis for the next administration, but could well hamstring a Likud government if one is elected next year.
UPDATE: See a related discussion at Daled Amos.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Post election post mortem
Congratulations to Sen. Obama on being elected the 44th president of the United States. How did he win?
Red State, Blue State looks at the numbers and sees, not a realignment, but an increase in the vote for the Democrat across the boards.
The red/blue map was not redrawn; it was more of a national partisan swing.
So it would appear that President elect Obama's efforts at getting out the vote (the ground game) and the economy were what fueled his victory.
(h/t memeorandum)
And I think this validates Dr. Helen's observation:
Because rather than think the country is going through some incredible demographic shift of Republican-hating left-wing ideology, it is rather comforting to know that the major reason people voted for Obama in this election was the economy. McCain was actually polling pretty well right before the economic crisis. Next election cycle, it will be something else. It might favor the Republicans or it might not. But to think that the entire philosophy of individual rights, small government, national security and gun rights is lost on a new generation of voters based on this one election is not only foolish, it shows a degree of cynicism that may not be accurate.
(h/t memeorandum)
This clinical dissection of the campaign pretty much confirms that.
To several McCain advisers, Sen. McCain's public show of dealing with the crisis by trying to broker a bailout deal between the president and Congress had fallen flat. "We completely blew it," said one. "The execution of a potentially great move couldn't have been worse."But Mr. Salter doesn't think briefly putting the campaign on hold was a mistake. "Even if John hadn't suspended his campaign, the unprecedented financial meltdown was going to help Obama," he says.
When voters were asked in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll about 10 days later which candidate would be better at improving the economy, 46% said Sen. Obama and 29% said Sen. McCain. Asked which presidential ticket was doing better in debates, the respondents favored Obama/Biden by 50% to 29% over McCain/Palin.
Of course this didn't help either:
Heading into the general-election campaign in June, Sen. McCain had been in a good place. He had won the Republican nomination early enough to be rested and ready after the bitterly fought Obama-Clinton contest.But in a strategy session of five McCain advisers -- campaign manager Rick Davis, pollster Bill McInturff, strategist Steve Schmidt, ad-maker Fred Davis and strategist Greg Strimple -- the back and forth revealed a fundamental problem. Fred Davis posed a question designed to give the campaign a central focus: "Why should we elect John McCain?" Tellingly, after several hours of debate, the five couldn't reach a consensus.
"Without an overriding rationale, our campaign necessarily turned tactical rather than strategic," one adviser recalls. "We focused more on why Obama should not be president, but much less on why McCain should be."
(related see this: Why be President. It's something every candidate should be able to answer.)
(h/t memeorandum)
This account of the campaign from the New York Times can scarcely contain its glee, but comes to the same conclusion:
Mr. McCain's inartful phrase about the economy that day, and the responses of the two campaigns, fundamentally altered the dynamic of the race. But the episode also highlighted a deeper difference: the McCain campaign team often seemed to make missteps and lurch from moment to moment in search of a consistent strategy and message, while the disciplined and nimble Obama team marched through a presidential contest of historic intensity learning to exploit opponents' weaknesses and making remarkably few stumbles.
Yes, Sen. McCain ran far from a perfect campaign, but his errors got magnified by the media in a way that Sen. Obama's didn't. Sen. Obama's response to Joe the Plumber could have been as devastating, but instead of treating it as a gaffe, the media started scrutinizing Joe the Plumber rather than exploring the implications of Sen. Obama's remark. It's a lot easier to stay above the fray when parties are voluntarily doing your oppo research for you.
November 5, 2008
Submitted 11/06/08
Watcher's Council submissions for this week are now up!
- If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise - Bookworm Room looks at the bright side of the election of President-elect Obama.
- National Security Rears It's Ugly Head - Joshuapundit is worried about the damage an inexperienced President can do and has done.
- Prop 8, Gay Marriage and the Spread of Islamofascism- Cheat-Seeking Missiles looks at one possible consequence of redefining marriage. It's a very surprising unintended consequence.
- Wednesday morning quarterbacking - I anticipated the two possible outcomes of the election and wrote my impressions regarding each.
- The real worry about an Obama presidency - The Colossus of Rhodey writes that President Obama' biggest impact might well be not in any domestic or foreign policy initiative but in his imprint on the Court.
