December 2003 Archives

o If you are a strong defender of the Iranian people contact us and we will add a graphical link to the site. We have space for 20 sites so please contact us ASAP! [Edit: Note of clarification - This is a quote from the folks at Blog Iran. Please contact them for placement on their page! Sorry if that wasn't clear. oops.]

o Islamic Regime Embezzles Food Donated to Bam Victims. Hospitals charge relatives and refuse to feed patients!
From Radio Farda 12/29/30

o Iranian Futures - Khatami's doublespeak and a hot potato.
by Nir Boms (vice president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies)

o IRAN'S POLITICAL QUAKE
By AMIR TAHERI

o Bam Victims Beaten & Arrested
by SMCCDI (Information Service)

o Executions & Amputations Continue Despite National Mourning
by SMCCDI (Information Service)

Indeed, the liberal Europeans should love Israel, whose social and cultural institutions — universities, the fine arts, concern for the “other” — so reflect its own. Gays are in the Israeli military, whose soldiers rarely salute, but usually address each other by their first names and accept a gender equity that any feminist would love. And while Arabs once may have been exterminated by Syrians, gassed in Yemen by Egypt, ethnically cleansed in Kuwait, lynched without trial in Palestine, burned alive in Saudi Arabia, inside Israel proper they vote and enjoy human rights not found elsewhere in the Arab Middle East.

When Europe frets over the “Right of Return” do they mean the over half-million Jews who were sent running for their lives from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq? Or do they ever ask why a million Arabs live freely in Israel and another 100,000 illegally have entered the “Zionist entity”? Does a European ever ask what would happen should thousands of Jews demand “A Right of Return” to Cairo?

Instead, the elite Westerner talks about “occupied lands” from which Israel has been attacked four times in the last 60 years — in a manner that Germans do not talk about an occupied West they coughed up to France or an occupied East annexed by Poland. Russia lectures about Jenin, but rarely its grab of Japanese islands. Turkey is worried about the West Bank, but not its swallowing much of Cyprus. China weighs in about Palestinian sovereignty but not the entire culture of Tibet; some British aristocrats bemoan Sharon’s supposed land grab, but not Gibraltar...

This little-reported news item is of great significance. It begs commentary.

Israel not only has the world's most experienced crews in quickly finding survivors in bombed out buildings, it is also a mere two-hour flight from Iran. In other words, no country in the world would come close to Israel in its ability to save Iranian lives quickly.

But none of this means anything to the rulers of Iran. The Islamic government of Iran has announced to the world that it is better for fellow countrymen and fellow Muslims -- men, women and children -- to die buried under rubble than to be saved by a Jew from Israel.

That is how deep the hatred of Israel and Jews is in much of the Muslim world.

Hundreds of millions of Muslims -- Arab and non-Arab, Sunni and Shi'a -- hate Israel more than they love life. Leaders of the Palestinian terror organization Hamas repeatedly state, "We love death more than the Jews love life." And now, Iran announces that it is better for a Muslim to asphyxiate under the earth than be rescued by a Jew from Israel.

Naive Westerners -- which includes most academics, intellectuals, members of the international news media, and nearly all others on the Left -- refuse to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Arab/Muslim hatred of Israel and Jews. Yet, there is no hatred in the world analogous to it. Not since the Nazi hatred of Jews has humanity witnessed such hate...

Most Iranian activists are advising to be extremely wary of funds and organizations associated with the NIAC or IAC (National Iranian American Council) which for years has been criticized for being supporters of the Islamic Regime in Iran. Most NIAC affiliates in California were exposed by Iranian Radio stations a few years back and so they were forced to leave the region. If you donate to the Red Cross, you can almost be 100% sure that the money will be utilized properly.

An article published at SMCCDI (Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran) says it all.

Now for your reading enjoyment:

Messages To The Iranian People
by The Post and Courier
charleston.net

FrontPage Interview: Michael Ledeen

The Regime's Total Incompetance with Bam Aid

Dead Mother's Embrace Saves Iranian Baby's Life

Summary Of US Rescue Teams and Air Force Effort for Bam

Ledeen: Really, really ugly

In the first of a two-part series written from Damascus, The Times reported that "1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million bullets for assault rifles," supplied by SES International Corp., "helped Baghdad's ill-equipped army grow stronger before the war began in March. Some supplies may now be aiding the insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation."

Files cited by the Times were taken from the abandoned office of Al Bashair Trading Co., by a reporter for the German magazine Stern shortly after U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

The newspaper said it had the 800 signed contracts translated from Arabic and sought confirmation internationally during a three-month investigation.

Among the findings The Times reported:

-- A Polish company shipped up to 380 surface-to-air missile engines to Baghdad through Syria.

-- A South Korean firm shipped $8 million in telecommunications equipment for "air defense."

-- A Slovenian firm shipped 20 battle tank barrels to the Syrian firm early in 2002.

-- Two North Korean officials went to Damascus to discuss an Iraqi payment of $10 million for components for ballistic missiles.

According to the newspaper, a confidential U.N. report identifies Al Bashair as the biggest of 13 companies used to evade the U.N. arms embargo and other sanctions. Al Bashair made deals for as much as $1 billion a year in the 90s...

The effort marks a new willingness to cooperate with US forces, a shift in the thinking of at least some key members of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, which lost political dominance with the fall of Hussein and has largely formed the most outspoken and violent opposition to the US-led occupation.

