President-Elect Obama's Plan

I just got this email from the Obama-Biden transition team, and so thought I'd share Obama's plan with my readers:

Dear Laurence,

Last Thursday, President-elect Barack Obama gave a major speech outlining his plan for getting us out of this economic slump we're in, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. It's a far-reaching and aggressive plan, and we think it's what the economy needs to get going again.

But it's going to take a lot of work to get the plan approved, and your involvement is essential. That's why we asked some of the leading members of the Transition's policy teams to sit down and talk a bit about it -- why it's necessary, how it will work, and how we'll make sure it's as efficient and effective as it is bold.

We compiled their responses into a short video, touching on each of the major elements of the plan. Watch the video now at http://change.gov/plan:

Some parts of the plan might already be familiar to you. The plans for rebuilding infrastructure, expanding renewable energy capacity, and overhauling health care and education all build upon promises that President-elect Obama made during the campaign.

We're committed to keeping those promises -- and now, given the challenges we face, they're more important than ever.

We're counting on your help and your support.

Thanks,

John

John D. Podesta
Co-Chair
Obama-Biden Transition Project

Mark Steyn on the Gaza Crisis

From National Review Online:

Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community” — and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago.

So, as I said, forget Gaza. And instead ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch. Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let’s take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift.

But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just last month terrorists attacked Bombay, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading:

“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.’
“Mumbai terrorist 2: ‘We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.’
“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill them.’
“(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)”

“Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims.” Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto, and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted “Muslims must die!” or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups’ eternal bleating about “Islamophobia” is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, “moderate Muslims” in London warn the government: “I’m a peaceful fellow myself, but I can’t speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.”

But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation — to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli “war crimes.” As I always say, the “oldest hatred” didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they’re hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes.

But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada:

O mad people of Gaza,
a thousand greetings to the mad
The age of political reason
has long departed
so teach us madness

You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged — and in the end will prove just as self-destructive.

Irwin Cotler on the Gaza Crisis

From the Jerusalem Post:

While the rejection by Hamas of any peace with any Israel - or the existence of Israel itself - is a foundational root cause, there is a much more pernicious and sinister one that is all but ignored in the fog of war. This is the public call by Hamas, in its charter as well as its contemporary declarations, for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be.

Jews everywhere - not just in Israel - are referred to as inherently evil, as responsible for all the evils of the world, as defilers of Islam, and, repeatedly during these hostilities, as the "sons of apes and pigs." This genocidal anti-Semitism - and I do not use these words lightly or easily, but there are no other words to describe what is affirmed in these genocidal calls, covenants and declarations - this culture of hatred, this is where it all begins.

In the words of Prof. Fouad Ajami following the 2002 terrorist massacre of Israeli civilians in Netanya sitting down for their Passover meal: The suicide bomber of the Passover massacre did not descend from the sky; he walked straight out of the culture of incitement let loose on the land, a menace hovering over Israel, a great Palestinian and Arab refusal to let that country be, to cede it a place among the nations.

The bomber partook of the culture all around him: the glee that greets those brutal deeds of terror, the cult that rises around the martyrs and their families.

MOREOVER, Iran not only joins in these genocidal calls, but has become the epicenter of calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map." In Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, one finds the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes embedded in the most virulent of hatreds and propelled by the avowed intent of Iran to acquire nuclear weapons for that purpose. Iran is not just a bystander to the conflict, but an actor and choreographer involved in the training, supplying, financing, harboring and promoting of Hamas.

The Iran "connection" to the present hostilities is too often ignored or sanitized. As a senior commander of Hamas has said, "Iran is our mother. She gives us information, military supplies and financial support." It is all the more tragic that innocent civilians are dying in Gaza because of hostilities supported by Iran, whose criminal accountability is marginalized.

Bush's UN Security Council Blunder

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Bolton says the US made a mistake to abstain from a recent Security Council vote:

Abstaining allows a resolution to be adopted (assuming it enjoys at least nine affirmative votes) without explicit support from, in this case, the U.S.

