Dreams Into Lightning 1

Going to Tel Aviv

2012-01-28T19:23:00.000-08:00

I'd been to Israel twice before, but it had been a long time - my last visit was in 1993. And both of my previous trips had been more or less religiously focused, and somewhat touristy. I visited Jerusalem, of course, and places like Safed (pronounced Tsfat, but inexplicably spelled "Safed" in English), and, briefly, Eilat.

But I'd never been to Tel Aviv.

Ever since, when telling Israeli friends that I'd been to Israel, they would ask if I'd been to Tel Aviv, and I would have to say no. And invariably their reaction would be, "WTF?!? How do you visit Israel and not see Tel Aviv?"

So, late last year, I booked a trip to Israel and stayed in Tel Aviv.

What Martin Luther King Did

2012-01-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

Via Jeff Fecke at Alas, here's Hamden Rice at Angry Black Lady:

And yeah, I said for African Americans, not for Americans, because his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer. That’s why some of us who are African Americans get a bit possessive about his legacy. Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy, despite what our civil religion tells us, is not color blind.

And why should it be? The world he lived in was not color blind.

So anyway, I was having this argument with my father about Martin Luther King and how his message was too conservative compared to Malcolm X’s message. My father got really angry at me. It wasn’t that he disliked Malcolm X, but his point was that Malcolm X hadn’t accomplished anything as Dr. King had.

I was kind of sarcastic and asked something like, so what did Martin Luther King accomplish other than giving his “I have a dream speech.”

Before I tell you what my father told me ...

Go to the post to read what Hamden's father told him.

Defense Department Troubled by Leaks

2012-01-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

The Number One problem for the Secretary of Defense, apparently, is the appearance of a video showing US Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. Matters came to a head when the White House characterized the incident as "deplorable" and "reprehensible". The Taliban, for their part, are unimpressed.

Dear, dear. With all these pictures whizzing around the internet, will our battlefield superiority be rendered void? Robert Wright opines:

First, there's the new transparency of war. Infinitely more battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details. So it's just a matter of time before some outrageous image goes viral--pictures from Abu Ghraib, video from Afghanistan, whatever. These images will make you and your soldiers more hated by the enemy than ever--and hated by civilians who may identify with the enemy, whether because of national, ethnic, or religious kinship.

The second big change is that hatred is now a more dangerous thing. America faces no serious threat from any nation-state, but the more amorphous threat from radical Islam, if mishandled, could mushroom and, years from now, reach massively lethal proportions. And the lifeblood of radical Islam (like the lifeblood of many radical things) is hatred. The more Muslims there are who hate Americans, the easier life is for recruiters from al Qaeda or some other such terrorist group. ...

First, actually, there's the old transparency of open societies, and the opacity of dictatorships. This is what ensures that we know every piddling little detail of the doings of American fighting men in Afghanistan, but nothing of what goes on behind the lines on the other side.

Just as important as what gets recorded is what does not get recorded. That's why the Abu Ghraib prison that Wright and others are so fond of citing is known to the public as the place where Americans abused Iraqi prisoners and not for the torture and mass executions that occurred in Iraq's dark past under the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein.

This is a good place to quote Rep. Allen West: "I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah."

The second big non-change is that hatred by itself is not dangerous to anybody. People acting from hatred are dangerous, and they are more dangerous if they have better weapons. Wright actually says as much. Wright's worry is that the enemy might get access to "massively lethal technologies". Better, then, to yield to blackmail before it starts.

Robert Wright's conclusion is typical of the accommodationist, pro-appeasement plan favored by so many mild-mannered liberals:

In the old days national security could be had by making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now national security requires (among other things) that as few people as possible hate you.

Notice that the element of "fearing you" is eliminated from the equation. Robert Wright can't picture anybody being afraid of him. (Judging by the picture, neither can I.)

This is the old liberal hand-wringing mantra of "let's not do anything rash, because then we might make them even more angry". (You remember the fretting about "the Arab street" after 9/11.) It's as if the enemy's hatred is an inexhaustible resource that can always be dialed up another notch. But somehow this same principle doesn't seem to apply to our side.

Robert Wright can't picture anybody being in mortal fear of him, but fortunately for all of us the United States Marines don't have that problem. Nor, I think, do they have any shortage of hate and contempt for the enemy. And I'll bet they're plenty angry.

Because the Marines understand one simple, timeless truth:

It's better to be pissed off than to be pissed on.

Women's Property Rights in Pakistan: A Step Forward

2012-01-13T12:58:00.000-08:00

Eesha Pandit at Feministing:

A Pakistani regional assembly has passed a law making it illegal for parents not to extend property rights to female family members, reports Radio Free Europe.

The new bill, passed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, in Northwest Pakistan on January 5, would punish those who refused property rights to female family members with five years in prison and a 50,000 rupee ($550) fine. Under Shari’a law, the existing standard followed by the province’s government, a daughter should receive half as much property as her brother. The new law changes that. ...

You can sign the Million Names Million Voices campaign at the link. Also, check out the video by Nouman Javaid and Khawar Jawad, "Socha Kabhi naa".

Husain Haqqani

2012-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

Nina Shea, National Review:

Husain Haqqani may soon be put on trial for his life in his native Pakistan. That country’s ambassador to the United States until last November, he now faces allegations of treason in the so-called “Memogate” affair, accused of instigating an unsigned memo to the U.S. government warning of a military-coup plot against Pakistan’s government — an allegation he denies. Haqqani’s defense lawyer, the valiant human-rights advocate Asma Jahangir, has filed an appeal to the Supreme Court challenging due-process irregularities in a preliminary investigation against him, and, fearing assassination from vigilantes, the ambassador has sought safety in the prime minister’s home, where he is a virtual prisoner.

There is every reason to believe that the real reason Haqqani is being targeted is that he is a prominent moderate Muslim, one of the few remaining in Pakistan’s government. ...

Go to the link to read the rest, and to find out what happened to two of Husain Hazzani's friends who spoke out for tolerance.

1948 Defenders' Memorial, Old City, Jerusalem

2012-01-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem

2012-01-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

View from the Old City, overlooking the Kotel.

Iran: Nuclear Scientist Killed

2012-01-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was killed in a bomb attack in Tehran the morning of January 11, Wednesday. The Iranian regime has urged the United Nations to condemn the attack. Tehran officials blamed the usual suspects - that'd be the US and the Israelis. Hillary Clinton denied any American involvement, but

Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said on his Facebook page Wednesday: "I have no idea who targeted the Iranian scientist but I certainly don't shed a tear."

Stratfor points out that this is the fifth successful assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in as many years. Additionally, according to Stratfor,

Beyond continuing a trend in assassinations, Ahmadi-Roshan's death revealed that the Iranians could be pursuing a method of uranium enrichment other than centrifuges. There are two main methods of uranium enrichment: gas centrifuges and gas diffusion. Al Jazeera reported that Ahmadi-Roshan was in charge of a project working on polymer membranes, which are necessary for gas diffusion but not for centrifuges. ...

Go to the link for the full article.

Tom the Redhunter has a valuable roundup of related events.

The MO is the similar in the targeted assassinations; two men on a motorcycle drive up next to the car while in traffic, the man on the back of the bike attaches a magnetic bomb to the car, they speed off, and a few seconds later the bomb explodes and the man inside is killed.

Iran is warning of a "cross-border, cross-regional strategy for striking back" according to the Jerusalem Post article.

Dizengoff

2012-01-11T21:49:00.000-08:00

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Israel Trip

2012-01-11T21:18:00.000-08:00

I visited Israel - mostly Tel Aviv, with a couple of trips to Jerusalem - for the first two weeks of November 2011. Very soon, I will be posting my impressions from that visit.

Meanwhile, I'll post a couple of selections from the pictures I took.

Site Update

2012-01-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

No, Dreams Into Lightning hasn't been hacked by Anonymous. I've been busy with personal stuff, but posting will resume shortly.

Hitchens remembered ...

2011-12-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

... by Shmuley Boteach. Of all the Hitchens tributes you'll read, this may be one of the most interesting.

We were planning to do another debate on whether the Jews are indeed the chosen people, a topic of particular interest for Hitchens given the discovery that he was Jewish only when his mother revealed it to him in his twenties.

Back and forth we went, trying to find a time that might suit him as he awaited the literal return of the voice he had lost to his treatment against esophageal cancer.

His mother had also told him that she planned to move to Israel where she said Jews were making the desert bloom, a move that was never carried out due to her tragic suicide. I once asked Hitchens on my radio show what, given his mother’s growing attachment to her people, it would have meant to him for her to have lived to see the substantial Jewish intellectual following he would one day amass. He told me that it would have made him very happy to see her proud.

He further shared with me how, amid his passionate atheism, he took pride in his Jewishness due to Jewry’s immense emphasis on learning and scholarship and being the people of the book. ...

Go read the rest. And don't miss Totten.

Phyllis Chesler on Charles Small, Subramanian Swamy

2011-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Phyllis Chesler at A7:

I am talking about the Islamic persecution of infidels on every continent—a persecution which is still ongoing; about forced conversions to Islam; and about the genocidal extermination of 80 million Hindus over a period of six centuries (1000-1500 CE).

What I’ve just written is historically true as is Islam’s history of anti-Black racism, slavery, and gender and religious apartheid. Ibn Warraq has a new and very important book just coming out on this very subject. It is titled: Why the West is Best. A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy.

But, it is a crime to say any of this. And, it is a crime to suggest that a liberal or constitutional democracy must defend itself against jihadic terrorism.

This is not true only in the Middle East or in Islamic central Asia. It is true in the major and most prestigious universities in the United States. ...

Read it all at the link.

French Kiss

2011-11-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

"L'Amour Plus Forte que l'Haine"

Following the announcement that Islamic prophet Mohammed would be 'guest-editing' an issue of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, all hell broke loose.

Their offices were firebombed, its website taken offline, and huge protests broke out at the weekend.

So how does Charlie Hebdo respond? With the headline "Love is stronger than hate": ...

Go to the BI link for the whole works. Great cover.

Related: Make love, not jihad.

French Magazine Firebombed

2011-11-07T21:00:00.000-08:00

Fox:

PARIS – French politicians and Muslim leaders denounced an arson attack early Wednesday that destroyed the offices of a satirical French newspaper after it "invited" the Prophet Muhammad as its guest editor this week.

No one was injured in the fire that started around 1 a.m. in the offices of Charlie Hebdo weekly in eastern Paris, hours before the current issue hit the newsstands.

"Everything will be done to find those behind this attack," said Interior Minister Claude Gueant ...

Time's Bruce Crumley says that the magazine is no free speech martyr. (What, exactly, does it take to be a "free speech martyr" then?)

Jill at Feministe responds:

Again: I agree that Islamophobic antics are “futile and childish;” I agree that they serve absolutely no common good. But they “bait” Muslim people into violence? They just make it too tempting to blow up a building? Nope! You don’t get to use violence in response to rhetoric, no matter how abhorrent the rhetoric.

And you know, the vast majority of Muslim people respond to bigotry by pushing back, or being disgusted, or voicing their disapproval, or being quietly angry, or organizing. It seems more than a little condescending and insulting to suggest that Muslims as a group just can’t help getting all bomb-y when someone pisses them off.

Lavender Alert

2011-10-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

Quick! Somebody call Debbie Schluessel! Only 30 percent of WNBA players are lesbians.

Boy wears pink nail polish; world ends; Fox's Keith Ablow throws hissy fit. The offending picture appeared last spring, but Fox's gender cop Dr. Keith Ablow isn't done yet. You might remember that (in)famous picture with J Crew designer Jenna Lyons painting her son Beckett's toes pink? Well, that right there is what's wrong with this world, Ablow will have you know.

Anwar al-Awlaki Gets His Virgins

2011-10-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Anwar al-Awlaki (also spelled Aulaqi; Arabic: أنور العولقي‎ Anwar al-‘Awlaqī; April 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was a Yemeni-American imam who was an engineer and educator by training. According to U.S. federal government officials, he was a senior talent recruiter and motivator who was involved with planning operations for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda. His sermons are alleged to have helped motivate at least three attacks inside the United States, and was the first U.S. citizen to be added to a list of persons approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency. With a blog, a Facebook page, and many YouTube videos, he had been described as the "bin Laden of the Internet". U.S. President Barack Obama alleged that Awlaki was "the leader of external operations for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula".

IISS:

Nigel Inkster, a former deputy head of MI6, said Awlaki "was the ideologue of al-Qaeda".

"He was very influential because he able to groom and animate so many," he said. "While everyone else in al-Qaeda was dumbstruck by the Arab Spring, he was the one person able to embrace the tsunami that hit the region."

Armies of Liberation:

AQAP issues message confirming death of Anwar al-Awlaki: Site Intel

Safe copy at Jihadology has link to original post: al-Malāḥim Media presents new statement from al-Qā’idah in the Arabian Peninsula: “Blood of the Martyr, Light and Fire: Statement on the Martyrdom of Shaykh Anwar al-’Awlaqī and his Colleagues”

No mention of al Assiri per @Inteltweet but Sami confirmed dead as well.

“The blood of the sheik (al-Awlaki) and his brothers will not go in vain; there are heroes behind him who do not sleep under oppression, and they will retaliate soon,” the group said. “We and the Americans are at war: we get them and they get us, and the end is for those who are patient – they are the ones who will be victorious.” FOX

Awlaki lived at Yemen house of General People's Congress official Zindani five months before death.

This article says Anwar was living in Sanaa in the house of a GPC member when the National Security transfered him to al Jawf for his own security, but put a transmitter in his car… Anyway this article contradicts the Ahram article, unless the National Security transferred him to Afrag’s house and then he went to visit Okaimi. Update : al Zindani does have a huge farm in Al-Jawf .. it’s about 10 kilometers x 10 kilometers.

Zindani's farm. Also, Awlaki trained Farouk on failed 2009 and 2010 bomb plots.

Long War Journal: AQAP confirms Anwar al Awlaki killed in US drone strike.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has confirmed that Anwar al Awlaki was killed in a US drone strike last month, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. In a statement released to online jihadist forums, AQAP also confirmed the killing of Samir Khan, who edited AQAP's online English publication, Inspire.

AQAP's martyrdom statement references the public debate in the US over the legality of killing Awlaki and Khan, both of whom were American citizens. AQAP says the US government "did not prove the accusation against them, and did not present evidence against them in their unjust laws of their freedom."

The statement, according to a translation provided by SITE, continues: "Where are what they keep talking about regarding freedom, justice, human rights and respect of freedoms?! Was America fed up with it to the point that it contradicted it - and every day it contradicts - these principles that it claims its state is based upon?!"

American Politics After Iraq

2011-10-02T17:14:00.000-07:00

Dr. Andrew Parasiliti of IISS observes:

President Obama can put Iraq in the win column.

He has done exactly what he said he would do four years ago as a presidential candidate. In December, the U.S. will withdraw most or all of its remaining forces from Iraq. Unlike the economy and the Middle East peace talks, Iraq is on course.

But there will be no electoral bounce for Obama on Iraq. Americans are too preoccupied with the dismal state of the economy to much notice or care. ...

Go read the rest at the link. Indeed, matters like employment, taxation, and public education are at the top of the public's list of priorities.

Happy New Year 5772

2011-09-28T17:52:00.001-07:00

I'll be away from posting until this Sunday, due to the Rosh Hashana holiday. I'm looking forward to taking this site to a new level in the coming year, and I'm grateful for your readership.

I've been posting at Dreams Into Lightning on Blogger since April 2004 and at DiL on TypePad since April 2006. Until now, I've mostly duplicated the same content on both sites, but that's changing.

DiL 1 (Blogger) will focus on analysis and viewpoints; DiL 2 (TypePad) will be the place for current news and events.

See you in 5772.