Sheik Sabah Mahmoud, leader of the Sada tribe, said he and 10 other tribal elders have formed a reconciliation committee in Tikrit to speak to other Iraqi leaders about trying to persuade rebels to put down weapons. He said he took that message last week to a group of scholars, religious leaders, and other prominent figures meeting in Baghdad.

"It's about time we put our differences aside and looked to the future," Mahmoud said. "I told them: `The reality is, [US forces] are here on the ground; the past is dead. Give the Americans a chance to see what they are going to give us.' "

The committee was formalized Saturday, he said.

"It's just the beginning," Mahmoud added during a meeting in the provincial government building with a US Army commander and seven other spiritual leaders...

The forms of militant Islamic fundamentalism - Al Qaeda recruitment, fighting the jihad in Iraq or Afghanistan or Palestine - are protests against the power and seeming omnipotence of the Western world and, particularly, the United States.

Indifferent to its own religious history and historical culture, it has substituted a shallow and commercial secularism that Islamic fundamentalism furiously rejects but is unlikely to defeat.

In all of this, the United States is a detonator of explosions primed by cultural and political frustration. It imagines that it brings progress, but all it has brought so far is a deepening chaos.

But once America struck Iraq in March - a faraway country without the raison d'etat - everything changed. America had shucked away all the rules of combat, all the rules of war, all the international structures it had meticulously built over decades since World Wat II...

"What bothered me more," he continued, "was that reporting, when it was uncertain what was going on, fell into predictions of disaster because there were so many who wanted for everything to go wrong. As soon as there were problems on the ground for the United States, it was Vietnam."

Hertoghe said newspapers ignored reports from journalists traveling with U.S. forces, including those from Agence France-Presse, when they did not indicate insurmountable difficulties.

"The papers wanted disaster, and when the reporting didn't reflect it, they predicted it," he said.

"Le Monde went the furthest," he added. "I wrote that Le Monde became 'Saddam's Gazette.' It gave a picture from Baghdad of Saddam's units perfectly controlling the situation. The difference between Le Monde and Le Figaro was that Le Figaro insisted that American tanks would operate easily on Baghdad's wide streets."

"Then when the Americans made their move, we read how they were massacring the Iraqis. The explanation for the collapse was that Saddam's fedayeen had so much compassion for the population that they stopped fighting."

Despite the book's appearance under the imprimatur of a leading publisher, Hertoghe said he was invited to discuss it on only one radio and one television broadcast.

The only extensive review in print of the book, he said, appeared in a free newspaper available to commuters in Paris.

"I tried to be totally fair in writing this," Hertoghe said. "I thought that a journalist's conscience was more important to his newspaper than any other consideration it might have. I admit to having read my contract before the book appeared. But I never thought I would be fired."

But there are others who would see the eviction of the Americans from Afghanistan and Iraq not as the end but as the beginning--as a victory not in a war but in a battle, one step in a longer and wider war that must be pursued until the final and global victory...

If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.

At the time, Jones was in jail on charges of shooting and killing two others in an unrelated case. According to a police affidavit in support of the arrest warrant in Pendleton's case, Jones admitted stabbing him multiple times but said it was in self-defense.

A sentence in the police affidavit caught my eye: "The investigation also revealed that the defendant [Jones] is a member of a group called the 'Muslim Brotherhood.' "

Now that rang a bell.

The Muslim Brotherhood movement, known officially as Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, has been around since 1928, when it got started in Egypt. Best known for its opposition to secular influences on Islamic societies, the Muslim Brotherhood has spread throughout the world, including the United States. By thought, word and deed, it doesn't exactly represent the peace-loving side of Islam. Its motto: "Allah is our objective; The Prophet is our leader; Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."[...]

Of course, this has no relevance to Israel. Like Israel's policies or not, there is as great an interaction within the governing bodies and among government, the media, intellectuals and the public as in any society on Earth.

Why, then, this disrespect to Israel's democratic institutions, particularly at a time when the need for democracy in the Arab world is being emphasized as the most important weapon to combat Islamist terrorism?

I would suggest that there is a tendency in some circles to psychologically delegitimize the Sharon government without stating it so bluntly...

"How can you say that George Bush is better than Saddam Hussein?"

These are some of the milder questions I received from an audience of some 150 undergraduate students from Tel Aviv University's Political Science Department. The occasion was a guest lecture I gave last month on my experiences as an embedded reporter with the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division during the Iraq war.

Many of the students were visibly jolted by my assertion that the patriotism of American soldiers was inspirational. The vocal ones among them were appalled when I argued that journalists must be able to make moral distinctions between good and evil, when such distinctions exist, if they wish to provide their readership with an accurate picture of the events they describe in their reports.

"Who are you to make moral judgments? What you say is good may well be bad for someone else."

"I am a sane human being capable of distinguishing good from evil, just like every other sane human being," I answered. "As criminal law states, you are criminally insane if you can't distinguish between good and evil. Unless you are crazy, you should be able to tell the difference."[...]

He said a 1951 law, which had deprived fleeing Iraqi Jews of their properties, is now under review. The aim of the revision is to restore the properties to their rightful owners.

"We are determined to return all the properties that were taken from the Iraqi Jews and all the others," he said.

In the meantime, he said he had assured representatives of Iraqi Jews who want to visit Iraq that they would be welcome and that the council would ensure their security...

