December 2004 Archives

Soon it will be time to party like those guys...well, not exactly like those guys...but in whatever way you do whatever it is you do. But first it's time for a little navel-gazing, and a little look back at some of the issues that caught my attention over the past year as I skim through the archives.

One of my resolutions last year was to "Write better, longer pieces on more frequent occasions." I'm not sure how much better they are, nor if there are a larger quantity of them, but I did write a few multi-paragraph pieces as the year wore on and the ideas batted themselves around my cranium. My trouble is that I'm perpetually torn between wanting to paste-up pointers to interesting items and waiting until I have something to say about them. Not sure which is "better," or if it really matters. I'd like to take my time, collect my thoughts and maybe craft more items that could stand alone as column-type pieces and be published in some forum that publishes...uh...columns, but really, is that going to happen? And I'm a bit of a pack-rat. I like to use the blog as a sort of "notes to self" collection. Finally, I like to try to make it so that visitors will be likely to find something new when they visit. So, some combination of linking and thinking will be likely to continue.

What goals did I set for myself last year?

Set up Solomonia so the reader can choose different skins (I know some people prefer a light background, for instance).

Check. Set up a bunch of skins. I'm sure I'll create more, too.

Write better, longer pieces on more frequent occasions.

Maybe.

Play Center Field for the Boston Red Sox (*cough*)

Uh, no, but how 'bout them Sox?

Put up at least one post lauding the New England Patriots

Check.

Exercise and eat better (*coughcough*)

Failure. Maybe this year.

Defeat Naziism, liberate a concentration camp

Working on it.

Hire an editor

Fugetaboutit.

Let's have a gander at the archives:

In January:

Demonstrators rally against Koizumi's visit to war shrine, Spacecraft survives close encounter with comet, Guest Blog - Of Terror, Hard and Soft Power and Nicolo Machiavelli (Still the most popular post in Solomonia history, and I didn't write it.), The peace marchers were out today, David Kaspar checks out Carnegie, Explaining Chomsky, Boston Mosque Coverage Continues, Other things to do with the computer aside from reading blogs, Now appearing: Pervez Musharraf as King Lear, (OK, Sol, stick to the much longer pieces or this is going to take forever!), State of the Union Quick Impressions, Dissecting the still-living corpse of Howard Dean, The Democrat Debate, The phone call Howard Dean hopes he doesn't get Tuesday night, Report: Honest Reporting, Relentless and Dershowitz, Burnt Offerings, Today's Bus Bombing, Gibson and the Holocaust

In February:

Adventuresome middle-aged female seeks companion - back hair and tail a plus, Tom Friedman - Ho Hum, Why I hate politics and politicians, The Clinton Qatar Address, Tom Friedman Redux

In March:

That darn "T"-word again, Manufactured Outrage and John Kerry's America, Now appearing: GWB as Otto von Bismarck, Robert Spencer: An Important - and Dangerous - Man, President Bush a Divider? Be real., Ernie Pyle is dead., Bat Ye'or and "The Silent Exodus" Update, Bureaucratic Sour Grapes, Report on Lecture by Bat Ye'or - 'Eurabia', Report on the Lecture by Bernard Lewis - "The New Antisemitism, First Religion, Then Race, Then What?"

In April:

Hamster Case, Word from the Front, Spanish Jihad Continued, Victory Lies Outside the City Walls, Fisking Ignatius, Spengler Musings and Spring Cleaning, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Time for me to Shnor! The Liberty Alliance!, The sense of belonging - a thought on a Saturday, "He won the war for us."

In May:

'Tony Martin law' is blocked, The Monkey's Paw, Responsibility, Free-Iran Update: SAY NO to Israeli Strikes on Nuclear Facilties - Find Out Why!, Spring Pictures, The Globe Publishes Porn, and Rumsfeld backs the Iraq interrogation techniques?!, The more I get to know you...the less I think I like you, Life is [not quite that] Beautiful, UNWRA demands Israel retract false accusa...DOH!

In June:

The LA Cross, D-Day, March for Darfur. March to protest Kofi. The report. (With pics), The New Threat, Boston for Israel Rally - Jerusalem Bus #19 - Report with Pics [Part 1], Boston for Israel Rally - Jerusalem Bus #19 - Report with Pics [Part 2], Boston for Israel Rally - Jerusalem Bus #19 - Report with Pics [Part 3], Boston for Israel Rally - Jerusalem Bus #19 - Report with Pics [Part 4 - Final], Holy Shmoly. I just watched a turtle lay eggs in my lawn. (People still Google in to that one.)

In July:

UN looks to Israel for nuclear disarmament, Oliphant: Milosevic trial = legit. Saddam=illegit., Gross-out story of the day, A bomb in Israel, Apollo 11, First to Fight, Doctors Without Borders leaves Afghanistan

In August:

Outgoing Consul Pinkas: I've learned nothing from FM Shalom (Check out the wicked combover.), Kerry woulda done better?, Back from the hills! (Updated), Kerry, Cambodia and the SwiftVets, Is Vennochi trying to float or sink Kerry?, Fisking a World-View as old as Harry Truman, Holy Shmoly! Bats in the attic!, Holy Shmoly! My Saturn is a Submarine!, Who does Oliphant think he's kidding?, You won't be able to sue our nation's enemies, Mr. Senator, First Fenway Frank, Live blogging the RNC...

In September:

The Old Stomping Grounds, A little live blog of the RNC, Live blog of The President's Speech, 'The unique depravity of modern Islamic terror.', Holocaust Denial in Real Time, Diana West: Memo to Spielberg: We're facing a 'War of the Worlds', A Thousand Coffins, Truth is Essential - "The Mideast Conflict Through the Eyes of the Media" Report, I'm not the one that's screwed up, the rest of you are. (In which I discover I'm insane.), Legal or Illegal?, "John Kerry...is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative.", "Concern Surrounds Whether Power Shift Is Too Late" - But who's concern?, Kerry's Quagmire, Wag the Dog, Live Blogging the Debate

In October:

Shouldering the Burden, They're out there, Vice Presidential Debate, Thoughts on the Mosque, How's things in London Towne?, The Debate...and the ball game, A Class with Robert Spencer - Report, Dead Before Dawn - A tale of woe, The Solomonia Endorsement, Friedman at his most foolish, The weak pro-Israel case for John Kerry, Flummoxed

In November:

A class with Robert Spencer - Session 2, Now We Know Why Dick Cheney's Daughter is a Lesbian, Divestment in Somerville, Death of a Terrorist, The New Dutch Boy, The Froggy on the Fallujah/Marine Video, A class with Robert Spencer - Session 3 with Concluding Thoughts, The International Jew, 'Columbia Unbecoming' - Report

And finally, in December:

Somerville Divestment Update, Excuses and quick movie reviews, "Yes, as a matter of fact we do favor them over you. Let me hip you to why...", Theo Epstein, You Want To Impress Me? (Rant.), Mahmoud Abbas's Serenity Prayer, Dore Gold on the UN - Report, The Battle of the Bulge and a Tea Party, "A role for three 'wise men'", Taking the info where you can get it, Lies My Ambassador Told Me, In the Red Zone - Book Review, Treating Our Own, How about we send some NEA money over to Asia? (Hey look! That's last night!)

Phew. That's a lot of links. Why I did that, I'm not sure.

Anawho...if you've been a reader, thanks very much, and let me remind you - please don't hesitate to leave comments on posts. I don't have a tip jar, so comments have to do.

Here's hoping you all have a happy, healthy New Year!

I salute you!

"When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was the contents of your best friend's stomach, you'll know what to do."

Now party hard!

I'm already sick to death of hearing all the arguing over whether America has been generous enough, or whether the President was quick enough to a microphone. What frivolous nonsense. Of course America is generous. Of course America is going to do a great deal to help - publicly and privately. Everyone should thank God for all the filthy wealth American capitalism has been able to generate, so that it can do great good in times like these, and our ships of war can be converted temporarily to transports of life with clean drinking water and supplies. And if you don't get by now that George Bush isn't the type of pol who rushes to a microphone half-cocked then you never will. What's the situation? How much money do we actually have available to spend? How can we get it there? When? To what extent are the vital interests of the United States at stake? You should know by now he only steps up to the mic fully cocked thank you very much.

And what is with these Iraq-funding comparisons? We're spending x on tsunami relief which is y% of a day's funding of the Iraq War. So what? We have a task to do there, too. The rest of the world hasn't stopped spinning and that money needs to be spent. There are lives at stake there, as well.

I have a better association to make. How about we look for programs that are somewhat frivolous - where there are no lives at stake, no great measure of our national prestige on the line in the international arena, where other funding avenues could easily be found to replace public largess - and move THAT money into Tsunami relief. I don't know what's earmarked for 2005, but maybe the President should have stepped up to the mic the day after and immediately re-dedicated the $121 Million budget of the National Endowment for the Arts to tsunami relief. Let's see who starts screaming then. Oh no! Not that! We can't send fresh water, medicine and bulldozers over there! No, we need more PISS CHRIST!

OK, I'll admit, I'm actually an agnostic on things like NEA funding - no sense in being overly dogmatic - and Piss Christ was a long time ago, but I do believe that when things get too controversial, and money needs saving, Arts funding should present its head for the block. (We can even have a nice ceremony as it saunters up to the guillotine...and gooorgeous costumes...) The money should probably be gotten privately. Besides, I'm ranting here.

The point is, drawing comparisons between Iraq and tsunami funding is as arbitrary as any other relationship, and merely confirms you never "got it" in the first place. It's also a bit like cancer research proponents complaining about the money being spent on AIDS research - they're not mutually exclusive and makes your own cause less appealing. Oh, and you better beware what you wish for...the cash has to come from someplace.

Now, I have this pile of rabbit feces I've been collecting, and I think with the proper backing I could really turn it into something big...

I'm not even sure what to do with this. Comparing 9/11 to the "shot heard 'round the world"...the American Revolution as a tool of the elite "landed classes," (you know, like...farmers...), you know you're stepping into Marxist la la land when you read the word "class" in an essay involving the American Revolution and the author feels the need to remind you that the nascent USA was a "slave-holding" sovereign.