British Ambassador to Syria Denounces "Big Brother"

2011-09-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Simon Collis minces no words:

I’ve been British Ambassador in Syria for the last four years. Last weekend I decided to start this blog after Syria passed a terrible milestone. The Syrians have now endured six months of unrest and violent suppression of mostly peaceful protests. As they now look towards the next six months with a mixture of uncertainty, fear and hope, I wanted to share some personal impressions about what’s happening. Some thoughts about why it’s happening. And maybe to spark some debate about what comes next and what can be done.

In doing so I am privileged. Because I can. The last six months have shown the Syrians can too. But in doing so, they face censorship, threats and arbitrary arrest.

The Syrian regime doesn’t want you to know that its security forces and the gangs that support them are killing, arresting and abusing mostly peaceful protesters: The UN says over 2,700 people have died in the last six months, some of them under torture in prison. It doesn’t want you to know that it is preventing many from meeting peacefully to discuss reform. It wants you to hear only one version of the truth – its own. ...

Iranian Nuke: How bad?

2011-09-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Dina Esfandiary at IISS says: Very bad.

Most importantly, it would make the Islamic Republic a great deal bolder in its foreign policy. Iran’s regional aspirations of hegemony would no longer be a matter of trying to appear like a bully, it would be one. And rather than threatening the region with a nuclear weapon, the weapon would give them the confidence to activate their proxies to cause trouble. Americans stirring up trouble in the region? Well, let’s send Hezbollah to nab a few in Lebanon to teach them a lesson. Or better yet, perhaps we can push Hamas to ratchet up their attacks on Israel, send them a few extra rockets and mortars. Memories of the eighties anyone?

Admittedly, this might be more difficult given the changes in the region in the past few months. But it is far from implausible.

An Iranian bomb would be bad for the region. In June, speaking to senior NATO officials, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal said that an Iranian bomb would “compel Saudi Arabia … to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences”, something he reiterated at the IISS GSR conference in September. The same is probably true of other states in the region – some have made it clear that an Iranian nuclear device would be an incentive for them to start their own programmes. Although turning to nuclear power does not necessarily mean getting the bomb, national fuel cycles pose a considerable proliferation threat, and increase the likelihood of a regional nuclear cascade.

Finally, an Iranian bomb would deliver a significant blow to the international non-proliferation and disarmament agenda. Iran signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and ratified it two years later. Its programme has since been subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verification. If the regime decides to get the bomb it will have abandoned the NPT. ...

Read the whole article at the link. And bookmark the IISS homepage for up-to-the minute, thoughtful commentary.

Two Executions

2011-09-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Eric Olsen at GayPatriot has some thoughts on the Troy Davis execution. His piece is exceptionally lucid and worth reading in full. Don't miss the comments.

Whether he was the one that actually pulled the trigger and shot Police Officer (and former Army Ranger) Mark MacPhail in the face and heart, Troy Davis was definitely in the gaggle of hoodlums that was attacking a homeless man whose cries for help were what Officer MacPhail was responding to when he met his untimely fate. The fact that 22 years of appeals were denied –including one last night that the highest court in the land rejected –leads me to believe that the evidence in its entirety is pretty conclusive…

That being said, I am not a fan of the death penalty when there is no DNA evidence.

And Troy Davis declaring he did not kill Officer McPhail with his dying breath didn’t help me feel better about an execution at the end of a circumstantial evidence case. I just keep telling myself regardless of whether he pulled the trigger…he was kicking the daylights out of a defenseless homeless man. ...

Read the whole thing at the link, and don't miss the comments.

Meanwhile, 'White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.' Two accomplices, John William King and Shawn Barry, were also convicted.

Bell Tolls for "Don't Ask"

2011-09-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

CNN: 'A minute into the new day, 12:01 a.m., the old "don't ask, don't tell" rule that has been in force since the Clinton administration is gone. In its place is a policy designed to be blind to sexual orientation and that the Pentagon brass insists will maintain the military in fighting trim and have no negative impact on "military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion and recruiting and retention."'

BBC: '"Repeal Day" parties have been organised across the country to mark the victory for gay rights.'

TOI: 'During the long, arduous campaign to repeal "don't ask, don't tell", activists and advocacy groups tended to downplay issues related to post-repeal benefits for civilian partners. "It's not something we've been pushing very hard for yet, but it's obviously going to be the next front in the ongoing battle for equality," said Alex Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United.'

Servicemembers United:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Servicemembers United, the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans, celebrated the historic end of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law today with the release of the following statement from its founder and Executive Director, Alexander Nicholson, who was himself honorably discharged early from the U.S. Army because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:

“On March 15, 1778 the first American servicemember was drummed out of the military for being gay. Since then, tens of thousands more have had their careers ruined and their lives turned upside down by a succession of anti-gay polices and regulations, culminating in the codification of an anti-gay statute in 1993 with the passage of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. In all, 14,346 men and women were discharged pursuant Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But thanks to the persistent hard work of unwavering advocates, especially those who have been directly impacted by this issue, and some courageous politicians over the past six years, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is now history. As a result, those who continue to serve can sleep easier tonight knowing that they can no longer be arbitrarily fired because of their sexual orientation. Justice has prevailed and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. God bless America.” ...

Nick, aka Colorado Patriot, at GayPatriot:

While I appreciate your gladness on my behalf, please do take a moment today and keep in mind that there were some of us who were serving under DADT without regard for it.

While I am grateful that the era of homosexuality being the military’s business has ended, I am grateful more so for those who, like me, joined the military knowing the score and choosing this rewarding life anyway.

While I welcome those young men and women into the ranks of our military who heretofore had waited the policy out, I am much more proud of those who didn’t require their own terms be met in order to answer the call to serve in the first place. ...

Enlightenment and Its Discontents

2011-09-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

In thus projecting a doctrine of human dignity, Rassvyet [published 1907-1934] did not only confront the Czarist regime and Russian society. It threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish liberals, socialists and assimilationists whose conventional policy was one of apology and self justification, accepting by implication the notion that if the Jews were not ultra-virtuous, not ultra-talented, and not ultra-blessed with ultra-civilized ancestors, they would not be entitled to the ordinary rights enjoyed or striven for by their non-Jewish fellow citizens. They thus openly accepted the double standard which was (and has remained) one of the hallmarks of anti-semitism throughout the world.

Standing alone among the organs of Jewish opinion, the Rassvyet editors applied their extraordinary intellectual resources to warn the Jewish community against the illusion that the "emancipation", which all demanded, would solve the essential Jewish problem. Emancipation had come to progressive Western Europe and what had been achieved? Virulent German anti-semitism, "scientific" Austrian anti-semitism were as alive as ever. Most dramatically of all, its monstrous face had appeared in France precisely in the age of vaunted liberalism: Dreyfus languishing on Devil's Island was a very recent memory. The idea that precisely in Russia, Russia of the pogroms, an emancipatory sun would melt the hearts of the endemic Jew-haters was a snare and an illusion: those who preached it were leading their people to the edge of despair.

- Shmuel Katz. Lone Wolf: A biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky.

When the winds of Emancipation began to blow through Europe, Jews were presented with a choice. They could become equal citizens but only by keeping their Jewish identity restricted to private life. Many Jews, understandably eager to break free of generations of persecution, embraced the offer. Judaism was reformed to meet the demands of this civic invisibility, with the German Reform movement leading the way. By instituting a number of significant changes, from translating the Hebrew liturgy into German to celebrating the Jewish Sabbath on Sunday rather than Saturday to abolishing traditional dietary restrictions, Reform leaders hoped to help the Jews become full partners in German life, to be what one Enlightenment thinker would later call "a Jew at home and a man on the street." Significantly, the German Reform movement did not see Jews as a separate nation but rather considered themselves to be "Germans of Mosaic persuasion."

But the Enlightenment strategy of fading out of view was deeply and tragically unsuccessful. Enlightenment and emancipation promised to treat Jews as equal citizens provided they remained invisible as Jews. But what started with eliminating Jewishness from the public square culminated in an attempt to eliminate Jews altogether. The country where Reform was born would also be the country that would condemn the Jews to extermination.

Europe's democratic ideals would leave no room for Jewish identity. On this point, there was little that separated the philosophical ends and ideologies associated with the Right or the Left. Each had a dream of sameness and unity, whether it entailed a fascistic single identity or imagined the dissolution of all identity.

- Natan Sharansky. Defending identity.

In Europe, and not just there, a new kind of politics did seem to be stirring, which sometimes called itself left-wing and sometimes right-wing -- a demagogic politics, irrational, authoritarian, and insanely murderous, a politics of mass mobilization for unachievable ends. Mussolini had embraced the word "totalitarian" to describe his own movement; and "totalitarian" in its stuttery sharp syllables seemed to fit the new kind of politics in each of its versions, right-wing and left-wing alike. The implications did seem fairly obvious. During the whole of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, a great many enlightened and progressive thinkers had supposed that a main danger, perhaps the principal danger, to modern civilization came from a single political tendency, which was the extreme right, and mostly from a single country, which was Germany, the sworn foe of the French Revolution. But that sort of outlook seemed hopelessly antique by 1950. In the new era, no one doubted that political movements on the extreme right could still make you worry. No one felt much confidence in Germany and its political traditions.

But the midcentury writers saw all too plainly that a danger to civilization had meanwhile cropped up in Russia and among the hard-bitten Stalinists, and among other people, too. The writers worried about the many mush-headed liberals and fellow travelers all over the world who, without being Stalinists themselves, managed to admire the Stalinist enterprise. ...

- Paul Berman. Terror and liberalism.

Cross-posted at DiL - TypePad.

Middle East at Critical Mass

2011-09-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

Turkey's Erdogan says his country is "ready for anything" as Turkey sends three military ships to the eastern Mediterranean to "defend against Israeli vessels". Debka reports that "If Turkish warships encounter an Israeli military ship outside Israel's 12-mile territorial waters, they will advance up to 100 meters from the ship and disable its weapon system."

Meanwhile, Russia says welcome as Iran goes nuclear.

And according to this enigmatic report, an unnamed IDF naval officer violated the territorial waters of an unnamed foreign country, and got a week in an Israeli brig.

Remarks. Via Meadia says that the Middle East is "on the boil", and Belmont Club concurs. Mead:

With the end of the Cold War, history began to return to a “normal” velocity. Countries got frisky; France has fallen in and out with both the United States and Germany several times since 1989. The rise of China and India transforms the international scene in a way that was common before 1945 but rare during the Cold War.

Fernandez oberves: "It bears recalling that the Cold war saw both the 1967 and 1973 Wars. So normal velocity does not necessarily augur good news."

Indeed. Michael Totten's latest report from Cairo explains that

The army and the Islamists have a strange relationship with each other that neither explains or is honest about. The state has viciously repressed the Brotherhood at times while at other times using it as either a sword or a shield against liberals.

Traditionally, Egypt's army and its Islamists have been antagonistic to one another. But what happens if they join forces?

No doubt Washington and Jerusalem prefer to do business with the military instead of the Brotherhood even if the regime was founded in a spirit of Arab Nationalism and Egyptian supremacy. But what if the U.S. and Israel will soon have to contend with both?

Turkey / Israel Rift

2011-09-02T12:05:00.001-07:00

Turkey / Israel rift. MK Dr. Michael Ben-Ari has had it with Turkey, and has called on FM Avidgor Lieberman to declare Turkey an enemy state and send its ambassador packing. Turkey says it will take legal action against Israel and prosecute Israelis for actions taken during the Mavi Marmara raid in May of 2010. Israel says, We're not sorry. Turkey says fine, we don't like you either.

Commentary. Claire Berlinski:

Turkey has announced that it's suspending military agreements with Israel and reducing diplomatic relations to "Second Secretary" level. I read the Palmer Report last night. As far as I know, it hasn't been translated into Turkish. Judith, do you know if it's been translated into Hebrew?

If it hasn't been translated into either language, we can conclude that popular debate about it is taking place among journalists, academics, diplomats, Americans, and on Twitter. It takes even a very fluent reader of English who has followed this story closely since it began about two hours to read it carefully.

All of this could make one quite despairing ...

Follow the Istanbul-dwelling American expat Berlinski for the latest. Here's some info on the Palmer Report:

The much-delayed UN report, by a committee lead by former NZ Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, into the deadly Israeli action against a Gaza-bound flotilla on May 31 2010 has been leaked to the New York Times prior to its official release, expected today.

The report find that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is legal and appropriate but the force used in the raid was excessive and unreasonable.

Summary

On 31 May 2010 at 4.26 a.m. a flotilla of six vessels was boarded and taken over by Israeli Defense Forces 72 nautical miles from land. The vessels were carrying people and humanitarian supplies. The flotilla had been directed to change course by the Israeli forces who stated that the coast of Gaza was under a naval blockade. Nine passengers lost their lives and many others were wounded as a result of the use of force during the take-over operation by Israeli forces.

The Secretary-General established the Panel of Inquiry on the 31 May 2010 Flotilla Incident on 2 August 2010. ...

Full text of the Palmer Report (pdf).

Hiatus

2011-08-01T10:20:00.001-07:00

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything here. So this post is just to make it official: Yes, I am on a hiatus, and yes, I will be back.

UN Defends Gay Rights

2011-06-17T18:42:00.001-07:00

Times of India:

GENEVA: The top UN human rights body declared on Friday there should be no discrimination or violence against people based on their sexual orientation, a vote Western countries called historic but Islamic states firmly rejected.

The controversial resolution marked the first time that the Human Rights Council recognized the equal rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, diplomats said.

The text, presented by South Africa, was adopted by 23 countries in favor, 19 against with 3 abstentions and one delegation absent during voting. ...

Read the article at the link.

New York State Senator Roy McDonald on Gay Marriage

2011-06-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

Via BuzzFeed:

You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing,” McDonald, 64, told reporters. “You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. ...

And there's more where that came from. Read the rest at the link.

Sarah Palin

2011-06-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted much about Sarah Palin. The main reasons are fairly simple: She doesn't hold national office (or any office at present), and she's not even a candidate for office at the moment. And - notwithstanding Sarah Palin's constant presence in the media - I try to stay focused on people and events that are newsworthy in themselves.

That said, I'll share a few of my own thoughts on the former Governor of Alaska. First: I am not sure that I would vote for her if she were to run for President, but I am sure that I do not believe she is the fool or the fanatic that the press has portrayed her to be.

I do not understand what it is about Sarah Palin that sends the Left and the media into frothing, apoplectic fits of rage - but I have to admit that I like it.

In the kind of liberalism I believe in, there's room for people we agree with but don't admire, and people we admire but don't agree with; and there's even room for people we agree with part of the time and disagree with part of the time. I don't know where the fanaticism of today's so-called "liberals" comes from, but I want no part of it.

So if I say that I think Sarah Palin is a decent, intelligent, competent, hard-working person, who's been treated miserably by the media, and with whom I agree about many things and probably disagree about many others - that is not an endorsement of "Sarah Palin for President". But it is a recognition that there's something about Palin that matters.

Saleh Leaves Yemen

2011-06-05T08:05:00.001-07:00

Without further ado, here's Jane:

After an entire day of contradictory reports on Saleh’s health and whereabouts, the Deputy Minister of Info announced on al Hurra that Saleh and 24 family members are in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment, and presidential power has been transferred to VP al Hadi. I’m assuming the GPC and the four horsemen (may be three now if Tariq is really killed) consider this as a temporary arrangement; where as the protesters see it as the beginning of the end. I’m in shock.

Updates, unofficial and official:

Ali Mohsen submits his resignation to Hadi

NEW JOKEs: SALIH REFUSE TO SIGN FOR SURGERY WITHOUT PRESENCE OF THE OPPOSITION

THEY SAID, ELECTRICITY SHUT OFF IMMEDIATELY IN SAUDI ARABIA AT THE ARRIVAL OF SALIH

Royal Court of KSA issues official communique that Saleh is in SA for medical treatment while some Yemeni officials insist he’s still in Yemen. Bin Ali said to be at Saleh’s reception at the airport.

Alarabyia correspondent reports seeing Saleh walking from the plane, which means not badly injured and odd if he had surgery earlier today

BaFadhl on AJA: Ali AlAnesi, head of Nat Sec, announced formation of an (unconstitutional) military council to cover for Saleh

Taiz under full control of the rev and celebrating with fireworks.