- If Obama Wins... Part 3 - The Razor provides a map for Republicans to get out of the wilderness.
- Why the Financial Fixes Aren't Working - The government decided to throw $700 billion at the liquidity problem, why has confidence been so elusive?
My non-council submission for the week is Israel: 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say 'We Didn't Know' When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know). by Mere Rhetoric.
Read. Enjoy. Be informed.
The Obama Presidency: Will The "Racist" Accusation Still Be Used?
Peter Kirsanow writes:Obama will get the most lavish and extended honeymoon in history. Every time he walks to the podium without falling down will be trumpeted as the greatest accomplishment since MacArthur returned to the Philippines. It will be the natural tendency of Republicans to join in the praise, and worse, to try to be "bipartisan" when it comes to legislation that is manifestly bad for the country and abhorrent to conservative principles. This tendency will be magnified by the Republicans' fear that any opposition to Obama's policies will be portrayed as motivated by racism rather than principle.Will the threat of civil war and blood in the streets be brought up when a contentious bill comes before Congress or when--hey, it could happen--the Congress threatens to override a veto?
At what point does Obama become a human being?
by Daled Amos
Obama Wins--And The Middle East Gets The Message
From The Jerusalem Post:
A barrage of rockets hit Gaza-belt communities Wednesday morning after IDF forces engaged Hamas gunmen inside the Strip. It was the worst outbreak of violence since a shaky cease-fire took effect in June.If Israel has any thought at all of taking action against Iran, everyone now knows it will have to happen before Obama takes office. For that matter, considering the pressures that Obama will apply on Israel, it may already be too late.
At least 30 rockets were fired into Israel, three of which landed in the western Negev, damaging several greenhouses. Two rockets fell in Ashkelon, one of which hit a residential neighborhood, sending three people into shock.
Israel ordered the Gaza crossings closed following the attacks, but while tensions ran high, Israeli officials said they remained committed to the cease-fire with Hamas, stressing that the operation was an isolated one.
Seven Israeli soldiers were wounded and six gunmen were reported killed in the fresh clashes, which began when IDF special forces entered Gaza in order to blow up a tunnel dug by Hamas terrorists for the purpose of kidnapping IDF soldiers.
The wolf at the door
In 1996, following a series of devastating terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, Israelis narrowly elected Binyamin Netanyahu to be Prime Minister. About three years later, despite fewer terror attacks, Ehud Barak successfully challenged Netanyahu to succeed him. It's true that Netanyahu alienated his base and ran a lackluster campaign. But what's remarkable is that because of his apparent success in containing terror, his constituency forgot why it elected him in the first place.
Within a year and a half, Barak, who had promised to be more forthcoming in negotiations with the Palestinians, found himself facing the Arafat led "Aqsa intifada," and ultimately lost power when he could no longer hold his government together.
In a sense we are seeing a replay of that scenario this year in America.
Seven years ago Al Qaeda attacked us here. In the interim President Bush led the United States in two wars in response. The first in Afghanistan and the second in Iraq. While there have been mistakes along the way, the upshot is that Al Qaeda, while still dangerous, is on the run. Al Qaeda was unable to strike at the United States again. Americans feel secure and are elected as President Bush's successor, Sen. Barack Obama, a man with no significant foreign policy experience.
In addition Sen. Obama opposed the war in Iraq. He considered it a mistake. Even with the success of the surge, he considers it a mistake. If he gave any serious thought to whether bringing down Saddam Hussein might have played a role in protecting the United States, Sen. Obama has given no indication.
Sen. Obama talks about how he would use all "tools" at his disposal to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
"No tool of statecraft should be taken off the table," Obama said in a speech covering broad national security issues, including Iraq and Iran.
He (and his allies) act as if President Bush didn't exhaust all diplomatic options before going to war against Iraq. But President Bush did try to get Saddam Hussein to come clean about his WMD program. Saddam never verified that he had disposed of his forbidden weapons.
And while Sen. Obama talks about restoring America's standing in the world, he forgets (or wants us to forget) that many of those nations who objected to the war in Iraq did so because they were bought off by Saddam. What will happen if President Obama finds himself stuck between using his "tools" of diplomacy and acting to defend the United States. Will the feelings of our allies take precedence? Or will he act decisively regardless?