One of the two Iraqis captured with Saddam in the Tikrit area had acted as Saddam's personal envoy to Syrian President Bashar Assad until just six weeks before his arrest.

He also said that suicide bombers from various Arab countries had crossed into Iraq from Syria, carrying Syrian documents...

He also said that the governing council has acquired evidence that incriminates the most senior members of the Jordanian royal family in allegedly illegal and corrupt dealings with Saddam.

The council, he added, had acquired thousands of documents which expose a network of politicians throughout the Arab world and Europe – including the Vatican – who had accepted huge payments from Saddam in the form of "oil contracts" which were traded by the Iraqi regime on their behalf.

The documents, which were unearthed from the files of the Mukhabarat (secret police), the state oil company, and in Saddam's personal office, expose a vast and complex paper trail that reveals not only the identity of the corrupt politicians, but also how their cash was laundered.

One leading Jordanian politician received more than $3 million in a bank account in Cyprus, the favored first stop in the laundering process.
There is also evidence, he said, the Jordanian authorities had established a sophisticated operation for providing front companies that allowed Saddam to trade on the international market in defiance of UN sanctions. Vast "commissions" were paid to individual Jordanians for this.

The source said he believes it unlikely the Hashemite throne will survive the detailed revelations that will emerge in the coming months.
The governing council, he said, has already informed the Jordanian government that it has halted the arrangement by which Jordan was permitted to purchase Iraqi oil at substantial discounts.

"We will sell to them on the same terms as we sell to Guatamala," he said. "They will not have another cent from us."

And he said Iraq will end all exports of oil through the port of Aqaba, a major source of Jordanian income, within two years, by which time Iraq will have completed the reconstruction of its own storage and export facilities.

Saying that the absence of a hostile regime in Baghdad has reduced Israel's strategic dependence on the Hashemite kingdom as a buffer against Iraq, he predicted that Jordan would, sooner rather than later, become a Palestinian state...

At the heart of this tightly woven network is Auja, Hussein's birthplace, which U.S. commanders say is the intelligence and communications hub of the insurgency. The village is where many of the former president's key confidants have their most lavish homes and their favorite wives.

When U.S. forces sealed off Auja in late October, they separated the leaders of the insurgency from their guerrilla forces, dealing the anti-occupation campaign a major blow, said Lt. Col. Steve Russell of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, which is responsible for the Tikrit area.

"It's amazing that all roads lead to this region," Russell said. "It's amazing who lives in that town. It's a who's who of families and a who's who of Saddam's former staff."...

"I am so sorry for those bombings in Istanbul," said Ali Kernic, 53, as he sat in a friend's electrical shop on Door to the Mosque Street, a neighborhood where the signs are in Arabic, not Turkish, and the names of many businesses have religious connotations. "The suicide bombers have been hurt by the United States and other forces. They are a little sick in the mind. They've lost sons, daughters, and wives, and they take revenge. Islam rejects terrorism."

Such sentiments, and the Islamicized and Arabized environment in which they are expressed, mark an ominous turn of events for the United States and its allies. Sentiments like Kernic's are common in the Arab world, but Turkey, whose people are not Arab, has long been considered the model of a moderate Muslim society capable of bridging the immense cultural gap between the Islamic Middle East and the Judeo-Christian West.

Recent interviews in Konya, widely regarded as the capital of Islam in Turkey; in Ankara, the national capital; and in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, indicate that major changes -- some of which have been gestating for decades -- are taking place in Turkish society. Turkish Muslims' attitudes have taken a sharp anti-Western, anti-American turn, and some fear a dangerous new outpost of international terror is being established among the nation's 70 million people.

"There is no friendship between the Islamic world and the rest of the world," said Konya's longtime mayor, Mustafa Ozkafa, who describes himself as a very conservative Muslim. "The relationship between the Islamic world and the Western world will end soon" as a result of efforts by people on both sides -- but mostly on the Western side, he said -- to arrange a clash of civilizations...

Officials now speak of "religionist terror" and refer far less often to Hezbollah connections to the bombings than they did in the days immediately following the blasts, domestic and foreign analysts note. Also, three leading anti-Hezbollah police commanders recently were transferred to cities with no known militant activities. The government said the transfers were part of a routine rotation that involved a total of 28 top police officials.

"The voters want an Islamic life," said Mehmet Buyukari, bureau chief in Konya for the national Dogan News Agency. "They are not sorry that there are no operations against Hezbollah. . . . Hezbollah is only the visible part of this story."

The documents did not refer to the number of Jews confined in Shanghai, the Times reported. Hiroshi Bando, a professor emeritus at Meiji University who specializes in Jewish affairs, said they may have numbered more than 10,000.

The documents released for publication Wednesday said the order was made for military reasons as well as to ensure that Jewish merchants in Shanghai would "not engage in black-market operations and other illegal activities."...

"That apparently angered the Japanese military," he said.

According to reports, the government resisted determined and repeated requests from Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews in the Shanghai ghetto.

The Japanese military began rounding up German Jews shortly after the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, came under Japanese occupation. By April 1944, 275 German Jews had been forced to live in restricted areas, according to the documents.

According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs - an independent, non-profit institute for policy research and education, Japan's wartime Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke told a group of Jewish businessmen, "I am the man responsible for the alliance with Hitler, but nowhere have I promised that we would carry out his anti-Semitic policies in Japan. This is not simply my personal opinion, it is the opinion of Japan, and I have no compunction about announcing it to the world."...