Hadi also in command of the armed forces.

Al Jazeera back in Yemen. ...

And here's Al-J:

Pro-democracy protesters are celebrating what they described as the fall of the Yemeni government after President Ali Abdullah Saleh left the country for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia.

"Today, Yemen is newborn," sang dozens of youths in Sanaa's University Square on Sunday, dubbed "Change Square", which has been the epicentre of anti-government protests that have raged since February.

"This is it, the regime has fallen," others chanted.

In Yemen's second-largest city Taiz, a flashpoint of anti-government demonstrations south of the capital Sanaa, hundreds also celebrated, chanting: "Freedom, freedom, Ali has fled". ...

Arab Nazis

2011-06-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

From the BBC's Sarah Ehrlich:
Farhud memories: Baghdad's 1941 slaughter of the Jews

On 1 June 1941, a Nazi-inspired pogrom erupted in Baghdad, bringing to an end more than two millennia of peaceful existence for the city's Jewish minority. Some Jewish children witnessed the bloodshed, and retain vivid memories 70 years later.

Heskel Haddad, an 11-year-old boy was finishing a festive meal and preparing to celebrate the Jewish festival of Shavuot, oblivious to the angry mob that was about to take over the city.

Thousands of armed Iraqi Muslims were on the rampage, with swords, knives and guns.

The two days of violence that followed have become known as the Farhud (Arabic for "violent dispossession"). About 800 Jews were killed, spelling the end for a Jewish community that dated from the time of Babylon. Only 180 bodies were identified, but the Israeli-based Babylonian Heritage Museum says about another 600 unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave.

Go to the original for the full, horrific details - but also for the stories of brave Arab individuals who did what they could to protect the innocent from the mob.

The BBC piece does not address the long history of anti-Jewish violence in the Arab world prior to the Nazi era. Nevertheless, this article is an important first step. It demolishes the notion that Israel is to blame for Arab Jew-hatred. Also, the article helps to put the Arabic word "Farhud" into circulation. The word needs to be part of the vocabulary of international discourse.

It is important to expose the link between Nazism and Arab anti-Semitism, as this article does. That the Nazis did horrific things to humanity in general and the Jews in particular is well known; "Nazi = evil" is not a controversial statement.

But Nazis are a "safe target". They were white, nominally Christian Europeans acting on a professed ideology of white supremacism; so it's easy to conflate them with the likes of the KKK. Best of all, they lost the war! There is no significant presence of Nazi sympathizers in today's academic or cultural establishments. ('Twasn't always so; but that's another story.) Unlike the Communists, for example - or the Islamists.

Exposing the Nazi-Islamist ties may be the most important thing we can do to disrupt the narrative that paints Israel as the heir to the Nazi mantle.

Nazism is not yet dead in the Middle East.

JPost: Newspaper reports Nazi party forming in Egypt.

A group of Egyptian political activists have announced plans to set up a local version “of the Nazi party,” an Egyptian newspaper reported on Thursday.

Citing a leftist Egyptian news portal, the Al-Masry Al-Youm daily said that “the party’s founding deputy is a former military official,” and that the party would be aimed at bringing “together prominent figures from the Egyptian society.”

The report cited founding member Emad Abdel Sattar as saying that the unestablished party “believes in vesting all powers in the president after selecting him or her carefully,” and that “preparations are under way to choose the most competent person to represent the party.”

Go to the article for full details. But pay special attention to what Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University, says about Nazi-inspired groups in the Arab world:

Historically, he said, the German Nazi party saw three attempts to copy it in the Arab world in the 1930s in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. The Egyptian party of that time was led by former president Anwar Sadat, who went on to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

“They were copying the extreme nationalism of Germany, before the Second World War, and before the word ‘Nazi’ became a coarse word,” Kedar said.[My emphasis - aa.]

Strategy Page has more.

This is ironic on many levels. While Arabs love to call Israelis "Nazis", it is the Arab world that is the true heir to the Adolph Hitler's vision of how the world should be. A major weapon in the Arab arsenal is anti-Semitism. For a long time, even before World War II, the racial hatred tactic was particularly popular in the Arab world. This was partly the result of Islamic radicalism, which pushed hatred of all non-Moslems, not just Jews. But as more Jews began moving into Jerusalem and surrounding areas in the late 19th century, more of the Moslem racial animosity was directed at Jews.

Mead: "Obama Throws Palestine Under the Bus"

2011-05-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

Walter Russell Mead has the most interesting - and I'd venture to say the best - analysis of Obama's Mideast speech that I've seen so far. I won't even try to excerpt it; just go read it. And yes, you read that title correctly: "Obama throws Palestine under the bus."

Obama's Speedy Re-Think on 1967

2011-05-22T05:48:00.000-07:00

JTA:

President Obama has elaborated upon his call for the 1967 lines to serve as the basis for a Palestinian state's border in an interview with the BBC.

"The basis for negotiations will involve looking at that 1967 border, recognizing that conditions on the ground have changed and there are going to need to be swaps to accommodate the interests of both sides," Obama told the BBC Thursday in an interview following his Middle East policy speech.

“Israel is going to have to feel confident about its security on the West Bank, and that security element is going to be important to the Israelis,” Obama added. “They will not be able to move forward unless they feel that they themselves can defend their territory, particularly given what they’ve seen happen in Gaza and the rockets that have been fired by Hezbollah.”

"Elaborated upon" is one way to put it. Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post has more. So does Carl at Israel Matzav.

Obama's Middle East Speech

2011-05-20T18:46:00.001-07:00

Jonathan Tobin was among the first to notice tones of neoconservatism in President Obama's speech yesterday:

The president says the United States opposes the use of violence and repression by dictators, supports universal rights including free speech and assembly, freedom of religion, equality of men and women, rule of law and right to choose our own leaders as well as political and economic reform. This is good policy. But wasn’t this the neoconservative policy of George W. Bush that the Democrats used to mock?

Tobin's Commentary colleague Peter Wehner put it more succinctly: "When Obama Became Bush (On Iraq)".

In just a few years, then, Iraq has, for Barack Obama, gone from a strategic disaster to something of a model for the region. His words sound very much like those of President Bush, who told the United Nations in 2003, “Iraq as a dictatorship has great power to destabilize the Middle East. Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East.”

The fact that Barack Obama is now (belatedly) embracing the views of his predecessor is something to be grateful for. To have a liberal, Democratic president declare that Iraq shows “the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy” and is “poised to play a key role in the region” is a very good thing for our country and the wider Middle East. And it will help to heal the divisions caused by the war.

The ending of the speech was equally noteworthy - for very different reasons. Obama's call for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders brought an immediate "no" from Netanyahu:

Responding to President Barack Obama's major Mideast policy speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel will not be withdrawing to the 1967 borders as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

MK Danny Danon declared that Obama "adopted the phased plan of Yasser Arafat", meaning the destruction of Israel piece by piece. An associate of Netanyahu said Obama "does not understand the reality in the Middle East".

According to Debka,

By rejecting US President Barack Obama's proposal for Israel and its troops to pull back from the West Bank to behind the indefensible 1967 lines, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lands in the company of eleven Middle East and North African rulers who spurned Washington's Middle East policy in the six months of the unfolding Arab uprising. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was the only one to keep faith with Obama and he was pushed out for his pains.

Meanwhile, Marc Tracy at Tablet cites Ha'Aretz in favor of the 1967 solution - and gets pounded in the comments.

Enduring America has a wrapup.

Morning Report: 2011-05-19

2011-05-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

Syria: Bashar Assad under US sanctions. MSNBC: 'The United States slapped sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad and six senior Syrian officials for human rights abuses over their brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, for the first time personally penalizing the Syrian leader for actions of his security forces. The White House announced the sanctions Wednesday, a day before President Barack Obama delivers a major speech on the uprisings throughout the Arab world with prominent mentions of Syria. ...' The article adds that 'The sanctions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syrian government officials have in U.S. jurisdiction and make it illegal for Americans to do business with them. The U.S. had imposed similar sanctions on two of Assad's relatives and another top Syrian official last month but had thus far refrained from going after Assad himself.' Via Ynet, Reuters calls it a "dramatic escalation" of US pressure.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon. BBC:

Thousands of Syrian refugees have fled their homes and are now seeking sanctuary in northern Lebanon.

They say life in the Syrian town of Tal Kalakh has become intolerable because of the violence of the Syrian army and its armed supporters.

"It was raining bullets so we fled immediately," said one middle-aged woman who - like all the refugees - did not want to give her name.

She described how one of her relatives, having started the journey across the border, turned back in order to get her cow.

"She was shot in the head and she was killed." ...

For Syrian troops, Michael Totten has some advice: Don't even think about it.

Three Syrian soldiers tried to defect to Lebanon after shielding fleeing refugees from Bashar al-Assad’s violent Shahiba miltia, but they were promptly arrested by Lebanese army officers and will most likely be sent back to Damascus. “Defecting” from Syria to Lebanon in 2011 is as useless as fleeing Moscow to East Berlin during the Soviet era. Anyone who tries is all but guaranteed to be arrested, will most likely be tortured, and faces the real possibility of being executed.

It’s sad, really. Lebanon, when left to its own devices, is a fairly open place and has acted as a refuge of sorts for writers and dissidents who can’t survive in the Arab world’s closed societies and despotic political systems. ...

Except, of course, that Lebanon is not left to its own devices - as Michael explains in his book The Road to Fatima Gate. Read the rest of Michael's article at Commentary.

Brain-dead UN inspectors leave sensitive equipment unattended in Iran, are surprised at signs that IRI regime thugs may have tried to hack their gear. Geeez, it's almost as if you couldn't trust those guys. Fox:

The U.N. nuclear agency is investigating fears from its experts that their cell phones and lap tops have been hacked into by Iranian officials looking for confidential information.

Diplomats tell The Associated press that the hardware apparently was tampered with while left unattended during inspection tours in the Islamic Republic. ...

Go to the link; in the comments, mindbender2go has a more charitable interpretation of the incident.

Danish film director Lars von Trier: I'm a Nazi. But some of my best friends are Jewish. Fox has the story.

Commentary. SWJ on Al-Qaeda after bin Laden:

Saif al Adel has been named the interim emir of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden's demise, according to multiple press reports. Al Adel is a longtime member of al Qaeda's military council and has been wanted by US authorities since the late 1990s, when he was implicated in al Qaeda's attack on two American embassies in Africa. Another lesser known al Qaeda leader, Mustafa al Yemeni, will reportedly direct the group's operations.

US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal caution that it is not entirely clear how the post-bin Laden al Qaeda will be structured. They did not confirm or dispute press reports pointing to al Adel's and al Yemeni's new roles.

Al Adel's relationship with Iran will undoubtedly garner more attention now that he has reportedly assumed, at least temporarily, one of al Qaeda's top roles. ...

Where's the kaboom?

2010-12-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

The Times Square bomb was a dud. The Portland bomb wasn't even a bomb. Now a bomber in Stockholm managed to kill himself and injure two people, but claimed no innocent lives.

So, the Western world seems to be staying ahead of the game so far. (Iraqis haven't been so lucky.)

Debka asserts that the "same hand" is behind the Times Square dud and the Stockholm fizzle:

The Swedish investigation into the country's first suicide bombing Saturday, Dec. 11, quickly found that the bomb car which exploded during a shopping rush in the heart of Stockholm was part of a well-planned, sophisticated terror operation, prepared several months in advance to inflict a large number of casualties. The Swedish media reported that Iraqi-born Taimour al-Abdaly was loaded down with three sets of bombs, one of which was a dozen miniature pipe bombs strung together as a belt.

Still, the suicide bomber was the only fatality. Two others were slightly injured.

Al-Abdaly's operation was therefore a near-failure, recalling Faisal Shahzad's failed bombing attack in Times Square, New York of May 1, although its planners, al Qaeda, are reported by debkafile's terror experts to have learned from that miss.

The Islamist terror group has turned to multilateralism in the planning, setting up and execution of operations methods to baffle national counter-terror intelligence agencies in the West, our Islamist terror experts report.

The Stockholm strike was accordingly broken down into segments, each taking place in a different country - Pakistan, Iraq, Sweden, Jordan and the UK. American and European cities may find themselves confronted in future with more attacks on those lines. ...

Full article at the link.

The Times Square bombing was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban:

Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel.

The tape has yet to be verified, but US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal believe it is legitimate. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel on YouTube was created on April 30. Officials believe it was created to announce the Times Square attack, and Qari Hussain's statement was pre-recorded. ...

(Long War Journal, 2010 May 2.)

Now from LWJ, here's more on the Stockholm bombing:

A car loaded with gas canisters detonated in a busy section of downtown Stockholm today, followed by another explosion 10 minutes later caused by a suicide bomber.

After the explosions, the bomber was found dead lying about 300 yards away from the car bomb, reportedly wearing a suicide vest and a backpack full of nails and surrounded by the remains of pipe bombs. The bombs apparently were inexpertly crafted and failed to detonate to full capacity. Two people were wounded in the bombings, which took place in a street filled with Christmas shoppers.

LWJ's Lisa Lundquist continues with more details:

The Shumukh al-Islam jihadist forum confirmed the identity of the suicide bomber as Taimour Abdulwahab in a statement released today on their website.

"It is our brother, mujahid Taimour Abdulwahab, who carried out the martyrdom operation in Stockholm," said the website Shumukh al-Islam.

Swedish police confirmed that the owner of the car used in the bombing has been identified as Taimour Abdulwahab, born Dec. 12, 1981; today would be his 29th birthday, according to Swedish journalist Per Gudmundson. The car was purchased as late as November of this year. ...

Read the rest at the link.

According to The Telegraph,

Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly showed little interest in religion as he was growing up in Sweden, channelling his energies into sport and partying.

But after he began attending Bedfordshire University in Luton “everything changed” as he became a strict Muslim with increasingly extremist views, even naming his baby son Osama in honour of the al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

But the BBC report (with video) states that he was challenged by leaders of the mosque he attended in

Luton when he started spouting off about wanting to recruit terrorists.
He lived in Britain for almost a decade and was known at his mosque in Luton for preaching about terrorism and trying to recruit extremists.

When he was challenged by the mosque's leaders he stormed out.

Questions are now being asked why the police were not alerted to Al Abdally's views ...

Go to the link for the article and video.

Morning Report: 2010-12-14

2010-12-14T06:58:00.000-08:00

Iran: Mottaki dismissal won't change policy. The Iranian regime's foreign policy will remain unchanged following the abrupt dismissal of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, says the foreign ministry. (Mottaki was fired while on business in Senegal.) BBC: 'Analysts say it may reflect a power struggle within Iran's ruling conservatives, as Mr Mottaki was seen as a close ally of conservative opponents of President Ahmadinejad in parliament.'

BBC video on Iranian dissident Mohsen Sazegara. Also from the Beeb, a feature on a former regime member, now living in exile. 'Throughout the 1970s Sazegara had been a student activist agitating for the overthrow of the Shah. In 1979 he became Khomeini's press attache. He also helped found the now feared Revolutionary Guard, originally established as a defence force against possible attack from Israel or the United States.' Video at the link.

Hillel Neuer on CTV. Also on video: UN Watch's Hillel Neuer speaks out against the Iranian regime and the "wishy-washy" EU. Clip begins with Canadian PM Stephen Harper's bold speech on Canada's foreign policy.

Syrian President visits Qatar. Via Stratfor, Bashar Assad paid a visit to the Qatari Emir on December 14.

UNSC to end Iraq sanctions. Also from Stratfor, the United Nations Security Council has agreed to end Saddam-era sanctions on Iraq including bans on WMD development(!) and the oil-for-food program.