You know you're stepping into something far worse - a difficult task considering Marxism's bloody history - when you see the rest. Here's a taste of where we're going:

Iviews.com: America and Islam - Seeking Parallels by Shahid Alam

The author is not some Islamist kook writing for Arab News. The author is a professor of Economics employed by Northeastern University here in Massachusetts who believes the "real America" is one that "...daily employs its might to mangle the lives of hundreds of millions..." Read the piece in full and lament - your taxes subsidize this man's salary. (Hat tip: Miss Kelley)

Related posts: Holocaust Remembrance Day (and Patriot's Day) and A Thousand Coffins

Update: Seems LGF was already on this. One of their readers got a response:

Gender equality has been pointed as one of the potential wells of power waiting to be tapped into by those seeking to reform Islam. Recently notable is Steven Vincent's new book, In the Red Zone, which makes a strong case for the need for reforming women's place in the Islamic social structure in order for there to be deep, meaningful change in Islamic nation's march to some sort of democratic normalcy.

But this argument begs the question: Is there a problem with Women's Rights in Islam? Or is the problem, if any exists, really one with the cultures who have taken on Islam the religion and perverted it to justify what are really tribally-based misogynist tendencies?

This lengthy FrontPage symposium explores the issue, as four scholars quote chapter and verse to make their cases.

FrontPage magazine.com: Symposium: Gender Apartheid and Islam by Jamie Glazov (Hat Tip: Mal)

I may have slandered California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza unfairly. It may just have been a virus (isn't this exciting!). My wife was also under the weather, and after the nausea subsided, I still had a day of slight fever - 101 degrees or so. I don't think that's food poisoning. I'm still feeling a little "off" today, but nowhere near as bad.

Fevers are a funny thing. You may feel only slightly achy, but the world seems at a strange tilt - perceptions are off, the negative and hopelessness is amplified - things that comprise normal, pleasurable activity like blogging or reading just annoy.

I have it to a fair certainty that certain well-known public news and entertainment personalities walk around with perpetually elevated body temperatures.

Remind me to tell you some day of the worst food-poisoning I've ever had to endure - when two sushi chef friends of my wife came a visiting. Had me on my back (when I wasn't leaning forward or sitting) for four days straight, and that was just the start of it. Let's just say, Beware the beef tataki that's been sitting out too long.

I think it was that frozen California Pizza Kitchen pizza I ate for lunch yesterday. What a night. Bleh.

Regular posting to resume tomorrow.

USATODAY.com - Poll shows troops in support of war

I kept waiting for the punch-line of this front-page Washington Post article about a business jet apparently used by the CIA to shuttle War on Terror prisoners. Was the point that its activities are illegal, or rogue? Doesn't appear so. Can't we learn about the issue without the details of tail numbers and an investigation of the cover-identities - including names - of the agents involved? Obviously, this is more than an effort to bring the issue to the public's attention, this article represnets a decision by the Post to make the CIA's job more difficult. But shouldn't the Post be simply informing the debate, or informing the public to see if there is a debate in the first place - not taking up their own effort on one side or the other. Our government has a difficult enough time without...this...

Washington Post: Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

Pete DuPont has one of those year-end wrap-up things in Opinion Journal today. I pretty well agree with it all, particularly with one of the most under-appreciated stories of the year:

OpinionJournal - It Was a Very Good Year -America and democrats of the world can be proud of 2004

Ah, but they still grow poppies...yeeess...but they don't execute women for showing ankles, beat kids for flying kites, provide a haven for Al Qaeda and enforce a medievil justice system by executing people in a soccer stadium built with international aid.

Hope you're all having a great weekend. I consumed a large quantity of adult beverage last night and spent the morning watching Disney on Ice, which kicked Dora's ass, I must say - a pleasant surprise. Yes, there was even a little bit - a very little bit - for the dads.

This evening I put the finishing tweaks on a new style for the blog - the "Tevye's Burden" skin. The text is a little larger, with white background and dark text. If you hadn't already noticed, you can change the colors Solomonia comes in if the default don't please you by either going to the Style Picker page - or, if you use Firefox, go to View -> Page Style and make your choice. If you find a problem with any of the styles, or have a request for a color scheme that's easy on the eyes, I'm all ears (at the contact shown at left, or just leave a comment).

Update: And of course, you know you can adjust the text-size on most web sites by going to View -> Text Size and changing it there, or just holding control and rolling the mouse wheel...

Merry Christmas to all my Christian and non-religious gift-giving/tree-decorating holiday celebrators.

The Chinese restaurant was packed! I hope Santa brings you all something wicked cool.

Via Norm, this fisking of a "remarkable" (that's legalese for "Are you freakin' kidding?") IHT op-ed claiming there's nothing wrong with Palestinian textbooks.

New Appeal to Reason: Rubbish from the IHT on Palestinian Textbooks

For my money, here's a good, one-paragraph executive summary:

They could change if they wanted to. They don't want to. They should be treated accordingly. Decide for yourself who "they" is.

You can read it all.

Jerusalem Post: US may strike at Ba'athists in Syria, official tells 'Post'

Must be a lovely place. He posted a taste:

Jihad Watch: Khomeini and Sistani fans write in to Jihad Watch

I know it's been a long week, because the first thing that springs to mind on reading that is, "WOOOHOOOO!! PARTY AT ROBERT SPENCER'S PLACE! Toga, toga, toga..."

Sixty years ago today, Dwight Eisenhower confirmed the death sentence of Private Eddie Slovik, making him the only American executed for desertion during World War 2, and the first since the American Civil War for same. There have been none since.

Eddie Slovik was a ne'er-do-well. He was involved in petty-theft, breaking and entering and disturbing the peace. He spent time in reform school for stealing candy, cigarettes and some cash from the drug-store he worked at. After reform school, he went back to prison for auto-theft.

In 1942 he got a job, got married and appeared to be settling down. 4-F in the draft due to his prison record, it looked like maybe the settled life would continue for Eddie Slovik.

His luck didn't last. Due to manpower shortages and the need for replacements, his draft status was re-classified 1-A at the end of 1943 and he was inducted into the US Army. Bad timing for a guy who had trouble following society's rules. Two things worked against Slovik - he was familiar with prison life and running afoul of the law...and he didn't want to fight.

He reportedly didn't want anything to do with guns and had to be walked through grenade training by his instructors.

When he got to France, he "became separated" from his replacement group making their way to join the 28th Division at the front and spent about six weeks with a Canadian Rifle Company before being turned over by them to officers of the 28th. He was gone again within hours, turning himself in to the authorities in Belgium.

A lot of guys would have been afraid to desert. They would have feared the label of dishonor and the possible jail consequences. But not Eddie Slovik. A guy who'd been in and out of jail as he had wasn't afraid of consequences, and certainly not of being labeled by society as "dishonorable." During training, he had written to his wife:

During the war, 21,049 soldiers were sentenced for desertion, 49 of them to death. Only Slovik was executed. He was the wrong guy, making the wrong choices at the wrong time.

He signed a confession in which he insisted that he would leave again if forced to go back. He was offered, to the last moment, the chance to avoid trial if he'd just re-join his unit. He opted for trial, assuming he'd be sent to prison. He assumed wrong.

At the time of his final desertion, the problem of men leaving their posts, or suffering from self-inflicted wounds to avoid combat was a growing one in Europe. The 28th was about to engage in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest - a meat-grinder of a debacle in which many, many boys who did not do as Slovik did found their end. The quantity of mercy for a guy brazenly looking for the "easy" way out was becoming decidedly thin.

He was sentenced to death by a military court. The trial took an hour and forty minutes. The sentence was decided by secret ballot and voted on three times. It was a unanimous decision at each vote.

More bad timing for Slovik. By the time his final appeal came before Eisenhower, sixty years ago today, the Battle of the Bulge was in full swing, and thousands of young men who had stayed to fight were being overrun and mowed-down. According to Stephen Ambrose, "Eisenhower never backed away from his decision. He thought the case about as clear-cut as one could get."

As it was. At first they thought they might have trouble finding a firing-squad. They need not have worried. According to two of the soldiers who performed the duty:

He was executed on January 31 and buried, along with 94 other American Soldiers in a special, secret cemetery in France set aside for those shot for rape and murder. Graves were marked only with numbers - no names. His wife spent the rest of her life trying to clear his name, but to no avail. Not until 1987 did an interested party finally succeed in having his remains removed and placed next to Slovik's wife in their final resting place in a Michigan cemetery.

The reason I bring this up, though, is to point out the basic decency of America when compared to our enemies - even an America at war. Ambrose points out:

Imagine the difference in character between an army that 's cold enough to reward failure and human frailty routinely with death, and one that agonizes over the fate of one trooper. Why would men, treated mercilessly themselves, treat occupied people any better? It's no wonder that the Germans who looked to surrender ran west instead of east - Stalin treating his men hardly better than Hitler treated his.

After all, how could an army that fails to recognize the humanity in its own, be expected to recognize it in anyone else? And that is, in the end, another of democracy's strengths, a source of democratic nations' basic goodness - each individual and their family is recognized as possessing value - an individual that serves by consent of himself in cooperation with his fellows. No dictator could ever hope to have as strong a fighting force...or one that fights as humanely.

Today our armed forces agonize over whether every single soldier has the proper body-armor and safe vehicles. Our own forces investigate their own abuses, worry over whether a hood over a dangerous prisoner is a violation of their rights, an enlisted man can publicly question the Secretary of Defense and not fear retribution and it takes them over a year to bring a soldier accused of murdering his fellows to trial.

Our enemies recruit children, care nothing of whether they slaughter their fellow Arabs and Muslims nor how many innocents they murder and aspire to suicide as the only sure way of meeting God.

To whom will nations turn?

Sources:

History Channel

The Execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik

Eddie Slovik

The Sad Story of Private Eddie Slovik

Wikipedia: Eddie Slovik

Cemetery Project

Citizen Soldiers - Criminals and Deserters

The Republican at New England Republican has brought in a stable of other bloggers to keep the content flowing. Looks like he's made some good choices for co-writers.

We can always rely on the Iranian Regime for new innovations of the blood libel.

