The Spectator (UK) on the Gaza Crisis

From a leader entitled The Right of Self Defence:

Those who criticise Israel’s actions should consider what Britain would have done if Sinn Fein had come to power in the Irish Republic during the Troubles and rockets had been regularly fired across the border. It is hard to imagine Her Majesty’s Government sitting idly by. Equally, it is hard to imagine that any Israeli government would have acted differently from the way this Kadima-led coalition has. Israeli elections are indeed imminent. But simply to interpret the military response as a cynical electoral ploy to shore up Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, and Ehud Barak, its defence minister, is to see the conflict through lazy Western eyes: from its foundation Israel has believed, correctly, that its very survival is at stake. Its leaders have acted accordingly, often in a fashion that baffles those fortunate enough not to live in nations encircled by foes that call for their extinction.

Hamas is radically different from the old PLO. First, it is Islamist, and second, it is largely dependent on Iran for funding and weapons. (The co-operation between Sunni Hamas and Shiite Iran should give pause to those who dismiss all reports of co-operation between terrorist groups and states across Islam’s confessional divide.) Moderate Arab states feel deep unease about Hamas, as they do about Hezbollah, another Iranian terror proxy force. It is indicative of their concerns that they are soft-pedalling their criticism of Israel — the Arab League meeting has been postponed for four days — as they did in 2006 when it launched a major assault against Hezbollah.

President-elect Obama would be well served to concentrate on the Iranian aspect of the problem, as Dennis Ross, Middle East peace envoy under President Bush Sr and Bill Clinton, and Martin Indyk, an ambassador to Israel under Clinton, are urging him to do. Attempts at direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians will be futile as long as the rejectionists of Hamas remain dominant in Gaza, pawns in Tehran’s chess game. The Camp David talks that came so close to securing a Middle East settlement at the tail end of the Clinton presidency mean that the outline of an eventual Middle East peace deal is already fairly clear. But no progress can be made until Hamas ceases firing rockets into Israel.

In the meantime, the incoming Obama administration should continue with the Bush administration’s efforts to improve governance in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. It was, after all, the rank corruption of the PA that allowed Hamas to make its electoral breakthrough in the 2006 elections.

This has been a bleak and bloody week in the history of the Middle East, a horrible throwback to the slaughter of the Six Day War and the conflict of 1973. But nothing should detract from the fact that Israel, like every other sovereign state, has the inalienable right to defend its citizens and territory against attack. No progress can be made until the finger-waggers of the West acknowledge that right.

Is The New York Times Going Bust?

From Michael Hirschorn's article in The Atlantic Monthly (ht Huffington Post/Newser):

Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400million in debt. With more than $1billion in debt already on the books, only $46million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good.

“As part of our analysis of our uses of cash, we are evaluating future financing arrangements,” the Times Company announced blandly in October, referring to the crunch it will face in May. “Based on the conversations we have had with lenders, we expect that we will be able to manage our debt and credit obligations as they mature.” This prompted Henry Blodget, whose Web site, Silicon Alley Insider, has offered the smartest ongoing analysis of the company’s travails, to write: “‘We expect that we will be able to manage’? Translation: There’s a possibility that we won’t be able to manage.”

The paper’s credit crisis comes against a backdrop of ongoing and accelerating drops in circulation, massive cutbacks in advertising revenue, and the worst economic climate in almost 80 years. As of December, its stock had fallen so far that the entire company could theoretically be had for about $1 billion. The former Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal often said he couldn’t imagine a world without The Times. Perhaps we should start.

Ophir Falk on the Gaza Crisis

From YNet:

Many Western leaders and columnists have embraced the obtuse notion that terrorism cannot be beaten by force and must be appeased or addressed by other means. Yet nothing can be further from the truth.

Israel's counter-terrorism measures were most effective when it applied significant force against terrorist strongholds. The 2002 operation Defensive Shield is a good example. Examples from abroad include the elimination of the Assassins in the 11th century, the Arab Revolt of '36-'39, the Red Brigades, The Shining Path, The Bader Meinhoff gang and others prove that force is the best method for victory.

More recent cases are the Russians’ relative success against Chechen rebels and Turkey's success against the PKK, where the wholesale elimination of the terrorists' leadership usually leading to terror's demise.

Years ago Benjamin Netanyahu noted in brief that the "… the guiding policy should be based on an disproportional response to terrorism. For example, in 1999, after Hizbullah launched Katyusha rockets on northern Israel, we responded with a massive bombing of key infrastructure in Lebanon, causing millions of dollars in damage. The result was a long and quiet period for northern Israel. The key in deterrence and prevention is that the response or perceived response to a terrorist attack will be disproportional to the attack itself."

Robert Spencer on the Gaza Crisis

From JihadWatch:

Many analysts continue to view Hamas (which name is an Arabic acronym for the “Islamic Resistance Movement”) as a nationalist group that will ultimately be pacified once a Palestinian state is set up. And to be sure, the Hamas Charter of August 1988 addresses nationalism, but not quite in those terms. It declares: “nothing is loftier or deeper in nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims.” When will this Jihad end? The Hamas Charter quotes Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood: “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors.”

In saying that “Islam” will eliminate Israel, Hamas, which identifies itself in the Charter as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine chapter, echoes another Muslim Brotherhood document -- one in which the organization vows to work in America toward “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion” -- that is, Islam -- “is made victorious over all other religions.” That is a political statement, not solely a religious one: it is a declaration of intent to bring Islamic law, Sharia, to America, and enforce here its codified discrimination against women and non-Muslims, and its denial of the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience.

Yet at the same time, it is a religious statement, like those in the Hamas Charter. The fact that those who are waging jihad warfare against Israel and the United States believe that they are carrying out divine commands ensures that neither jihad will end with changes in economic conditions, or with a negotiated settlement. While Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has indicated a willingness to enter into a long-term truce with Israel, he also told Iranian supremo Ali Khamenei in May 2008 that “the Palestinian nation will continue its resistance despite all pressures and will not under any circumstances stop its jihad.”

Was Meshaal, then, simply lying when he declared his openness to a truce? Not at all -- but his call must be understood in light of his own frame of reference, not a Western one to which he does not subscribe. In the West, nations enter into truces with one another because they are weary of war and value peace. No such concept of truce exists in the Islamic law that Hamas and Meshaal accept as their supreme guide. In traditional and authoritative Islamic law, a Muslim force may agree to a truce with a non-Muslim enemy only if the Muslims reasonably expect that their opponents are prepared to convert to Islam, or if the Muslims are weak and need time to gather their strength to fight again more effectively. It is the latter concept to which Hamas has been having recourse in its short-term truces with Israel: it uses the cessation of hostilities as an opportunity to get back on its feet, and then the rockets start once again raining down upon Israel.

The EU and the U.N., and all those calling upon Israel to enter into another truce, should take careful note of that fact. Hamas has never hidden its intention to destroy Israel. Israel should not be impeded in its necessary struggle to destroy Hamas.

Bosnians Protest Against Israel

Another Reuters report:

SARAJEVO, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims protested in front of the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo on Thursday to call on Washington to stop Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Didn't Israel support Bosnia during the Yugoslav war...even taking in a group of Bosnian refugees in 1993? Maybe US policy in the former Yugoslavia needs to be re-examined as well. Calling Leon Panetta!

Afghans Volunteer to Fight Israel

Not surprising, but how come the US and NATO permit recruiting to fight against an ally--much less calls for "Death to America"? Maybe someone could look into the Afghan operation, asap...perhaps Leon Panetta's first task? From Reuters:

KABUL, Jan 8 (Reuters) - More than a thousand Afghans signed up on Thursday to say they wanted to go and fight Israel in the Gaza Strip, many of them blaming the United States which has some 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, for supporting the Jewish state.

Accusations by Taliban militants and some Muslim clerics that Israel and its main ally, the United States, aim to destroy Islam have a strong impact on public opinion in Afghanistan, where Washington plans to almost double its troop numbers this year.

Scores of young men crowded into the library of Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque, lined with banners reading "Death to Israel" and "Death to America", to sign up to fight Israel.

Ann Coulter v NBC

From AnnCoulter.com:

After NBC canceled me "for life" on Monday -- until seven or eight hours later when the ban was splashed across the top of The Drudge Report, forcing a red-faced NBC to withdraw the ban -- an NBC insider told The Drudge Report: "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."