China getting fed up with North Korea. StrategyPage:

December 14, 2010: Leaked American government reports (Wikileaks) shows China is fed up with North Korea, calling its impoverished neighbor a "spoiled child." But there's been an unfortunate blowback from North Korea's recent aggression against South Korea. Reacting to an American suggestion, Japan and South Korea are planning the use of Japanese forces to help defeat another North Korean invasion of the south. This cooperation was long considered impossible, because of Korean hatred for brutal Japanese occupation from 1905-45. ...

Full article at the link.

Richard Holbrooke dies. Arutz Sheva: 'US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who two years ago praised Truman for recognizing Israel despite State Department opposition, died at the age of 69.'

Morning Report: 2010-11-29

2010-11-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks causes diplomatic upheaval. Everybody knows that the ongoing document dump of leaked diplomatic correspondence is the big story of the moment. Undoubtedly ambassadors and foreign ministers all over the world are pounding their heads against their desks and going, "Oh sh*t!" Well, I'm just going to leave you with that image and hold off on trying to post anything substantive on the mess until all the documents have been posted and the dust settles a little bit. So let's move on.

Iranian nuclear scientists targeted in bombings, one dies. Washington Post reports that 'According to Fars, scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were parking their cars in separate locations near the university campus about 7:45 a.m. local time when they were attacked. ...' Shahriari was killed, Abbasi was wounded; the men's wives were also injured. Debka asserts that

Prof. Majid Shahriari, who died when his car was attacked in North Tehran Monday, Nov. 29, headed the team Iran established for combating the Stuxnet virus rampaging through its nuclear and military networks.

Debka claims the attacks were shootings, not bombings.

Kenya steps up repression of gays. BBC:

David Kuria from the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya told the BBC that Raila Odinga's comments would encourage people to extort money from gay and lesbian people.

On Sunday, Mr Odinga warned that men or women found engaging in homosexual acts would be arrested.

He later said he was only saying the constitution bans same-sex weddings. ...

Briefly noted. The man who immortalized the words "Stop calling me Shirley" has died. He will be missed.

Commentary. Winston at The Spirit of Man has kind words for Canada:

Canada leads the world again by example. This time it is leading everyone else against the despotic regime of Iran. Who knew Canada would become a bullhorn for those who couldn't be heard before? It makes me proud to be part of this country. A country that stands up for moral clarity and honorable western values.

Prime Minister Harper's wife Mrs. Lauren Harper has stood again and again for the right of the oppressed Iranian women. And Minister Jason Kenney has indicated that Canada will not attend the "hatefest" at that toothless organization known as the United Nations. ...

Notice that Winston understands the important part "western values" play in Canada's culture. Meanwhile, fellow Canadian Irshad Manji takes a wary look at the erosion of those same values in Sweden:

Let me illustrate through a YouTube clip that a fellow writer in Sweden sent me. The video features a small-town representative of the Sweden Democrats (SD). He’s being invited to name those elements of Swedish culture that need protecting. For several seconds, the man falls mute. Finally, he replies, “Christmas and, uh, ancient ruins.”

My writer friend, Hakan Lindgren, explains that “everybody who saw the clip was supposed to laugh at this SD buffoon. I didn’t.”

Mr. Lindgren believes that Swedes now suffer the “hidden, anaesthetized pain” of living in a country with little or no connection to its traditions. Their pain remains hidden because “we have learned not to complain.” Immigration didn’t precipitate this identity crisis, he emphasizes. Modernization and its various trappings did. As he puts it, “We were told – and we accepted – that our traditions were worthless compared to the benefits of modernity.” The upshot: A profound lack of confidence, individually and socially.

But it’s aggravated by our era of mass migration, Mr. Lindgren goes on, because you’re bound to bump into someone “who is full of self-confidence about his culture or religion. That confrontation brings out all the postponed feelings – you feel hurt, angry, inferior, ashamed, envious.”

What an eye-opener for me. When Muslim immigrants self-segregate and hang onto conservative cultural traditions, I see them acting out their insecurities. But for others, these are markers of too much security.

The YouTube clip gives rise to yet another twist. Despite his concern for Swedish culture, the man is wearing a baseball cap – and one that bears the Confederate flag, a searing symbol of 19th-century American slave-holding states. Did he know what the flag stands for? Is this his message, too? Or does he seek only to be a rebel in some vague sense?

Turkey

2010-11-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

Arutz Sheva:

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that his country would get involved if Israel entered Lebanon. Speaking in Beirut, Erdogan asked, "They want to invade Lebanon and Gaza with advanced planes and tanks, to kill women and children, to destroy medical centers and schools, and expect us to remain silent?"

He continued, "Turkey won't be quiet but support justice with all the means at its disposal."

Ha'Aretz: 'Hundreds of Lebanese of Armenian descent clashed with army troops during a protest Thursday over a visit to Beirut by the Turkish prime minister. ...'

Stratfor: 'An unnamed senior Turkish diplomat confirmed that Washington contacted Turkey after [Wikileaks] reports surfaced claiming the government had supported al Qaeda in Iraq, and that the United States aided Iraq-based Kurdish rebels fight against Turkey.'

Morning Report: 2010-10-19

2010-10-19T00:06:00.000-07:00

Militants attack Chechen parliament. CNN reports that at least two people are dead after one or more militants attacked the parliament in Chechnya. Fox reports that 'the shooting erupted in the office of the speaker of the Chechen parliament.' BBC says 'At least three guards were reported to have been killed at the building in the capital, Grozny.' Another source is now reporting that the gunman has been "eliminated", or "neutralized", or whatever, anyway he's down for the count.

IDF arrests terror suspects. Arutz Sheva reports that three suspected terrorists have been arrested in the West Bank.

State's Crowley says US concerns about Iranian influence in Iraq "long-standing". Xinhua reports that State Department spokesman Philip Crowley cited "long-standing" concerns by the US over Iran's meddling in Iraq, and other issues.

Al-Qaeda Threats: More, Smaller Attacks in US and Europe

2010-09-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Washington Post: 'Al-Qaeda and its allies are likely to attempt small-scale, less sophisticated terrorist attacks in the United States, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, noting that it's extremely difficult to detect such threats in advance. "Unlike large-scale, coordinated, catastrophic attacks, executing smaller-scale attacks requires less planning and fewer preoperational steps," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Accordingly, there are fewer opportunities to detect such an attack before it occurs." '

Telegraph, UK (September 20):

French intelligence services are hunting a female would-be suicide bomber who they believe could be planning to target the Paris metro.

The alert followed a tip-off from a friendly intelligence agency - thought to be Algeria’s - warning of an imminent al-Qaeda threat.

Five French nationals have been kidnapped close to a French uranium mine in Niger in the last week, while a bomb scare caused alarm at the Eiffel Tower.

In a separate development armed guards were deployed to protect prominent Islamic moderate Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris mosque.

“The terrorist threat is real and today our vigilance, therefore, is reinforced,” said Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister. ...

Debka: 'The high level of preparedness for terrorist attack - "reinforced red" - maintained in France since Sept. 16 was quietly expanded this week to most of the big international air hubs of Europe, including London's Heathrow, Amsterdam's Schiphol andairports in Moscow, Berlin and Rome. Security measures were also redoubled at the important railways and subway stations of Europe. The commander of French police and security services Frederic Pechenard went on the air Wednesday Sept 22 with a statement for the public: "I'm not here to frighten people," he said, "but we have serious evidence coming in from reliable intelligence sources telling us that there is a risk of a major attack." He declined to say whether the alert level had been raised from "reinforced red" to "reinforced scarlet." He said the danger could come in the form of "the assassination of an important figure or an attempted mass casualty attack on a crowded public area like a metro train or department store." ...'

Afternoon Roundup: 2010-09-17

2010-09-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Patti Villacorta is looking for feminist icons to stand up against increasing social and institutional pressure on young women in Gaza (and elsewhere in the Arab world) to wear the hijab.

New York School of Visual Arts asks, "Raye-man kojast?" Via Banafsheh:

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents “Where Is My Vote? Posters for the Green Movement in Iran,” an exhibition of 150 political posters by graphic artists world wide created in support of the protests in Iran that followed the 2009 presidential election. The exhibition is the first public viewing of these posters in printed form and was organized by designers Anita Kunz and Woody Pirtle along with Francis Di Tommaso, director of the Visual Arts Gallery, and Steven Heller, author, design historian and co-chair of the MFA Design Department at SVA.

“Where Is My Vote?” highlights the unique role that socially responsible designers can play in rallying support for free speech, and the power of design to inspire political activism. The exhibition features posters by some of the most celebrated graphic artists working today, including R. O. Blechman, Cathie Bleck, Seymour Chwast, Ivan Chermayeff, Milton Glaser, Robert Grossman, Anita Kunz, Yossi Lemel, Jennifer Morla, István Orosz, Woody Pirtle, Andrea Rauch, Ralph Steadman, Gary Taxali, James Victore and Massimo Vignelli, among others.

Hamas official reported detained in Cairo. According to Debka, 'Egyptian security detained Hamas' head of security Mohammad Dababesh at Cairo international airport Friday, Sept. 17, the first high-ranking Palestinian held for questioning by Egyptian security. It is not clear whether Dababesh was on his way back to or from the Gaza Strip. Our sources report that he is no doubt being grilled on the Grad missile attack launched against Eilat and Aqaba from Sinai on Aug. 3, in which two Egyptian border posts were destroyed.' The article also reports an imminent Hamas attack planned to take place within the next 24 hours (i.e. during the Yom Kippur holiday).

CSP on the Shariah threat. The Center for Security Policy has released its report on the threat of political islamist ideology:

Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates – figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world’s largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama – whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms.

On this side of the divide, shariah is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society.

By contrast, the other side of the divide is dominated by Muslim supremacists, often called Islamists. Like erstwhile proponents of Communism and Nazism, these supremacists – some terrorists, others employing stealthier means – seek to impose a totalitarian regime: a global totalitarian system cloaked as an Islamic state and called a caliphate. On that side of the divide, which is the focus of the present study, shariah is an immutable, compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to install and the world required to adopt, the failure to do so being deemed a damnable offence against Allah. For these ideologues, shariah is not a private matter. Adherents see the West as an obstacle to be overcome, not a culture and civilization to be embraced, or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of governments peacefully to coexist with the end-state they seek.

"Life is sacred, but books and beliefs are not."

2010-09-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

Jerry West of the Salem News (Oregon) talks sense on the Koran burning affair:

Well, Terry Jones backed off on the Koran burning. So what? Why should any rational person care if someone burns a Koran, or a Bible, the Sears catalogue or a Donald Duck comic book? That would depend on the nature of the burning.

Book burnings by governments or others with the intent to deprive society of their content would be a direct attack on the right of free expression and the open exchange of ideas.

Two important elements of an enlightened democracy.

On the other hand, private individuals burning books to make a point, so what? Doing that is also part of one's right of free expression. ...

Jerry West touches an all the important points, and his piece is well worth reading in full.

Koran Burning: Freedom Rears Its Ugly Head

2010-09-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

Hell has officially been turned into a very large hockey rink. I am now "to the right" of Robert Spencer, Brigitte Gabriel, and even Pamela Geller in rushing to the defense of a book-burning fundamentalist preacher. Or rather, a would-be book-burner, as it seems the Reverend Terry Jones was talked out of the act by the President and General Petraeus. While I have no particular admiration for Jones and his little stunt, I am beginning to see this episode more in the light of the Mohammed cartoons. The West bravely stuck to its guns on that round, but what's going on here? It looks as if, in the five years since then, we have moved backward.

Also the Nazi book-burning metaphor needs to be checked. You have every right to burn a book if you own the book. It's burning other people's books that's the problem. On comparing the putative Koran-burning in Florida with other book-burnings, I find more differences than similarities. Take a look, for instance, at the history of Talmud burnings - among which, for example, we find:

On Sept. 9, 1553, the Jewish New Year, a huge pyre was set up in the Campo de' Fiori in Rome of Hebrew books that had been seized from Jewish homes.

I don't think Pastor Jones' burning of the Koran falls even remotely in this category. I would put it more in the league of the burnings of "Harry Potter" that made a blip in the news a few years back.

(Admittedly comparing the Koran to Harry Potter is disrespectful, and I apologize to all Harry Potter fans.)

Really, did anyone think that the fallout from 9/11 would not include, inter alia, this? That in a nation of 300 million people, mostly non-Muslims, there would not be, somewhere, someone who would see fit to take a match to the writings of the Prophet Mohammed? If the architects of our post-9/11 strategy could not see this coming, I think we are entitled to use phrases like "failure of imagination".

Book burning gives all of us a queasy feeling but in these times we had damn well better develop a strong stomach.

***

Now the President has stepped in to condemn the contemplated burning, saying it endangers the lives of our troops in Afghanistan. General Petraeus gets involved too: "It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan," the General said in a statement.

Really? Burning a book does that? I thought the danger came from terrorists. And for that matter, I thought our troops were over there to BE a danger to the terrorists. If they are only there to be hostages to one fanatic with a match, then bring them home now.

When I was in the service we used to be fond of slogans like "I'm fighting for your right to spit on that flag." Now no more. Our Commander-In-Chief and our most renowned general have made it their business to beg American citizens to behave properly, lest they cause trouble for the soldiers who are supposed to be defending the rights of Americans. They have now given ominous warnings about the proposed Koran burning becoming a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.

And so it will, if Obama has his way: With Reverend Terry Jones duly chastened, the islamists of al-Qaeda will see their first tangible success in the American homeland in - well, nine years, but who's counting? They will see that, with patience and persistence, they have been able to retake the ground they had seeimingly lost with the Mohammed cartoons. They'll be able to point with pride to the fact that their holy warriors in Afghanistan have intimidated President Obama and General Petraeus into taking up their cause for them, and telling an American citizen: "Yes, technically you have the right to do that - but we really wish you wouldn't." It's small, but it's a first step. And the argument that "if you do that, the enemy will make things harder for the American troops" has limitless possibilities.

It is very, very hard for me to see this as a victory for our side.

***

And what happened to the President who waxed so eloquent about the Imam's "constitutional right" to build a mosque near Ground Zero?

The Belmont Club comes closest to expressing my thoughts on this.

Comparing Jones to Imam Rauf reduces President Obama’s defense of the Ground Zero mosque to absurdity. How could an administration which ordered Bibles sent to Afghanistan burned and endorsed the right of the Ground Zero mosque builders to proceed with their construction turn 180 degrees on the matter of Koran burning without spinning like a top? They were hoist by their own petard.

I hadn't known the bit about the Army burning Bibles. But it is a fine mess indeed for the President.

***

Is the Koran-burning a provocation?

In 2006, gay-rights organizations planned a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. The event was highly controversial, and my sympathies were divided. At first I opposed the event, arguing that it would be a "provocative gesture". But after further reflection I realized that people are responsible for their own actions: one must agree to be provoked.

And that's what I'm saying now. Terrorists, fascists, and extremists are responsible for their own actions. If we are serious about our defense of freedom, we must not allow ourselves to be blackmailed.

***

But it turns out it wasn't that easy.

I almost feel sorry for General Petraeus today. He's just spent the past few days running around and "putting out fires" - literally in this case - and succeeded in getting the Gainesville Koran-burning canceled. But just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, freedom rears its ugly head and some guy - we still don't know who - comes out of nowhere and starts burning pages from a Koran. Not in Gainesville, Florida, but at Ground Zero, New York City.

As one observer noted, there's almost an anti-climactic quality about the video. Some random, nameless guy - we'll call him Joe the Lighter - holds up a Koran, tears a few pages out and burns them, gets shouted at by angry New Yorkers, and is uneventfully escorted away by police. And that's it.

The contrast between the Reverend Terry Jones affair and Joe the Lighter could not be more striking. No signs, no press releases, no fanfare. He just does what he does. And after the event, he walks away without a single word.

Whatever will happen in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the Islamic world, will happen. I'm sorry if people get hurt. But as Americans and as free human beings, we are under no obligation to conform to any President's or General's idea of how we ought to act.

UPDATE:
Joe the Lighter is Derek Fenton an employee - now, former employee - of New Jersey Transit.

What's gotten into Russia?