Keep in mind that Sen. Obama's own Vice Presidential candidate, Sen. Joe Biden recently warned that there will be nations who will test the new president. How will he act?
For seven years Al Qaeda's been on the run. As it was with Israel in 1999, the electorate felt safe enough to try a new approach. I hope we - and the world - don't pay a price for letting up on the fight.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Netiv haasarah redux
As Israel prepared to evacuate all Israelis from Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan, a famous Palestinian "moderate" demanded that Israel also withdraw from Netiv Haasarah, a community just north of Gaza.
PA security chief Mohammad Dahlan publicly voiced the PA demand that Israel withdraw from the town of Netiv Ha'asara, a small residential community south of Ashkelon, in order to complete the planned withdrawal from Gaza.
A similar scenario is replaying itself in the north.
A senior Hezbollah official on Monday said the Lebanese militant organization believes that large swaths of northern Israel belong to Lebanon, far beyond the line Israel pulled back to in 2000."The Zionist terror organizations moved the border from that of 1920 to that of 1923, and Lebanon lost seven villages and twenty farms. One must be cautious before moving the border to the Blue Line, because then Lebanon will lose millions of square meters," said Nawaf Musawi, head of international relations for Hezbollah. ...
He branded Blue Line [the UN-approved border between Israel and Lebanon], which runs very close to the 1949 Israel-Lebanon border known as the Green Line, as merely a "withdrawal line."
In response Noah Pollak observes wryly:
What's less fun, I suppose, is all the westerners who will use this proclamation to insist that Hezbollah is a reasonable group with limited ambitions and a flexible political agenda.
Advocates of dialogue with Hezbollah have repeatedly argued that a compromise over the Shebaa Farms would deny Hezbollah any further pretext for continuing "resistance" against Israel. In a textbook move, Hezbollah has just laid out just that-the next pretext.
The ever increasing demands of terrorist organizations on Israel, is a reminder of the aptness of Winston Churchill's description of appeasement.
It also shows the inadvisability of the President elect Obama's reported promise to the Palestinians, as that will only encourage them to demand more from Israel.
Crossposted on Yourish.
The world doesn't wait
Yesterday, after trying to destroy a smuggling tunnel in northern Gaza, the IDF came into conflict with Hamas forces. Then Hamas fired mortars into Israel. then Israeli forces bombed targets in Gaza.
The Israeli army said the clashes erupted late Tuesday after its forces uncovered a tunnel in central Gaza that militants planned to use to abduct Israeli soldiers. It said a special army unit headed to the area to destroy the tunnel. One Palestinian was killed in fierce gunbattles that ensued.Hamas then fired mortars across the Gaza border into southern Israel and Israel answered with the airstrike in the early hours of Wednesday, killing five suspected Palestinian militants, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. The army said the airstrike aimed at the mortar launchers and hit them.
(Naturally, the headline, only mentions the Israeli retaliation, "Israel launches 1st airstrike on Gaza since June".)
As FresnoZionism noted a few months ago, Hamas has been using the ceasefire to build up its fortifications and armaments, emulating Hezbollah's efforts in southern Lebanon. Elder of Ziyon noted an earlier tunnel in the same general area a few weeks ago.
The editors of the New York Times are alarmed by the way Hamas has used the ceasefire to build its threat against Israel.
As a step toward peace, Hamas must dismantle its bunkers and scrap the missiles it has acquired that threaten Israel. To do so, Hamas needs the public support of American Muslims and moderate Palestinians against militants who seek political change through violence.
Well no, that's not what bother the editors of the New York Times. The problem they're worried about are the "settlers."
Terror against Israel is less of a problem than Binyamin Netanyahu.
Israeli voters are expected to choose a new government in February. Mr. Olmert's designated heir, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, failed to put together a coalition government for the right reasons: She refused the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party's demand that there would be no negotiations on the status of Jerusalem. Such a commitment would have made any peace deal impossible. Ms. Livni's chief rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, opposes immediate talks on a Palestinian state.Israelis need a leader who can calm the forces that are tearing Israel apart and also negotiate a just peace. The new American president must be ready to fully support that effort. The lesson of the last few months should be clear to all. Israel will have no peace -- with its neighbors or its own citizens -- without a peace agreement.
Why is the Palestinian demand to divide Jerusalem sacrosanct but the Israeli wish to keep all of Jerusalem inimical to peace? Why is a peace agreement so essential to Israel that it must address all Palestinian demands but not so important for the Palestinians for them to accommodate Israeli prefernces?