In point of fact, I'm not particularly critical of Obama in my new book. I'm critical of the media for behaving like a protection racket for Obama rather than the constitutionally protected guardians of our liberty that they claim to be. So I think what the NBC insider meant to say is that NBC is not interested in anyone so highly critical of NBC right now. It's such a downer, it's just not the time, and it's not what their audience wants right now, either.

In fact, I think my book is the downer America has been waiting for!

Bring Back the Hospital Laundry!

Doctors and Nurses are killing patients with their dirty clothing, says Betsy McCaughey, also in today's Wall Street Journal:

Dirty scrubs spread bacteria to patients in the hospital and allow hospital superbugs to escape into public places such as restaurants. Some hospitals now prohibit wearing scrubs outside the building, partly in response to the rapid increase in an infection called "C. diff." A national hospital survey released last November warns that Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections are sickening nearly half a million people a year in the U.S., more than six times previous estimates.

The problem is that some medical personnel wear the same unlaundered uniforms to work day after day. They start their shift already carrying germs such as C.diff, drug-resistant enterococcus or staphylococcus. Doctors' lab coats are probably the dirtiest. At the University of Maryland, 65% of medical personnel confess they change their lab coat less than once a week, though they know it's contaminated. Fifteen percent admit they change it less than once a month. Superbugs such as staph can live on these polyester coats for up to 56 days.

Do unclean uniforms endanger patients? Absolutely. Health-care workers habitually touch their own uniforms. Studies confirm that the more bacteria found on surfaces touched often by doctors and nurses, the higher the risk that these bacteria will be carried to the patient and cause infection.

Until about 20 years ago, nearly all hospitals laundered scrubs for their staff. A few hospitals are returning to that policy. St. Mary's Health Center in St. Louis, Mo., reduced infections after cesarean births by more than 50% by giving all caregivers hospital-laundered scrubs, as well as requiring them to wear two layers of gloves. Monroe Hospital in Bloomington, Ind., which has a near-zero rate of hospital-acquired infections, provides laundered scrubs for all staff and prohibits them from wearing scrubs outside the building. Stamford Hospital in Connecticut recently banned wearing scrubs outside the hospital.

Rabbi Marvin Hier on the Gaza Crisis

From today's Wall Street Journal:

There have been hundreds of articles and reports written from the Erez border crossing falsely accusing Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (In fact, over 520 truck loads of humanitarian aid have been delivered through Israeli crossings since the beginning of the Israeli counterattack.) But how many news articles, NGO reports and special U.N. commissions have investigated Hamas's policy of deliberately placing rocket launchers near schools, mosques and homes in order to use innocent Palestinians as human shields?

Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It's because Israel's first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.

And then there are the clarion calls for a cease-fire. These words, which come so easily, have proven to be a recipe for disaster. Hamas uses the cease-fire as a time-out to rearm and smuggle even more deadly weapons so the next time, instead of hitting Sderot and Ashkelon, they can target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The pattern is always the same. Following a cease-fire brought on by international pressure, there will be a call for a massive infusion of funds to help Palestinians recover from the devastation of the Israeli attack. The world will respond eagerly, handing over hundreds of millions of dollars. To whom does this money go? To Hamas, the same terrorist group that brought disaster to the Palestinians in the first place.

The world seems to have forgotten that at the end of World War II, President Harry Truman initiated the Marshall Plan, investing vast sums to rebuild Germany. But he did so only with the clear understanding that the money would build a new kind of Germany -- not a Fourth Reich that would continue the policies of Adolf Hitler. Yet that is precisely what the world will be doing if we once again entrust funds to Hamas terrorists and their Iranian puppet masters.

An Israeli Soldier's Mother on the Gaza Crisis

From A Soldier's Mother (ht LGF):

It is so horrible, sometimes you forget to look behind the picture. It's so simple, really. A child should be able to go to school and be safe. I last spoke to my son days ago and in the background I could hear the sound of explosions. Through the phone, dozens of kilometers away from me, and quite a distance from Elie, I could hear another unit firing. Can you imagine how loud that would be up close?

Yesterday, mortars were fired FROM the school In Jebalya. This was a direct and intentional attack on Israel, on Israel's soldiers and population. Mortars are explosions. They are loud. You can't pretend you didn't hear them. Many months ago, I went to a ceremony on a base where Elie had completed his basic training. Part of the ceremony included Elie's group showing their parents what they had learned. After the awards and the talking, some of the soldiers ran to the armored personnel vehicles, while others, including Elie sat on the ground and watched. An officer came near me, as I stood watching with my youngest daughter. He told me to sit down with the girl "on your lap." So, we sat down, as the soldiers were doing. As another officer was explaining to the crowd about the types of explosives that would be fired, where they would be targeting (the hill a few kilometers in the distance), etc. I saw the soldiers stick their fingers in their ears.

I thought to myself - they've been doing this - they know. So I told my daughter to do the same...quickly. She did, and so did I. Except - then I couldn't hear the explanation and so I uncovered my ears. Now, I've lived in Israel more than 15 years, but there is still sometimes a delay factor in my Hebrew comprehension. Now they are going to fire...took me too long and so, I heard and felt the BOOM as the cannons fired.

Everyone in that building yesterday KNEW that the school was being used as a launching ground...and yet, apparently not one of those thought it would be a smart thing to leave. That seems strange to me, unnatural. I was once in Jerusalem, walking with by two daughters when something "exploded" ahead of me. Everyone around me stopped, as I did. It was a bus hitting something that went flying in the air and crashed loudly into something else. People began to move and yet I stood there, unsure what to do. It should be both human instinct and parental instinct to move away from danger.

And the people who now mourn the "innocents" who died in yesterday's attack on the United Nations school don't question why people remained in the building from which these weapons were fired. They don't question that this defies human instinct and certainly what should have been every parent's first reaction. The people in the school died for three simple reasons:

1. Palestinians decided to use the United Nations school as a launching base to attack innocent civilians. This wasn't the first time they had used the school. Months ago, Israel filed a formal complaint to the United Nations. Clearly, nothing was done to stop this abuse and so we come to reason # 2.

2. The United Nations did not stop the Palestinians from using their area. One might argue that they could not stop them - and the answer, the simple answer was that they should then have made it clear, publicly, that they could not offer a place of refuge in a firing range. They should not have allowed families to take refuge in such a place. And that brings me to # 3.

3. The families and parents. I heard a father mourning the death of his son. He blames the Israeli government, and I blame him. "Are you insane?" I want to ask him. "How could you allow your son to be near mortars being fired? What did you think Israel was going to do?" Why didn't you take your son? Why didn't you behave responsibly? It was YOUR job to protect him; to love him enough to keep him safe and it doesn't take a genious to figure out leaving your son in a building from which mortars are being fired in the middle of a war is negligent, stupid, insane, and so so wrong. How could Israel have known that there were people in the building? All they could know is that mortars were being fired from that location. My son is stationed far from the cities. Why? Because if he is a target, we don't want civilians nearby. We do not hide in hospitals, in schools, in homes. Why, why do the Palestinians? And if they do, why, why does the world blame Israel?

People will ask how it is that I don't blame Israel and the answer is simple. Fire came from that building. Call it what you want - a school, a refuge, a mosque, a home...if you shoot at an enemy...common sense would say the enemy will shoot back. Do it from inside a mosque, and the mosque becomes a target. Do it from inside a school, and the school becomes a target. Do it from behind your citizens and families, and you show the true nature of your society, your culture, your cause...

...And what they forget to tell you - is the people who allowed these many pictures to happen, the ones who posed these children with guns, painted their hands with "blood" and strapped "explosive belts" to their bodies, the ones who raise them to believe death should be attained for the glory of God and the more Jews and heathens and infidels you take with you, the higher your place in Heaven - they are the ones responsible for the horror that happened yesterday because they are the ones who put hundreds of people into a place that should have been a sanctuary and then they turned it into a launching ground.