All five of the permanent members of the Security Council abstain for various political reasons. The abstainer may conclude that threatening a veto carries too high a political price on the international stage, while a "yes" vote will haunt it later on.

But abstaining comes with its own costs. A permanent member's abstention invariably reflects that it failed to achieve its objectives. It also signals timidity.

Britain and France avoid vetoes for fear that if they are seen to be too hard-edged, they will be harried off of the Security Council and replaced by one European Union seat. Russia and China are motivated by other pressures. Russia is cautious because its influence is waning. China's influence is increasing, but it feels the need to tread lightly.

This is all the more reason why the U.S. can't afford to abdicate its international leadership role. For the U.S., abstentions have larger costs than for any other permanent member.

When the U.S. abstains, it cedes the field to others on the Security Council. And our global interests make losing the initiative unacceptably risky, especially on critical issues such as the Middle East.

Ms. Rice's abstention last Thursday, for example, neither mitigated the council's pressure on Israel, nor increased the likelihood of a cease-fire. As a display of weakness, it simply invites a diplomatic feeding frenzy. That will almost certainly happen now in regards to Gaza, where Resolution 1860 is having no effect.

Finally, abstaining encourages careless decision-making in Washington, especially for an administration seeking to avoid hard foreign-policy choices in order to focus on domestic issues. In short, abstaining passes the buck to those who do not have the U.S.'s interests at heart, while allowing those in Washington to feel like they are actively managing our interests.

NY Times Apologizes for Publishing Fake Letter to the Editor

And they have the chutzpah to criticize bloggers...In today's paper, this note:

A few weeks ago, as many of you will recall, we published what turned out to be a fake letter over the name of the mayor of Paris, whose office later confirmed that he did not write it. We apologized to him, and to you, the readers. And since then, we have worked to tighten our verification system for letters and enforce it more rigorously.

We encourage our readers to keep writing letters, of course, and we are all for full and vigorous (but civil) debate. But we are asking for your help as we “trust but verify.”

From now on we will adhere unfailingly to our existing standards: we will consider only letters with full contact information — your name, address, current location and daytime and evening telephone numbers (not for publication). If your letter is being considered, we will call you and send back an edited version for your approval before publication.

And here is our contact information:

E-mail: letters@nytimes.com

Fax: (212) 556-3622

Telephone: (212) 556-1873

Postal address: Letters to the Editor, The New York Times, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10018-1405

The readers of this page deserve to know that the letters we publish are legitimate. While no verification procedure involving strangers and operating on a degree of trust can be completely foolproof, we will work to ensure that an error like this doesn’t happen again.

THOMAS FEYER

An earlier note provides more detail:

Early this morning, we posted a letter that carried the name of Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, sharply criticizing Caroline Kennedy.

This letter was a fake. It should not have been published.

Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers.

We have already expressed our regrets to Mr. Delanoë's office and we are now doing the same to you, our readers.

This letter, like most Letters to the Editor these days, arrived by email. It is Times procedure to verify the authenticity of every letter. In this case, our staff sent an edited version of the letter to the sender of the email and did not hear back. At that point, we should have contacted Mr. Delanoë's office to verify that he had, in fact, written to us.

We did not do that. Without that verification, the letter should never have been printed.

We are reviewing our procedures for verifying letters to avoid such an incident in the future.

Kennedy, Seen From Paris (December 22, 2008)

Who wrote the letter?

Bernard Henry-Levy on the Gaza Crisis

From his New Republic article, "Liberate the Palestinians from Hamas:"

Quickly, let's hope, the fighting will cease. And very quickly, let us also hope, the commentators will regain their wits. They will discover, on that day, that Israel has committed many errors over the course of many years (missed opportunities, a long denial of the Palestinian national demands, unilateralism), but that Palestinians' worst enemies are the extremist leaders who have never wanted peace, have never wanted a State and never conceived of one for their people other than as an instrument and as a hostage. (Consider the sinister image of Hamas supreme leader Khaled Meshal who, on Saturday, Dec. 27, when the scale of the greatly desired Israeli response was becoming clear, only knew to declare a return to suicide missions--and this during his comfortable exile, his cushy job in Damascus ...)