Actually, the lesson of the past fifteen years has been that if you allow the illusion of peace to blind you to your enemy's ambitions, your enemy will cause you lots of grief. Another lesson that should be clear to all is that Israel will have no peace until it defeats the terrorists who threaten it. Of as Joshua Sharf put it:
Of course, this reverses the formula exactly. In fact, Israel's peace will follow from its security.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Colorado 6
It looks like Joshua Sharf has been defeated.
Bummer
November 4, 2008
Pew Survey: Anti-Semitism On The Rise In Europe
A disturbing new trend is emerging across Europe. Anti-Semitism and xenophobia are on the rise. A growing minority of citizens in several European countries holds unfavorable opinions of Jews. Negative views of Israel, sympathy with the Palestinian cause, rising anti-Americanism, and a backlash against globalization and immigration all play a role in this trend.I'm not sure that the rise in Anti-Semitism can be called 'modest', or that Anti-Semitism can really be compared with anti-Muslim sentiment--after all Jews tend to try to fit in and generally do not go around blowing people up.
Research by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, as well as polls by the Anti-Defamation League, make clear that anti-Jewish sentiments are increasing. Granted, the breadth of European anti-Semitism should not be overstated. This rise in negative attitudes toward Jews has for the most part been modest, and anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe remain much less common than anti-Muslim views.
Facebook And Holocaust Denial (Update)
upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.Now it seems there is another related violation of Facebook's TOS--one that again Facebook is doing nothing about.
upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law.Cuban notes that:
The advocation of Holocaust Denial is a crime in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Israel, Slovakia and Switzerland. Of those countries, Facebook has an active presence by way of a localized platform in Germany.While Cuban seems to emphasize that the TOS forbids providing "instructions for a criminal offense," the fact the TOS also forbids material "that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law" might be even more apropos.
...Holocaust Denial is a crime in Germany as well as many other countries. Facebook has an independent presence in Germany. Facebook TOS would seem to prohibit content that violates the laws of the countries Facebook has a presence in. It can therefore be argued that Facebook content that promotes Holocaust Denial is a violation of Facebook TOS and should be removed.
But don't bet on it.
As Cuban quotes:
All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.
UPDATED: Rest assured that the JIDF is on the case.
by Daled Amos
Bush, Obama, Israel
A way that President Bush (despite his faults) was good for Israel:
When President Bush took office, Israel was in the midst of the "Second Intifada" uprising. We now know that this Intifada was premeditated by Yasser Arafat (who was extensively supported diplomatically and financially by the Clinton Administration) while engaged in Oslo "peace" negotiations. Suicide bombers terrorized all of Israel, murdering some 2000 Israeli civilians. We and our children were forced to risk our lives just boarding buses, attending weddings, synagogues, holiday festivals, or sitting in cafes.By contrast, today this country has returned to a level of safety and normalcy. Israel's reining in that wave of terror (including building the security fence, opposed by Obama) would have been significantly more difficult without the diplomatic and moral support of the Bush Administration for the Sharon government's no-nonsense means of shutting down Arab terror.
Read the whole thing.
(h/t Dr. Helen)
Why President Obama would be bad for Israel
Obama is disastrously weak on Israeli security? "Well he's willing to accept Israel's security choices, he's spoken out against Palestinian violence, and he's reached out to Israelis." Except he totally rejects the Israeli center-right that Israelis are about to entrust with their security, he opposes the security fence that protects Israel from Palestinian violence, and Israelis don't actually believe that his overtures are genuine.
Read the whole thing.
(h/t LGF)
Do they know something we don't?
Obama supporters are voting for his experience. (h/t Instapundit)
(Maybe it's just the dateline on that screenshot. It says Roswell New Mexico. That isn't the McCain campaign that's optimistic, just alien impostors!)
(h/t Instapundit, again.)
Begin again
Tzippi Livni mocks the return of "Benny" Begin to the Likud.
"We are actually in a situation in which the Right wants to put a stop to everything and the Left may want to give up everything," she said. "However, our way is to continue the peace process in an intelligent and responsible manner that preserves Israel's interests."Speaking during a Kadima faction meeting, Livni said that Likud had turned into a party that "says no to everything."
