Arianna Huffington: Follow the Bailout Money

It's funny that I knew both Ann Coulter and Arianna Huffington...Yin and Yang commentators. Here's Arianna's latest:

On top of it, the bailout is a fascinating story. Not so much a whodunit as a who's-doing-it. This mystery is unfolding right in front of us, and the size of the victim pool could very well depend on whether we unravel the mystery in flashback or while it's still in progress.

Like most good mysteries, this one has a huge cast of characters -- like the Dickensianly named Neel Kashkari, the young Goldman banker put in charge of the bailout at the Treasury Department, the sharp-tongued Barney Frank, and the earnest and increasingly bewildered Hank Paulson, who started off the bailout process by romantically getting down on one knee in front of Nancy Pelosi and proposing to make the whole thing official.

But what we know is clearly dwarfed by what we don't know, because at every point in this story, the government has chosen to draw the curtains.

Just last week, four firms -- Goldman, Blackrock, Wellington and PIMCO -- were selected to manage the $500 billion account of mortgage-backed securities for the Fed. But how they were selected, what they're getting paid, and what they plan on doing with the money is all under wraps. "The selection of these managers seems incredibly opaque," Jeffrey Gundlach, an expert in mortgage-backed securities, told TPMmuckraker.

The head of one of the firms, Bill Gross of PIMCO, assured CNBC last month that "PIMCO would be the leader here in suggesting to the Treasury that we would work for no fee." So is Gross holding to his no fee pledge? We don't know - and the government isn't in any rush to tell us.

As a GAO report last month dryly concluded: "The rapid pace of implementation and evolving nature of the program have hampered efforts to put a comprehensive system of internal control in place. Until such a system is fully developed and implemented, there is heightened risk that the interests of the government and taxpayers may not be adequately protected and that the program objectives may not be achieved in an efficient and effective manner." In other words, the money is flying out the door but no one is watching where it's going.

Why I'm Supporting Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General

Opposition to Obama's nominee stems from his TV debate with Michael Moore, according to a report in The Hill. Years ago, Moore tried to get a small-circulation film journal called Montage to kill a critical article that had been assigned to me by my editor, titled "Will the Real Michael Moore Please Stand Up?" Despite a lot of pressure, the editor stood firm against Moore--he made the article tougher than my original draft. But the editor subsequently relocated to England. And that was the end of my career in documentary film. I'm not saying that Moore got me blacklisted...but he kept making pictures, won Academy Awards, even had a Fox TV show--and I didn't.

In any case, I support Dr. Gupta because of the Stalinist party-line thuggishness of his opponents' arguments against him. So, Dr. Gupta disagrees with Michael Moore that American health care is inferior to Cuba's. So, he made a few mistakes. Who doesn't?

IMHO (as a holder of a PhD in Film and Television) Dr. Gupta would make an excellent spokesperson to push Obama's health care reform plan through Congress. That he was critical of socialized medicine gives him more credibility, not less, whatever Paul Krugman and Congressman Conyers might say. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that given a choice between Michael Moore and Dr. Gupta, the American public are more likely to believe Dr. Gupta...

Obama's Plan for Middle East Peace?

Daniel Pipes has suggested it may be found in Richard Haass and Martin Indyk's book, Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, published by Brookings. Pipes called it "pablum," but maybe that's what the world needs now...here's an excerpt from an interview on PBS's Charlie Rose show:

Charlie Rose: So what we have here is "restoring the balance", let's pick up on this title first.

Martin Indyk: Well, our thought was that the most important balance that needs to be restored is between the use of force and the use of diplomacy.

I think that fits very well with the whole attitude of President-elect Obama and his Secretary-designate Clinton – that there needs to be greater emphasis on diplomatic tools, and in particular in the Middle East, greater emphasis efforts to engage. And that is something that we go into detail in – how to engage Iran, which the President-elect has a mandate to do now; how to move the Israeli-Palestinian peace process forward; and how also to bring Syria into the Arab-Israeli negotiations, so that there can be a comprehensive effort to achieve Arab-Israeli peace at the same time as we engage with Iran.