Atrocity Propaganda in the Gaza Crisis

Just a thought from a PhD in Film/TV. What I've seen as coverage of the Gaza crisis has pretty much resembled the "atrocity propaganda" from World War I--the type of thing the British put out about Germans killing Belgian nuns. After the war, it became clear that these stories were exaggerations, if not outright lies. The skepticism about that sort of thing led to doubts about reports of mass killings of Jews and other civilians by Nazis in WWII, and may have contributed to the ability of Hitler to get away with much of his "Final Solution."

What has been noticeable in the footage of wounded children and bombed schools in Gaza has been the complete lack of any reporting on Hamas's war aims, political aims, or larger goals--as well as a studied indifference to Hamas' tactics in Gaza prior to the Israeli assault.

IMHO, this is not accidental. Any discussion of Hamas' history, ideology, or record of savage violence--a literal "reign of terror"--would reduce sympathy for the Gaza regime. So, the media must concentrate on civilian casualties to whip up anti-Israel hatred through atrocity propaganda...in order to help Hamas. As Marxists used to say, reporters like Julian Manyon of ITN News (whose reports from Gaza have appeared on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer in the USA) are "objectively" working for Hamas, although they may subjectively think of themselves as unbiased.

Why is this the media focus? Not for ratings or to sell newspapers. Its purpose is to defeat Israel in the court of public opinion and force the Big Powers to help Hamas.

That is, the editorial rationale behind much coverage of Gaza that I have seen is obvious: not to report the war in Gaza, but to demonize Israel.

It is working, which is why there have been attacks on Jews in Europe and Canada. In this sense, Western media outlets such as the BBC and most American networks bear a responsibility for stoking Jew-hatred. Were they to actually report the war aims, strategy and tactics of Hamas, they would be forced by logic and self-interest to adopt an anti-Hamas stance...

From the Council on Foreign Relations website:

What does Hamas believe and what are its goals?

Hamas combines Palestinian nationalism with Islamic fundamentalism. Its founding charter commits the group to the destruction of Israel, the replacement of the PA with an Islamist state on the West Bank and Gaza, and to raising "the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." Its leaders have called suicide attacks the "F-16" of the Palestinian people. Hamas believes "peace talks will do no good," said the Hamas leader Abd al-Aziz Rantisi in April 2004. "We do not believe we can live with the enemy."

Has Sarkozy Done It Again?

From Al Jazeera:

Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, has said that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have accepted a Franco-Egyptian truce plan for Gaza.

A statement from Sarkozy's office on Wednesday said: "The president is delighted by the acceptance by Israel and the Palestinian Authority of the Franco-Egyptian plan presented last night in Sharm el-Sheikh by [Egyptian] president [Hosni]
Mubarak."

"The head of state [Sarkozy] calls for this plan to be put in place as quickly as possible in order to halt the suffering of the population."

Benjamin Netanyahu on the Gaza Crisis

From today's Wall Street Journal:

In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties. But Hamas deliberately attacks Israeli civilians and deliberately hides behind Palestinian civilians -- a double war crime. Responsible governments do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties, but they do not grant immunity to terrorists who use civilians as human shields.

The international community may occasionally condemn Hamas for putting Palestinian civilians in harm's way, but if it ultimately holds Israel responsible for the casualties that ensue, then Hamas and other terror organizations will employ this abominable tactic again and again.

The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza? Does it demand an equal number of casualties on both sides? Using that logic, one would conclude that the United States employed disproportionate force against the Germans because 20 times as many Germans as Americans died in World War II.

In that same war, Britain responded to the firing of thousands of rockets on its population with the wholesale bombing of German cities. Israel's measured response to rocket fire on its cities has come in the form of surgical strikes. To further root out Hamas terrorists in a way that minimizes Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel's army is now engaged in a ground operation that places its soldiers in great peril. Carpet-bombing of Palestinian cities is not an option that any Israeli leader will entertain.

The goal of this mission should be clear: To end the current round of missile attacks and to remove the threat of such attacks in the future. The only cease-fire or diplomatic initiative that should be accepted is one that achieves this dual objective.

If our enemies assumed that the Israeli public would be divided on the eve of an election, they were wrong. When it comes to exercising our most basic right of self-defense, there is no opposition and no coalition. We stand united against Hamas because we know that only by defeating Hamas can we provide security for our people and hope for a future peace.

We fight to defend ourselves, but in so doing we are also fighting a fanatical ideology that seeks to reverse the course of history and throw the civilized world back into a new dark age. The struggle between militant Islam and modernity -- whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza -- will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose.

Senate Should Seat Burris, Not Franken

Roland Burris has law and precedent on his side, Franken does not. If Harry Reid weren't so offended at the B.O. of the American people, he'd understand that means the Senate should seat Burris, asap, and put this scandal to rest. Blagojevich called the Democratic leadership's bluff--they didn't have the guts to impeach him, so he did what he legally was able to do...and appointed a qualified Senator from Illinois. The system worked...time to move on in Illinois.

in Minnesota, the law is equally clear--Franken may not be certified so long as Norm Coleman's challenge stands. Until this is settled, no one should be seated. That's not just my opinion, it's state law. And I believe folks like Franken used to say things like: "No man is above the law."

Shmuley Boteach on the Gaza Crisis

From the Jerusalem Post:

One of my friends in the media was talking to me about how Israel is just as bad as Hamas - just as culpable as the terrorists. Rather than engage in a useless debate, I employed a variation on JFK's argument in the famous Ich bin ein Berliner speech of June 1963. OK, they're the same, I said. So I suppose given the choice of living under Israeli or Hamas control, you would just flip a coin? No, he said, he would never live under Hamas, under any circumstances whatsoever.

So much for the two sides being equal.

Which is why Israel's one million Arab citizens did not elect to live under the control of either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, even though they had every opportunity of voting with their feet and leaving Israeli governance for Palestinian governance once those two regimes were established. In Israel they may have their complaints, but they can protest against the government, petition the High Court and enjoy every freedom. Under Palestinian control they face summary execution for merely being accused of collaborating, as we are seeing in the current conflict in Gaza, without so much as even a makeshift hearing.

And this argument is what gives the lie to all those who claim that their opposition to Israel is motivated by their concern for the Palestinians. If they really cared, they would never want a radical, hate-filled organization which teaches young Palestinians that their highest calling in life is to blow themselves up while committing murder. They would want real peace and prosperity for the Palestinians. For that matter, whoever claims to care about the Arabs throughout the Middle East should protest against them having to live under the House of Saud, Bashir Assad, Hizbullah and other assorted Arab governments which are the great enemies of Arab human rights, press freedoms and political liberty.

Or maybe they really don't care all that much about the Palestinians and just have an irrational dislike of Israel.

Bradley Burson on the Gaza Crisis

From Haaretz;

Analogy Two: A man comes into your home. He has a gun he made himself. He points it at your family. He fires, but misses. The gun has little accuracy. He fires repeatedly, missing again and again.

You have a much better gun, made in a real factory. It is in the drawer in the bedroom.

Demonstrators in London and San Francisco - who are distant relatives of the gunman - stage a protest, calling you a murderer and demanding that you keep the well-made gun in the drawer because it would be a disproportionate response.

The man with the homemade gun, it turns out, is a religious fanatic who lives across the street. You were once his landlord. There is much bad blood between you.

He races back across the street. He has a larger weapon that he smuggled in through his basement. He shoots from behind his younger son. He wounds your daughter. You take out a rifle. You aim for him and hit the son, killing the boy.

The demonstrators are now calling you a Nazi and chant "Slaughter the Landlord!"

[In his defense, the neighbor explains that you have kept him and his family locked in the house, and have at times, failed to pay his water, gas and electric bills, causing them to be turned off.

This is some years after the neighbor send out his older son, nicely dressed, to knock on your door. Your older daughter opens the door. He greet her politely, and presses the detonator on a homemade bomb.

Natan Sharansky on the Gaza Crisis

From today's Wall Street Journal:

How does the West respond to the obvious exploitation of Palestinian refugees? Soon after my meeting with Mr. Abbas's chief of staff, I met with the ambassador of one of the West's most enlightened countries. I asked: Why are the Palestinians not willing to help their own refugees? "I can understand them," he answered. "After all, they don't want the refugee problem to be taken off the agenda."