I'm not certain how the leadership of Kadima now differs from the Left, but here's what Begin wrote back in 1996 about Oslo. (Oslo and Mideast Logic, Jan 17, 1996, The Jerusalem Post)
This is the logical chain of the Oslo agreement: 1. The government has signed an agreement with Arafat. 2. For the agreement to be implemented, Arafat must survive. 3. To survive, Arafat must violate the agreement.
The current calls strengthening Abbas absent the demonstration of any will or capability on his part to foster coexistence with Israel shows that Begin's words that those words of caution are no less appropriate nearly thirteen years later.
Israel Matzav isn't deterred by Livni.
Ehud Barak also sounded off:
Also Monday, Labor leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak slammed former IDF spokeswomen Miri Regev and former science minister Benny Begin for joining Likud. Referring to the Middle East peace processes, Barak said their decision made the Likud's stance clear and demonstrated that "the Likud way is likely to bring us again to a dead end."
When Barak took office after he defeated Netanyahu, he inherited a situation where terror was down.He left office a year and a half later at the start of the "Aqsa intifada." Whose approach then led to a dead end?
PS. Begin's return to politics is very strange. Israeli politics has moved quite a bit to the left since he resigned a decade ago. He also left with seemingly hard feelings towards Netanyahu. It's hard to see that he will fit in better now than in 1998.
Crossposted on Yourish.
Frank talk about race
One of the aspects of the presidential campaign that has been commented on a lot is race. It started, perhaps, with the revelation that Sen. Obama's paster, Rev. Jeremiah Wright had made quite a few anti-American and anti-White comments in church. In response Sen. Obama delivered a speech on race in Philadelphia this past March. While the speech was hailed by many, I found it lacking because Sen. Obama didn't take responsibility for failing to react more quickly to his mentor's incendiary words.
But there's another aspect about race that doesn't get much play. Here's a sentence from Eugene Robinson's latest (or here):
I know there's a possibility that white Americans, when push comes to shove, won't be able to bring themselves to elect a black man as president of the United States.
And then there's Jonathan Capeheart's Black Angst:
Yet I still can't allow myself to think for one minute that "they" (the infamous, faceless "they") will let Obama, Michelle and the girls move easily into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come January.
So whether it's Robinson's "white Americans" or Capeheart's "they" at fault, we know that if the polls were wrong there will be great bitterness among African Americans at having the prize of the presidency stolen from them. But look at the Gallup:
An Obama victory would also owe a great debt to overwhelming support from racial and ethnic minorities. McCain led among white voters, 51% to 44%, but Obama more than made up for that with an 83% to 13% advantage among non-whites, including a 97% to 1% advantage among blacks and a 73% to 24% lead among Hispanics.
If this is correct, then whites could be blamed for the failure of Barack Obama even though nearly half of the would have voted for a black man. The logic of race relations evades me. If over 90% of blacks will vote for the black candidate it doesn't seem appropriate to saddle whites with the burden of implied racism.
There are of course many reasons not to vote for Sen. Obama. He has precious little relevant experience. He has numerous associates of questionable makeup. He seems to say whatever is necessary to get ahead. His political views are well to the left of the mainstream. And yet, if he loses, or even if the finish is closer than expected it will be white people who will have their virtue questioned.
We do need a frank talk about race this election season. We have not had it yet.
Yossi, we hardly knew ye
In a too generous retrospective of Yossi Beilin's career, Ethan Bronner writes:
For the last two decades, the easiest way to invoke dovishness in Israel has been to utter the words "Yossi Beilin." The politician who navigated mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1990s and has never stopped believing, Mr. Beilin has a unique place in the Israeli political galaxy, admired and reviled for his relentlessness.
He was not reviled for his relentlessness. He was reviled for his failure to play by the rules.
Still, Mr. Beilin's decision to leave public life and set up a private company offers a lens through which to view Israeli politics. The arc of his career describes the fortunes of peacemaking. He said last week that he was leaving in triumph, since his support for an end to occupation of Palestinian territories and the creation of a Palestinian state, once radical positions, are today mainstream. There is no denying that shift in public opinion and official policy. But it is impossible not to see the move also as a defeat -- of Mr. Beilin's understated style in an overheated environment, and of his goals, with no Palestinian state on the horizon.