MEMRI TV Project Special Report: Iranian TV Drama Series about Israeli Government Stealing Palestinian Children's Eyes

Scotsman.com: Spanish Police Break Up Islamic Terror Cell

(via Jihad Watch)

My level of knowledge on the goings-on in Ukraine are at an admittedly sub-pontificating level. I'm just watching and learning like most everyone else - whether they admit it or not, hence my feeling that the President should leave his orange tie in the closet for the moment.

JR of Transatlantic Intelligencer feels that Yushchenko is getting a bit of a free-ride from a Western blog and media establishment that's a little too quick to create good-guys and bad-guys. It's worth taking a gander at.

Transatlantic Intelligencer: Viktor Yushchenko, Iraq and "Fascist Thugs"

It is worth noting, as long as we're noticing Yushchenko's possible ties to Fascists, this story about his recent visit to a Kiev Synagogue to kindle Chanukah candles:

Update: See JR's latest post: How Did the Blogosphere Get Fooled on Ukraine?: Preamble, Parts I + II (The Return of the Cold War) for a detailed update and some interesting thoughts on how we may be ignoring some hard-earned lessons.

Most of us remember where we were and what we were doing on September 11, 2001. Whether we started in the car, a meeting or were still in our beds, at some point we all found ourselves in front of a television set - the images burning themselves into our synapses. But like all effective nightmares there are emotions that carry along with the images. They are independent entities in their own rights, burned along with the images of smoke and dust and falling bodies into our memories forever- the disbelief, the awe, the anger, the rage and the frustration.

Most of all the frustration. The physical human instinct to help other humans in need, protect them...and to revenge...the intellectual human need to understand, both what was happening, who or what had caused it and why.

Some would fulfill these needs by joining the military, but for most of us these frustrations would remain an unfulfilled emptiness - at best we'd end up trying to fill them up by flogging out our tensions on internet web logs and the like.

Author Steven Vincent could add another sense memory to his 9/11 collection - smell. He was only a few miles away - able to view the second airliner complete its final journey live from the roof of his own apartment building. Those moments, those images, those smells and emotions would, as for so many of us, have a profound effect on the author. But unlike for many of us, they would lead him not into a blogger's set of pajamas, but instead into an outfit consisting of a black dishdasha and keffiyeh and a journey of thousands of miles - into Iraq. Into the Red Zone.

What could drive a man to, as Vincent says, give up his job as an art reporter and critic - cast off his comforts and travel into the belly of a country barely clawing its way out of the pit of warfare (and, as we've seen to date, still in it)? Again, among the reasons was something common to many of us who watched the towers fall that day - the recognition that yes, there was evil in the world - and it had found us:

Fear is a wonderful motivator. In Vincent's case, it was one of the factors that stirred the silt in the bottom of his gut. It got him moving. Where it got him moving to was another matter, decided later with the invasion of Iraq. Again, like many of us, he understood that the hijackers were not themselves Iraqi, but in another sense, in a larger sense, Saddam's Iraq was tied to 9/11, and the invasion provided great opportunities for the future:

He was inspired by a President and, again just as with many of us, it surprised him:

But find a way to participate he did - never underestimate a writer motivated - and In the Red Zone is the fruit of his labor. The fruit of four months worth of traipsing the country - alone, with local guides, making contacts as he went - interviewing the locals, the NGO's, and the Western soldiers.

This is a view from the inside, from the ground up, as gathered by a man who shares a world-view with many of us - supporters of the War, admirers of the President (wherever we started from) - people who understand the importance of the War in Iraq and success there as part of the overall effort in the Greater Struggle who hope and pray in our own ways for the success of this effort. Although many of us have turned to alternative sources of news - supplementing mainstream media outlets with the firsthand accounts of bloggers (like Iraq the Model, Healing Iraq and many others), questions always remain as to how representative they are.

Viewed in this way, Vincent operates as our agent, dispatched from home base to go sniff-out the truth and report back to us: How do "average" Iraqis view the US and our troops? How is the reconstruction going? Do we find more optimism or pessimism and why? Are Iraqis ready for democracy? Are Muslims?

This is not a day-by-day travelogue. We do not read about the details of the author's travels - how he gets from place to place and what he sees unless, of course, the description relates directly to a point being made. This is not a chronological description of events where the author effectively packs us with him and we share the ride. Instead, what we get are the lessons Vincent has learned, with enough detail provided to make the point.

If I have one criticism of the book I would say that was it. I found myself wanting more - more detail, more descriptions and more blanks filled in. A plea from the reader to author Vincent to "take me with you!" goes unheeded. Instead, he goes out and brings us back the conclusions. He includes supporting data, yes, but I want more - a few more "tell me what it was like" descriptions, a little more of what may to an editor have seemed to have been extraneous may also have helped satisfy just a bit. Sometimes the reader can discover his own conclusions that the author never expected or intended.

But that, in the end, emerges as a nit to pick compared to the power and import of this work. Vincent goes to Iraq as an agent with ideological "street cred." He's not there to write an anti-War polemic - in fact, some of his most entertaining anecdotes are when he meets the folks referred to derisively by Iraqis as "People of the Slogans" - but it's also clear upon reading that, while he may be "our man in Baghdad," Vincent is not there to white-wash a thing. This is not a book that war supporters can turn to to read a chapter to help sooth a battered spirit at the end of a long day. Clearly that's not what Vincent views his job to be.

And the positives and negatives do begin to blend, right from the start, on that first trip into Iraq. While internationalist groups predicted all sorts of humanitarian disaster and hardship with the Afghan invasion - including Noam Chomsky's infamous prediction of millions intentionally starved to death by US forces - in the end, Afghans voted with their feet and the only humanitarian crisis was created by two million Afghans returning to their country from sanctuary abroad. So too was it with Iraq.

In an incident that finds its echoes throughout the book, Vincent finds himself sharing a car ride from near the Jordanian border and on into Baghdad. His companions are a seemingly Westernized, erudite professional couple and their two sons. A computer specialist and an artist, they're returning to Iraq from their home in Vienna to show their two young sons "the land they came from." This is exactly the type of family many of us are counting on to help serve as the basis of a reconstructed Iraq.

Along the way, there's also a lesson in what the invasion achieved - the evil it overthrew.

Ah...righteousness. Look what an evil dictator we overthrew. We feel good now, right? Hmmm...not so fast.

Vincent notices that it's Mohammed that does the talking. His wife? Quiet. That's OK, though. Her English probably isn't that good.

Maybe not.

And those selections are representative of the roller-coaster of feelings we're handed on the journey - a little taste of triumph to nourish our need to feel that America "done good," but quickly tempered by a cold, complicated reality, oblivious to our need for self-justification.

At this point I'm going to acknowledge that this is a blog post review, not the New York Times Review of Books and cut it short. I could go on and on providing meaty morsels culled from this all-too-short, but oh-so-important bit of non-fiction. My copy is filled with yellow highlighted bits. I almost can't bear not to include a description of his encounter with Canadian Folk-singer and "Person of the Slogans" extraordinaire, Bruce Cockburn (a couple of who's vinyls still adorn my shelf), but I'll leave that for you to read for yourself or find in other reviews.

In a way, while looking for the answer to the question of, "Can democracy take root in the Middle East (outside Israel), and if so, what will it 'look' like?" we might view author Steven Vincent as our tester and In the Red Zone as his soils report.

Before the War, we were told that of all the Arab states, Iraq was perhaps the ripest for change and a move toward Western democratic secularism with its tribal ways of life muted by a strong urban middle class, yet he finds much to worry us. Ancient tribal customs still hold strong sway, as do horrible corruption, almost no sense of civic responsibility, misogyny - terrible, overbearing misogyny - religiosity to a degree that nearly banishes critical thought, external interference, deadly conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism...it's more than enough to sap the will of any farmer brave enough to try to till this land. If this is the best there is, the outlook elsewhere must be grim indeed.

But try we must, for one could argue that our subsistence here and beyond relies upon this one crop.

Vincent, for all the difficulties he saw there, has not himself given up hope. We shouldn't either. But we do need to be realistic about what we're facing there, and reading In the Red Zone is an essential step in coming to grips with that reality.

Author Steven Vincent blogs at In the Red Zone.

You can purchase his book direct from the publisher here, or from Amazon here.

Don't miss Arthur Chrenkoff's review of In the Red Zone here, and his interview with the author here.

Also, check out FrontPage Magazine's interview here.

Star-Telegram: LOST IN THE FALLOUT - In 1983, he likely saved the world. Where is he now? (in full to save registration - via Mick Hartley):

Lynn B. points to a Wall Street Journal story (reprinted here, at Backspin, regarding the "Mythical Martyr," Mohammed al-Durra. He was the young Palestinian Arab boy supposedly killed by Israeli troops at the Netzarim Junction four years ago. The images were shown world-wide.

Evidence decisively shows that the incident was a put-up.

For my own report on a film and presentation I saw debunking the event, see here: Truth is Essential - "The Mideast Conflict Through the Eyes of the Media" Report

An emailer points to this letter to the UK Telegraph, responding to Charles Moore's courageous op-eds against the new religious hatred laws. (See here and here for Moore's pieces.) The author is London's Arab League Ambassador, Ali Muhsen Hamid.

Telegraph | Opinion: Christians are also victims of persecution

What's amazing to me is that men like Hamid say such brazenly false things, and the Telegraph prints them, when even a quick Google search can turn up the lie.

It is true that Christian populations are down in the West Bank and Gaza for many reasons. Among those reasons I've no doubt is the fact that they live under the conditions of a state of perpetual low-level warfare. But there are many others as well. In fact, Christian populations are down across the Arab Middle East. They've finished on the Saturday People (the Jews) and they're working on the Sunday People, you see.

But in Israel itself, a little Goggling shows that the Christian population was about 37,000 back in 1949 and stood at around 137,000 in 2001 - an almost four-fold increase. (source)

See also this Joseph Farrah article: MIDEAST: CHRISTIAN-FREE ZONE?

See also here for detailed info: The Christian Communities of Israel

Can anyone take seriously an Arab League representative implying that Freedom of Religion is a revered value amongst the states (and pseudo-states) he represents? Blaming Israel for intolerance of religious minorities and getting the facts wrong at the same time is the brazen Big Lie and guilt transference rolled into one. The Christians of the region know the truth, and they're voting with their feet.

[Click the picture to see the entire front page.]