And to create some synergy between these three initiatives that we think can have some positive impact on the overall objective of trying to make the Middle East a more stable, peaceful, and free place. The critical thing here is that we have 3 huge diplomatic challenges, so it is going to be a very tall order for the next president.

Christopher Hitchens on the Gaza Crisis

From Slate:

So, that is why this nasty confrontation is taking place this time instead of at another time. But each miniature of the picture also implies its own enlargement, which in turn suggests that if the latest Gaza war hadn't come at this time, it would certainly have come at another. Again and as usual, Morris' work is instructive. As one of the most stern of the "revisionist" historians of Israel's founding who went deep into his own country's archives to show that Palestinians had been the victims of a deliberate ethnic cleansing in 1947-48, Morris is accustomed to looking disagreeable facts in the face. I strongly recommend a reading of his Dec. 29 op-ed in the New York Times. In it, he described not so much what he saw when he himself looked facts in the face as what Israelis see when they look outward and inward. To the north, Hezbollah local missiles backed by Syria and Iran, two dictatorships, one of which may soon possess nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. To the south and west, Hamas in Gaza. In the occupied territories of the West Bank, the same old colonial rule over the unwilling and the same mad confrontation with the Messianic Jewish settlers. Within Israel itself, an increasing tendency for Israeli Arabs to identify as Arabs or Palestinians rather than Israelis. Overarching everything, the sheer demographic fact that Israeli law, and Israeli power, governs or dominates more and more non-Jews, fewer and fewer of whom are interested in compromise. (It was this demographic imperative, if you remember, that made even Sharon give up the idea of "greater Israel," a scheme for which many state-subsidized Israeli settlers are still very much willing to die—and to kill.)

Compared with the threat to its very existence that had been posed in 1967, wrote Morris, the only changes that now favored Israel were the arrival of another 2 million or 3 million Israelis and the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. But how reassuring, really, are those developments? Where are the new immigrants to go, unless onto disputed land? And on whom can the nukes be employed? On Gaza? In Hebron? These places would still be there, right next to the Jewish community, even if Damascus and Tehran were ashes. Only the messianic could even contemplate such an outcome. (What a pity there are so many of them locally.)

Confronted with this amazing concatenation of circumstances, and with some of the frightening blunders—such as the last invasion of Lebanon—that have resulted from it, some Israeli politicians appear to think that taking a tough line in Gaza might at least be good for short-term morale. This was the clear implication of the usually admirable Ethan Bronner's New York Times front-page reports on Dec. 28, 2008, and Jan. 4, 2009. So why not just come right out with it and say that one is bombing for votes?

It is only when one begins to grasp all the foregoing that one understands exactly how disgusting and squalid is the behavior of the Hamas gang. It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but—just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq—it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence and the racist and religious demagogy that led to the sanctions in the first place. Palestine is a common home for several religious and national groups, but Hamas dogmatically insists that the whole territory is instead an exclusively Muslim part of a future Islamic empire. At a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Hamas' leadership is physically and economically a part of the clientele of two of the area's worst dictatorships. (Should you ever be in need of a free laugh, look up those Western "intellectuals" who believe that a vote for an Islamist party and an Islamic state is a way to vote against corruption! They have not lately studied Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Gaza could have been a prefiguration of a future self-determined Palestinian state. Instead, it has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and made into a place of repression for its inhabitants and aggression for its neighbors. Once again, the Party of God has the whip hand. To read Benny Morris is to be quite able—and quite free—to doubt that there should ever have been an Israeli state to begin with. But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy.

Washington Post: "Insane" Secret Service Inaugruation Plan Cuts Virginia Off From DC

From today's Washington Post:

"First was the hysteria of announcing over 4 million people might be flooding the Mall. Later, they amend that number by half. Then they announce there will be no parking, few toilets and that everyone will be standing and waiting for hours. Then they tell people not to bring children and, finally, they close all the bridges," fumed Virginian Holly Kenney. "Do they think we're dense? Clearly, the public is no longer welcome."