...A spokesman for French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said the decision to cancel the six Air France flights came early Wednesday after American authorities notified France that "two or three" suspicious people, possibly Tunisian nationals, were planning to board the flights.

A senior U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "people were going to be on the flights that they (French officials) did not want entering the country."

The French Interior Ministry said the flights were canceled at the request of the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Three of the cancelled Air France flights were scheduled to depart Wednesday -- two from Paris and one from Los Angeles. Air France gave the flight numbers as 68, 69 and 70.

The three other flights were scheduled to leave on Christmas Day -- two from Los Angeles and one from Paris. Air France listed those flight numbers as 68, 69 and 71...

"Then it would be nice if Gen. Ariel Sharon was asked to declare his own stocks of nuclear weapons and was questioned rather closely about what contribution they make to regional security. For a start, where was Israel thinking of using such devices and under what circumstances? In the war against jihad, Israeli nuclear weapons are even more useless than our own. Precision-guided munitions, which take out the tyrant and spare the population, are the wave of the future."[...]

But there are other, far less ambiguous examples. Thus, a cartoon in a respectable Italian daily, La Stampa, showed an infant Jesus lying in front of an Israeli tank -- with a caption saying, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again." The reference to the smear against Jews as "Christ killers" is impossible to miss. In England, a columnist for a leading newspaper, The Observer, declared that he refused to read pro-Israel letters signed with Jewish-sounding names, and suggested that Jews writing on issues related to the Middle East should identify their background.

The report censored by the European Union's center on racism pointed to the dangers of the anti-Israeli animus on the left: "Israel, seen as a capitalistic, imperialistic power, the `Zionist lobby,' and the United States are depicted as the evildoers in the Middle East conflict as well as exerting negative influence on global affairs." In many cases, it seems that this "progressive" outlook is providing a cover for a very old prejudice.

Amid growing military tensions, Israel reportedly threatened to shoot down the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which have been detected in recent weeks over the nuclear research facility at Nahal Sorek and the missile test site at Palmahim, south of Tel Aviv.

The flights contravene the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and are said to be fuelling the growing distrust between Israel and Egypt over a military build-up.

Jerusalem reportedly asked Washington not to supply Egypt with advanced F-15 jets or "smart" JDAM (joint direct attack munition) bombs. After being shown intelligence which revealed that Israel was the "enemy" in all of Egypt's recent war games, the United States froze Cairo's request.

The move is expected to have a "dramatic effect" on the security situation over the coming months, said the commander, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno.

The new approach will focus primarily on security, and will target the south and southeast of the country, regions that have born the brunt of a renewed Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgency this year...

The predominantly Muslim demonstrators brandished French identity cards or the national flag as they marched through central Paris carrying banners that read "My veil, my voice" or "Veil, cross, kippa, leave us the choice." The draft law, which the government hopes to submit to parliament in February, would ban religious symbols such as headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses.

Devout Muslims believe women should cover their hair from the view of men not related to them. Devout Jewish men wear skullcaps, or kippas, as a sign of constant reverence to God.

Pupils will still be allowed to wear discreet symbols of faith such as Islamic pendants, the star of David or crosses...

Suspect Says Sent Money from Iran for Turkey Bombs
ABC News

Bremer: Iran's People's Mujahedeen Will Not be Sent Home
by AFP

Libya's Fatal Blow to Axis of Evil
by David Pratt and Trevor Royle

Mofaz: No Casualties if we Strike at Iranian Nukes
by Amir Oren

The Meaning of Iranian Inspections
by Michael Ledeen

Islamic Regime's Judiciary Arrests 40 at a Party in Ivory Coast Ambassador's
US Government Radio Farda

Well, actually -- he didn't. Karadzic and Mladic are still at large.

And yet it probably is fair to say that Clark knows more about dealing with war criminals than the rest of the Democratic field. After all, none of the other candidates has ever horsed around with a mass murderer. Clark has.

On Aug. 27, 1994, when he was a three-star general working for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Clark paid a visit to Mladic in Bosnia. In so doing, The Washington Post reported, he "ignored State Department warnings not to meet with Serb officials suspected of ordering deaths of civilians." Clark says he wanted to get Mladic's views for a policy paper he was writing and thought he had permission to do so.

Either way, Clark did more than take notes. The two men drank wine and posed for jovial pictures that showed them merrily wearing each other's caps. Mladic plied Clark with other gifts, too -- a bottle of brandy and a pistol inscribed "From General Mladic." It was like "Ike going to Berlin while the Germans were besieging Leningrad," one disgusted commentator wrote, "and having schnapps with Hermann Goering."

"I would go to NATO," Clark says, "and I would tell John Abizaid, the [US] commander, `You're now working for NATO.' " And what would that change, exactly? Not much, Clark admits. "When you do NATO, it's the United States, anyway, that's doing it. I mean, NATO doesn't have an intelligence system. It relies almost exclusively on the United States." It is an incoherent position, and the more he tries to clarify it, the more he retreats into windy platitudes. "I think if the United States works in efficient multilateralism through NATO, we can move the world."

"I'll beat the . . . out of them," Clark told a questioner as he walked through the crowd after a town hall meeting yesterday. "I hope that's not on television," he added.

It was, live, on C-Span...