That's the front page image on today's Boston Globe that accompanies the article describing yesterday's horrific car-bombings in Najaf and Karbala, as well as the ambush of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad.

I post it for the irony factor, in so far as Al-Manar was just this Friday placed on the Terrorist Exclusion List and banned in the United States on Friday.

A conspiracy theorist could have good time with that image. They always say Al Jazeera is just coincidentally in the right place at the right time, now here's terror mouthpiece Al Manar. Of course, Hizballah (which runs Al Manar) is Shi'ite, so why would they be complicit in this - but Hizballah is backed by Iran, which has its own reasons for wanting chaos in Iraq right now and many of its security operatives are Sunni Palestinians.

Obviously, this speculation is just that - and based on a single screen-shot - so take it for what it's worth, which is probably very little.

But I was still intrigued to see the words "AL Manar Exclusive" on the front page of my morning paper. This is a particularly obvious example, but just imagine how much text and photo journalism comes to us through our mainstream, Western news sources that had its origin with terror mouthpieces and their supporters. Quite a bit of it in the Middle East - whether from the terror regimes themselves or more "responsible" agents too afraid for their lives or their access to cross them.

MEMRI has a report on the reaction of the man who served as the object of Noam Chomsky's flirtation with Holocaust Deniers - Robert Faurisson.

MEMRI: French Holocaust Denier on Ban of Al-Manar: 'The Big Lie of the Alleged Holocaust ... is the Shield of Jewish Tyranny... Destroy it'

Faurisson is the man Chomsky once called, a "relatively apolitical liberal." For much commentary on Chomsky and the Faurison affair, see Oliver Kamm's blog. Start here and follow the links.

I guess it takes a level of nuanced thinking Nobel laureates don't possess to process the idea that Israel's nuclear weapons are meant to prevent the construction of any more gas chambers.

Haaretz: Nobel laureate compares Israeli nuclear arms to gas chambers

Do these European do-gooders and their oh-so-clever Holocaust comparisons really think they've thought it out from more angles than the Israelis themselves? "Yeah, gee, we never thought of that before. It IS just like the Holocaust. We feel so ashamed! Thank you SO much." And, of course, if the Israelis refrained from doing everything that some Leftist slogan-chanter thought was "just like the Holocaust," they would have ceased to exist long ago.

And isn't Mordechai Vanunu a little old to be considered an orphan?

Mordechai Vanunu is walking proof of Israel's functioning, often push-over, democracy. In the nation-state of Solomonia he'd have been locked up and the key melted down for reactor-core lining.

The important list. The Mr. Skin list.

Debra Winger was in the IDF?

(via Who's Your Rabbi?)

Speaking of 'Coercive Fantasists,' here's a great example of someone travelling down the road to deriving his own sort of new-age religious variety. Must be read to be believed. Gristmill calls it "Stalinesque Lunacy," which sounds about right.

(via The Commons)

Charles Moore of The Telegraph, that is. Addressing issues of free speech, offensive speech and protected groups. Don't miss. (Previous entry here.)

Telegraph: It is Muslims who have most to fear from Islamists:

Read all.

Americans, it's relavent to us, to. Unwritten PC rules, hate-speech standards and legal limits on free speech can do the same thing here and handcuff our ability to discuss important issues.

(via Dhimmi Watch)

I don't know about wise men, but this idea feels like it's about 2000 years old. Yet another proposal to bring the mountain to Muhammad. Don't they know that just makes The Prophet fat and lazy?

Ah, I hear you say, but this high-level delegation is really high level this time. But I say it doesn't matter whether the delegation is composed of ex-Presidents or current Secretaries of State - it's just as easy to say "NO" to either. In fact, the higher level the delegation, the more value there is to the refusal in the eyes of the despots and their followers.

Boston Globe: A role for three 'wise men' By Paul Smyke

OK, that's enough of that. Read the rest on your own if you must.

One final note. When I do one of these posts I usually Google the author so I can see if there's any context or agenda the paper is leaving out. Often I find they're the head of some "progressive" group or another. This time I found something a bit different.

Turns out Mr. Smyke was on the Board of something called the Cuba Policy Foundation. This group is apparently dedicated to American policy change toward Cuba - lifting the embargo, etc...no surprise there (he also donated to the Kerry campaign - no surprise there, either), until I went back to the group's front page and found that the entire Board had resigned en masse back in 2003 due to Castro's abuses:

So, while I think the effort was likely misguided, I have to tip my hat to a rare display of substance.

Now about that mountain...

Don't miss it.

The Diplomad: Ratman of the Far Abroad

It's about more than rats...

BBC NEWS: Japanese men lap up new comfort

Hmmm...I would think that that would depend on what's under the skirt.

In any case, it looks like the perfect cocooning device. Give me one lap pillow, a comfy couch and the extended edition Return of the King and I'm golden for the night. Add the rest of the trilogy and a bottle of hot sake and we'll call it a weekend.

CNN.com - Cuba erects billboard attacking U.S.:

These Cubans better be careful, or we may just have to get all Diplomad on their asses.

And what is there about ex-State employees that makes them seem anxious to take shots at their country when they retire? Too much sleeping with the enemy makes them too much sympathetic methinks:

Really? No one? Not even Communist Cuba? Couldn't he just have said, "Hey, I'm retired now, ask someone else." Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and..."

A lot of other bloggers do it, so I thought I'd join the club.

(No, I didn't make this.)

A Coercive Utopian is someone who knows what the ideal society should look like and is willing to kill you to achieve it. Coercive Utopians in pursuit of Fantasy Ideologies range from atheistic Marxists to the most God-obsessed religious-types. Bin Laden is part of this latter group, of course.

The trouble with these "coercive fantasists" is that, even if you want to give them what they want, you may not be able to do it - because what they want may not be achievable, even if it were not abhorrent. In the case of Bin Laden, this means the re-establishment of the Caliphate, the re-conquest of formerly Islamic lands and the establishment of strict Shariah Law therein is what he wants - and he'll stop at nothing to achieve it. It sounds crazy, but it's true. That's what he wants - for starters, and he'll stink up every cave in East Waziristan if he has to in order to get there.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross (last linked to here) uses the readily-available evidence of Bin Laden's own statements, his deputies and the authorities he looks to to document what it is Al Qaeda is really after...

FrontPage magazine.com :: Osama's Big Lie by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I only just saw this and haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm sure this FrontPage Magazine interview with Natan Sharansky is something not to be missed.

FrontPage magazine.com :: The Case for Democracy by Jamie Glazov

An email from a Marine Gunnery Sergeant in Iraq at Blackfive (via LGF):

BLACKFIVE: The Heart of America:

Sixty years ago today was the first day of the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans attacked unexpectedly - many thought Germany was on its knees. Some even thought the war might be over by Christmas. Back home, some of the war production economy had been shifted back to civilian production, so oddly enough there were artillery ammo shortages on the front.

It's been cold in Boston the past few days, but whenever I think of the movies I've seen and the books I've read about the battle I find it hard to complain. They didn't have winter clothes, or portable heaters. They couldn't light fires for fear of providing a target for enemy fire. They had to piss on their machine guns to get the bolts unfrozen.

I was chatting with an old veteran who came into my office who's been disabled since that time in 1944 (I had noticed there was something "off" about his arms, but I didn't ask about it.). He said he was a young private at the time. I asked him if he had seen Band of Brothers and what he thought of it. He told me he couldn't watch stuff like that...brought back too many memories - told me he had spoken to another old vet not long ago, remembering...he couldn't sleep for days.

Sixty years on.

This Day in History: 1944 Battle of the Bulge

Reaching back in time, some other American Patriots deserve to be remembered.

1773 The Boston Tea Party:

I used to work on the seventh floor of the Federal Reserve Building in Boston, and looking down on the Boston Tea Party Ship watch tourists toss crates of "tea" into Boston Harbor (the crates are then hauled back up on their ropes to be tossed in again by the next in line).

From patriots with painted faces trying to save their livelihoods and their liberty, to men storming across Europe in the Great Crusade to save others'...December 16.

This is certainly a positive thing. At least some Europeans are talking about the right stuff...

Haaretz - EU justice commissioner to push law against anti-Semitism

But I have one question. Do you really want questions of whether something or someone is anti-Semitic being adjudicated in European courts of law? If they say, 'yes,' will that make it so? If they say, 'no,' what about then? And what will you be able to do about it after they render a final judgement you know is wrong?

The question of anti-Semitism is something people have to work out for themselves among themselves.

A law and a court? Nein danke.

It's that time of year again! Time for Honest Reporting's The Dishonest Reporting 'Awards' 2004:

THE 'CAMERA SEES ALL' AWARD

Winner: While photojournalists were recording a seemingly candid expression of Palestinian suffering alongside the security fence, AP's Enric Marti shot the scene from another angle, including the pack of photographers in his frame:

This image speaks volumes about media coverage of Palestinian life. The photographers are not merely 'capturing the scene,' but rather creating it -- either actively (by asking the woman to pose) or passively (allowing themselves to be manipulated by her posing for their cameras).

The 'Award' winners in this category are the five unidentified photographers who sent to their newsrooms the version depicted here (at right).

Don't miss the winners and runners-up in the other categories, as well: SYMPATHY FOR TERRORISTS AWARD, SLIP-OF-THE-TONGUE AWARD, ISRAEL CONSPIRACY AWARD, and the ALTERNATIVE MEDIA AWARD.

Awesome. Went with the family yesterday at the new Jordan's Furniture store in Reading: Comcast IMAX 3D Theater Jordans Furniture Natick / Reading

I haven't been to a movie in 3D since I was a kid and saw a 3-D-ified version of Murders in the Rue Morgue (I think it was this one). The technology sure has come a long way since then.

I don't even know how the story was. I think it was pretty good, though, but the immersive quality of watching in an IMAX and in 3D was just phenomenal. Highly recommended.

I attended a talk by former Israeli Ambassador, Dore Gold, last night. He's on tour promoting his new book, Tower of Babble : How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos. Unlike last time I went to see him, he actually showed up this time - although a half hour tardy.

It took place in a lecture hall at Harvard Yard. Attendance was around 250 and mostly students. Everyone was well-behaved. No pies thrown. There was a touch of speechifying during the question and answer session, but nothing too bad. It's interesting how much the MC's of these events have to emphasize, "Please ask a question, and stay on topic..." That's been true at every event I've attended, although there hasn't been any trouble at the stuff I've been to, it's an obvious recurring problem.