But to some business and political leaders in the region, the plan represents more than a snub. They are concerned that the unprecedented closings and restrictions will turn away visitors, hurt businesses and employees, and tip the balance too far toward security over access.

The plan unveiled by the Secret Service and area transportation officials Wednesday closes all Virginia bridges across the Potomac and interstates 395 and 66 inside the Beltway to personal vehicles. It also cordons off a large section of downtown Washington to help manage the unprecedented crowds expected. Maryland, in contrast, has no planned road closures.

"The Secret Service, they're insane," said U.S. Rep. James P. Moran (D-Alexandria). "This is security on steroids. They are imposing major obstacles on people who have a right to be there for the inauguration..."

...Alexandria resident Phil Hocker, 64, is trying to figure out a way to get his family to the inauguration and was furious about the announced restrictions.

"The Secret Service's plan to keep the inauguration secret is succeeding," he said. He also blames the Obama transition team for not putting its foot down with security officials. "If the motto of the campaign was 'Yes we can!' the motto of the inauguration is 'No you can't.' "

Richard Baehr on the Gaza Crisis

From the American Thinker:

In fact, contrary to what we see on television, Hamas does not grieve for children accidentally killed by Israel in the heat of battle. Rather, this is part of the Hamas war strategy. The Palestinian children who die in conflict with Israel are fodder for Hamas' propaganda machine. This is why Hamas uses civilians as shields -- both to protect their fighters and weapons caches, and to play the resulting civilian casualties for all they are worth.

Matt Lauer to Ann Coulter: "You're Not Banned For Life..."

(ht Huffington Post)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More Hillary Clinton Corruption Charges...

At Obamanoms (ht Michelle Malkin):

According to the New York times, a $100k donor to the Clinton Foundation, NY developer Robert Congel, made his donation in November 2004, around the same time Senator Clinton secured a $5 million earmark for Congel’s Destiny USA shopping center and pushed through legislation that helped Congel finance the project. The way the legislation was written, Congel’s Destiny USA shopping center was just one of four proposed projects that would qualify for the program.

Stephanie Miner, a member of the Syracuse City Council critical of the construction project, called Destiny USA a “boondoggle” that won tax breaks with dubious economic and environmental promises.

In another example of possible quid pro quo in the Clinton Foundation donor list, there is the $26 to 30 million total donations from a financier of mining ventures, Frank Giustra, who accompanied President Clinton to Kazakhstan in 2005 on the private jet of Giustra. On the trip, Clinton praised Kazakhstan’s authoritarian president, and Giustra later entered into agreements to invest in uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s government. Giustra donated $10 million to $25 million, and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative gave between $1 million and $5 million.

Finally, there is the odd $10-25 million donation from the Domican Republic’s AIDS agency, COPRESIDA (The President’s Commission on AIDS). COPRESIDA benefited from an Export-Import Bank loan at the 11th hour of the Clinton Administration. The Dominican Republic agency was the buyer in an insurance deal with connections to the state of New York ( the broker of the deal is Export Risk Management, Inc., New York, NY). Why would a cash-strapped AIDS agency accused of mismanagement in a country of 9.5 million give President Clinton one of his largest donations to do the same thing it is trying to do–collect money and redistribute for AIDS projects?

This “coincidence” between benefactors of Clinton’s earmarks/influence and donations to the Clinton apparatus, appears to be similar to another “coincidence” that took place in 2007. Senators Clinton and Schumer sponsored a $1 million earmark for a Woodstock museum that is part of a larger development plan of billionaire Alan Gerry. Days after the earmark was inserted into the legislation, Gerry donated $20,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, managed by Schumer, and $9,200 to Clinton’s presidential campaign.

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."