This reflexive "understanding" for the Palestinian leaders' abuse of their own people is the heart of the problem. For decades, the international community has actively assisted in building the terrorists' unique system of control -- over where Palestinians live and in what conditions, and over what they think -- by allowing terrorists to turn the refugee camps into the center of the Palestinian war machine. Instead of working to relieve the refugees' misery, the United Nations has dedicated an entire agency, UNRWA, to perpetuating it. For the rest of the world's refugees, the U.N. works tirelessly to improve their conditions, to relocate them, and to help them rebuild their lives as quickly as possible. With the Palestinians, the U.N. does exactly the opposite, granting refugee status to the great-grandchildren of people displaced in 1948, doing nothing to dismantle the camps, and acting as facilitators for the terrorists' goal of grinding an entire civilian population under their thumb. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World.

It is not only the refugee camps that the West has helped sustain. For years, Hamas in Gaza -- like Hezbollah in Lebanon, and like the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat -- has been amassing huge stockpiles of weaponry, most of it under the noses of Western observers who are meant to prevent the import of such weapons. It's as if we are telling the terrorists: Go on, build your armies, prepare for war. We understand.

The same can be said about the use of children as human shields. Where was the West when Palestinian leaders were actively transforming their children's classrooms into indoctrination centers for martyrdom?

And so, invariably, the script is played out: Hamas fires its missiles, Israel responds with military force in Gaza, children are killed, their pictures are played countless times on televisions in the West, articles are published saying both sides are evil, and Israel is pressured to stop.

Whether this war will bring about lasting change, or just provide another breather before the next battle, depends to a very large degree on the Free World. A successful Israeli campaign -- in which Hamas is eliminated as the controlling force in Gaza -- will bring an unprecedented opportunity for Western leaders to change the rules of the game when it comes to Palestinian civilians. It's time for the West to recognize the human rights of Palestinians -- not only when they are suffering in war.

Panetta to Head CIA

According to the Huffington Post (via MSNBC). Not a bad idea, he had a good reputation in the Clinton years. Maybe Panetta could be the new broom that sweeps clean...

Claiborne Pell, 90

I was sad to hear that Senator Pell died while I was on vacation. He was a literal "good guy" who gave an unknown 25-year old novice an interview for a project that eventually became my documentary feature film Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? From John Mulligan's obituary in the Providence Journal:

He was a onetime Foreign Service officer whose lifelong goal, the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became a disappointment once he attained it. But as a dogged generalist who was happy to till a legislative field for years be fore it bore fruit, Pell scored lasting achievements. Cases in point were his campaigns against drunk driving, and for federally subsidized railroads.

He was a man who had a national college scholarship -- the Pell grants -- and a local bridge -- the Pell Bridge spanning Jamestown and Newport -- named for him, plus honorary degrees and international decorations running to the dozens. But Pell never outgrew a devotion to his late father that went beyond the filial.

The gaunt son wore the stout father's belt -- wrapping it around his waist several times to keep it properly cinched -- and decked his Capitol office with such mementoes as the sepia-toned photo of Navy Secretary Franklin D. Rosevelt, New York Gov. Al Smith and New York Democratic Chairman Herbert C. Pell.

The only child of Herbert Claiborne and Matilda (Bigelow) Pell, Jr., Claiborne deBorda Pell was born on Nov. 22, 1918, into a family whose forbears included fighters on both sides of the American Revolution, five members of Congress and a vice president (George M. Dallas, who served under President James K. Polk from 1845 to 1849).

Pell's father represented Manhattan's silk stocking district in the House from 1918-20. As President, Roosevelt appointed him minister to Portugal and Hungary.

His father's work gave Pell a front-row seat on history and shaped his ambitions. They were on hand, for example, to hear London applaud Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. The future senator drew particular inspiration from Herbert Pell's little-noted efforts on behalf of Jews in flight from pre-war Nazi Germany. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Herbert Pell was instrumental in the establishment of both the Sosua colony for Jewish Refugees in the Dominican Republic, and a 1944 UN Resolution asking that crimes against stateless persons or any individuals because of their race or religion be included as a war crime, since such acts are against the "laws of humanity." (USHMM 1994, 33)]

The family summered often in Newport, moving there permanently when Claiborne was nine. He received his early education at St. George's School there and studied at Princeton during what he later called ``the last of the F. Scott Fitzgerald days.''

Young Pell ran cross country, played on a rugby team that won the Intercollegiate Championship and graduated cum laude in 1940. He later took a masters degree in fine arts at Columbia.

After graduation, Pell worked as a roustabout in the Oklahoma oil wells. Then he made his first sally into foreign affairs as a private secretary at the American Legation in Portugal. After the war broke out, Pell drove trucks in the effort to carry emergency supplies to prisoners of war in Germany. He was arrested several times by the Nazi government.

Four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pell enlisted in the Coast Guard as a ship's cook. He saw duty in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean before he contracted undulant fever and was sent back to the Newport Naval Hospital. There he met his future wife, Nuala O'Donnell, a fellow Newporter whose great-grandfather had founded the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.

Pell played bit parts in the opening scenes of the Cold War, watching the tanks of Soviet occupation roll into Czechoslovakia and clerking for the creators of the United Nations in San Francisco. As a senator, Pell could always produce a well-thumbed blue copy of the U.N. charter from his jacket pocket. Pell's tour in the Foreign Service included assignments to the consulate in Genoa, Italy and the State Department's Baltic Bureau.

In 1951, the Pells built a shingled ranch house, largely of Pell's design, overlooking Rhode Island Sound on Ledge Road, near Bailey's Beach in Newport. Pell spent much of the 1950s in investment banking but kept active in politics.

When he jumped into the free-for-all to succeed retiring Sen. Theodore F. Green in 1960, no less an authority than Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy called Pell the least electable man in America. Political Rhode Island tended to dismiss Pell's candicacy as a sideshow to the blood match between two hard Irish pols - former Governors Dennis J. Roberts and J. Howard McGrath - both past their prime and with a whiff of scandal about them.

The newcomer unleashed on them the first modern political campaign the state had seen, pouring his own money into television, polls and professional managers of the Democratic primary campaign. And Pell set rules for himself that became his hallmarks on and off the campaign trial:

Don't attack the other fellow. Keep a sense of humor. Do the unexpected.

When the opposition cried ``carpetbagger,'' Pell fired back with full-page newspaper ads featuring his grand-uncle Duncan Pell, Rhode Island lieutenant governor in 1865.

When one foe called him ``a creampuff,'' Pell trumpeted the endorsement of the bakers union.

When somebody sneered that little Claiborne had been raised by a nanny, Pell trotted out a very nice old lady who made a very nice impression on voters.

Pell's appeal may have been less mysterious than it appeared, based as it was on the simple tool with which Pell disarmed opponents for decades: a self-deprecating brand of honesty.

The late U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee, a failed Pell challenger who became his Senate colleague for two decades, once said, "It's very fundamental in politics to be what you are. 'To thine own self be true.' Claiborne has always been very straightforward in that regard.''

Fareed Zakaria on Samuel Huntington

From today's Washington Post:

Living through change, people have often stuck with their oldest and
most durable source of security: religion. That was the most important
message of "The Clash of Civilizations." While others were celebrating the
fall of communism and the rise of globalization, Huntington saw that with
ideology disappearing as a source of human identity, religion was returning
to the fore.

My own relationship with "The Clash of Civilizations" is complicated.
When I was a graduate student, I was asked by Huntington to comment on a
draft of the essay. A few months later, shortly after becoming managing
editor of Foreign Affairs, I helped publish it. I still think Huntington
got some important things wrong, but much in that essay is powerful and
prescient.

My relationship with Sam Huntington, however, was uncomplicated. I
admired him through and through. He was a pathbreaking scholar, a generous
teacher and a devoted friend. His work was remarkably broad. His first book
practically invented the field of civil-military relations; his last was on
demographics and culture. He was also broad-minded. While many academics of
his age and political persuasion -- temperamentally conservative -- were
seared by the campus chaos of the 1960s, Huntington saw the student
radicals as part of a recurring tradition of American puritans, righteously
enraged that American institutions didn't live up to the country's founding
principles. He closed one book by noting of such critics: They "say that
America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They
are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a
disappointment only because it is also a hope."

I learned from the books but also from the man. I never saw Sam
Huntington do anything deceitful or malicious, or sacrifice his principles
for power, access or expedience. He lived by the Anglo-Protestant
principles he cherished: hard work, honesty, fair play, courage, loyalty
and patriotism.