I'm not going to do one of my in-depth reports. I did record the event, but I didn't take much in the way of written notes. I'll just give a few thoughts and impressions I took away with me.

The book addresses the many weaknesses of the UN and how it got that way, concluding with some recommendations. None of the arguments and issues will be of any surprise to blog readers, but I'm looking forward to reading it. Gold is someone with personal UN experience, and I'm sure it will be interesting.

One of his opening anecdotes was of the time he was called to give a last-minute speech at an emergency session of the United Nations in Geneva. In 1999, for the first time in decades, an emergency session of the signatories of the 4th Geneva Convention had been called. It had never happened before. Not with all the invasions, conflicts and ethnic battles in all the years since. What was the big emergency now? As Gold put it, "We were building some condos in Jerusalem."

He used this as an example of how off-kilter and often bizarre the UN's priorities have become. Manipulated by regional and religious group interests, the UN's activities have fallen far out of line from where the average moral Westerner would expect them to proceed.

It wasn't always like that.

When the UN was born in the aftermath of the Second World War, made up of nations who had opposed the Axis, it's membership was smaller and more focused. Most of the nations in question had only recently been united in some sort of common purpose.

Not so as the years went by, more and more countries joined with few standards as to the character and motivations of the membership. What this has done is create a huge pool of nations - dictatorships, terror and torture states, expansionist nations and banana republics - who have far different values and standards from the Western democracies - particularly the United States - and others of the original membership.

This pool has, in effect, created a market for a new commodity - the UN vote. Particularly now in a world without a Communist threat, and an Islamist threat unrecognized by many, the nations of the West that formerly shared a common purpose are now more free than ever to buy and trade in this new market of States.

What has occurred as a result is the utter corruption of the old order. Now influence is bought, sold and peddled while the old standards of global responsibility take a distant back seat.

The UN was founded to prevent aggression by one state upon another. It worked somewhat in the old days, but since then the UN has had a decidedly difficult time in sorting out aggressor from aggressed. As examples, Gold offered the example of Rwanda, where the UN (under head of Peacekeeping Operations Kofi Anan) refused to allow its commander on the scene to remove Hutu ammo dumps even though there was an advance indication of the upcoming genocide - it would have violated the UN's neutrality to have done so - or the International Court of Justice's finding on Israel's Security Fence which did not take into account the reason for the fence's existence - Palestinian-Arab terrorism. And how can be expected to sort out such issues, being as they are, influenced by so many conflicting interests, trying to satisfy them all. Instead, they end up providing cover for aggression and formaldehyde for dictator-regimes which should have been shoved over the cliff long ago.

Name any number of global flash points where a united effort on the part of an interest and world-view sharing group would be necessary and make possible to achieve some objective - North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Sudan...the list could go on and on and in each case there is some influential party who see's themselves with contrary interests in the UN power structure standing by to prevent unified action.

And there's no end in sight. Structural reforms like increasing the size of the Security Council and adding extra permanent members certainly wouldn't fill any of the deep moral vacuums the body suffers from. It would just add more bidders into the commodity market, and more interests to the paralysis pool. It would do nothing to un-isolate underpowered democracies who can't join regional groups such as Israel or any other up-and-comer who chooses to buck the usual system of dictatorship pandering. Who can they rely on for support when the cards are against them? The United States is one of the only countries militarily and economically powerful to even occasionally vote even against their most obvious immediate self-interest.

Gold offers a solution we've been hearing more and more about - start relying less on the United Nations and more on "Coalitions of the Willing" - temporary groupings put together for common causes and who share interests. This is reminiscent of the proposals floating about to replace the UN outright, or supplant it with some sort of body composed of democratic nations, with some sort of meaningful standards for admission.

I love the concept, but I'm a skeptic. The first thing that needs to happen, or at least simultaneously with, is the de-valuing of that commodity market I discussed above, and in order to do that, the UN itself will have to be de-valued. I have no expertise on International Law to know how that can happen from a legal standpoint - making decisions of the United Nations matter less in courts of international jurisprudence - and I can tell you from a layman's perspective that from a world-wide popular-opinion standpoint, whoever wants to start undermining the credibility of the UN has a massive row to hoe.

Without that happening, the rewards for nations to eschew the UN debating society - thus giving up one of their own bases of influence (think France here as a for-instance) are slim as they would be were the same efforts pursued within the UN structure itself.

I'll have to read Gold's book to see if he comes up with any actual solutions to breaking nations who should know better of their corrupt and corrupting habit of influence-peddling, and the addicting narcotic of participating in a resolution-passing debating society and fantasizing that the world is a better place therefore. Sadly, I didn't hear it last night.

Is Abbas's call for "an end to the militarization of the intifada" significant? Yes. It's been known that this was Abbas's position for some time, and it's certainly positive that he said it publicly in the Arab press - Arafat being notorious for telling Western audiences what they wanted to hear, but then brazenly going back on it in private or in Arabic. That act was starting to wear thin in the end though. The world of mass-communication - and especially the internet - was bringing the pressure to bear. No more Peace in English and War in Arabic.

Now Abbas may have the best of intentions ("best" being a relative term), but let's not get carried away. Roadblocks, checkpoints and targeted assassinations don't exist as some sort of Israeli play activity. They're there to save Israeli lives, and they'll stay there as long as those lives are threatened.

With the weak central state authority and the multitude of armed gangs, each with their own motivations, Israeli lives will continue to be threatened, regardless of even Abbas's best efforts, for some time now. (Hamas has already rejected the call to lay down their arms, of course.) That means, with continued attacks against Israelis, and the inevitable efforts of Israel to defend its citizens, there will be no end of excuses for failure.

Not that they will need any real excuse, when they can just make one up. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon was certified complete by the UN years ago, but Hizballah uses the excuse of Israel's occupation of the "Shabba Farms" area as an excuse to keep up the fight and wrap their rhetoric of "occupation" around. (Shabba Farms are an area even the UN says belongs to Syria and who's final ownership must be negotiated with them, but Hizballah claims is a part of Lebanon.)

In order for this thing to work, a whole lot of things are going to need to come together - including pressure on the Syrians to keep the Hamas leadership they host in check (let them come and live in Gaza if they think continuing the fight is so great), allowing the Israelis to do what they need to do to keep their citizens safe while at the same time doing some of Abbas's dirty work for him by making the bad-guys hurt, and setting out real rewards and punishments for Abbas - something only the USA can do seriously as Europe, Russia and the UN can never be trusted to actually hold the Palestinian Arabs responsible for anything.

As an example, an early indicator of Abbas's seriousness will be whether the ongoing toning-down of incitement on PA TV continues. In the decidedly un-free society that is the Palestinian Authority, the media is something directly under the control of Abbas himself. Will he use his power to hold to the new Peace-line - indoctrinating the kids and their parents in the need for co-existence and reconciliation? It will certainly be one of the first indicators of the seriousness of any Abbas effort. Will he use the airwaves and print to get the people on board with his efforts, or will he play the double-game of pantomiming peace while he's "undermined" in public so he can simply throw up his hands and say, "Well, I tried...but the Israelis...they were too much."

Should Abbas be elected to the Presidency - as looks increasingly likely - he's going to need to sort out what's within his power and purview and what isn't, and he's going to have to exert serious energy into forging Palestinian society to follow his lead. No more excuses about what the Israelis are doing. He knows the score. He knows what the Israelis are about and he still wants the job. Either he's taking it with the intention of being serious about peace - difficulties and all - or he should be viewed as another in a long line terrorists and dealt with appropriately*.

Oh, and somewhere in there he might consider making a gesture to Uncle Sam by doing something about turning over the guys who murdered three of our citizens over a year ago. Those guys were there to give out Fulbright Scholarships...and terrorists lay in wait for them and blew them up. He could make an example of them if he really wanted to.

[*I chose the word "appropriately" rather than "accordingly" intentionally. "Accordingly," to me, implies "summarily," as though once it's clear Abbas isn't serious he should be dealt with as all terrorists should be - with a large object dropped on their heads. There will be deeper political considerations at play, however - as, sadly, with Arafat - so "appropriately" seems to imply a bit more of an aspect of diplomatic consideration. It will be important to recognize him for what he is at that point and at least no longer deceive ourselves, though.]

I received a pointer to this blog dedicated to the charitable efforts of one particular Jerusalem family. If I ever find myself in Jerusalem again, I may just stop by and give them a look. Sounds like a party.

Note that there is money being collected there and I make no claims about that one way or the other. Take a look yourself at The Machlis Experience.

(If Tokyo Rose were, y'know, a guy.)

A fairly slick propaganda film from the Iraqi terrorists. Is that a Dutch accent on that narrator?

(via LGF)

Pedro pondering two offers - Ace reportedly set to leave Red Sox for Mets

Three years at $40 million's not good enough? It was fun while it lasted.

Bye.

You know, the guy with the face.

The guy at CodeBlueBlog isn't buying the dioxin poisoning thing.

Like I know. Interesting, though.

Update: But Doc MedPundit says Not so fast.

Update2: More doubts cast on the diagnosis here, including threats of intimidation for the "correct" diagnosis. Say it ain't so, Viktor!

Peaktalk's Pieter translates a bunch of selections from Theo Van Gogh's web site. Very interesting. It definitely fleshed-out my image of the man.

A taste. On America's "superficiality":

...we used to carry them around door-to-door and ask for pennies, nickles and dimes for the world's children. The Diplomad remembers them, too, but not very fondly. Look what's become of UNICEF lately: The Diplomad: Hype, Nonsense, and Feminazism: Your UNICEF Dollars at Work

Atlantis to Orbit, 2001

If you click on the picture and read the explanation, click on the word "human" (Or just click that link there), then you can go to this page with applications for viewing the "Visible Human." I used the third one down, "NPAC Visible Human Viewer" to make this picture:

(Click for a larger version.)

You can slice it however you want it. Fascinating.

CNN.com: Marine sacrifices finger to save wedding ring

Doh!

Related to the Somerville Divestment entry below - I'd like to know more about what's behind these numbers, but it goes to show what a minority the various Israeli voices speaking in favor of divestment must really be.