The first part of this is correct. Israel has changed quite a bit in the past twenty years and Beilin's extreme views are now pretty much mainstream. But the defeat wasn't one of Beilin's "understated" style. it was one of his misreading the Palestinians. If there was a movement towards Beilin's positions in Israel, there has been no reciprocal moderation on the Palestinian side. Maybe some of the rhetoric is milder than it was 1992, but even Abbas still denies the right of there to be a Jewish state.
The next three paragraphs are bewildering. I've highlighted the essentials.
Most successful Israeli politicians resemble Ariel Sharon -- open-shirted men with strong military backgrounds, thick fingers and quick tempers. But the soft-voiced Mr. Beilin, with his Cross gold pens and carefully knotted ties, was a different species, one that left Israelis bemused. At his political height, that mattered little since he was less a leader of the people than a leader of the leaders, a behind-the-scenes actor who persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 that Yasir Arafat wanted peace. That feat was all the more remarkable because, as Mr. Beilin noted in a two-hour conversation in his office last week, he and Mr. Rabin never liked each other.It is a tribute to Mr. Beilin -- to his powerful intellect and keen interpersonal skills -- that despite his demure style and lack of good-old-boy credentials, his political fortunes rose remarkably in the 1990s as the Oslo peace process that he set in motion took over Israeli politics. In the Labor primaries at one point, he won the No. 2 spot. Twice he was appointed a minister. For a while, if you wanted to know what was next on Israel's geopolitical agenda, you consulted Mr. Beilin.
But when peacemaking reached a dead end and the second intifada broke out in late 2000, sending Israel into a fury of suicide bombings and fierce military counterattacks that killed thousands, Mr. Beilin lost his sheen. He was accused of being a snake-oil salesman, responsible for luring Israelis into the false belief that they had a peace partner. The exotic fellow with the Ph.D. and attaché case was anathema.
First Bronner credits Beilin with convincing Rabin to trust Araft, but then, two paragraphs later, shocker: Mr. Beilin lost his sheen. Here's a guy who got the leader of his country to trust an unrepentant terrorist who proceeded to launch a terror war against his country.
"He was accused of being a snake-oil salesman, responsible for luring Israelis into the false belief that they had a peace partner." He wasn't accused of being a "snake oil salesman" that's what he was shown to be. Trusting Arafat was a huge mistake. I can't feel the sympathy for Beilin that Bronner seems to want me to feel. Worse, Beilin's never admitted his fundamental mistake. The failure to achieve peace he blames on others, not on his own faulty judgment.
He sees two clocks ticking. One is demographic, with the Jewish-Palestinian ratio in Israel and the Palestinian areas nearing 50-50. The other is geopolitical, what he calls the growing threats and hatred toward Israel in the region. "Our behavior," he said, " is costing us a huge price because we are giving the fanatics the best pretext." Mr. Beilin, now 60, is starting an Israeli version of Kissinger Associates and says he plans to stay involved as a private citizen in peace efforts, even as he promotes businesses across the Israeli-Arab divide.
The demographic "clock" has stopped ticking. Whatever will be in the future for the Palestinians, the vast majority of them are no longer under Israel's jurisdiction. The demographic threat is simply a device to force Israel to make the concessions the Palestinians demand of them. To Beilin, the idea that peace negotiations should, in any way, meet Israeli requirements is inconceivable. And it's astonishing that now 15 years after Oslo, that he could still make the argument that Israel's failure to meet Palestinians demands is the "best pretext" for "the fanatics." If his peace making premise was correct, the fanatics would have little or no standing now. In fact, the Arab world has not been transformed as he so blithely assumes.
Near the end Beilin expresses his hopes and fears:
He says he fervently hopes for a victory by Barack Obama -- but also that the economic and other crises don't overwhelm the new administration. "God forbid if this conflict is marginalized," he said. "If we are marginalized, it will be to kill each other."
As long as the Arab Israeli conflict is front and center, it raise the price of peace for Israel and it gives Beilin a platform to sell his badly concocted prescription. Beilin's hyperbole isn't about the fear of violence, but the fear that his own importance will be diminished.
Yossi Beilin, as a member of the Knesset subverted Israeli law in order to get Oslo passed. Since Oslo was predicated on the honorable intentions of Yasser Arafat it failed miserably. Yossi Beilin's retirement from politics is a much overdue slide into irrelevance earned by his arrogant inability to take responsibility for his historic failure.