Of course, the Romans didn't have to worry about things like International Law.

They were International Law.

...Freeh told Robinson he was "heavily involved" in the Khobar investigation, and had traveled to the bomb site hours after the explosion. He said he spent nearly two years trying to persuade Saudi diplomats to let FBI agents interview six Saudi citizens whom the Saudi government considered the bombing's perpetrators, and he ultimately succeeded.

"They admitted they were members of Saudi Hezbollah," Freeh said. "They admitted complicity in the act. And they implicated senior Iranian officials in the funding and planning of the attack."

Robinson repeatedly questioned what led Freeh to his conclusion that Iran was responsible, other than the confessions of six Saudis.

Freeh responded that other witnesses and evidence corroborated their stories. He said they also named leaders in the Iranian military and information agency who helped select the target site and pay for the group's training and explosives...

In addition, subject to security coordination, we will transfer Palestinian towns to Palestinian security responsibility.

Israel will greatly accelerate the construction of the security fence. Today we can already see it taking shape. The rapid completion of the security fence will enable the IDF to remove roadblocks and ease the daily lives of the Palestinian population not involved in terror.

Dr. Ruth will serve as international honorary chair of Hillel's “Love Is Real” pro-Israel campaign. “The world's largest Jewish campus organization and the diminutive diva of responsible romance are joining together to introduce college students to one of the world's oldest love stories: the romance between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel,” says a press release announcing the project’s launch.

"The relationship between the Jewish people and Israel can serve as a model," says Dr. Ruth. "It is loving, lasting, and responsible."...

The Israeli medical charity that arranged the flight for month-old Bayan Jassem and her parents said that following the 10-hour operation on Nov. 26, Bayan developed bleeding in her lungs and other complications that led to a multiple failure of vital functions.

"All the medical team's efforts to overcome these problems failed," the Save a Child's Heart foundation said...

..."The baby's parents thanked the medical team for all its efforts and said what happened to their daughter was the will of God," it added.

(It was in 538 BC that Cyrus, king of Persia, fulfilling the word of God as spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah, issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to return to Zion from their exile in Babylon and rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem.)

Mofaz, admitting he was not in the miracle business, wished the Iranian people success in their struggle for freedom. But then a stream of callers pleaded for Israel to intervene to help overthrow the Islamic regime. The defense minister replied it was up to the Iranian people to determine its fate. But he also mentioned the United States role in the region and said the Americans still had much work to do after prevailing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran and Syria were still there as key elements of Bush’s axis of evil.

This reply brought forth a chorus of listeners who wanted to persuade the Israeli minister that the Teheran regime was more of a danger to the region and the world than Saddam Hussein had ever been...

For almost two centuries, such Protestantism did much to shape the American character. But it lost its unified force in the 1920s, when various forms of theological liberalism captured the mainline churches. Evangelicalism re-emerged in the 1950s and has since assumed a higher profile in American society. Billy Graham, whom the president heard that day at a family gathering, has been its leading figure.

So it is that you may draw a line in American history from the Great Awakening to that day four years ago when candidate George W. Bush, asked by a reporter to name his favorite philosopher, replied, "Christ, because he changed my heart." Mr. Bush did not say that Christ was his favorite political adviser. Ye who live in Blue States, please take note.

So what does get the Dean juices going? A few days later, the governor was on CNN and Judy Woodruff asked him about his admission that he'd left the Episcopal Church and become a Congregationalist because "I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church over the bike path."...

Yes, according to Boeing, which plans for larger windows and luggage bins inside the 7E7's cabin. Designers are using a mix of blue lighting, filters and sheer materials to create a sky-like effect in which passengers can't easily tell how close or far away the ceiling is. In addition, Boeing designers plan to increase the air pressure and humidity inside the cabin, which they think will make passengers more comfortable and reduce sinus problems caused by the desert-dry air inside today's jet cabins. Boeing has also designed "Dream Lavs" - elaborate new bathrooms - for the Dreamliner.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them...

We have enemies that have earned our hatred, and whom we should fear. They are fanatical terrorists who seek opportunities to kill American civilians here and Israeli civilians in Israel. But right now, our national media and the Democratic Party are trying to get us to believe that the people we should hate and fear are George W. Bush and the Republicans.

I can think of many, many reasons why the Republicans should not control both houses of Congress and the White House. But right now, if the alternative is the Democratic Party as led in Congress and as exemplified by the current candidates for the Democratic nomination, then I can't be the only Democrat who will, with great reluctance, vote not just for George W. Bush, but also for every other candidate of the only party that seems committed to fighting abroad to destroy the enemies that seek to kill us and our friends at home.

And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end.

That means my blog and Movable Type installation.

You see, apparently, they were experiencing some sort of attack and needed to apply some critical updates, which they did. Well that's a great idea. The server is under attack, so let's delete it ourselves.

Look, I understand. Mistakes happen. I knew they'd tell me that I was responsible for backing up my data, and I have, although the last backup of my entries is about three weeks behind, which means I will need to import all the entries since then one-by-one, and will lose most comments left since then. Fortunately, I have my templates saved.

The short of it is and without going into any more detail, I know I share some responsibility for the amount of time this is going to take to get going again, and the fact that I do not have the technical know-how to back up a MySQL database, but it would have been nice had they acknowledged that maybe, just perhaps, they share a wee bit of responsibility for doing the basic bone-head move of patching a piece of software and not backing up their customer's data first. Hell, I'd still be annoyed if I had a complete backup from last night.