Jerusalem Post: 91% new inductees to IDF ask for combat roles

This is just a reminder to bloggers and webmasters that it's not too early to put your name and web address down on the list of participants for the next blogburst.

At final tally, something like 84 sites participated in the first blogburst. See this post here for an example of what a "blogburst" is about.

The commitment is very low - you can either just agree to post-up the minimum common text, or you can go farther and craft your own post on the agreed-upon subject. Your level of participation is up to you. The date of the next blogburst is January 27, 2005, and the subject is: "Remembering the Wannsee Conference and the Liberation of Auschwitz."

This is a good way to give exposure to important issues while at the same time driving a little extra traffic past your site.

In order to participate, simply drop an email to Joseph at IsraPundit@yahoo.com. He'll tell you what you need to do. Hint: It's very simple, and you're not obligated to anything by contacting him. It will open up the options for you, though, so why not give it a go? Don't wait for a personal invitation. Hop on in.

I notice the group that sponsored the divestment attempt has finally gotten around to posting an update on their site:

No, the end of the battle is no reason not to keep asking for cash. Wonder where the money will go now that the fight is over? Apparently, they have a staff(!) and a lot of other divestment battles to fight. It's worth noting that their links page is full of all sorts of divestment campaigns - many aimed at Israel as a whole, not just 'settlers' or 'occupation facilitators.'

Amazing that they blame the loss on lobbying from "an anti-Israel" group. I believe by "group" they mean every mainstream Jewish (and many non-Jewish) group on the planet. I'm not sure what could be more anti-Israel than disrespecting and undermining Israel's democracy and legitimacy by trying to strong-arm it into buckling under with coercive tactics to abandon its chosen policies and methods of protecting its own people from death. Failed politicians, radical Israelis with a minority viewpoint in league - knowingly or naively - with forces who would like nothing better than to dismantle the Jewish State. What could be more anti-Israel than that?

I was going to only put up a quick-link to this piece, but I decided it was so good I should post a full entry with an excerpt. Do read the whole thing.

Don't imagine that the assaults on freedom - the decidedly illiberal activities in the supposed defense of liberalism, or at least good intentions - that go on in Europe couldn't happen here. It's thankfully a bit tougher, due to our Constitutional protections, but the Courts are perfectly capable of discovering overriding public interests in order to curtail our freedoms - witness Campaign Finance and the restrictions on political speech.

Telegraph: Is it only Mr Bean who resists this new religious intolerance? By Charles Moore (via LGF)

Read it all.

By the way, Friday night I watched Johnny English. Boy, was that disappointing.

I received this piece in email from the author. A quick Google and I found I had actually linked one of his pieces almost two years ago now.

If I read the piece correctly, I don't share his expectation that a "fresh start" is possible, or even necessarily desirable. I'm not sure we should go back to appeasing hateful regimes - particularly to avoid being outflanked by the Europeans or Chinese. I think continued chain-rattling, if not outright confrontation, is in the cards for the immediate future. Just as Israel, by its nature, calls to us for necessarily close ties whether we like it or not, so it is that Iran, under the current regime, cannot be anything but a foe whether we choose it or not. It's a historical inevitability we're going to have to get used to...and confront.

I present the piece in full. It continues in the extended entry. I've left the text large, but in italics for easier reading.

Beyond nuclear power
America needs a fresh start with Iran

The architects of our foreign policy need not only to start preparing for the unavoidable contingency of accommodating a nuclear Iran, but they need to even more importantly start containing the tectonic geopolitical forces that are helping Iran become nuclear.

Do something about the scalpers!

Even legitimate, face-value seats are outrageously priced so a family of even average means can't possibly afford to go to the game. Decent seats are 80 bucks each. 80 bucks! If you can get them! Even the grandstand seats are 45 bucks a pop. 20 bucks to park - and don't get me started on the price of food in the ballpark. Do the math.

But an honest guy can't even get tickets. Seats just went on sale. My dad calls me up to try to get seats...I get on the web and the phone and you know what's available when you finally get through? Nothing! I try for four seats together with the four-game packages and forget it. I try for two seats together - nothing unless you want to stare at a pole. Try for individual games? OK. Day game. During the week. No two seats together! The only thing you can get are single seats.

And it was the same thing last year and the year before that.

Oh, but just go down to the ball park the day of the game. You are assaulted from the moment you get off the subway to right outside the park gate with guys selling seats - good seats. They're standing around with literally fists full of tickets! Ain't there supposed to be a law about that? Oh yeah. There is, but forget about it. These guys are standing around shouting, "TICKETS!" right in front of the cops who couldn't give less of a crap.

Do the Red Sox give a damn about the average fan? Not on your life. The tickets get sold. Who buys them and what they do with them isn't any of their concern. I don't want to deal with those bastards.

It's pathetic. I'm down to taking my daughter to hang around OUTSIDE the ballpark - and if we do go, it'll be just us with a single seat (I'll have to say she's not three yet. See? I'll be a scoff-law, too.) - sorry Grampa, you stay home.

So what's going to become of the family tradition of fathers and kids going down to Fenway together and building memories? Down the shitter of huge player salaries that's what. It's not going to be, "Gee dad, remember when you took me to see Luis Tiant beat Mark Fidrych and bought me my first Fenway Frank?" Now it's gonna be, "Gee dad, remember when we finally got that big-screen TV and watched the Sox in high-def?" (Which reminds me: Would someone please tell NESN to get out of the frickin' Stone-Age and start broadcasting the games IN STEREO!?)

There's no single entity to blame here - the players who demand every dollar they can squeeze, the agents, the cops who have better things to do, the scalpers themselves, the fans who pay them...but it starts at the top - with team ownership. They could do something about it but they won't.

Charles Johnson points to this Reuters story on the "Forum for the Future" in Morocco where the USA had to put up with the usual bull from the same old collection of despots and appeasers.

LGF: Colin Gets the Cold Shoulder:

In my imaginary, perfect fantasy world, Colin Powell would seize the mic and say the following:

"OK, it's true. We do favor Israel over you, and I'm going to be very frank with you and tell you why.

We favor Israel over you because Israel is a democracy and you are not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel has a free press and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel enshrines freedom of speech and expression and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel practices freedom of religion and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel does not persecute its homosexual citizens and you do.

We favor Israel over you because Israel has Nobel winners in the Sciences and Universities that foreigners consider attending. You have none of either.

We favor Israel over you because Israel's press, government and religious establishment do not incite hatred against us and yours do.

We favor Israel over you because you broadcast and publish statements that remind us of the Holocaust - an event we shed blood ending and built a museum to remember, and we know that Israel is the Jewish State.

We favor Israel over you because you have tried repeatedly to wipe Israel off the map while Israel has not tried to do the same to you.

We favor Israel over you because Israel supports our foreign policy efforts and you oppose them - in Iraq and elsewhere.

We favor Israel over you because Israel respects Women's Rights and you do not.

We favor Israel over you because Israel's economy is larger than all its immediate neighbors combined.

We favor Israel over you because Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin, has one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed, as well as the highest per-capita level of citizens with university degrees. You are all far, far behind.

We favor Israel over you because relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth - just like us...and unlike you.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on with all the reasons why it's natural and beneficial and obvious that we would be closer to Israel than to you, but I need to give the mic back at some point.

We welcome you to join us. My hand is out.

But it is up to you. Not us."

In my dreams.

[Note: A couple of those things came from a JAT mailing I got some time ago.]

Update: Hey, why didn't someone tell me The Diplomad was back after their brief break? Somewhat related to this post, take a look at Two More Reasons to Like Israel and The Diplomad.

Not...exactly. She could, it simply appears she has an extra hoop to hop through.

Ellen Goodman (How'd the Boston Globe let her escape the pasture?) writing in today's Washington Post says that due to an arcane law, even dissident voices from countries like Iran have trouble getting published in the USA.

Will Her Voice Ever Be Heard?

Now, it certainly sounds like a silly law. I say "sounds like" because I wouldn't say that it is for sure until I hear the counter-point that Goodman does not, and is under no obligation to, provide - although it wouldn't have hurt the piece and the point as we shall see.

Thing is, we get to this:

Now, if this were a blog-post, writing a graph like that would have a tendency to drain the outrage right out of the rest my post. Happens all the time, in fact. I'm hopping along, happily writing a mess of snark, when I start to anticipate the objections and address them - then it hits and I start seeing some of the other side, a little doubt enters the equation and before you know it the high dudgeon strikes the bottom of the shallow pool.

So maybe it is a silly rule, but I read that graph and think, "Oh, so our rules aren't good enough for her, eh? Can't be bothered to fill out some simple paperwork then? We need a jurist from the Shah's Iran to come lecture us, the USA, on freedom of speech? Pffft...I don't think so..." And there it is...suddenly I'm having trouble taking the rest of the piece seriously.

Of course, I could just turn the blog post into a pointer. If you're actually getting paid for your print, I suppose you soldier on regardless. The cash is worth the credibility drain...I guess.

...one to go. A reminder that there are efforts within the Presbyterian Church to overturn the decision to explore divesting from companies doing business in Israel.

Haaretz: Presbyterians urge reversal of decision to divest from Israel

Is this part of the puzzle? They not only get the cash, they get the electricity, too.

IranPressNews: IRAN TO JOIN UNIFIED ENERGY SYSTEM OF RUSSIA, CIS, BALTIC STATES IN 2006

This James Fallows article is a fascinating look at the options for Iran by way of a wargame held with some very knowledgeable people - David Kay, Ken Pollack, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Sam Gardiner and others - playing various roles. The outcome of their game does not draw a very sanguine picture for a military option in Iran. I offer it as an important data-point.

One option they never seem to discuss is the feasibility of covert, regime-destabilizing action - like that which toppled Mossadeq all those years ago and which many Iranians seem to be open to, now. I suppose the answer is implicit in the finding that too-bold moves against Iran may be reciprocated and thus the options are muted even for bold covert activity. Pollack particularly (not just here, but when I saw him interviewed elsewhere on the subject) seems to feel that the Iranians could be making things much worse for us in Iran, and that so far they have been keeping things fairly stable. Is that right? I have no way of knowing. I know the Iraqis chastised Iran yet again for interfering and causing trouble - but there's interfering and there's interfering. I'm going to avoid being one of those bloggers who makes pat statements about subjects he can't possibly be expert at.