2010-09-07T09:10:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post:

Israel and Russia made history on Monday, signing for the first time a military agreement that will increase cooperation on combating terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but also could lead to the sale of Israeli weaponry to the Russian military.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Serdyukov, signed the agreement during a ceremony in Moscow. Later in the day, Barak met with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at his private residence in Sochi. ...

Arutz Sheva adds that 'The wide ranging agreement is the fruit of a long period of discussions.'

JPost again:

Russian Foreign Minsiter Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday called for clarity on all issues pertaining to the Iranian nuclear program.

"Clarity in all remaining issues of the Iranian nuclear program is not only necessary, but would also primarily serve the interests of Iran itself," Lavrov said.

A7: 'In a statement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that "he IAEA must continue its work,” and that “Iran must answer the demands of the IAEA." Lavrov was in Paris meeting with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner on Iran, among other issues.'

IMRA quoting AFP:

The defense ministers of Russia and Israel on Monday (6 Sept.) signed an agreement on military cooperation, hailing the unity between Moscow and the Jewish state. Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and visiting Israeli counterpart Ehud Barak did not give details on the nature of the deal, which came after disputes over Russian arms contracts in the Middle East.

"I am sure the agreement we are signing today will give a new boost to our
bilateral relations," said Serdyukov, quoted by Russian news agencies.
"Our views on many challenges of today are close or identical," he said.
"Primarily this concerns issues of terrorism and non-proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction."

Go to the link for more details. Interesting stuff.

Department of Bugs and Features

2010-09-01T13:40:00.001-07:00

FCC complains court ruling would make it "impossible" to enforce indecency regulations.

Morning Report: 2010-09-01

2010-09-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Obama marks end of Iraq combat mission. MSNBC: 'President Barack Obama set the tone for changing the role without fanfare, making clear in a major speech on Iraq on Tuesday that this was no victory celebration.' Full article at the link. At Commentary, Peter Wehner thinks the "most damage" was done on the subject of Afghanistan, while Max Boot is more charitable.

UN Chief Ban condemns the terrorist murder of four Israelis. Arutz Sheva: 'UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday called Tuesday's terror attack near Kiryat Arba in which four Israelis were shot and killed a "blatant attempt" to derail upcoming peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, AFP reported. "The secretary-general condemns the killing of four Israeli citizens in the West Bank on 31 August," Ban's spokesman said in a statement.'

Commentary. Iranian expat Winston at The Spirit of Man has some thoughts on Iraq:

President George W. Bush must be smiling today. He must be proud too.

It is the eve of "Operation New Dawn" in Iraq. The day that the Iraqi people will finally become somewhat independent of US combat forces and will fully gain the control of their country. Just like S. Korea, Germany, Italy and Japan where US presence has secured safety and freedom, a US presence in Iraq will also be necessary for some time to come. Though the former US ambassador 'Ryan Crocker' also believes Iraq still needs the America's enduring support and engagement. Of course, the Iranian regime will always be trying to duplicate its Lebanon style plots in Iraq dividing the country. Therefore that's just one solid reason to keep the US military there for now. But the point of this entry today is not about the strategic weight of today's developments. It is just about emotions.

Today I am cheerful and again envious. I had this same feeling once before: When the former US led 'Coalition Provisional Authority' transferred sovereign authority to the Iraqi interim government on June 28th, 2004. That day I was in Iran and was filled with joy and envy. It's difficult to describe how we, in Iran, felt as we saw the liberation of Iraq. ...

Read the rest at the link.

Israel Attacks Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Reactor

2010-08-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

... with words.

In a statement issued after the Islamic Republic celebrated the launch of its reactor in Bushehr, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy said: "It is totally unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates resolutions of the (United Nations) Security Council, decisions of the International Atomic Energy Agency and its commitments under the NPT (non-proliferation treaty) should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy."

Whoa. "Totally unacceptable." Why, that's just one step short of a strongly-worded letter from the United Nations.

It wouldn't surprise me if Debka has gotten this one right: 'debkafile reveals that both the Kremlin and the State Department have joined in concealing the secret deal whereby Russia votes for UN Security Council sanctions against Iran in return for US silent acquiescent to Moscow's activation of the Bushehr reactor.'

Why Tisha b'Av Matters

2010-07-20T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well we can go back - there are some very good examples of the Romans putting down Jewish insurrections from the first century BC all the way into the second century AD that were very successful. ...In every one of the cases the Romans were able to divide and conquer. In other words, they found a larger percentage of the population would be willing to want to educate their children, speak Latin, have aqueducts, be subject to habeas corpus law, and enjoy Roman prosperity -- a larger percentage than that of so called nationalist leaders who wanted to kill the Romans and revert back to their pre-provincial status. So it worked. - Victor Davis Hanson, quoted at Right Wing News

The Jewish fast of Tisha b'Av commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and again by the Romans in the year 70 CE. It is the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, marked by the reading of the Book of Lamentations and special hymns.

The destruction of the Second Temple - with its enormous loss of life, and accompanied by the expulsion of the Jews from the land of Israel and an exile lasting more than 18 centuries - created a fundamental crisis for Jewish theodicy. (The newly published Koren Mesorat haRav Kinot provides a complete guide to the liturgy and commentary by the great twentieth-century teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik.)

One theme that has been consistently stressed by rabbis through the ages is the role of 'sinat chinam', a Hebrew phrase roughly translated "baseless hatred", in pricipitating the tragedies of Tisha b'Av. They mean, specifically, hatred among the Jewish people; in other words, to a certain extent we brought in on ourselves.

I'm no historian, but I found myself reading up on the Jewish revolt against Rome. It is - to say the very least - sobering reading.

The siege of Jerusalem, the capital city, had begun early in the war, but had turned into a stalemate. Unable to breach the city's defenses, the Roman armies established a permanent camp just outside the city, digging a trench around the circumference of its walls and building a wall as high as the city walls themselves around Jerusalem. Anyone caught in the trench attempting to flee the city would be captured, crucified, and placed in lines on top of the dirt wall facing into Jerusalem. The two Zealot leaders, John of Gischala and Simon Bar Giora, only ceased hostilities and joined forces to defend the city when the Romans began to construct ramparts for the siege. Those attempting to escape the city were crucified, with as many as five hundred crucifixions occurring in a day.

Titus Flavius, Vespasian's son, led the final assault and siege of Jerusalem. During the infighting inside the city walls, a stockpiled supply of dry food was intentionally burned by Sicarii to induce the defenders to fight against the siege instead of negotiating peace; as a result many city dwellers and soldiers died of starvation during the siege. Zealots under Eleazar ben Simon held the Temple, Sicarii led by Simon Bar Giora held the upper city. Titus eventually wiped out the last remnants of Jewish resistance.

By the summer of 70, the Romans had breached the walls of Jerusalem, ransacking and burning nearly the entire city. The Romans began by attacking the weakest spot: the third wall. It was built shortly before the siege so it did not have as much time invested in its protection. They succeeded towards the end of May and shortly afterwards broke through the more important second wall. The Second Temple (the rennovated Herod's Temple) was destroyed on Tisha B'Av (29 or 30 July 70). Tacitus, a historian of the time, notes that those who were besieged in Jerusalem amounted to no fewer than six hundred thousand, that men and women alike and every age engaged in armed resistance, everyone who could pick up a weapon did, both sexes showed equal determination, preferring death to a life that involved expulsion from their country. ...

Here's the Jewish Virtual Library:

In the decades after Caligula's death, Jews found their religion subject to periodic gross indignities, Roman soldiers exposing themselves in the Temple on one occasion, and burning a Torah scroll on another.

Ultimately, the combination of financial exploitation, Rome’s unbridled contempt for Judaism, and the unabashed favoritism that the Romans extended to gentiles living in Israel brought about the revolt.

In the year 66, Florus, the last Roman procurator, stole vast quantities of silver from the Temple. The outraged Jewish masses rioted and wiped out the small Roman garrison stationed in Jerusalem. Cestius Gallus, the Roman ruler in neighboring Syria, sent in a larger force of soldiers. But the Jewish insurgents routed them as well.

This was a heartening victory that had a terrible consequence: Many Jews suddenly became convinced that they could defeat Rome, and the Zealots' ranks grew geometrically. Never again, however, did the Jews achieve so decisive a victory.

When the Romans returned, they had 60,000 heavily armed and highly professional troops. They launched their first attack against the Jewish state's most radicalized area, the Galilee in the north. The Romans vanquished the Galilee, and an estimated 100,000 Jews were killed or sold into slavery.

Throughout the Roman conquest of this territory, the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem did almost nothing to help their beleaguered brothers. They apparently had concluded—too late, unfortunately—that the revolt could not be won, and wanted to hold down Jewish deaths as much as possible.

The highly embittered refugees who succeeded in escaping the Galilean massacres fled to the last major Jewish stronghold—Jerusalem. There, they killed anyone in the Jewish leadership who was not as radical as they. Thus, all the more moderate Jewish leaders who headed the Jewish government at the revolt's beginning in 66 were dead by 68—and not one died at the hands of a Roman. All were killed by fellow Jews.

The scene was now set for the revolt's final catastrophe. Outside Jerusalem, Roman troops prepared to besiege the city; inside the city, the Jews were engaged in a suicidal civil war. In later generations, the rabbis hyperbolically declared that the revolt's failure, and the Temple's destruction, was due not to Roman military superiority but to causeless hatred (sinat khinam) among the Jews (Yoma 9b). While the Romans would have won the war in any case, the Jewish civil war both hastened their victory and immensely increased the casualties. One horrendous example: In expectation of a Roman siege, Jerusalem's Jews had stockpiled a supply of dry food that could have fed the city for many years. But one of the warring Zealot factions burned the entire supply, apparently hoping that destroying this "security blanket" would compel everyone to participate in the revolt. The starvation resulting from this mad act caused suffering as great as any the Romans inflicted. ...

For the Jews of modern-day Israel, the significance of Tisha b'Av is complex. Israel is a modern state founded on secular institutions and Jewish identity; in short, it is inherently paradoxical. FailedMessiah links to Noam Talmor at Yediot Acharonot with a defense of Israel's Tisha b'Av enforcement on secular grounds.

Talmor also turns a critical eye on Israeli education:

Upon its inception, Zionism sought to establish the image of a strong and proud Jew. To this end, the Bible was glorified as it encapsulated a period in which the nation of Israel enjoyed independence in its own land. Such glorification served to justify the settlement of the land in light of the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land described in the Bible. However, one of the side effects of such glorification was a disconnect by Jewish historical sources from the period following the canonization of the Biblical text.

Even today, no Jewish text written after the Bible and before Bialik is taught in the state school system (except for medieval poetry in the literature study track). Indeed, there is a sort of hole in the history of the Jewish people between exile and Herzl. Therefore, many secular Israelis do not have a sequential perception of Jewish history. For many, there is biblical history and Zionism, nothing in between. ...

The piece links to a related article summarizing the results of an opinion poll on the subject of Tisha b'Av. The poll finds that

A majority of the Jewish public declared that they intend to fast or, at the very least, to avoid going out with friends on Tisha B'Av, the day marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples, according to a Ynet-Gesher poll conducted ahead of the holy day.

Returning to the related topic of 'sinat chinam', the poll also examines the attitudes of Israelis toward Arabs, haredim (or "ultra-Orthodox" Jews), "Tel Avivians" (representing the supposedly decadent, secular side of Israeli society), and religious-Zionist settlers.

In response to the question "Which among the following groups in your opinion is the most hated in Israeli society?" 54% chose Arabs, 37% chose haredim, 8% chose religious, and 1% chose Tel Avivians. An analysis of the data reveals that the haredim themselves believe that they are the most hated, whereas religious, traditionalists, and seculars responded that Arabs are more hated.

The poll also asked the respondents to indicate honestly which of the four groups is the least liked by them personally. Arabs topped the list with 52% and haredim were in second place with 32%. Some 11% responded they least like settlers, and 5% said they least like Tel Avivians. A breakdown of the results shows that haredim, religious, and traditionalists mainly dislike Arabs, whereas seculars mainly dislike haredim.

Perhaps most strikingly, the poll showed the religious/secular rift in nearly a dead-heat with the Arab/Israeli conflict in terms of its perceived danger to Israeli society.

The Jewish nation-state has faced external threats in all of its historical incarnations. The threats to Israel from within are ultimately the threats that can destroy Israel: a divided society; an element who believe that "G-d is on Israel's side" and that therefore Israel cannot lose; and another element who just do not care.

But Jews are, above all else, masters of taking the long view. Here is the IDF Chief of the General Staff visiting the Chief of Defense Staff of Italy.

Funny, I didn't hear anybody speaking Latin.

*

Better Women through Chemistry!

2010-07-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

Bioethics Forum:

And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.” ...

Via Blag Hag, via Boobquake.

I'm going to contain myself and spare you the rant. I'll just quote Jen at Blag Hag: 'It's bad enough that these studies are harming children with no real idea of what effects it'll have on them when they're adults. But it's also a shame that these studies give science a bad name - the image of a manipulative, powerful overlord found too often in SciFi novels. We must remember that science itself is neither good nor evil; the blame lies with people who abuse it.'

Morning Report: 2010-07-06

2010-07-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

Irshad on culture and strategy in Afghanistan. Irshad Manji writes:

The tribal culture of “honor” has already trumped democracy in Afghanistan. Despite being suave and sophisticated, President Hamid Karzai rarely defends individual rights, a cornerstone of democracy. Instead, he quietly condones punishments inflicted in the name of tribal honor, from widespread gang-rapes of women to acid attacks on schoolgirls.

Why would a Muslim, routinely described as a “moderate,” hand so much power to feudal warlords? For years, military strategists have told me it’s because Karzai has to avoid carnage at all costs.

But does violating innocents to pre-empt further violence make sense?

Sadly, yes, and that’s where the power of culture enters Afghanistan’s grim picture. In societies influenced by Arab culture, a massive motivator of action is asabiyya or tribal solidarity.

She goes on to cite Ibn Khaldun. Read the rest of her post at the link.

BP does something slightly not evil. Debka: 'Monday, July 5, Mehdi Aliyari, secretary of Iranian Airlines Union, said airports in Britain, Germany, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had refused to refuel Iranian passenger planes. He said the cutoff affected the national carrier Iran Air and the biggest Iranian private airline Mahan Air, both of which operate several flights to Europe. Following this announcement, a spokeswoman of the oil giant BP said "we will comply with any international sanctions that are imposed. And that goes also for the new round of US sanctions following a decision by Congress." Around Friday, BP sent faxes to its refueling operations in some European countries, including those owned with partners, ordering a ban on refueling for several Iranian airlines, including Iran Air. BP is under US pressure over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.' The Wall Street Journal reports that BP 'has instructed its European operations not to refuel Iranian airlines after U.S. President Barack Obama signed sanctions targeting Iran's gasoline supplies, people familiar with the matter said Monday.'

Netanyahu, Obama in fifth meeting, set to approve new Gaza contraband list. JPost:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu left for the US late Monday night for a meeting the next day with President Barack Obama, perhaps not carrying any dramatic new diplomatic initiative, but at least bringing a message of significant changes in what goods Israel will allow into the Gaza Strip.

Hours before Netanyahu was to board his plane for Washington, Foreign Ministry director-general Yossi Gal and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj.-Gen. Eitan Dangot unveiled the principles behind a detailed list of items Israel will not allow into the Gaza Strip. Everything not on that list will be let in.

Full article at the link.

Iran: Anniversary of student uprisings approaches. SKF: 'We are fast approaching July 9th which marks the 11th year anniversary of the July 9th (18 Tir) 1999 pro-democracy student demonstration in Iran. The 18 Tir demonstrations were originally triggered when a reformist newspaper “Salam” was banned from publication. As a reaction to the peaceful protests Regime Agents attacked the student dormitories in Tehran University where they beat and arrested hundreds of students and turned the dormitories into a blood bath. At least one student was murdered by Regime Agents when he was thrown off the dormitory balcony. ...'