Well, they didn't. They just stuck with the legalistic, "We require our customers to back up their data, etc..." and that's all. That annoyed me.

So, all of this is the long way of saying that I probably won't be updating for a few days as I CHANGE HOSTS and re-import and re-assemble all of my entries, which will leave links from other folks dangling, as the file-names of individual entries will change, but what can I do?

Thank you for your patience, and I hope to see everyone when I start posting again - which won't be more than a few days...I hope.

The North's terms amounted to a response to a plan offered a day earlier by the United States, Japan and South Korea (news - web sites) for ending the standoff over the communist state's nuclear weapons program.

Bush's statement, and similar remarks by White House and State Department spokesmen, appeared part of jockeying for position in advance of another round of talks with North Korea. The impoverished North has often tried to use the nuclear confrontation as a means to win economic aid and diplomatic recognition.

While Washington and its allies have sought the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs, Tuesday's proposal from Pyongyang offered only to "freeze" them as a first step. The North added, however, that the long-term goal is to "de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula."

"The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program," Bush said. "The goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way."

"That," he said, "is the clear message we are sending to the North Koreans."[...]

The United States unveiled plans Tuesday to limit competition for 26 reconstruction contracts in Iraq worth up to $18.6 billion, excluding countries such as Germany, France and Russia which opposed the war.

France said it would study whether the U.S. move was legal and Germany said it could not accept the U.S. decision.

"That would not be acceptable for the German government. And it wouldn't be in line with the spirit of looking to the future together and not into the past," a spokesman for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in Berlin.

He did not say what action Germany might take.

In an apparent effort not to sharpen the brewing diplomatic row with Washington, President Jacques Chirac, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin and other ministers avoided reporters' questions after a cabinet meeting...

"I don't have anything to say today about Al Gore's sense of loyalty, I really don't," he said, "and I have no regrets about the loyalty that I had to him when I waited until he decided whether he would run to make my decision because that was the right thing to do."

Earlier Tuesday on NBC-TV's "Today" show, Lieberman said he "was caught completely off guard" by the Gore endorsement. "I heard about it from the media," he said.

Lieberman returned repeatedly to the theme that Dean is someone who would reverse the gains Democrats made under President Bill Clinton...

Friedman yells "F**k you," hits the guy with his right hand, and then shoves him into a small crowd of people with their backs turned. Schwartz has a good foot and 100 pounds on the diminutive Friedman, but he went about three feet backwards from Friedman's push.

Friedman turns around and sees me with my notebook and tape recorder. Deer in the headlights. Schwartz goes, "Did you get a picture of that?" Still under the lull of the truth is untrue/up is down nature of the event, I consider for a moment whether I'm a photographer. Friedman runs over to an IPF executive, the one who said he does "the most unbelievably insightful reporting ever," (sans an adjective) to tell on Schwartz. Like those wimpy nerds in grade school, he hits first, tattles second, screaming about "that asshole," who apparently is so mean that his innocuous comment deserves a whack.

Finally, I have Friedman cornered. Can he answer some questions? "No, no." But I've got one question I think he'll have a cool answer to: What do you think your role is for the Geneva Accord? "I'm a journalist, I'm a columnist," he says and then runs away. Sure, he is those things, but only in the loosest sense: more, he's an actor, a trader, and a fighter.

The man who spent the past few hours pronouncing how we need to see past the present, the rhetoric, and the attacks to achieve peace has just gone violent on some random guy.

You couldn't ask for a more fitting ending.

Arafat, who still pulls most of the strings on the Palestinian side, has responded with one of his classic "yes-but-no-maybe-perhaps-not-we-shall-see" equivocations. Other Arab political reaction has been dismissive or hostile.

The pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat branded the accord "a fruit of illusions." Arab News welcomed it as a means of weakening Ariel Sharon's hold on power. Egypt's state-owned media lashed out at the "betrayal" of the "right of return" to Israel for an estimated 5.5 million Palestinians.

Syria's state-owned media adopted a similar position. But they also saw the accord as a sign of Israel's weakening resolve. The newspaper Tishrin, the ruling Ba'ath Party's mouthpiece, claims that the accord shows that the Intifada is forcing the "Zionist enemy" to look for a way out of its "quagmire."...

Intifada, "uprising" in Arabic, is the term used by Palestinians for their revolts against Israeli occupation from 1987 to 1993 and over the past three years. The recent intifada has seen numerous suicide bombings by Palestinian militants. Mujahideen means holy warrior.

Rabbi Bernie King, who lives in Irvine, said the teams' names undermined those who worked to have closer relations with Muslims.

"Something like this ... tends to support those in the community who have suspicions about the real intent of Islam," King said...

Kim spelled out a sequence of simultaneous steps Pyongyang would take with Washington. It "will allow the refreeze of our nuclear facility and nuclear substance and monitoring and inspection of them from the time the United States has concluded a nonaggression treaty with the DPRK and compensated for the loss of electricity."

"Nonaggression treaty" is the North's infelicitous choice of words for a written pledge that the United States will not attack it, not interfere in its internal affairs, and not impede its economic development by continuing sanctions or discouraging aid and investment from South Korea and Japan. Next, it will settle the missile issue -- "put on ice its missile test-firing and stop its [missile] export" -- once the United States and Japan open diplomatic relations. Then, it "will dismantle [its] nuclear facility from the time the [light-water reactors promised under the Agreed Framework] are completed."