Sadly, The Atlantic requires a subscription to read it all - or even a significant portion - but perhaps a little Googling can come up with somewhere it is posted in full, or perhaps they will make it available at some future point. I've quoted just a touch here.

The Atlantic Online | December 2004 | Will Iran Be Next? by James Fallows

In a more perfect world, I would sorely love to re-play this war-game with the assumption that Iraq had never been invaded - status-quo say three years ago - then see where their conclusions take them. Even better, I'd like to take them back in time and erase the lessons of Iraq. There's a lot of implicit blaming of difficulty on the invasion of Iraq here (I may be inferring more than there is, though.), and I'm not sure the picture would look any better were Saddam still around. In fact, I think it would be a lot worse, with even fewer options available and far fewer lessons learned.

At least Vizzini had the common decency to die quickly. Arafat still haunts.

Maariv: Kadoumi claims US and Israel behind Arafat's death:

If you need a reminder of who Kadoumi (or Kaddoumi, or Kaddumi) is, check here and here. Don't forget who it is Israel has to "negotiate" with, even now. And, of course, Palestinian poll shows significant drop in support of terror...down to 41%. Oh, but the trends are good.

The City of Somerville will not be divesting form Israel any time soon. I was unable to attend the meeting, but accoring to the JCRC, things went well:

Update: Here's a final posting on the web site of the group opposing the measure.

Callimachus says his editors (he works in the MSM) weren't interested in a recent Bush visit to a California military base - wrote it off as a PR stunt.

Blackfive has an email from a guy who was there with the President:

As part of my work, I had to deal with a family who lost their son in Iraq - they were smashed. Very, very difficult people to deal with...and everyone I deal with is difficult - I sell cemetery monuments for a living. Now, even assuming they were a particularly tough case...an entire basketball court full of 170 of them is going to have more than its share of difficulty in it. Well more than its share.

No wonder Presidents age so quickly.

Just ask the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

Jerusalem Post: Exclusive: Nobel judges stand by Arafat:

In the 10 years since, there has rarely been a moment that indicated that Yasser Arafat was ever, in any way, about peace. At every turn, in every way, in public and in private, Arafat was about Arafat - power, money...murder. His "efforts" on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs led them down a path of misery and more misery - and the real slide accelerated the closer he came, culminating in a rapid bleeding out following his return from Tunis with his capos in toe.

I guess Country singers are a different breed from much of the rest of the usual poseur stage rat species (Dixie Chicks not withstanding).

FrontPage Magazine: Leftist Lies about Gitmo by Charlie Daniels:

Oh man, I just got done watching Pat Buchanan sitting in for Joe Scarborough. The segment was on The Passion. It was an entertaining, if ultimately useless, argument, but it was eminently entertaining watching Rabbi Shmuley Boteach scream at Jennifer Giroux, calling her an "ignorant peasant." That was worth the price of admission.

But most worthwhile was my discovery of this lovely creature, Govindini Murty (the picture on that page does not do her justice - far more lovely in full color), who's existence, and the existence of her Liberty Film Festival (oh yeah, her husband is in on it, too, but forget that) show that yes, there is conservative, pro-America, life in Hollywood...and it is gooood.

I dunno what it is tonight. Everything is aggravating me. I'm even aggravated I misspelled "Aggravation" in the title above, but I'm going to leave it, just to annoy myself more. What's even more aggravating is that usually when I have this feeling, like someone put a tack up my butt, it's good for writing. In fact, I need to be a little aggravated to write anything...but today...nothing. I come home after a boring meeting (the trade group I belong to), over an hour's drive each way, to an email box full of news items and pointers and all I can get out of it is a few bare links. I even took a nice one-hour nap. Feh. I'm even annoyed with my family, "Put the rabbits back in the cage, bring this down to the cellar for me...daddy, what are you reading...is that noggin.com...?" I check out the Carnival of the Vanities and see some boob has put up a link in the comments to some other boob's progressive site entry claiming to "debunk the David Project" - whatever the hell that means. I'm bugged I can't even be bugged to fisk it. I have a headache and I'm out of blood-pressure medicine.

And now I'm listening to the "final show" of Boston radio talk-host David Brudnoy. David is in the hospital dying of cancer. His only appearances are a tape-recorded final interview from the bed and it has to be one of the bravest things I've ever heard. He's had a long while to come to terms with his own death, having battled AIDS for years now, and finally Merkel cell carcinoma is doing the final work. People are calling in to the show - various public figures, the Governor, Senator Kennedy - many others and David is supposed to be listening from the bed. The final interview they've been playing with David as he talks about the end is just amazing. He's ready and letting his fans and listeners share it with him. "My head is completely accepting of it. I'm absolutely ready." Inspiring.

And now I feel guilty for putting that tragedy in the middle of a pissy little post about myself. I think I'm going to go watch Johnny English and see if that helps my mood - I doubt it.

Here is the latest on the situation from the JCRC:

In response to the recent raid by Venezuelan police on a Caracas Jewish school. Here is one Venezuelan journalist's response:

El Universal: We Are All Jews by Michael Rowan:

(via Jerusalem Posts)

I am very, very, late in linking to this. Oodles of bloggers are once again putting on a push to raise money for Spirit of America - biggest fund-raisers get cool prizes like...hats (SoA has very low overhead!).

I didn't join any of the teams, but just click the link below, pick someone and donate something if you can. What a great way to help! Not sure what Spirit of America is? All the more reason to click the graphic below and browse around.

Here. (via Rishon Rishon)

Read on.

It reminds me of the parable of the Little Red Hen with updated version (authored by Ronald Reagan!) here.

Michelle Malkin has a number of links, including this to her column featuring a very interesting incident I had known nothing about before: The Turncoats on Niihau Island.

For a take-down of the latest Chomsky other-worldiness claiming Pearl Harbor as justified under current doctrines of "preventive war," don't miss this Frontpage piece: Chomsky on Pearl Harbor

If your one of those people, like me, who absolutely can't stand the revisionist attempts to make us into the moral equivalents of our enemies of those days, do consider reading Downfall : The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank. This is a scholarly (but readable) explanation of the final days of the empire and the reasons for the dropping of the bombs. If you want the answers to all those questions of "Weren't the Japanese about to surrender anyway?" "What were the casualty estimates for invasion?" "What did Truman know and when did he know it?" and much more, give this book a try.

Oh, and for a good book on the character on the character of the enemy we faced, try The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang.

Update: Chuck has a link to a page with info on the fate of the Japanese ships involved in the attack. Payback's a bitch.

Tigerhawk points to this multimedia page at National Geographic.

I love Lee Kaplan's investigative reports. Here he travels to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Conference in San Francisco and reports on the goings-on. Shocking to the uninitiated, bear in mind that your tax dollars are either subsidizing these people and their politics directly, or through the tax-exempt status of their institutions.

I wonder if he went in disguise this time.

FrontPage magazine.com: Scholars For Terror by Lee Kaplan

There are many skills that need to be mastered in the new Iraq - the fine points of democracy, feedom of the press, writing, speaking, broadcasting without a dictator telling you what to create...post-Saddam history and current events...

...add to the list the skill to excavate a mass grave with care and understanding...

CNN.com - Iraqis trained in mass grave recovery:

I just want to know if they make an ergonomic version.

Israel21c: Meet Israel's virtual keyboard that fits in your pocket

IranPressNews (English): Students give Iran's Khatami turbulent reception:

Definitely Not Work Safe. Just keep scrolling.

It certainly is depressing reading the news in the Washington Post around the SNAFU's that comprised Pat Tillman's last mission. Also depressing that now it's all about who to blame - more than lessons learned. It doesn't change a thing to me, and as a Red Sox fan, I have no trouble saying Tillman should have been the selection over the choice that was ultimately made.

They've been trying it in Tennessee. It hasn't been working out too well.

OpinionJournal - HillaryCare in Tennessee - The disaster that might have been for the entire country.

Online polls are, of course, essentially meaningless - but not everyone knows that and there is at least a bit of rhetorical advantage in winning them. Go to this page at the CS Monitor and vote "NO" to the question, "Should US-based churches boycott certain companies doing business with Israel?"

It was almost even just a short time ago but the "yes" votes are pulling away. Get in there and vote - and spread the word.

(Via IsraPundit)

The Homespun Bloggers have released the first installment of Homespun Radio. Click here to listen. If you come in in the middle, don't worry. It's on a loop.

John Hawkins was kind enough to include me on the list of judges for his 3rd annual Warbloggers Awards. The results are fairly predictable. Allow me to save you some search time: the only list Solomonia appears on is the list of judges. I'll keep my own votes in the various categories to myself, but let me say that I gave maximum priority to those who link me...such...a...ho.

The Third Annual Warblogger Awards For 2004 - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

A feel-good story about a scout-troop helping our Jewish soldiers in the field (about 1% of the force, BTW) celebrate the holiday: CNN.com - Scouts share Hanukkah with Jewish soldiers in Iraq.

Ironic, isn't it? A couple thousand years ago the Assyrians were our enemies, now they're our friends. Sorta shows the futility of all that fighting, doesn't it? All we have to do is wait 'em out and it'll all work out in the end...in a few thousand years.

Dean recommends checking out Evan Coyne Maloney's short film, Brainwashing 101 - a film highlighting some of the more egregious examples of campus intolerance in recent times. I second the recommendation. Download it for free from the link above.

No posts today as I was hard at work at some behind the scenes technical stuff. I'll put up a post about that soon.

So the day's not a total loss, let me give you a few quick takes on some of the movies I've seen lately:

SpongeBob SquarePants Movie: We're SpongeBob fans 'round these parts, so taking the four-year-old to this was a no-brainer...pretty much literally. That's OK, though. I'm still not sick of the guy and it had a few good laughs. Good excuse for getting out of the house.

Elf: I really, really like Will Ferrell, so this was a natural rental. That guy can just stand there looking at the screen and I'll laugh. Maybe I was a bit too built up for it then, because I was slightly disappointed. Still, cute movie, and I liked his little love-interest there, Zooey Deschanel. She was perfect. Me wants. Am I too wrapped up in politics? Ed Asner bugs me.