Fouad Ajami on Samuel Huntington

From the Wall Street Journal:

If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis ["The Clash of Civilizations"]. I admired his work but was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been correct all along.

A gracious letter came to me from Nancy Arkelyan Huntington, his wife of 51 years (her Armenian descent an irony lost on those who dubbed him a defender of nativism). He was in ill-health, suffering the aftermath of a small stroke. They were spending the winter at their summer house on Martha's Vineyard. She had read him my essay as he lay in bed. He was pleased with it: "He will be writing you himself shortly." Of course, he did not write, and knowing of his frail state I did not expect him to do so. He had been a source of great wisdom, an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him in the regrettably small way I did.

We don't have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main commandeered by a new generation. They are "rational choice" people who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon.

More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington's life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran through the work of Huntington's final years.

Martin Kramer on the Gaza Crisis

From Martin Kramer's Sandbox:

In the fog of war, it isn't just the truth that falls casualty. So does common sense. Quite a few pundits seem to think that Israel lacks a strategy in Gaza. But unlike the Lebanon war of 2006, this war has been planned in advance, and every stage has been war-gamed. Here is my read of Israel's strategic plan, which lies behind "Operation Cast Lead."

Israel's long-term strategic goal is the elimination of Hamas control of Gaza. This is especially the goal of the Kadima and Labor parties, which are distinguished by their commitment to a negotiated final status agreement with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. The Hamas takeover in Gaza reduced Abbas to a provincial governor, who no longer represents effective authority in all the areas destined for a future Palestinian state. Hamas rule in Gaza is a bone in the throat of the "peace process"—one Israel is determined to remove.

Struggle over Sanctions. But how? After the Hamas takeover in June 2007, Israel imposed a regime of economic sanctions on Gaza, by constricting the flow of goods and materials into Gaza via its crossings to Israel. The idea was gradually to undermine the popularity of Hamas in Gaza, while at the same time bolstering Abbas. Israel enjoyed considerable success in this approach. While the diplomatic "peace process" with Abbas didn't move very far, the West Bank enjoyed an economic boomlet, as Israel removed checkpoints and facilitated the movement of capital, goods, workers, and foreign tourists. So while Gaza languished under sanctions, with zero growth, the West Bank visibly prospered—reinforcing the message that "Islamic resistance" is a dead end.

Hamas in power, from the outset, sought to break out of what it has called the Israeli "siege" by firing rockets into Israel. Its quid pro quo was an end to Hamas rocket fire in exchange for a lifting of the Israeli "siege." When Israel and Hamas reached an agreement for "calm" last June, Hamas hoped the sanctions would be lifted as well, and Israel did increase the flow through the crossing points, by about 50 percent. Fuel supplies were restored to previous levels. But Hamas was fully aware that sanctions were slowly eroding its base and contradicting its narrative that “resistance” pays. This is why it refused to renew the "calm" agreement after its six-month expiration, and renewed rocket fire.

Were Israel to lift the economic sanctions, it would transform Hamas control of Gaza into a permanent fact, solidify the division of the West Bank and Gaza, and undermine both Israel and Abbas by showing that violent "resistance" to Israel produces better results than peaceful compromise and cooperation. Rewarding "resistance" just produces more of it. So Israel's war aim is very straightforward, and it is not simply a total cease-fire. At the very least, it is a total cease-fire that also leaves the sanctions against Hamas in place. This would place Israel in an advantageous position to bring about the collapse of Hamas rule sometime in the future—its long-term objective.

David Israel on the Gaza Crisis

I received the following email from a member of the 6th Armored Division association, of which I am an honorary member:

Got so many questions like the one below I decided to write up a kind of common answer.....so for whatever it's worth my answer.
dave


What's Your Take


I live in a retirement community in Medford, Oregon. There are almost 1000 residents here between the ages of 65 and 100 years of age. The political makeup is approximately 275 Democrats, 100 Independents and 675 Republicans, although In the recent election there was a sizable number of crossover votes.

Within the past week I have been greeted by many fellow residents with, “So what's your take on Gaza?” (Many residents are aware that I lived in Israel for eight years which included the period of the 1973 war, “ The Yom Kippur War”). Before answering I usually counter with, “What's your take?”. (The last sentence of this piece will state the most common answers received to this question). Since Southern Oregon is Bible Belt country the answer is not the usual media reaction that appeasement and capitulation must be the Israeli policy. While it is true that some former members of the Academic community who consider themselves to be legal experts accuse Israel of gross violations of international law and demand an immediate cease fire, others see things differently. One woman asked when would Israel end their terrible occupation of Gaza. “Where did you hear that Gaza was occupied”, I asked. “I heard it on talk radio”, she answered. She was totally unaware that Israel had left Gaza in 2005, leaving all industry and infrastructure to the Gazan population. The Gazans then immediately destroyed everything. Ten thousand Israelis were uprooted and forced to move out of the Gaza strip. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation spread by media people who do not have the knowledge or the background but who pose as experts on the Middle East.

Many opposed the Israeli evacuation of Gaza saying at the time it would just give terrorist organizations a closer base from which to bombard Israeli population centers. The politicians won out leading to what is being experienced today, exactly as predicted. It did take three years, but now the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Arad are targeted by Hamas missiles on a daily basis. Sixty three hundred rockets and mortar shells have fallen on Israel since 2005. Five months ago President -elect Obama visited the city of Sderot in southern Israel. His reaction: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that and would expect Israel to do the same thing.”

Who then bears the responsibility for what is happening in Gaza today? Israel does not want the territory. Israel had it and gave it to the people of the area. Egypt does not want Gaza or the Gazan people. The fact is that Egyptian borders are closed to the people of Gaza. When Egypt controlled the area the people were denied Egyptian citizenship. What would be the immediate effect if Hamas stopped firing missiles and mortars into Israel? Would there be quiet as there was during the six month cease fire which recently ended? Would the oil rich Arab countries offer aid to their brothers in Gaza? Would Egypt allow Gazans free passage into Egypt? Would any of the 22 existing Arab countries allow Gazans to emigrate? These situations have never taken place, although they may in the future. Maybe. Meanwhile there are one and a half million people in Gaza and the casualties mount daily. Terrorist groups numbering approximately 25,000 bring death and destruction on the entire population. Hamas warns the terrorists to dress in civilian clothes so that it would not be possible to distinguish them from the general population. Casualty figures are difficult to determine but both the UN and Palestinian Authorities claim that 60 civilians have thus far been killed. Israeli intelligence had pinpointed only military targets, but since Hamas places these facilities in populated areas civilian deaths are inevitable. There seems little doubt there will be many more civilian deaths, although up to now most of those killed were terrorists (according to Hamas' own figures).

The United Nations expressed serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza and called for an immediate halt to all violence. The members called on the parties to stop immediately all military activities. It should be noted that no such calls for calm were issued by the United Nations while missiles and mortar shells were falling indiscriminately only on Israel. According to international humanitarian law there exists a principle of “distinction” when it comes to combat. Legitimate targets may be only enemy combatants or objects that contribute to enemy military activity. Furthermore there is a prohibition on the use of weapons that cannot be aimed at specific targets, thus violating the principle of distinction. Under these rulings every one of the 6300 rockets fired into Israel since 2005 is a war crime .Firing weapons aimed into civilian areas qualifies under both counts as war crimes. The UN has never called attention to these war crimes while calling for calm at this time.To some it would seem that Israel has exercised overwhelming restraint before responding to Hamas provocations.

British Prime Minister Gordeon Brown December 27: “I call on Gazan militants to cease all attacks on Israel immediately. These attacks are designed to cause random destruction and to undermine the prospects of Peace talks led by President Abas. I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population.”

The most common answer to the query ...What's your take?.......”Its about time.” david l. israel

Happy New Year!

All good wishes for 2009, to all our readers...

Merry Christmas!

Here's Barack Obama's Christmas Message:

Remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama
Holiday Radio Address
December 27, 2008

Good morning. This week, Americans are gathering with family and friends across the country to celebrate the blessings of Christmas and the holiday season.