Does Pyongyang mean what it says? The surest way to find out is diplomatic give-and-take. That's why Tokyo and Seoul have urged Washington to make a counteroffer. That requires the Bush administration to do something it has not yet done -- decide what it wants most and what it would offer in return...

As Americans and supporters of Israel, we ought to be mindful of the dangers Israel faces and the support she needs. The “world community” has been no friend of the Jewish State. Instead, the words “democracy” and “Israel” are sneered at. She faces charges of being an “apartheid state,” even “nazi-like” or fascist. A proposal for a Resolution calling for the protection of Israeli children which mirrored one already passed for the protection of Palestinian children was virtually laughed out of the UN. She faces constant efforts in international forums to handcuff her ability to defend herself and her citizens in the face of an almost unprecedented campaign of murder and indoctrination to murder.

And these efforts are not the province of some politically extreme, anti-Semitic fringe. Sadly, they have become all too mainstream. That is the reality we face.

So it was with some dismay that I read Alan D. Solomont and Geoffrey H. Lewis’s piece in the December 5-11th edition of The Jewish Advocate entitled, “Report from the ‘peace’ front” – a plea for us to give positive consideration to the “Geneva Accord.”

The last I had heard, Israel had a duly elected government who’s job it was to negotiate treaties and decide the nation’s course. There is a very good reason that so many former Israeli politicians and MK’s with no standing to negotiate are involved in this plan. It is because they were roundly trounced in the last Israeli elections in favor of the current government. Yes, the Israeli people know what they want, they have the means to express it and they have spoken. As supporters, that is the word we should be lining up behind.

Instead, much to their shame, so-called peace makers and Israel-supporters sat silently as Palestinian speakers took the stage and denounced the lawful Israeli leader as a “fascist,” heard Israel denounced as an Apartheid state and its Security Fence, a response to years of Palestinian Arab murder, labeled “shameful.” Instead of first going to their electorate for support, these men (who would face the possibility of sanctions under the Logan Act if they were Americans) have gone first to the international community for help in forcing their own country into an agreement they must not believe they can convince them to support on their own, as if to say, “Help us, help us save us from ourselves.”

Unfortunately, can anyone say with a straight face that the international community has any credibility in dealing with Israel in a fair manner?

In what I can only describe as a turn of rhetorical sophistry, Messrs. Solomont and Lewis quote a statistic that polling found that 53 percent of Israelis would support a peace plan based on “the same principals as are found in the Geneva Accord.” Presumably, this is meant to project the impression that the plan is popular, and that only the government stands in the way. The fact is, that polling on this specific initiative shows that only a minority of Israelis supports it so far, and their elected government supports it not at all – a government who’s job is difficult enough without a band of freelance diplomats and international do-gooders complicating their efforts.

Israelis are understandably skeptical. It has been many years and much bitter experience since they followed the will o’ the whisp of Oslo into danger, violence and despair. Predictably, they want more than words, paper and unreciprocated concessions this time. We who will pay but little price for failure should be supporting them and their choices, not foisting our own upon them.

Just as important, discussion and debate must be informed by facts and reason, particularly on a matter of such importance and high passions as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This standard apparently was not met on this occasion certainly not by those who heckled Ms. Chesler and/or did nothing to guide the discussion back into its appropriate channels, but also not by Ms. Chesler herself. Regrettably, by attacking Islam in a culturally misleading and historically uninformed way, Ms. Chesler undermines her position as a compelling voice on this issue. Moreover, the resurgence of anti-Semitism in various parts of the world and also on some college campuses is a serious matter that deserves responsible discussion. Invoking Kristallnacht in this context is hyperbole and highly irresponsible. All in all, the evening represented a failure of the most basic elements necessary for an enlightened discussion of issues...

But is it? Poller left France for a U.S. speaking tour in November with one week’s news publications to read on her flight—two weekly magazines and three major newspapers. All of them, she said, were “reeking with hatred [for Jews].” They also sympathized extensively with terrorists. News reports are not factual. “They are sermons,” Poller said. A profile of philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the weekly Nouvel Observateur, for example, praised his defense of the Palestinians, citing an article he wrote on “le grandeur de Arafat,” despite his personal responsibility for more than 1,000 civilian murders.

EU officials may not want to admit it. But attacks on Jews have been mounting since the terrorist war on Israel began in September 2000. In the last year, however, anti-Semitic attacks in France have grown increasingly bold. In January, Paris Rabbi Gabriel Farhi was attacked several times. In April 2002 alone, the French Interior Ministry recorded nearly 360 anti-Semitic crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions, according to Washington Times reporter Al Webb. [2] In May 2002, a mysterious fire erupted at the Israeli embassy in Paris.

“Yes, a synagogue was burned,” Frenchmen routinely admit, according to Poller. “But how do we know this was anti-Semitic?” Sellam’s murder was handled in much the same way, she said, although 2,000 mourners attended the popular young disc jockey’s funeral. Le Parisien, according to Poller the only print newspaper to report the crime, noted that Sellam was Jewish and his alleged murderer Muslim, but explained the crime as an outburst of jealousy by a lifelong friend. “Sebastian was successful and his murderer was unsuccessful and jealous.”[...]