Crossposted on Yourish.
November 3, 2008
Juggling carnivals 11/03/08
Incoming Carnivals
First of all last week Me-Ander, the creator of the Kosher Cooking Carnival hosted its 35th edition.
Esser Agaroth did a fine job with Haveil Havalim #189, the election edition.
Here in HP has the compact but comprehensive J-Pix 20.
And finally, What's new in Maryland hosted the 45th Carnival of Maryland.
A blog carnival is a time consuming enterprise. Please check these out. Not just because of the work involved, but because you're sure to find something interesting at them.
26 months
This morning at 1:15 AM she turned 113 weeks old.
What can I say? She continues to grow and to delight.
When I come home at the end of the day I get a wonderful greeting. A smile. A hug. Maybe a kiss.
She usually goes to bed in a good mood, and says "night, night" and gives me a kiss.
Her speech continues to develop. We can have conversations a bit more with her these day. Not about the presidential election, of course, but like how she ought to eat her yogurt. She stays focused enough to realize that taking two bites and then asking for something else won't please us.
Like her sister five years ago, she's discovered that I keep a stash of M & M's in my car. Her sister used to ask for "Em-ems," but as soon as she gets into my car I hear "candy!" That's an imperative statement, not a declarative one.
One of her more endearing tricks is that when she exits the van, she squeezes through to the drivers seat and insists on "driving" before she leaves the car.
Baby you can drive my car!
One less endearing trait is the fight she puts up when we brush her hair. I really love those ringlets, but they're getting knotty and she hates it when we brush her hair. (Her oldest sister with naturally curly hair, used to really hate that too!)
She's also started appropriating our expressions as her own. A few weeks ago she asked me where Imma was. I said, "At work." She responded "Oh fine." Those are the words of resignation of her older sister.
It also appears that she's well on her way to dressing herself. She can pull on a pair of pants. A shirt requires some outside help. Yesterday I was trying to help her get socks when she dismissed me with, "It's my turn."
As usual, I reserve the right to add items if I'm reminded of things I forgot!
Previous related entries:
25 months,
Two years,
23 months,
22 months,
21 months,
20 months,
19 months,
18 months,
17 months,
16 months,
15 months,
14 months,
13 months,
One year,
11 months,
10 months,
9 months,
eight months,
seven months,
six months,
five months,
four months,
three months,
two months,
One month.
Party of the rich
I can't say I'm being scientific about it, but I have been surprised by the number of Obama bumper stickers I see on SUV's or lawn signs in front of mansions. Maybe it's because I read this by Martin Peretz:
Campaign financing records will not be filed with the government commission that oversees these matters until Friday. So I am hazarding a small guess about what you can read from the information we already have from the Obama effort. But here is one fact that is self-evident:Democrats and liberal Democrats, at that, are not poorer than Republicans and conservatives. They can not only give and raise enormous sums. But those of them who are wealthy are quite willing, even enthusiastic, to contribute to a candidate whose success will mean an increase in their taxes. Nobody particularly likes paying taxes. But, as Warren Buffett said, he should not be paying a lesser percentage of his income in tax than his secretary does. I shouldn't either, and neither should you.
Jay Nordlinger is now making a similar observation:
Modestly off people -- "real Vermonters," as some people say -- are voting for McCain and Palin. Comfortably off people, such as those who own ski chalets, are voting for Obama and Biden.
(via memeorandum)
Closing arguments at the wsj
Sens. Obama and McCain make their final pleas for our votes at the Wall Street Journal.
Sen. Obama, The change we need:
We'll create two million new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and laying broadband lines that reach every corner of the country. I'll invest $15 billion a year over the next decade in renewable energy, creating five million new, green jobs that pay well, can't be outsourced, and can help end our dependence on Middle East oil.When it comes to health care, we don't have to choose between a government-run system and the unaffordable one we have now. My opponent's plan would make you pay taxes on your health-care benefits for the first time in history. My plan will make health care affordable and accessible for every American. If you already have health insurance, the only change you'll see under my plan is lower premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of plan that members of Congress get for themselves.