As we celebrate this joyous time of year, our thoughts turn to the brave men and women who serve our country far from home. Their extraordinary and selfless sacrifice is an inspiration to us all, and part of the unbroken line of heroism that has made our freedom and prosperity possible for over two centuries.

Many troops are serving their second, third, or fourth tour of duty. And we are reminded that they are more than dedicated Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guard – they are devoted fathers and mothers; husbands and wives; sons and daughters; and sisters and brothers.

This holiday season, their families celebrate with a joy that is muted knowing that a loved one is absent, and sometimes in danger. In towns and cities across America, there is an empty seat at the dinner table; in distant bases and on ships at sea, our servicemen and women can only wonder at the look on their child’s face as they open a gift back home.

Our troops and military families have won the respect and gratitude of their broader American family. Michelle and I have them in our prayers this Christmas, and we must all continue to offer them our full support in the weeks and months to come. .

These are also tough times for many Americans struggling in our sluggish economy. As we count the higher blessings of faith and family, we know that millions of Americans don’t have a job. Many more are struggling to pay the bills or stay in their homes. From students to seniors, the future seems uncertain.

That is why this season of giving should also be a time to renew a sense of common purpose and shared citizenship. Now, more than ever, we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans – that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. Now, we must all do our part to serve one another; to seek new ideas and new innovation; and to start a new chapter for our great country.

That is the spirit that will guide my Administration in the New Year. If the American people come together and put their shoulder to the wheel of history, then I know that we can put our people back to work and point our country in a new direction. That is how we will see ourselves through this time of crisis, and reach the promise of a brighter day.

After all, that is what Americans have always done.

232 years ago, when America was newly born as a nation, George Washington and his Army faced impossible odds as they struggled to free themselves from the grip of an empire.

It was Christmas Day—December 25th, 1776 – that they fought through ice and cold to make an improbable crossing of the Delaware River. They caught the enemy off guard, won victories in Trenton and Princeton, and gave new momentum to a beleaguered Army and new hope to the cause of Independence.

Many ages have passed since that first American Christmas. We have crossed many rivers as a people. But the lessons that have carried us through are the same lessons that we celebrate every Christmas season—the same lessons that guide us to this very day: that hope endures, and that a new birth of peace is always possible.

Happy Hannukah!

No shoe-throwing at President Bush's Hannukah reception this year, I'm sure, even though he held it a little early--December 15th, at the White House. The pictures look nice.

He said some nice things, too:

The story of Hanukkah recalls the miraculous victory of a small band of patriots against tyranny, and the oil that burned for eight nights. Through centuries of exile and persecution, Jews have lit the menorah. Each year, they behold its glow with faith in the power of God, and love for His greatest gift -- freedom.

This Hanukkah we celebrate another miraculous victory -- the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. When President Harry Truman led the world in recognizing Israel in May of 1948, many wondered whether the small nation could possibly survive. Yet from the first days of independence, the people of Israel defied dire predictions. With determination and hard work, they turned a rocky desert into fertile soil. They built a thriving democracy, a strong economy, and one of the mightiest military forces on earth. Like the Maccabees, Israel has defended itself bravely against enemies seeking its destruction. And today, Israel is a light unto the nations -- and one of America's closest friends.

This evening, we have the great privilege of celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary and Hanukkah in a very special way. Thanks to the generosity of the Truman Library, we are fortunate to light the menorah presented to President Truman in 1951 as a symbol of friendship by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

A decade after President Truman received this gift, he visited Prime Minister Ben-Gurion for one of the last times. As they parted, Ben-Gurion told the President that as a foreigner he could not judge President Truman's place in American history, but the President's courageous decision to recognize the new state of Israel gave him an immortal place in Jewish history. Those words filled the President's eyes with uncharacteristic tears. And later, Ben-Gurion would say he rarely had seen somebody so moved.

And so tonight I'm deeply moved to welcome the grandsons of these two great men -- Clifton Truman Daniel and Yariv Ben-Eliezer -- to light the Truman menorah together.

Laura and I wish all the people of Jewish faith a happy Hanukkah and many joyous Hanukkahs in the years ahead. Thank you. (Applause.)

More International Problems From Clinton Donor List

The mainstream American media may be turning a blind eye to the smoking guns in the Clinton donor list--but they are paying attention in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). Here's a report from the Sunday Leader about problems at The Stassen Group:

Stassen Group cited in list of donors to Bill Clinton

The Stassen Group of Companies headed by tycoon Harry Jayawardene has donated between US$ 100,000 to 250,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation, it is revealed.

Former US President Clinton last week released a list of donors to his charity, The William J. Clinton Foundation following an assurance given he would do so on the nomination of his wife Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State designate in President Elect Barack Obama's new Administration.

The 'Stassen Group' is named in the list of donors having contributed between US$ 100,001 to US$ 250,000.

Jayawardene is currently embroiled in a legal battle with fellow directors of the Stassen Group which is expected to turn nasty.

It is learned,Clintons detractors will trace the source of all monies received by the Foundation including whether they have come through the proper financial channels of the respective countries.

Who's Lying About Clinton Donor List?

Indian mogul Amar Singh or Bill Clinton? According to Indian website Livemint.com, somebody is not telling the truth:

New Delhi: Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh on Friday denied contributing any money to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, which has listed him as one of the top donors on Thursday.

“I am denying it,” he told Mint in an interview. “I cannot react to media speculations. Anything can be written about anybody and I do not think I should react to it.”

“Let me add that I feel privileged to be on the list of friends (former US president Bill and wife Hillary) Clintons have,” Singh added. “It is a matter of happiness that I am friends with the Clintons.”

As part of a deal that cleared the way for Hillary Clinton to be nominated by US President-elect Barack Obama as the next secretary of state, Bill Clinton released a list of 205,000 donors on the foundation’s website. A list of top donors, those who gave $100,000 (about Rs47 lakh today) or more, reported by The Wall Street Journal shows Singh as having given between $1 million and $5 million."

This story has already caused controversy in India, according to the Economic Times of India:

Impressive, indeed! But also as intriguing, as Mr Singh's total declared assets, as per the affidavit filed along with his nomination papers for election to the Rajya Sabha, are no more than Rs 37 crore. So, did the SP leader bring alive the Mahabharata hero Daanveer Karna when he decided to donate up to more than two-thirds of his wealth to the Clinton Foundation?

Imagine, if this is how Hillary Clinton begins a term as Secretary of State...how do you think it would end?

Washington Post: Clinton List Means "Heap of Potential Trouble"

The paper pulls its punches by suggesting that there is a way out for the Clintons with a revised agreement with Obama--but in fact the logic of the case dictates that there isn't any possible agreement that a convicted perjurer and impeached former President may reasonably be trusted to follow. The Clinton list should signal the end of Hillary's bid for Secretary of State. If not, Obama's promise to change the culture of Washington should prove D.O.A. on January 20th, 2009. A self-inflicted wound that would haunt his entire administration.

From Sunday's Washington Post editorial:

But however worthy the cause or uncontroversial the foreign government, it strikes us that such fundraising by the former president presents an unavoidable conflict. What is the standard for the ethics official to apply? Doesn't spurning a proffered donation from a foreign government risk creating its own diplomatic problems? What happens when Secretary Clinton, visiting Country X to press for, say, a climate change agreement, is informed by the prime minister that he's just written her husband a $10 million check for that cause? What about gifts from foreign governments seeking trade concessions or approval to purchase military equipment? Even if Ms. Clinton is not influenced by gifts to her husband's charity, the appearance of a conflict is unavoidable. The better approach would be to allow existing commitments to go forward but to forswear any new ones.

Moreover, the memorandum of understanding does not appear to contemplate any prior review of contributions by foreign individuals or corporations, or by U.S. companies or individuals with overseas entanglements. So consider -- because it already happened -- the case of a wealthy investor who is seeking business opportunities in, say, Kazakhstan. He gives millions to the Clinton foundation, visits the country with the former president and obtains the sought-after contract. No one in the Obama administration will vet such a gift in advance; the public will learn of it only with the yearly disclosure. The new administration is buying itself a heap of potential trouble with this arrangement.