"We have given them a lot of chances, especially when Mr Khatami was being chosen.

We have given him six-and-a-half years but nothing has happened and we don't trust them any more," she said in comments translated from Farsi for the Washington audience.

A woman student said bluntly: "Reform in Iran is dead."

She said there were some "tricks" that could persuade some that there was some form of democracy in Iran but added she was not fooled: "Believing in reform is nonsense."

A poet called Mohammed said even those people who had pioneered promised reforms admitted that they had got nowhere.

"Because of the ideological framework, reforms are not possible in such a regime," he said...

It is worth remembering that Oslo, too, was showered with acclaim. The world cheered when Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn. It welcomed the PLO's unequivocal promise to forgo its guns and bombs. "The PLO commits itself . . . to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides," Arafat had vowed in writing, "and declares that all outstanding issues . . . will be resolved through negotiations. . . The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence."

For the sake of peace, Israel paid the steep price Oslo demanded. It recognized the PLO, allowed Arafat to take over Gaza and the West Bank, agreed to the creation of a Palestinian militia, and even supplied that militia with weapons. It was appeasement on a scale far beyond Chamberlain's, but Israelis convinced themselves that it was worth it if it would mean an end to Palestinian violence and bloodlust...

PA celebrates “Geneva Agreement” while rejecting their only concession by Itamar Marcus

Introduction:
The Palestinian Authority has been publicly praising the Geneva Agreement signed yesterday between its representatives and representatives of the Israeli extreme left, while sending clear statements of rejection to its people regarding the one clause that obligates the Palestinians. On the positive side the Palestinian Authority sees the Geneva Agreement as major achievement, as prominent Israelis have agreed to 100% of the Palestinian territorial demands. These Israeli concessions are all clear and explicitly worded. A clear map is included with the agreement.

On the rejection side, the only Palestinian concession, that they give up their demand to have “refugees” settle in Israel, was worded ambiguously. While the agreement validates UN resolution 194, seen by the Palestinians as giving them “right” to settle in Israel, the final number to settle is left to Israel to determine, taking numerous undefined numbers into account.

This clear delineation of Israel’s concessions juxtaposed against the ambiguity of the Palestinian concession has enabled the Palestinian Authority to truly celebrate: Israel is obligated; they are not.

This dual message has been explicitly stated repeatedly to the PA population. Today’s PA daily had no problem hailing the agreement and at the same time expressing total rejection of the Israeli interpretation regarding refugees. The paper included two full pages of reports on all the Palestinian demonstrations against the agreement’s clause to limit “the right of return” and included three explicit statements by PA leaders of rejection of relinquishing the “refugees rights.”

The following statements are all from today’s official daily, Al Hayat Al-Jadida:

“The Minister of Foreign Affaires, Dr. Nebil Shaath, emphasized that the Palestinians will never give up the right to return to their houses, and will negotiate only about the procedures of returning… “ [Dec. 2 2003, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida]

“The Chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Rafiq Al-Natshah, emphasized that the Palestinian problem started with the refugees and will not be solved unless the refugees return to their homes. He mentioned that the sacrifices and the struggle of our people will not allow anyone to forsake nor to concede any of our people’s rights. He added: Anyone who imagines that our people want peace at the expense of its rights, is wrong and if the peace initiatives come at the expense of the right of our people, let all the peace initiatives go to hell…”[Al Hayat Al-Jadida] Dec. 2, 2003]

“The President [Arafat] blesses the conference of peace forces in Geneva” and them immediately followed with: “…adhering to the legitimate international decisions which include: [UN decision] 194.” [Al Hayat Al-Jadida] Dec. 2, 2003]

In summary, the Palestinian interpretation of the Geneva Agreement is that Israel is obligated to hand over all the land and the refugee issue has to still be decided.

This is why the Palestinians are celebrating.

"The present administration in Washington has been invariably supportive of Israel, and the well-being of the Palestinian people has been ignored or relegated to secondary importance," he said.

"Without a resurrection of strong and unbiased American influence, Israeli and Palestinian extremists will prevail.

"There is no doubt that the lack of real effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a primary source of anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East and a major incentive for terrorist activity."

Carter said settlements in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip and the security fence are the main obstacles to peace...

A letter from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat endorsing the initiative that was read at the ceremony said the Palestinians have extended an olive branch and Israel has responded by building "a shameful and disgraceful wall."

Former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abbed Rabbo told of the plight of "farmers who have seen their land and trees sacrificed to the alter of the separation wall."...

But by doing this, Israel will become an Apartheid state. This is an alternative we will never accept."

One Palestinian speaker called Sharon a "fascist." Another called the fence "a Berlin wall that separates Palestinian land into bantustans."...

"We don't believe we can make peace by boycotting the other leader or by calling him a fascist," Beilin said.

"Anti-Semitic incidents in the monitoring period were committed above all either by right-wing extremists or radical Islamists or young Muslims, mostly of Arab descent, who are often themselves potential victims of exclusion and racism;" but the report also noted that that "anti-Semitic statements came from the pro-Palestinian left."[...]

As we pursue reform, accomplishing religious freedom would be nice. But our priority should be casting aside old superstitions, and replacing them with a much more powerful, fundamental faith: the religion of freedom.

Managing Iraq, which means taking it easy on Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, also means condemning lots of people to death who could be saved if we waged war against our enemies...