The Incredibles: Another one we saw at the theater. BTW, we saw this at a place called "Chunkey's" where you sit in a reclining car-seat at a real table and order off a full menu with table service. That was interesting. Pretty good, too. Steak tips. Yum. The movie was excellent. No doubt. Very enjoyable and I'd see it again. The only thing that bothered me was that I get the whole thing about letting exceptional people be exceptional, but I couldn't get out of my mind the thought that, "OK, but what about us regular people who are just stuck in these shlubby lives of ours? We're screeeewed aren't we?"

Spider-Man 2: I enjoyed the first one and I enjoyed this one, too, even though it dragged a bit in places and Kirsten Dunst has a smokin' body but a horsey face. Mega-cool Doc Oc effects, and I really enjoyed the scene on the train when Spidey passes out.

The Adventures of Milo & Otis: This is an older film - made in Japan in the 80's. English version has a voice narration by Dudley Moore. It's a terrific kid's movie about a dogy and a kitty and their animal adventures. My kid loved it, but adults will be a bit disturbed appreciating it on a different level. I guess animal protection rules in Japan weren't what they are in the States as it's quite obvious they must have drowned a few cats and dogs in the making. Seriously. Kinda freaky.

Shrek2: Saw it in the theater, just rented it. Good, fun, worthwhile, but I thought the first one was brilliant.

The Day After Tomorrow: I love disaster and other types of "last man on earth" stories. The effects were awesome, but the story was flat stupid. Attention Hollywood action film makers: You don't know crap about politics or science, either. Don't even try, you just fuck up your movies. If I ever meet Dick Cheney I'm gonna tell him, "I LOVED you in The Day After Tomorrow!"

Scooby-Doo: The first one. I wasn't interested enough to sit for more than 15 minutes of it (though I grew up on the cartoon), but my wife watched it and said it was surprisingly good.

The Passion of the Christ: I finally saw it. I said and read pretty much all there was back when the controversy was raging. I think sometimes when a controversy gets going it becomes self-perpetuating with people responding to the responses and on and on. As far as the movie itself went I fast forwarded through some parts - boring. I didn't notice the sort of disclaimer I had understood Gibson to have added about Jesus being the only crucified Jew to live again. Yes, the main bad guy is certainly the head Rabbi, and they wear those prayer-shawl type things, but some of the Rabbi's do step forward in his defense, and I'm not sure, so don't quote me, but I think the only person actually referred to as a "Jew" (we're just presumed to know about all the others I guess) is that fellow who's unfairly seized as a bystander, helps Jesus for awhile, shares his burden and is left to live on after Jesus is crucified. I think there's something poignant and significant in that.

Movie I'm looking forward to: The new version of Walking Tall starring The Rock. I loved the original, and I like that Rock guy. I'm not a wrestling fan, but every time I've seen him interviewed he seems like a real cool guy. Movies that affected me growing up and will have me doing something stupid some day just you wait and see: Walking Tall and Billy Jack.

Nick Kristof finds yet another den of Philo-Americanism, this time in the Ukraine. Last time it was during his jaunt through Iran. These New York Times columnists are a tough audience, though. Last time Kristof was chastising the Administration for tough talk and inflaming Iranian nationalism. Now he's upset the President isn't being more confrontational.

Here I was thinking that being more nuanced and careful about our international relationships - and our relationship with Putin, like it or not, is extremely important - was a desirable thing. It would be inappropriate for the President of the United States to be overtly partisan toward one candidate. Our position should be one in support of the system and the will of the people - something that will naturally, as it sounds to now, put us on the orange side - not one side of the question over the other. Let Powell do the tough talk.

Leave the orange tie in the closet.

Despite its flaws, this is a piece worth reading, though.

The New York Times: Columnist: Let My People Go

The resolution is non-binding, but as both candidates have endorsed a pull-out, so once the government changes it will happen either way - hopefully gradually if it does. It will certainly happen after the January 30th elections.

CNN.com - Ukraine votes for Iraq withdrawal

An update to the post below.

The Telegraph has released a statement:

They also have a news item on the subject.

Via Damian Penny, who also notes:

Washington Jewish Week: Bill finally becomes a law:

(Hat tip: Jerusalem Posts)

...of the Palestinian Authority. Jonathan has a good run-down of the choices. The choices provide the odd opportunity to root for the Holocaust denier to defeat the convicted murderer. Ah for the "good old days" when people were occasionally shot while trying to escape.

But that's over-the-top I suppose. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for the Palestinian Arabs to show where they're coming from by giving victory to the...Holocaust...denier (Mazen). OK, so the choices aren't great, but you have to start somewhere. With the religious terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad talking about boycotting the election, that should dampen the effect of the murderer constituency - not that they view themselves that way, necessarily. I've seen Marwan Barghouti referred to on a Libyan blog as "the Palestinian Nelson Mandela" - yikes. Well, I'm not sure Nelson Mandela was even the South African Nelson Mandela. These comparisons get thrown around so hap-hazardly.

There was an interesting article in this week's Jewish Advocate newspaper (not available online) on the issue (previous posts here, here and here). I thought I'd pull out a few tidbits.

The title is Somerville inundated by e-mails, letters on divestment. According to the article: "Hundreds of e-mails and letters have been received. The pace picked up as the Dec. 1 deadline for submission of written testimony on the resolution approached...

As of Tuesday morning, Nov. 30, when The Advocate reviewed copies of letters which are part of the public record, Long had received about 92 pieces of correspondence, mostly in the form of e-mails. [I'd have thought there would be more, actually. - Sol] Eight arrived early Tuesday morning and weren't part of this tally, which was 22 in support of the resolution and 70 opposed..."

The article then describes the contents of several of the correspondences from Jewish authors. One Somerville resident who opposes the divestment resolution asks rhetorically, "if they [the Aldermen] envisioned future elections for office in Somerville being decided on the foreign policy views of candidates."

An important note, as Charles Jacobs noted in an off-hand remark at the Columbia Unbecoming screening, don't assume that it's just Muslims or some purely anti-Semitic group behind these efforts. Some of the most vocal speakers at the hearing on the issue previously, and some of its strongest backers are Jews. In fact, in a previous issue of The Advocate, there was an angry letter from one such backer taking the paper to task for its one-sided coverage of the event. He described himself as a former IDF tanker and compared The Advocate's coverage to Pravda (at least he knows that's a bad thing). I'd reproduce the letter but I don't have that issue in front of me. [Update: I found a longer piece by the same author here, at the divestment project's home page - bleh.]

"In a letter supporting divestment, Marilyn Alwan of Lexington wrote: 'As a Jew, I am keenly aware of the injustices perpetrated on my people throughout history. I am ashamed of the actions of the Israelu government carried out in my name.'

Many recent e-mails to the clerk's office are forwarded from World View News Service, whose editor, Maria Hussain, wrote a lengthy and provocative article entitled, 'Night of Power for Somerville.' [See my first post on the issue, here, for the...remarkable...article.]

A copy of the letter Massachusetts Congressman Capuano sent to the Board is reproduced in the article, and as an exemplar of tone and logic for an effort like this I reproduce it here:

I know some of you will read that "sharing of the blame" business and cringe, but remember, this is not a time for strict "Pro-Israel Advocacy," this is a time for defeating this initiative - which in itself is pro-Israel advocacy.

As I was working on this post, a new update came in from the JCRC which I reproduce in full:

...apparently, he did it on principle. Court opinion or not, there is no cleansing this man.

CNN.com - British MP wins Saddam libel case

Update: It is less clear, as I read a bit more, that it has been proven that Galloway didn't take the cash - merely that The Telegraph couldn't prove he did - in other words, they couldn't (or didn't try to) prove that the documents were true - and in a country with weaker free-speech laws and broader libel laws...Galloway won the case. It will be interesting to read more on this.

Shocking, I know.

Mohammad Al Asi will be giving a talk (apparently critical, since he has talked about prioritizing the "liberation" of Mecca) on the regime in Saudi Arabia this Saturday night.

Who is Mohammad Al Asi? He is billed as: "Research Fellow of the Institute for Contemporary Islamic Thought, Contributor to Crescent Magazine, Elected Imam of the Islamic Center in Washington, DC and Currently completing the first English commentary of the Quran"

Here's what the ADL has to say about Al Asi:

What is the Institute for Contemporary Islamic Thought?

Just another radical preacher coming to a campus near you.

This Pipes article on Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi gives me a chance to re-link my entry on the David Project documentary describing real academic intimidation, 'Columbia Unbecoming' - Report.

FrontPage magazine.com :: Columbia University's Hysterical Professor by Daniel Pipes

The City of Berkeley, California is holding up a rally permit - hard to believe, I know. This is Berkeley, after all - they go around naked there. Oh, but see, it's for a "Rally Against Global Terrorism" and will include the wreckage of Jerusalem Bus #19. That means, well...I'll let one of the organizers tell it...

FrontPage magazine.com: Freedom of Speech Denied in Berkeley by Suzanne DeWitt

Honey, if you can't have an anti-terror rally here in the USA because some groups might get angry and the State can't guarantee your safety...the terrorists have already won.

Check out what you have to go through just to get your event even considered (well, not everyone has to go through this, of course):

Some people still call the foes of an even like this, "Liberals."

Honest Reporting has the final word on the horrible human rights abuse perpetrated by Israeli stormtroopers.

Oh, the humanity!

You can bear witness to this atrocity by viewing the video here. (You may need to choose a location, then click again to view the video.) WITNESS! ...a man play his violin. SEE! ...a guy thumb through his paperwork. BOGGLE! ...as another soldier chats on his cell-phone. MARVEL! ...at no one take much notice of this oozing horror.

And, as it turns out, the soldiers merely asked the man to open the case. He began playing on his own, and when they were done checking him out they told him to stop. According to IMRA:

As Honest Reporting notes (in its item on the work of Washington Post reporter, Molly Moore) :

I recommend watching the video and watching the buffoon of a "Human Rights" activist issue the boiler-plate condemnation of the event in reaction to the video. Tempest, meet tea pot. Of course, what this does is make it even less likely that, were there a real abuse at a checkpoint, it would be taken seriously.

Update: Don't miss this post at LGF.