Wall Street Journal: More Dirt From Clinton Foundation List

This sort of story would compromise Hillary from the get-go, were she to be confirmed as Secretary of State. From today's Wall Street Journal:

The Nigerian-born Mr. [Gilbert] Chagoury, whose family is Lebanese, has also been a financial supporter of Christian politicians and religious leaders in Lebanon, another potential diplomatic hot spot, say people familiar with that nation's political scene.

Mr. Chagoury and representatives for Mr. Clinton have repeatedly declined to comment on the two men's relationship. Following Thursday's disclosures by the Clinton Foundation, a spokesman for President-elect Barack Obama said Mr. Obama wouldn't be commenting on any of the donors.

Mr. Chagoury's ties to Mr. Clinton apparently began in the mid-1990s. The Clinton administration was being urged by human rights-activists and others to put severe sanctions on Nigeria because of the Abacha regime's practice of jailing and executing political opponents.

In August 1996, President Clinton dispatched then-Rep. Bill Richardson to Nigeria to lay out the U.S. government's concerns. In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Richardson, currently New Mexico's governor and President-elect Obama's nominee for commerce secretary, said that after a meeting with the dictator, he was taken to see Mr. Chagoury, who supposedly "had a lot of influence with Abacha." During an hour-and-a-half discussion over pizza at Mr. Chagoury's home, the businessman seemed sympathetic to U.S. complaints but noncommittal, Mr. Richardson said.

A few weeks later, prior to the 1996 U.S. presidential election, Mr. Chagoury contributed $460,000 to a tax-exempt voter-registration group connected to the Democratic National Committee. A 1997 Washington Post article said that Mr. Chagoury subsequently received an invitation to a White House dinner for Democratic Party supporters. He also met with Clinton administration officials on Nigeria and later talked privately about his efforts to influence U.S. policy toward that country, says a person familiar with the matter.

Over the years, business deals Mr. Chagoury has been involved with have been the subject of government investigations into suspected bribery by Western companies that do business in Nigeria, according to news reports. In 2004, Mr. Chagoury was among those whom Nigerian investigators sought to question about a gas-terminal deal, according to news reports. He hasn't been accused of wrongdoing in any of the investigations.

Despite any controversies, Mr. Chagoury has steadily built ties to Mr. Clinton. In 2003, he helped organize a Caribbean trip where the former president was paid $100,000 for a speech. Mr. Clinton has made over $40 million giving speeches around the world. According to news reports, Mr. Chagoury attended Mr. Clinton's 60th birthday bash two years ago in New York. He also joined the former president at the gala wedding celebration in France last year of Mr. Clinton's top aide, Douglas Band, say people who were there.

During the just-completed election campaign, a Chagoury relative, Michel Chaghouri of Los Angeles, was listed in campaign records as someone who raised at least $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. Campaign records also show that Mr. Chaghouri raised money from a number of individuals named "Chagoury" or "Chaghouri" or "Chamchoum" -- Chamchoum is the maiden name of Gilbert Chagoury's wife. Several gave the federally allowed maximum of $4,600 each. Mr. Chagoury's name doesn't appear as a donor. As an apparent foreign national, Mr. Chagoury would generally be barred from giving to a U.S. presidential campaign.

Georgetown Journalism Students Sue CIA, FBI Over Daniel Pearl Death Documents

So much news that I almost forgot to post this item from yesterday's Washington Post about another FOIA case against the CIA --and FBI, among eight government agencies named-- to access documents relating to the death of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Inquiring minds want to know: Why isn't the Wall Street Journal also on this case? I'm not holding my breath for Mssrs. Gigot, McGurn and Taranto... Anyway, here's an excerpt from the Post:

For more than a year, a group of Georgetown University students has been poring over documents, searching for cellphone numbers of suspected terrorists and calling Pakistani police in the middle of the night. Now their class project has come to this: They're suing the CIA and the FBI.

The students' assignment was to find out who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and why. Although the class ended last spring and many of the students graduated, they're still trying to write that last paper.

Pearl disappeared while reporting in Pakistan in 2002. A video delivered to the FBI showed him being beheaded.

Yesterday, the group, known as the Pearl Project and now attached to the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court asking for the release of records by the CIA, FBI, Defense Department and five other federal agencies.

Members of the group are seeking, among other things, FBI files on convicted terrorist Richard Reid. Pearl was reporting a story about Reid and his Pakistani handler when he disappeared. They hope the lawsuit will unearth documents or new sources in time for them to finish their final paper late this spring.

"It's not only a really personal story . . . but a story really pertinent to current events and, well, to humanity," said Rebecca Tapscott, a 2008 graduate.

The idea for the class began in summer 2002, after four men were convicted in Pakistan in connection with Pearl's death. Pearl's longtime friend, Asra Nomani, with whom Pearl was staying when he disappeared, suspected that more people were involved. She knew, for example, that a man who led police to Pearl's body, which was found outside Karachi, was allegedly one of the guards who had held him. But he was never charged.

Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and Barbara Feinman Todd, an associate dean at Georgetown, created a journalism seminar in 2007 to investigate Pearl's death and write the story that he was reporting when he was kidnapped. They also wanted to learn more about terrorist cells, counterterrorism efforts and the complicated relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

More on the Pearl Project can be found at the Center for Public Integrity website.

FOIABlog comments on the case:

This Washington Post article discusses a FOIA lawsuit filed this week by students in a Georgetown University journalism class. The suit is related to records various government agencies have about those involved in the death of Danny Pearl, including shoe bomber, Richard Reid, who Pearl was trying to interview before his kidnapping.

I believe Richard Reid, and others like him, have very limited privacy rights. They are not U.S. Citizens or Legal Permanent Residents, thus they have no rights under the Privacy Act. There is a huge public interest in these records and as such, agencies should not send out letters asking for these people's signatures before they will process records relating to them. This is not a new issue as years ago, the DEA turned down a request by Terry Anderson for information on those who kept him hostage--and didn't relent until Anderson was forced to sue. Hopefully, the new administration will find compentent people to oversee FOIA Offices at these agencies so that the courts are not clogged with these types of matters.

Wonkette on Clinton Foundation Donor List

THE SAUDIS OWN EVERYTHING: Clinton Foundation’s List Of Foreign Influence-Buyers Is Quite Long And Sinister

Approximately 1400 million years ago in the Paleozoic era, when Hillary Clinton was running for President instead of Secretary of State, she was asked repeatedly if the Clinton Foundation would release its donor list. She always said, “Well, you’ll have to talk to my husband about that,” which was liberal doublespeak for “Fuck no.” Now after repeated threats from the Chicago mobster Barack Obama, the Foundation has released its donor list, which is over TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED PAGES LONG. (Maybe that is why the Web page takes so frigging long to load?) Let’s see how many foreign governments were extorted by Bill Clinton to buy him blow jobs on Ron Burkle’s jet!

Holy zowie wow!

Saudi Arabia … the Cheneyite breakaway republic of Blackwater … also the notorious rogue nations of Norway, Italy, and Jamaica … plus the Dutch national lottery. This explains why Bill Clinton is always talking, in Dutch, about how a lottery “isn’t really gambling.”

Madoff Bad for Jewish Charities and Investors, Not Bad for the Jews...

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a roundup of losses reported so far in the Bernard Madoff scandal...including an interesting graphic showing charity victims. But IMHO, while this may be bad for Madoff's investors, it is not so bad for the Jews. Madoff showed that Jews are just like everybody else--not at all stereotypical "Yids" who cheat "Goyim," instead as rather trusting and gullible American investors who could fall for a con man as easily as anyone...

Paul Weyrich, 66

The Washington Post ran an interesting and surprisingly respectful obituary of Paul Weyrich on the front page this morning. He certainly deserved the coverage. Weyrich was a real Washington "character," like someone out of a fifties Otto Preminger film, the first actually pear-shaped person I'd ever met. He was an obvious train buff, and for a while had his own television network, on which I appeared a couple of times on TV shows hosted by him and Newt Gingrich to talk about the National Endowment for the Arts. This controversy was important enough to him to have been mentioned in his Post obituary:

"Look at the National Endowment for the Arts as a prototype," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Here's a piddling little organization -- about $100 million budget out of a $2 trillion budget -- and rather inconsequential in national significance. Republicans surely could have been able to shut that down given the fact that it had offended many, many people with the kind of art it had subsidized.