Hillel Neuer Blasts UN "Human Rights" Council

2010-06-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

Via United Nations Watch.

HILLEL NEUER'S ADDRESS:

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Go to the video to hear Luis Alfonso de Alba's response.

Afternoon Roundup: 2010-05-11

2010-05-11T16:11:00.001-07:00

Al-Qaeda rampage in Iraq leaves over 100 dead. Debka:

In an unprecedentedly wild rampage, even for al Qaeda, raider-units, speeding drive-by gun squads, car bombs, and homicidal suicides mowed down checkpoints, liquidated Iraqi soldiers, police and security personnel and murdered civilians, in eight Iraqi cities including the capital, Baghdad, Monday, May 10. By the end of the day, more than 100 people were dead and 300 injured.

The gunmen broke new ground in terrorist tactics when they used automatic weapons fitted with silencers to creep up on their victims. debkafile's military sources report that at dawn, the raiders appeared simultaneously at checkpoints in most quarters of Baghdad. They lowered the windows of their cars when asked for documents, then opened fire with the silenced automatic weapons on the officers manning them. ...

IraqPundit:

Meanwhile, everyone is talking about the meeting between Nouri Al Maliki and Ayad Allawi. A deal is getting worked out among the parties. Everyone wants the killings and bombings to stop. Everyone is so tired and fed up that you can smell the frustration in the air.

A writer appears to understand what Iraqis are experiencing. He says in the LAT: "It would be a tragedy if, after having spent hundreds of billions of dollars and sacrificed thousands of lives, the U.S. were to lose the endgame in Iraq. Yet that could very well happen unless senior administration officials — including the president himself — get more engaged in the process and show more flexibility in implementing the troop drawdown."

Iran regime executes five. Azarmehr:

Five Iranians including a woman were executed this morning. Farzad Kamangar, the dissident Iranian Kurdish teacher, Shirin Alamhouli, Ali Heidarian, Farhad Vakili and Mehdi Eslamian were hanged in the early hours of this morning.

View From Outside Iran (formerly View From Iran) writes:

Together with a number of volunteers, we have been preparing a campaign to mark one year of crackdowns on dissent in Iran. That campaign focuses on prisoners of conscience in Iran and those political prisoners in danger of execution. This morning, when we got up and turned on my email, the first message was from a dear colleague who linked to the AP article on the early morning execution of 5 of the people we had come to know through our work. "I can't stop crying," she wrote. "I do not know what to do." ...

Go to the link to learn about their lives.

Irshad Manji on Faisal Shahzad. Irshad Manji:

I’m convinced that Islam is not the intrinsic problem. Rather, the tribal culture of honor in which many of these would-be terrorists are steeped is the real source of their “religious” motivations. Among mainstream Muslims, tribal culture has become synonymous with faith. A lethal mistake.

Young Muslims often come of age being taught that they have a religious duty to avenge the Muslim community’s honor. In fact, it’s not God-given faith but man-made culture that dictates this “duty.”

And the tribal culture of honor travels well beyond traditional Islamic nations, colonizing the hearts and minds of even second- and third-generation Muslims in North America, Europe and Australia. ...

Times Square Bomb Suspect Faisal Shahzad Arrested at JFK

2010-05-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Debka:

Faisal Shahzad, 30, a US citizen from Pakistan, was arrested at New York's JFK airport Monday night trying to board a flight to Dubai and will appear before a federal court Tuesday, May 4. He was identified as the buyer of the Nissan Pathfinder used to rig the failed car bomb. US Attorney General Eric Holder said that more than one person is sought in connection with the attempted terrorist plot.

Shahzad's information is vital for uncovering the extent of the conspiracy and its potential for more terrorist attacks in New York or other American cities. ...

The Pakistani Taliban claimed credit for the attempt.

CNN:

Shahzad was on board Emirates Airlines Flight 202 to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the jetway had been pulled back when the plane was called to return to the gate, a law enforcement source said. Shahzad was booked through to Islamabad, Pakistan, via Dubai, a senior airline official confirmed.

"They just caught him at the last second," a law enforcement source said.

More details at the link.

Arutz Sheva: 'Fox News says the record of an overseas phone call helped lead to Shahzad's arrest.'

Journalism and the Devil's Advocate

2010-05-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

How far should one go to understand the other side?

Let's begin where I left off in this morning's post, with a critique of an editorial by David Ignatius in the Wall Street Journal titled "The Dangers of Embedded Journalism." Ignatius stops just short of invoking the phrses "Stockholm syndrome", but I think that's a pretty accurate description of his concern.

I refrained from attacking Ignatius too harshly because I wanted to address a legitimate concern he raised, which I think should be in the mind of any reasonable person. The question is: When a reporter is embedded with the United States Armed Forces - or any organization - is there not a danger that the reporting will become skewed in favor of the host organization? My friend Michael Totten did not think it unreasonable for his readers to ask whether he's only allowed to see "what the Army wants you to see." Michael's eloquent response is at the link.

If embedded journalists were Americans' only source of information about wars - or for that matter, if any other single source has such a monopoly - I would worry. But that's demonstrably not the case. Nor is it the case that today's media establishment is exactly a cheerleading squad of pro-American patriotism.

I argued that

[it is better] to take one's chances with an environment where sympathies are openly declared, and may be factored into the equation by the reader or viewer. The availability of multiple viewpoints allows for critical thinking on the part of the audience. ...

Do people tend to gravitate to similarly-minded communities - like "the Huffington Post and Daily Kos and MichelleMalkin.com and the Drudge Report", to use Ignatius' examples? Yes, absolutely, and that's an inherent limitation of the new journalism. But the environment that fosters crowd-pleasing, ideologically intense outlets like these also gives rise to a whole spectrum of intelligent opinion and analysis between and outside of these extremes.

And that is the essence of the argument in favor of citizen-generated, crowdsourced journalism such as blogging.

Up to now I have been addressing Ignatius' legitimate concern (as I see it) and figuratively "playing devil's advocate". Now I want to turn my attention to some of the more troubling aspects of this editorial.

As it turns out, crowdsourcing has come to my aid, because many of the commenters have complaints similar to mine. So I see that I am not alone, that some other people have expressed similar ideas (perhaps more concisely and articulately than I could), and that some have added points that I would not have thought of.

csanders1 wrote:
I guess it was a real tradegy that these unbiased reporters were not able to interview Hitler and Tojo in order to make sure that the American people understood their side of the conflict. I watch Fox. If you watch it you will see that even though the bias is to the conservative side, they have liberal persons on in equal numbers. If you really want bias, watch NBC, CBS and ABC. I do not see snyone reporting on the massive intrusions that the government is making on citizen rights and privacy but rail that someone might have to prove that they are a citizen before they vote or receive government benefits.

Cliff Sanders, Greensboro, GA
5/2/2010 2:02:52 PM

Cliff is presumably responding to this odious paragraph in Ignatius' piece:

The path back to unembedded journalism won't be easy, especially for war correspondents. It's one thing to want to interview both Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and quite another to actually get to talk to them. But we should operate under the assumption that we won't always be at war, and try to restore the normal order.

So, whose side is David Ignatius on? His idea of balance and neutrality is to put Mohammed Omar and General McChrystal on the same level.

Roytex wrote:
It's possible for excellent journalism to be unbiased. I'm conservative. I used to read the NYT editoril page because it produced in me a pleasant sense of indignation. But I read the rest of the paper because the reporting and writing were outstanding, and unbiased even to my keen ideological eye. The paper later allowed it's editorial point of view to contaminate its news reporting and lost me. It was as if Walter Conkrite, or maybe even Mrs. Clinton, were editing the whole thing. Maybe that's changing now that the Times is under economic pressure. That tends to change minds a bit.

24681 wrote:
Journalism is always going to be biased, especially if the journalists are being shot at. I recall quite a bit of bias among NY reporters during the 9/11 attacks. (We didn’t hear anymore about “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”).

But I’d rather the journalists be embedded and be biased on the side of America, than running around non-embedded and being biased on side of the enemy – which is exactly what they did during the Vietnam War.
5/2/2010 7:58:51 AM

breth wrote:
Well, you had me at Fox coming from the right and MSNBC coming from the left.

But then you lost me at CNN and The Washington Post coming from the middle.

Let's be real. Is David Ignatius in the center? Yes.

Is the Post in the center? Uh, no.
5/2/2010 12:29:19 AM

Some points brought up in the readers' comments: (1) Ignatius' column is carefully worded to avoid drawing attention to the fact that the mainstream media are not evenly split between liberal and conservative, but rather are a liberal sea with a conservative island (Fox News); (2) bias in news reporting is not necessarily objectionable in itself, but when the bias is extreme and/or is not acknowledged, it is a problem; (3) there is a difference between presenting opposing views on a topic which is subject to reasonable debate, and giving a platform to dictators, terrorists, and fascists.

Not everyone thinks journalists should talk to to just anyone, anyplace, anytime. Via Norm Geras, here's the tale of Eleanor Mills, who won't be the ayatollahs' stooge:

“Thanks so much for coming on,” [journalist Lauren Booth] said cheerfully. My face must have registered some shock. “Don’t worry: only presenters have to wear a headscarf,” she grinned, and she walked off down the corridor. I noticed that everyone around me looked Middle Eastern and the walls were bedecked with pictures of Iran. D’oh! The penny dropped. Press TV: the controversial television channel backed by the Iranian regime.

My heart started to race and I grabbed my phone. Thank God for mobile internet. Seconds later I’d found Press TV on Wikipedia; it was not reassuring. The station was set up three years ago to give the Islamic republic a way of getting its message across to the outside world. It is designed to look neutral to attract western journalists and politicians. But its message is always the same: it chooses those who are critical of the West for propaganda reasons. As well as Booth — who has been outspoken in her attacks on Tony Blair and Israel — its presenters include that old apologist for tyranny George “Saddam Hussein’s mate” Galloway and Yvonne Ridley, the Express journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban and converted to Islam.

The more I read, the more uncomfortable I felt. Visions of the violent death of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman shot dead by Iranian government security forces as she took part in the protests last year over the rigged election, swam into my mind. I remembered the seas of green flags, the awe-inspiring bravery of all those thousands of ordinary Iranians who ventured onto the streets declaring the election void, protesting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, had swindled his way to victory, despite the risk of murderous reprisals. Most of all I recalled the terrible accounts of the brutality with which the regime punished protesters; how so many of them had disappeared, their frantic families knowing nothing of their fate, and had been taken to secret prisons where they had been raped and tortured. ...

Eleanor Mills knew what she had to do, and she did it. Please read the whole article at the link.

Morning Report: 2010-05-02

2010-05-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

New York car bomb. Smoke coming from a green Nissan Pathfinder SUV parked on 45th Street led to the evacuation of Times Square, New York City, and the discovery of an unsuccessful car bomb, on Saturday evening. CNN:

Officials said authorities are going through video from dozens of surveillance cameras in Times Square to determine who left the Nissan Pathfinder with its engine running and hazard lights flashing on a street shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday.

Inside the vehicle, police found three propane tanks, two filled five-gallon gas containers, two clocks with batteries, consumer-grade fireworks and a locked metal box that resembled a gun locker.

Full article, with extensive details and lots of videos, at the CNN link. Fox News recalls that

The theater district in London was the target of a propane bomb attack in 2007. No one was injured when police discovered two Mercedes loaded with nails packed around canisters of propane and gasoline.

Officials said the device found Saturday was crudely constructed, but Islamic militants have used propane and compressed gas for years to enhance the force of explosives. Those instances include the 1983 suicide attack on the U.S. Marines barracks at the Beirut airport that killed 241 U.S. service members, and the 2007 attack on the international airport in Glasgow, Scotland.

In 2007 the U.S. military announced that an Al Qaeda front group was using propane to rig car bombs in Iraq.

Again, go to the link for the full article.
Debka observes:

Mayor Mike Bloomberg said: "This could have been a deadly event." He also said the electric wiring of the device "looked amateurish."

This description exactly matches the bungled efforts of the would-be martyrs Reid and Abdulmutallab. It suggests that their al Qaeda masters have not been able to bring the new crop of jihadis up to professional terrorist standards. It is also possible that the Nissan SUV was supposed to blow up in another part of Manhattan and the perpetrator abandoned it on Times Square prematurely when he saw smoke coming out of his improvised device.

The Belmont Club has some thoughts.

Ignatius on embedded journalism. David Ignatius at the Wall Street Journal finds he has misgivings about the value of embedded journalists in the military, and longs for the good old days of objective journalism.

Commentary. It's really worth a longer post of its own, but I want to dash off a few thoughts on Ignatius' column now. First of all, he does have a couple of good points: journalists who embed with soldiers, or any other group, are likely to develop sympathies with the group they're with. Also, a non-embedded reporter can see things the embed cannot:

I covered the war as an unembedded or "unilateral" reporter, entering Iraq two days after the invasion with colleagues in rented SUVs. That experience taught me two things: First, it is too dangerous, in most cases, to cover modern warfare without protection from an army. Second, although my visits were brief, I was able to see things that the embedded journalists could not. I remember visiting villages in southern Iraq after the U.S. Army rolled through and finding local people who were intimidated by the beginnings of the insurgency. (And yes, you could see in that first week that there would be an insurgency, as I tried to indicate in my reports.)

Ignatius goes on to complain about the situation that many of us have noticed (and some of us have contributed to): the role of "objective" news reporters is being usurped by more openly ideological outlets, like cable TV and blogs.

The problem is, many of us have come to see that the traditional, "objective" news establishment wasn't as neutral or objective as it claimed to be. (I had my own experience with Jay Dixit of the supposedly non-political Psychology Today magazine.) Better to take one's chances with an environment where sympathies are openly declared, and may be factored into the equation by the reader or viewer. The availability of multiple viewpoints allows for critical thinking on the part of the audience.

As I argued in my earlier post on source bias,

A soldier on the front lines is going to have a very vivid, detailed, and specific recollection of a battle. The general in a command bunker may not see the battle up close, but he will have information on the "big picture" of troop strengths, enemy positions, strategic decisions, and other things that the soldier will not know, and may not be allowed to know. The soldier's memory may be distorted by trauma, confusion, fear, or shame (of a real or imagined failiing on the battlefield); the general may ignore or suppress key information, perhaps with his career in mind. Both perspectives are valuable, both have their limitations.

Do people tend to gravitate to similarly-minded communities - like "the Huffington Post and Daily Kos and MichelleMalkin.com and the Drudge Report", to use Ignatius' examples? Yes, absolutely, and that's an inherent limitation of the new journalism. But the environment that fosters crowd-pleasing, ideologically intense outlets like these also gives rise to a whole spectrum of intelligent opinion and analysis between and outside of these extremes. In the end it is up to the citizen journalist to provide the facts and analysis that will satisfy the audience, and it is up to the audience - that's you, dear reader - to sort it all out.

(UPDATE: Wow. Ignatius is getting clobbered in the comments. My treatment is charitable by comparison.)

Morning Report: 2010-04-21

2010-04-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

Six years on, DiL continues its mission of reporting events in the Middle East and around the world.

US rules out military strike on Iran. Debka: 'US deputy defense secretary Michele Flournoy said Wednesday, April 21: "The US has ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program any time soon." This is the first time a senior administration official has publicly admitted that America has dropped its military option against Iran. Instead, said Flournoy, the US is hoping that "negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons." ...' The Debka article concludes that Israel's leaders are "divided" over whether to attack Iran over US objections.

“Would an airmen like me ever be ordered to fire on an Israeli – aircraft or personnel?” Jennifer Rubin at Commentary, citing Wired, reports that Admiral Mike Mullen couldn't give a straight answer to an airman's question about a possible US/Israeli conflict. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sidestepped a question of what would happen if Israel sought to fly over Iraqi airspace to attack Iran.

If Israel decided to attack Iran, the speculation went, those jet would need to fly through Iraqi airspace to reach their targets. That airspace is considered a “no-fly” zone by the American military. So might U.S. troops shoot down the Israeli jets, the airmen asked the chairman, if they breached that airspace?