From two choices, one. Either Hamas leaders re-establish the truce that they broke, and, while they're at it, declare null and void a charter founded on the pure rejection of the "Zionist Entity": In doing so, they will rejoin the vast party for compromise that has not ceased--God be praised--to make progress in the region, and peace will be established. Or they will only, obstinately, consider the suffering of Palestinian civilians in terms of its fueling of their annealed passions, their insane hate, nihilistic, beyond words. And if that is the case, it is not only the Israelis, but the Palestinians, who will need to be liberated from Hamas' somber shadow.

cnewmark

My cousin Savtadotty had a link on her Facebook page to Craig Newmark (founder of craigslist)...and he has a blog that looks interesting: cnewmark.com:

"White House illegally deleted Secret Service computer records"

Ellen Miller from the Sunlight Foundation tells us about a small but signficant victory for the good guys.

Turns out the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, CREW was investigating visits to the White House of nine conservative religious leaders. They also were checking up on. Stephen Payne, a lobbyist, caught in a video sting operation.

Come On People...

I thought the appearance of Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint on Meet the Press this morning was interesting. Something seemed left unsaid. When I googled the book, it showed up on Thomas Nelson's website for Christian inspirational titles, COME ON PEOPLE: On the Path from Victims to Victors:

When you have people who tell you, "You can't get up, you're a victim," that's when you know that it's the devil you're hearing, no one else.

Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint have a powerful message for families and communities as they lay out their visions for strengthening America or, for that matter, the world. They address the crises of people who are stuck because of feelings of low self-esteem, abandonment, anger, fearfulness, sadness, and feelings of being used, undefended, and unprotected. These issues often impede their ability to move forward. The authors aim to help empower people make the daunting transition from victims to victors. Come On, People is always engaging and is loaded with heart-piercing stories of the problems facing many communities.

Picturing Florida at the Menello Museum of Art

Just a plug for a new exhibition at the Menello Museum of Art in Orlando, for those readers heading to Disneyworld...our friend Victor Bokas's work pictured here is featured....January 9th to February 28th.

Melanie Phillips on the Gaza Crisis

From The Spectator (UK):

What is also being almost totally obscured by the western media jihad against Israel is the murderous onslaught by Hamas against the Palestinians themselves. Here is another video apparently showing Hamas mowing down and murdering a Palestinian wedding party for no other reason than there was music and dancing at the wedding. The narrator asks repeatedly why, if Hamas murder their own people, they are so angry when the Israelis kill them in self-defence. There is no indication of who the narrator is – he describes himself merely as an Arab, but he is clearly a supporter of Israel – so you will need to draw your own conclusions. Such Arabs certainly exist, but for obvious reasons need to keep the lowest of profiles. Also obscured by the media jihad is the fact that Hamas are not parochial Palestinian terrorists but Islamists bent on global domination. On this MEMRI video, they say in terms that the wish to annihilate not just Israel but Europe and America and conquer the entire world for Islam.

Savtadotty on the Gaza Crisis

From Cousin Lucy's Spoon:

A good part of today so far was spent obsessing and discussing the current doings in Gaza. One of my friends regrets that Israel didn't send ground troops in at the very start to rout out Hamas terrorists more quickly, another focuses on the tragedy of civilian deaths, and now Joe the Plumber is coming to Israel to report on the situation first-hand as a citizen journalist.

To take a break, I had a refreshing conversation with my daughter-in-law Pippi Bluestocking, a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Drama back in the USA. And, not being able to control myself after the usual catch-up on my granddaughter's doings - actually make that my granddaughters' doings, because Mermaid Girl is visiting from Booland - I asked: Why are the English-language and European media so anti-Israel? To which Pippi replied, Because the Palestinian story is more dramatic.

Good heavens, she's not only a professor of Drama, she's also brilliant.

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."

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