But if he invests, the money comes from somewhere. I can't believe that all of his promises are compatible. That's the skeptic in me talking, but this is a nice rhetorical flourish:
None of this will be easy. It won't happen overnight. But I believe we can do this because I believe in America. This is the country that allowed our parents and grandparents to believe that even if they couldn't go to college, they could save a little bit each week so their child could; that even if they couldn't have their own business, they could work hard enough so their child could open one of their own. And at every moment in our history, we've risen to meet our challenges because we've never forgotten the fundamental truth that in America, our destiny is not written for us, but by us.
Overall, there seem to be too many promises, not all of which are compatible.
Sen. McCain, What we're fighting for:
Domestically, it's largely a promise to stay out of the way.
I will not impose "one size fits all" health care on families and small businesses through expensive mandates and fines. I will bring down the skyrocketing cost of health care with competition and choice, reform the insurance market to be fair, and allow you to keep the same health plan if you change jobs or choose to stay home.One in five jobs in the U.S. depends on trade and I will fight the threat to those jobs from Democrat plans for isolationism. I won't make it harder to sell our goods overseas and kill more jobs. I will open new markets to goods made in America and make sure our trade is free and fair. And I'll make sure we help workers who've lost a job that won't come back find a new one that won't go away.
In the world it's a promise to be engaged wisely:
I have devoted my life to safeguarding America. Former Secretary of State George Shultz compares diplomacy to tending a garden -- if you want to see relationships flourish, you have to tend them. I have done that, by traveling the world and establishing ties with everyone from dissidents to heads of state. There is great need for American leadership in the world, and I understand that only by exercising that leadership with grace and wisdom can we be successful in safeguarding our interests.
Not perfect, but a nice summary of what he stands for without too many specifics.
Israel's calm, that's not good
Having done all they can to ensure the election of their preferred here, the editors of the Washington Post turn their attention to the next election, Israel's in A Middle East Vote.
Let's skip to the end:
Thanks to the construction of a fence along the West Bank border and a cease-fire deal with Hamas, Israel has been more peaceful in recent months than it has been in years. That favors right-wing leader Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister. It is likely that he would seek to put off a settlement with Palestinians indefinitely. Mr. Netanyahu is seen as inflexible and untrustworthy by many in Washington; his election could spell a fractious period in Israeli-U.S. relations.
Israel is quiet and that is a bad thing because it might bring Binyamin Netanyahu to power. Now, I'm not at all confident of this. After all, Hamas agreed to a ceasefire so it could build its fortifications. When the ceasefire ceases being advantageous. And of course the Post doesn't really acknowledge that ceasefire is broken on a regular basis.
And I love the characterization of Netanyahu as "inflexible and untrustworthy." Well I guess the Post's reporters have done their job in portraying his as such. Netanyahu was villified when he was Prime Minister for demanding that the Palestinians keep their end of the bargain. He did withdraw Israel from most of Chevron, something the even Shimon Peres failed to do. That's not inflexible. (I don't agree with that flexibility, but at least acknowledge that Netanyahu actually moved the peace process along.)
At the moment, the parties of Ms. Livni and Mr. Netanyahu are tied in the polls. A clear victory by Ms. Livni could energize the peace process, and its pursuit by the new president could strengthen the U.S. position around the region. But more likely is a narrow victory by one side or a coalition government that hamstrings Israel's negotiating ability. That would perpetuate what at present is the leading obstacle to a deal, which is the political weakness of both the Israelis and Palestinians who seek it. As the Bush administration has discovered, intervention by the United States, even if energetic, cannot easily compensate for that deficit.
Notice how this is all about Israel. There's nothing about the rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas. Or that a leading Palestinian university still denies historical Jewish ties to the land of Israel. Of even that, in legal proceedings, the PLO still argues that terror against Israel is justified.
To this, the PLO, represented in part by none other than the appalling Ramsey Clark (who in a distant age, 1967-69, was attorney general of the United States), replied that the attacks were acts of war rather than terrorism. As Daniels summarizes the PLO argument: "defendants argue that subject matter jurisdiction is lacking because this action is premised on acts of war, which is barred under the ATA [Antiterrorism Act of 1991], and further is based on conduct which does not meet the statutory definition of 'international terrorism'."This response is noteworthy for two reasons: (1) Fifteen years after Oslo supposedly ended the state of war, four years after Mahmoud Abbas took over and supposedly improved on Arafat's abysmal record, the PLO publicly maintains it remains at war with Israel. (2) The PLO ar