Mullen tried to sidestep the question. “We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Israel. I’ve spent a lot of time with my counterpart in Israel. So we also have a very clear understanding of where we are. And beyond that, I just wouldn’t get into the speculation of what might happen and who might do what. I don’t think it serves a purpose, frankly,” he said. “I am hopeful that this will be resolved in a way where we never have to answer a question like that.” ...

The case for regime change in Iran. The Spirit of Man says that President Obama should not just read, but write and memorize, this article by Michael Rubin at Commentary:

The U.S. intelligence community has advised Obama that regime change in Iran is risky, and it is. It is not certain that a democratic or even constitutional order would emerge. Three decades of Islamist governance have shaped Iranian political culture, and the all-persuasive influence of the Revolutionary Guards will be hard to shake. Still, the CIA’s preference—which is to do nothing and let the chips fall where they may—is poor advice and poorer policy. The Obama administration instead should gear its interventions to maximize the probability of a democratic, constitutional, and nonthreatening Iran. This requires concentrating on measures that would strengthen so-called civil-society efforts and cripple the Revolutionary Guards.

A multifaceted approach can work. First, Obama should impose broad sanctions ...

Read the rest at the link. Rubin specifically advocates banning business with the Iranian Central Bank, strengthening support for pro-democracy groups, weakening the Revolutionary Guards, and a strong Persian-language media campaign.

Commentary. A belated happy Independence Day (Yom ha'Atzma'ut) to Israel. And good luck - you'll need it.

Wish I could say something more positive than that.

Shuttle to fly Robonaut-2, Air Force to launch X-37B.

2010-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Robots in space! My commentary here.

Six Years

2010-04-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Geeez, has it been almost six years since I first started Dreams Into Lightning?

I feel like I should do something to celebrate.

Like, post or something.

Barry Rubin (not Levin) Won't Be Al-Jazeera's Clown

2010-04-19T13:33:00.002-07:00

Good on Barry Rubin.

Subject: AL JAZEERA ENGLISH RIZ KHAN INTERVIEW REQUEST

Good morning, Professor Levin [sic].

Would you be interested in appearing on The Riz Khan Show this coming Tuesday to debate the topic "Is the Is there [sic] a partner for peace in Israel?" and more generally, the topics of the upcoming Israeli elections [there are no upcoming elections. BR], the Obama Nuclear Summit and US-Israeli relations. Uri Davis, Israeli professor who is a on the Fatah Revolutionary Council, will be the other guest.

The Riz Khan show is an interactive half-hour interview program that airs live at 12:30pm NY time / 17:30 London time from studios in Washington, DC. It is the flagship show for evening prime time in South Asia and the Middle East….

Go to the link for Rubin's response.

Anat Kam, Uri Blau: Israel's Fourth Estate and Fifth Column

2010-04-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

Arutz Sheva reports on the indictment of Anat Kam, the Israeli journalist who stands accused of stealing classified documents during her tour as a soldier in the IDF and passing the secret material on to a reporter for the left-leaning Ha'Aretz.

Journalist Anat Kam, 23, is accused of stealing over 2,000 IDF classified documents, many hundreds of which are termed “secret” and “top secret.” The alleged crimes occurred when she served as a soldier clerking in the IDF military - specifically, in the office of the Commander of the Central District - between 2005-2007.

She allegedly handed over many of the “top secret” and “secret” documents to Haaretz reporter Uri Blau. Blau, who was abroad when the investigation started, has refused thus far to return to Israel for investigation. It is suspected that many of the classified papers are still in his possession – despite an offer made to him that the returned documents would not be used to prosecute him or his source, Anat Kam.

Kam, who was secretly arrested during the investigation, has been indicted in the Tel Aviv District Court. She stands accused of collecting secret information, giving it to unauthorized individuals, and attempting to harm state security. ...

Debka has more.

In September 2009, the Shin Bet and Haaretz signed an agreement whereby Uri Blau promised to hand over all the documents in his possession, in return for which the Shin Bet agreed not to use them to initiate a criminal investigation against him or track his sources.

Two months later, in December 2009, Anat Kam was identified as the source of the leak and placed under house arrest. On January 14, she was indicted on charges of grave espionage.
It turned out later that the reporter Blau handed over only 50 secret documents. The rest he is suspected of keeping back.

In 2009, he left Israel and moved to London, apparently to avoid arrest and questioning about the missing documents.
In interviews with foreign journalists, Haaretz chief editor Dov Alfon said this week the newspaper will take care of all Blau's needs for as long as necessary. This Israeli daily is therefore protecting its reporter despite the breach of his agreement with the Shin Bet and is treating his case as the fundamental issue of a journalist's right to immunity and the immunity of his sources.

The Shin Bet chief warned that Blau has chosen a hazardous course by exposing himself to hostile agents as an intelligence target.

I'm thinking, if the Mossad don't get him first .....

UPDATE (2010-04-10): Arutz Sheva - Anat Kam studied under far-leftist professor Shlomo Sand.

In the interests of fairness, here is what Ha'Aretz has to say for itself:

1. Does Haaretz's insistence on protecting its reporter and his sources in the Anat Kam affair endanger state security?

Of course not. All the reports Uri Blau published in Haaretz based on his documents were submitted to the military censor and approved by her before publication, as required by law. In fact, in one case Haaretz's editors decided not to publish one of Blau's stories after it had gone to press, after senior defense officials changed their minds and requested that it not be released.

The state's security depends not only on upholding the censor's regulations, which Haaretz has done and continues to do, but also on upholding Israel's democratic values, including a free press. The agreement signed between Blau and the Shin Bet security service proves that the Shin Bet understands this as well.
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2. Does Blau possess classified documents and why doesn't he give them to the Shin Bet?

Blau left on vacation abroad with no classified documents in his possession. But like any investigative journalist, he has documents on which he bases his articles. These include, for example, the documents that led him to expose that Itay Ashkenazi, the chief of staff's son, was employed in companies that do business with the Israel Defense Forces - or documents he used for the report on Knesset Constitution Committee chairman David Rotem's involvement in the purchase of lands in Beit El with false papers. This is also the case with documents detailing money transfers to Ehud Barak Ltd., the company controlled by the defense minister's daughters.

Haaretz, therefore, believes that it cannot pass on all the documents Blau has to the defense establishment because its senior officials may use them to trace his sources. ....

Read the rest at the link.

US, Israel Deny Dimona Visa Story from Ma'ariv

2010-04-10T19:40:00.000-07:00

JTA reports that the US and Israeli governments have denied a story published in Ma'ariv (Hebrew - see here) asserting that the US government has instituted a policy of denying visas to Israeli scientists with ties to Israel's nuclear reactor at Dimona.

Tom Campbell's Past Islamist Ties

2010-04-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (HT: Cinnamon Stillwell) has an eye-opening report on Tom Campbell.

Campbell, who represented California's 15th Congressional District (an affluent area including Silicon Valley), clearly had close ties to Sami Al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi, both of whom were later convicted on charges related to terrorism support. He joined Reps. David Bonior (D-MI) and John Conyers (D-MI) in fighting to bar the use of classified evidence in deportation cases. Campbell sought to reduce U.S. aid to Egypt and Israel and was a critic of U.S. sanctions in Iraq.

And Campbell also forged strong political relationships with Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Islamist ideologues including Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and Omar Ahmad of CAIR attended and spoke at fundraisers for Campbell during his Senate campaign a decade ago.

Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/1874/from-radical-islamist-ally-to-superhawk

Go to the link for details on Campbell's past ties with Sami al-Arian and Mazen Al-Najjar. Abdulrahman Alamoudi, later convicted on charges of terrorism support, called Campbell a "tested friend" in 2000.

To be clear, Campbell has since distanced himself from Alamoudi and has expressed regret for his decision to keep Alamoudi's campaign donation. Similarly, Campbell now states that he favors the death penalty for terrorists and supports Israel's right to defend itself. But it's a cause for concern that he has "gotten religion" so recently on Middle East affairs.

UPDATE: Dan at GayPatriot weighs in on Tom Campbell.

While I highly doubt Campbell himself is anti-Semitic, he has a very troublesome record on Israel and associates with many Jew-hating individuals. Campbell can show that he is not a member of this crowd by putting forward a platform on Israel more consistent with a conservative national security policy in the wake of 9/11 and popular support for the Jewish State.

I still need review all the items on the list I have received [citing Campbell's "Troublesome Record on Israel"], but those points I have confirmed trouble me to no end.

In a subsequent post, Dan emphasizes that he does not regard Campbell as anti-Semitic, but is concerned about the man's associations.

At NYT, not all anti-Semitisms are created equal.

2010-04-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

Noah Pollak at Commentary has an illustrative case of what it takes to get a story on anti-Semitism into the pages of the New York Times.

Here’s a pop quiz that I’m sure nobody will have a hard time passing: Which of the following two stories made it into the New York Times?

1. One of the top leaders of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, a man who has been written about on hundreds of occasions in the Times, responded to the dedication of a synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem by delivering a viciously anti-Semitic rant in which he promised the annihilation of Israel and said that the Jews “killed and murdered your prophets” and “have always dealt in loan-sharking” and are “destined to be destroyed.”

2. A Vatican preacher compared condemnation of the Church over its sex-abuse scandal to the persecution of Jews, remarks from which Church officials immediately distanced themselves.

No prizes for guessing which one got front-page coverage, and which got none at all. Why?

The reason, I think, is because the Times is a left-wing paper and adheres to one of the central tenets of enlightened progressivism: people who can be identified as Third World, or who are not members of the Judeo-Christian/European world, must not be held to the same standards to which white, First World people are held. This double-standard — it is the racism of the enlightened — pervades the treatment of different cultures and religions in the strongholds of Western liberalism, that is, in the media, academia, and the “human rights” community.

Please go read the rest of the article at the link. I'm quoting it here because it makes a point that, sadly, can't be stressed often enough. Organized liberalism often ignores its legitimate ideals and instead pursues a blind veneration of anything 'exotic' and unsullied by the corrupting taint of Western culture.

I could tell you about the Passover Seder I attended where the host invited everyone to name a country or place that needed improvement in human rights; she started the ball rolling by declaring, "America!" I could tell you about that, but why? You've probably heard something similar yourself.

Of course America isn't perfect, and of course there is room for our nation to become more just, more humane, more wise. But isn't it patriotism of the worst kind - or more correctly, nationalism - to care only about improving one's own country?

I can't resist bringing in this 1945 essay on nationalism from George Orwell. Here are a few passages that jumped out at me:

In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago. However, in this essay I am concerned chiefly with the reactions of the intelligentsia, among whom jingoism and even patriotism of the old kind are almost dead, though they now seem to be reviving among a minority. Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism -- using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members, but "fellow travellers" and russophiles generally. A Communist, for my purpose here, is one who looks upon the USSR as his Fatherland and feels it his duty t justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great. But many other forms of nationalism also flourish, and it is by noticing the points of resemblance between different and even seemingly opposed currents of thought that one can best get the matter into perspective. ...

The old-style contemptuous attitude towards "natives" has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes. ...

Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word "antisemitism" claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it ...

In our day, of course, this carries over to opinions about the State of Israel and its foreign policies. (But then, I'm an American Zionist - the most "violent and malignant" kind, according to GO - so I would say that!)

Trident Test Fire: Fact or Fiction?

2010-04-01T19:11:00.001-07:00

Did the US test-fire a nuclear-capable Trident from Saudi waters? Depends who you listen to; Debka says 'A US defense spokesman denied the Trident's launch, Wednesday, April 1, but Saudi security sources stand by the report' but Stratfor (subscription service) says the report is false. However, whether or not the launch actually occurred, the message seems to be that the US is extending the umbrella of nuclear deterrence to the Persian Gulf.

Morning Report: 2010-04-01

2010-04-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

Dreams Into Lightning is pleased to announce that reports of the Site Owner's death have been greatly exaggerated; it's probably a conspiracy by the Mainstream Media. In any case, here is a snapshot of some of the events we're following this morning.

The answer is, nobody knows. The Belmont Club has the latest analysis on the economy. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has a new commission new commission to study wasteful commissions.

Report: US fires Trident from Saudi waters. Debka: 'The US test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic Trident missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads from Saudi territory during a joint military exercise last week, a Western military official reported late Wednesday, March 31. Debkafile's military sources report this was the first time in Middle East military history that a nuclear-capable missile was fired from the oil kingdom toward the Persian Gulf and Iranian shores. It came in response to Saudi and Gulf Arab concerns over America's failure to halt Iran's evolving nuclear weapon program. ...' Arutz Sheva reports that the US had denied the missile test.

Third terror attack in Russia. Arutz Sheva: 'Two people were killed and a third was critically wounded Thursday morning in the third suicide bombing attack in less than a week in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan, located in the northern Caucasus, close to Chechnya. ...'

California Republicans eye Boxer's seat. California's Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat, will be challenged by one of three Republicans this fall. It's between former HP chair Carly Fiorina, former Congressman Tom Campbell, and state assemblyman Chuck DeVore. The AP's Kevin Freking reports that the gay marriage issue may play a significant role in this campaign; Campbell, alone of the three candidates, supports same-sex marriage. 'A business professor who holds a doctorate in economics, Campbell is the kind of middle-of-the-road Republican who would be likely to give Boxer a tough challenge as she seeks a fourth term in the Senate. But his opposition to Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that enshrined a ban on gay marriage in the California Constitution, has made him a target of the social conservatives who dominate the ranks of the state GOP.' Fiorina and DeVore are profiled here on Fox; the Bay Area Reporter has an article on Campbell. The BAR says of Campbell:

His neck-and-neck tie with Fiorina is all the more remarkable considering Campbell supports marriage equality and was a vocal opponent against Proposition 8, the measure voters passed in 2008 that overturned the California Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Should he be nominated by GOP voters in the June 8 primary, it would mark the first time that Republicans have backed a pro-same-sex marriage candidate who is truly competitive in a statewide race.

Commentary. I'd like to write more, but I've got to go; I have a little two-and-a-half-year-old girl who is fascinated by the Hebrew alphabet and wants me to show her the letters. My 14-year-old is in New York with his mom's family. Happy Passover if you're celebrating, and enjoy those maccaroons.

Morning Report: 2010-03-21

2010-03-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Netanyahu: Israel won't back down on East Jerusalem apartments. CNN: 'Israel has no intention of backing down in its argument with the United States over Israeli plans to build 1,600 apartments on disputed land in largely Arab East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.'

Iraq: No election recount. The BBC reports that 'Iraq's election commission has rejected calls from the president and prime minister for a recount of votes cast in the general election on 7 March.' IraqPundit explains (after going off on yet another clueless NYT article) that

Several political science professors and information science professors were interviewed [Arabic]. They said the success of Allawi is a rejection of the political religious movements. Iraqis saw what religion does when it enters politics, and they don't like it.

Women Orthodox Rabbis? Not yet.

2010-03-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Via FailedMessiah, Rabbi Avi Weiss has agreed to withdraw his planned ordination of women scholars with the title "Rabbah", feminine for rabbi; rather, Sarah Hurwitz and her colleagues will assume the title "Maharat".

Following weeks of negotiation with the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Avi Weiss has made an about face and agreed to not confer the title ‘Rabba’ on graduates of his Yeshivat Mahara”t for women.

The RCA issued a statement Friday afternoon that confirmed a report in the March 5 issue of The Jewish Star.

The story in the print edition quotes an unnamed source who said, “They’re negotiating. The RCA does not want to kick him out and he does not want to be kicked out, but this is an intolerable activity …. He [Weiss] is an impetous fellow, which is okay. Everything is in how he words it. If I had to guess, when Rabbi Weiss retracts, he’s going to say this was the right thing at the wrong time and I regret doing it, and I commit to not doing it for a period of time.”

Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the RCA, did not return calls for comment but on Friday afternoon the organization released a statement to announce that Rabbi Weiss had backed down.