"But the culture overwhelmed the political process," he added. "Why? Because upper-crust, suburban Republican women in the districts of Republican congressmen defended the filth."

Actually, he was pretty successful by Washington standards. Congress voted to zero out the NEA...and even George Bush hasn't dared try to restore NEA appropriations to the high levels of the 1990s. That's thanks to Weyrich, I'm sure.

His TV network began on satellite, then some cable channels--until Republicans drove him out of business due to his on-air criticism of them. He kept going, regardless. Weyrich had an old-fashioned stick-to-his guns quality, and an obvious eccentricity, that was unusual in button-down, carefully worded, and too-often cowardly Washington, DC. As the obits mentioned, he was one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority. He set up the Free Congress Foundation as his own bailiwick. More recently, he helped nurture Jihad Watch, where Robert Spencer has posted a tribute:

Paul Weyrich's impact on the national stage is well known. In 2007 when I was doing research on the so-called "Christianists" for my book Religion of Peace?, I found paranoid Leftist writers referring to him as the "most powerful man in America." He wasn't, but his influence in advancing the wisdom of protecting individual freedom and limited government in an age of encroaching statism and collectivism cannot be calculated.

Paul Weyrich was also one of the first and foremost American public figures to see through the "Islam is a Religion of Peace" deception that spread through the nation from President Bush and others after 9/11. In 2002 he named me an Adjunct Fellow of the Free Congress Foundation and asked me to write a series of monographs on Islam: An Introduction to the Qur'an; Women and Islam; An Islamic Primer; Islam and the West; The Islamic Disinformation Lobby; Islam vs. Christianity; and Jihad in Context. The perspective I expounded in them was just as unpopular with the conservative (and of course liberal) mainstream then as it is now, but Paul was undeterred by that; he was determined to defend the West and present the truth. He even arranged for me to address the Council for National Policy in New York, where fantasies and deceptions arising from political correctness and realpolitik usually rule the day.

Paul Weyrich taught me a great deal, by word and by example -- about how to deal both personally and professionally with the slanders and smears that are a daily aspect of this work (although I've not always lived up to his example in this); about how to avoid discouragement and keep on fighting no matter what the odds are, and about much more. He was an extraordinarily kind and genial man, a stark contrast in person to the vicious caricatures of him purveyed by those who feared and hated him.

I think one reason the Post gave Weyrich good play was that he was what he was...he was also good copy. Washington will miss him.

Clinton Donor List Disqualifies Hillary for State Department Post

It's like putting a "For Sale" sign on the Secretary of State. The disclosed 2000-plus name Clinton Foundation donor list is one big appearance of conflict-of-interest...not to mention appearance of corruption, bribery, and influence-peddling. It is an invitation for prosecution, not a recommendation for disinterested public service.

Just one example, this item from Bloomberg News:

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian investor Victor Dahdaleh, facing a U.S. federal probe of allegations that he helped Alcoa Inc. defraud a Bahrain government-controlled metals company, is among donors who gave as much as $5 million to former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation.

The U.S. Justice Department in March said it was investigating claims in a lawsuit by Aluminum Bahrain BSC, which said Dahdaleh acted as a middleman for bribes that helped Alcoa overcharge the Bahrain company by as much as $975 million for alumina, used in aluminum manufacturing.

Dahdaleh’s dispute with Bahrain -- home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and an anti-terrorism ally -- shows how entanglements by Bill Clinton’s financial backers may pose headaches for Hillary Clinton as the New York senator seeks confirmation as President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state.

“It certainly creates a couple of extra hurdles for the Obama administration,” said Joel Rosenthal, president of New York’s Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Mark Helprin on Bush's Ghastly Legacy

From today's Wall Street Journal:

The administrations of George W. Bush have virtually assured such a displacement by catastrophically throwing the country off balance, both politically and financially, while breaking the nation's sword in an inconclusive seven-year struggle against a ragtag enemy in two small bankrupt states. Their one great accomplishment -- no subsequent attacks on American soil thus far -- has been offset by the stunningly incompetent prosecution of the war. It could be no other way, with war aims that inexplicably danced up and down the scale, from "ending tyranny in the world," to reforging in a matter of months (with 130,000 troops) the political culture of the Arabs, to establishing a democracy in Iraq, to only reducing violence, to merely holding on in our cantonments until we withdraw.

This confusion has come at the price of transforming the military into a light and hollow semi-gendarmerie focused on irregular warfare and ill-equipped to deter the development and resurgence of the conventional and strategic forces of China and Russia, while begging challenges from rivals or enemies no longer constrained by our former reserves of strength. For seven years we failed to devise effective policy or make intelligent arguments for policies that were worth pursuing. Thus we capriciously forfeited the domestic and international political equilibrium without which alliances break apart and wars are seldom won.

The pity is that the war could have been successful and this equilibrium sustained had we struck immediately, preserving the link with September 11th; had we disciplined our objective to forcing upon regimes that nurture terrorism the choice of routing it out with their ruthless secret services or suffering the destruction of the means to power for which they live; had we husbanded our forces in the highly developed military areas of northern Saudi Arabia after deposing Saddam Hussein, where as a fleet in being they would suffer no casualties and remain at the ready to reach Baghdad, Damascus, or Riyadh in three days; and had we taken strong and effective measures for our domestic protection while striving to stay within constitutional limits and eloquently explaining the necessity -- as has always been the case in war -- for sometimes exceeding them. Today's progressives apologize to the world for America's treatment of terrorists (not a single one of whom has been executed). Franklin Roosevelt, when faced with German saboteurs (who had caused not a single casualty), had them electrocuted and buried in numbered graves next to a sewage plant.

Austin Powers Shoe-Throwing Prefigured Iraqi Incident

(ht Joe Garofoli, sfgate.com)

Cheney Misses Meaning of Iraqi Shoe-Throwing

In an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Vice President provided evidence that the Bush administration simply does not understand how to conduct public diplomacy:

KARL: What did you think when you saw that shoe flying at the President?

CHENEY: I thought the President handled it rather well. He had some good moves, the way he ducked and avoided the shoe. And then what was his response -- that it was a size 10. I guess he could see that as it went by. No, I think it was an incident where an Iraqi reporter threw shoes at the President -- I don’t attribute any special significance to it.

Here's a link to some recent significance in Latin America: Latin Leaders Joke About Bush Shoe Attack:

COSTA DO SAUIPE, Brazil (Reuters) - Latin American leaders meeting in Brazil this week couldn't resist poking fun at U.S. President George W. Bush over his recent shoe-throwing incident in Iraq.

"Please, nobody take off your shoes," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva joked to reporters at the start of a news conference on Wednesday.

An Iraqi journalist had hurled his shoes at Bush at a news conference in Baghdad on Sunday, calling him a dog.

VOA Promotes Iraqi Shoe-Thrower, Saudi Offer of $10 Million, Anti-US Website

Here's some incredible VOA coverage. Instead of demanding that the Saudi government arrest the millionaire as an accomplice to an assault on the President of the United States (btw, where is the Secret Service in all this?), VOA treats the story as a joke--and then plugs a website where viewers can throw shoes at a virtual President.

Shame on the VOA, shame on James Glassman, author of Dow 36,000 and America's Top Propagandist, and shame on President Bush for letting things come to this low state. Maybe they should change the name of the broadcaster to the Voice of Anti-America?

I hope Obama will be more on the ball when it comes to anti-Americanism:

A Saudi Arabian man has offered $10 million for the shoes of an Iraqi journalist hurled at U.S. President George Bush in Baghdad Sunday.

Middle Eastern news agencies reported on Mohamed Makhafa's offer Wednesday. He is quoted telling Cairo's al-Safwa Television that the footwear hurled at the U.S. president's head is the "shoe of dignity" with high "moral value."

Meanwhile, Reuters news agency reports that an Egyptian man is offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to the shoe-thrower, Muntazer al-Zaidi.

Reuters reports the young woman Amal Saad Gumaa said she likes the idea of being attached to a man she finds so honorable.

Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets in support of Zaidi, who has achieved something of a folk hero status since the incident.

The shoe-tossing has also inspired an online game (www.SockAndAwe.com) that lets players throw brown laced-loafers at Mr. Bush. The site says more than 17 million cyber-shoes have struck the president's virtual head as of Wednesday.