Rabbi Weiss said as much in a letter addressed to RCA President Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, which was released to the public:

“It is not my intention or the intention of Yeshivat Maharat to confer the title of “Rabba” upon its graduates,” Rabbi Weiss wrote. “Yeshivat Maharat prepares women for positions of religious leadership in the Orthodox community. Each student who completes its course of study in Tanakh, Talmud, Halakha and Jewish Thought, and is deemed fit by her faith, knowledge of our Mesoret, ethical integrity and temperament to assume positions of religious leadership in Orthodox institutions will be confirmed as manhigah hilkhatit, ruhanit, toranit (Maharat).”

The basic problem for the Orthodox establishment, as they see it, is one of tzniut or modesty. I'll let Rabbi Avi Shafran explain it all:

“Tznius isn’t a mode of dress. It includes the idea that women are demeaned and not honored when they’re put in the public eye and put on a pedestal. The position he [Weiss] has created violated the concept,” Shafran said. Whether the ordination violates a specific halacha (Torah law), is unimportant, he explained.

“Putting a woman in front of a group of men and women on a regular or ad-hoc basis is violative of tznius. Halacha accomplishes much more than the letter of the law. There is nothing in the Shulchan Aruch about keeping a cat in the aron kodesh. It’s technically permitted but it’s wrong to do.”

An opinion letter at JTA takes issue with the decision.

February 15: Washington's Birthday

2010-02-15T11:19:00.000-08:00

Union Leader:

Today is not Presidents' Day. The holiday's official title is George Washington's Birthday. It is a day for celebrating the Father of our Country, whose greatness is often forgotten.

Few Americans know that George Washington never received more than elementary-level schooling. But he was a whiz at math, and his sharp mind and appetite for adventure led him to surveying, then to the Army.
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Incredibly, in his first military adventure, the totally untrained soldier led an attack on a French force near the Ohio River, killing a French ambassador. Thus began the French and Indian War. ...

Via GayPatriot.

But, what do you mean, it's not Presidents' Day?

Wikipedia:

Washington's Birthday is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February. It is also commonly known as Presidents Day (sometimes spelled as Presidents' Day or President's Day). As Washington's Birthday or Presidents Day, it is also the official name of a concurrent state holiday celebrated on the same day in a number of states.

And here'w Wiki on Washington himself:

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731][1][2][3]– December 14, 1799) was the commander of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797).[4] For his central role in the formation of the United States, he is often referred to as "the father of his country".[5][6]

The Continental Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces in 1775. The following year, he forced the British out of Boston, lost New York City, and crossed the Delaware River in New Jersey, defeating the surprised enemy units later that year. As a result of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured the two main British combat armies at Saratoga and Yorktown. Negotiating with Congress, the colonial states, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and failure. Following the end of the war in 1783, King George III asked what Washington would do next and was told of rumors that he'd return to his farm; this prompted the king to state, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world." Washington did return to private life and retired to his plantation at Mount Vernon.[7] ...

Go read it all, and have a pleasant Washington's Birthday.

Caprica: It's the story of a woman named Zoe, who's trapped in the wrong body ...

2010-02-01T20:24:00.000-08:00

... and A. E. Brain can relate.

And It's About Damn Time

2010-01-28T19:26:00.000-08:00

CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates will unveil the Pentagon's plan to prepare for repealing the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" law regarding gay soldiers at a committee hearing Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said.

"The Defense Department leadership is actively working on an implementation plan and the secretary will have more to say about this next week," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said on Thursday.

President Obama said in his first State of the Union address Wednesday night that he would work with Congress and the Pentagon this year to repeal the law that prohibits military members from acknowledging openly that they are gay. ...

Why I follow the Middle East.

2010-01-18T15:43:00.000-08:00

It's never dull.

Mousavi: Mohammadi was killed by US/Israel, not IRI after all. Debka:

In a gesture of reconciliation toward the regime, Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi conceded Sunday, Jan. 17, that the Iranian scientist Mehsoud Ali-Mohammadi murdered outside his home last Monday was the victim of Iran's "enemies," namely the US and Israel.

The opposition had previously blamed his death on the "tyrannical regime's" campaign to wipe out the intellectual elite backing the reform movement.

Reversing this position, Mousavi said: "The depressing martyrdom of the renowned physicist and Tehran University academic Mehsoud Ali-Mohammad signifies the harsh reality that enemies of Iran are set to take advantage of today's critical situation to pursue their own interests."

He added: "This criminal action is definitely part of a huge plan that obliges all of us, irrespective of our political tendencies, to give some thought to discover its other aspects."

Arutz Sheva: Mohammedi was killed by Hezbollah, not US/Israel, and he wasn't a nuclear bomb scientist after all. A7:

Evidence is mounting that Hizbullah may have been behind last week's assassination of Professor Ali Mohammadi, a physics professor who was murdered in a booby-trapped motorcycle explosion near his home.

Contrary to initial reports, Mohammadi apparently was not a nuclear physicist and had no connection with the development of Iran’s nuclear program, thus ruling out a motive that opposition groups were responsible for killing him.

Exclusive analysis from Dreams Into Lightning. Now you know as much about it as I do.

Undisclosed Location

2009-12-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

Where is the Secretary of State?

Nile Gardiner at the Daily Telegraph writes: “The White House should send a search party to track down Hillary Clinton. America’s foreign policy chief has been missing from the world stage for several days, and has become as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel at the height of the French Revolution.”

Come to think of it, we haven’t seen or heard from her since the Flight 253 bombing attack. ...

RTWT.

Barry Rubin on Obama and Iran

2009-12-31T08:49:00.000-08:00

Barry Rubin at GLORIA Center: Obama's 2010 Policy

A friend of mine is angry, saying I'm too tough on President Barack Obama and that nothing he does pleases me. Well, I wish he'd do more that pleases me, and disconcerts America's enemies.

True, he has done three good things lately: his Nobel speech, which sounded like it was actually given by a U.S. president; his remarks on the demonstrations in Iran (better six months late than never), and his tough verbal stance about investigating the mistakes that led to the near disaster (though I worry they're less about dramatic change and more just a show to reassure the public that something will be done). I also pointed out that the administration's relationship with Israel was pretty good overall.

Yet on the single most important Middle East issue, Iran's nuclear program and its aggressive ambitions, hints about his policy are getting worrisome both because of what this administration isn't doing and what it's obviously thinking. The year has now ended with no major public move toward imposing serious sanctions. True, there are a few statements you can dig out indicating a turn in that direction. Yet what should have happened was a major public speech by December 31 about the administration's sanction plans. After all, it set that date as a deadline for action ten months ago yet let it pass with no visible action.

There are other bad signs that the administration still doesn't comprehend the problems it faces. ...

Full post at the link.

Iran's Khamenei Planning to Escape to Russia?

2009-12-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

According to this report, Iran's Supreme Leader and his family and henchmen may be planning to escape to Russia in the event that their criminal regime falls. Zand-Bon at Planet Iran:

December 29, 2009

Iran Global website has exposed a document that discloses information on Khamenei and various authorities of the regime’s possible escape to Russia.

The document is on the National Security Agency of the Islamic regime’s letterhead addressed from the office of the High Assembly of the Islamic Republic’s National Security official [name is redacted] to an individual [name redacted] in the revolutionary guards. The letter is dated 6th of Dey (December 27th).

It reads:

Re: Response to a letter number [redacted] written on the 5th of Dey (December 26th).

Salam Aleykom

With respect, we would like to inform you of the inspection, check up and preparation of the aircraft, destination Russia, for the purpose of transporting the Supreme Leader ....

Report: CIA Had Info on Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab

2009-12-29T16:39:00.000-08:00

CNN:

The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab talked about his son's extremist views with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency, a reliable source told CNN's Jeanne Meserve on Tuesday.

Had that information been shared, the 23-year-old Nigerian who is alleged to have bungled an attempt to blow up a jetliner as it was landing in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight, the source said.

Read the rest at the link.

UPDATE: Breitbart covers a certain 'Farouk1986' whose profile looks a lot like UFAM's:

Internet postings purportedly written by a Nigerian charged with trying to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day suggest a fervently religious and lonely young man who fantasized about becoming a Muslim holy warrior.

Throughout more than 300 posts, a user named "Farouk1986" reflects on a growing alienation from his family, his shame over sexual urges and his hopes that a "great jihad" will take place across the world.

While officials haven't verified that the postings were written by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, details from the posts match his personal history. ...

RTWT. H/T Van W. at Facebook. Breitbart credits the Washington Post with breaking the story.

Obama Condemns Tehran's "Iron Fist of Brutality"

2009-12-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

BBC:

US President Barack Obama has condemned the Iranian government's attempts to quell recent protests, in which eight people have been killed.

He said the "iron fist of brutality" had been used to silence protesters, calling the actions of officials an "unjust suppression".

Barack Obama also urged the government to release detained opposition figures.

Notwithstanding the criticism some of us have directed at President Obama and his Middle East policies, the President deserves praise for this unequivocal and strongly worded statement. Go to the BBC's video link for the clip.

Star: Saleh 2009 = Saddam 1990 ?

2009-12-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

Again via Jane, here's Lebanon's Daily Star:

Like Saddam Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh is an autocrat with a fair amount of blood on his hands, perched atop a decades-old security-oriented regime.

This regime does some things well, such as managing a personality cult, but it’s much less proficient at other tasks, such as running the country’s tribal and regional politics and generating stability.

Saudi Arabia and Egypt have stood with Saleh and the US is now getting heavily involved, providing the regime with missiles, sending unmanned drones to bomb areas affected by the Houthi rebellion, and dispatching covert military teams to join Yemen’s Army in pursuing threats to stability, under the rubric of the “war on terror” policy.

And like Saddam, Saleh deals with a large part of his country as if it’s the enemy. Iraq’s Kurds suffered atrocities in the weapons during the Saddam era, while the southerners of Yemen have also been treated horribly by the Saleh regime, and we’ve heard calls for secession from the central government in both countries. ...

UPDATE: Bill Roggio at Long War Journal has this on Yemen and Al-Qaeda:

As the US has stepped up cooperation with Yemen in targeting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known terrorists wanted by the US government continue to operate in the open while the Yemeni government looks the other way.

The US has stepped up military and intelligence support with the weak Yemeni government and President Ali Abdullah Saleh over the past several months as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has grown more bold. The terror group has been plotting to target the Yemeni state as well as US and other foreign targets inside and outside Yemen, according to US intelligence officials.

The US deployed special operations forces to Yemen in the fall to work with the country's army and security serves to root out al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The terror group has opened large training camps in Sana'a, Abyan, and Shabwa provinces over the past year.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/yemen_permits_wanted.php#ixzz0b8CtxvPx

UPDATE: CNN reports

The U.S. and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets in Yemen for a potential retaliation strike, two senior U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday, in the aftermath of the botched Christmas Day attack on an airliner that al Qaeda in Yemen claims it organized.

The officials asked not to be not be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. ...

David Savage at the L.A. Times:

Yemen's emergence as a center for Al Qaeda activity has added another complication to the Obama administration's plan to close the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yemenis make up the largest bloc of the remaining detainees. This month, six men from that country were sent home, and their lawyers expected that up to 40 more could soon be released from Guantanamo.

Now that an Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen has claimed to be behind the attempted bombing of an airline flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, however, the lawyers fear the administration will block further releases. ...

Dreams Into Lightning notes that that would just break our heart.

Yemen Passes Terror Financing Law

2009-12-29T15:36:00.000-08:00

Yemen's Parliament today ratified the Tuesday the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism. Armies of Liberation reports:

After years of delay during which this bill was brought forth and then rejected by Parliament, Yemen passed a counter-terror financing law. The argument against the law was that it would hamper efforts to fund “legitimate resistance” movements like Hamas and other charitable giving. Also recall in 2005, when the UN circulated a list of 144 bank accounts associated with al Qaeda and/or the Taliban, Yemen closed one and took no further action in subsequent years. ...

More here.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and NWA 253: Roundup

2009-12-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

CNN, December 27:

The alleged terror incident aboard a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Detroit has raised questions as to how a Nigerian man carried explosives through stringent security measures.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been charged with attempting to destroy a passenger plane after he detonated a device on board a jet on Friday.

Authorities in the United States are investigating whether Abdulmutallab had any connections with terrorist organizations or was acting alone. ...

In from the Cold on Janet Napolitano's claim that "the system worked::

Of course, Napolitano didn't mention all the red flags that Farouk Abdulmutllab managed to raise over the past 4-5 months. Or the failure of various government agencies to connect the dots, and identify the Nigerian as a potential terrorist. Instead, she assures us, that the system worked as advertised. Never mind that we were just moments away from a "man-caused disaster," to use one of Ms. Napolitano's politically-correct terms for a terrorist attack.

Our number one Yemen woman, Jane points out possible Yemeni links:

PETN, our new vocabulary word, was used in both the attack of Prince Naif and in the recent airliner incident. In both cases the explosive device was sewn into underware. The Nigerian says he was trained at a camp near Sana’a (Arhab?), and recruited online by a “radical cleric” who facilitated contact with al Qaeda in Yemen. The Yemeni government hasn’t yet recieved any official communications from the US on the matter. ...

More here.

Debka:

DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources note that in the past year, Washington was strangely deaf to a flood of notices from Saudi, Egyptian and Yemeni security agencies warning that al Qaeda networks had established themselves in Yemen and so gained a jumping-off base into the Arabian peninsula and across the strategic Gulf of Aden. The network was now directly linked from Yemeni shores to Osama bin Laden at his new headquarters in Pakistani Baluchistan.

These warnings went unheeded by the relevant agencies in Washington.

Only two months ago, on Oct. 7, President Barack Obama told the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia: "We're making real progress in our core mission - to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and other extremist networks around the world."

Citing a counterterrorism expert, Obama added: “Because of our efforts, Al Qaeda and its allies have not only lost operational capacity, they’ve lost legitimacy and credibility.”

Only three days before the US president's speech, on Oct. 3, the FBI arrested the Chicagoan David Headley at O'Hare Airport and charged him with targeting and conducting reconnaissance for the al Qaeda branch Lashkar e-Taibe's terror massacre in Mumbai of November 2008, which left more than 170 people dead.

A month later, US Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan shot dead 13 comrades at the Fort Hood base in Texas. Federal investigators persist in refusing to call the crime an act of terror although Hasan was shown to have been in regular correspondence with Anwar al-Awkali, the imam who was religious mentor to 9/11 hijackers and himself, from the time he relocated to Yemen in 2008.

The failed Christmas Day airliner bombing has strong leads to Yemen indicating that the attempt was plotted, planned and aided from that country.

Read the full article at the link. Debka concludes that "the weakness is conceptual rather than technical or human."

Finally, Roderick Jones at Counterterrorism Blog has a comprehensive analysis:

The visible US response to the latest attempted terrorist attack on the country, has so far sadly conformed to past mistakes and strategic blunders. The attempted attack by the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as the NorthWest Airlines flight 253 was coming into land at Detroit airport has led to an increase in security by the TSA, which has so far taken the following form: restrictions surrounding in-flight entertainment on International flights coming into the USA, extra screening on flights coming into the USA, extra screening at domestic airports, restrictions on moving around the cabin one-hour before landing and discussion of restrictions on taking electronics on the airplane and of course the default extra screening of baby food, which seems to happen after every terrorist event. This is eloquently described as, 'TSA Security Burlesque' by an Atlantic Commentator.

It could reasonably be claimed that most people regard the security regime surrounding air-travel as at best a nuisance and at worst a catastrophic drain on economic resources. In large part the west's terrorist opponents have won this battle. Low-cost terrorist attempts at aviation infrastructure create enormous security reactions - truly exhausting and bleeding the west's financial and psychological capital to resist. Nobody who has suffered through a US domestic flight since 9/11 would argue the airline industry is in good-shape. As a key-component in global economic growth destroying the aviation industry is a good place for a nihilistic terrorist movement to start.

What has caused this? At this point, it is the reaction of United States Department of Homeland Security to any terrorist event involving aviation [which then spreads throughout the global aviation system], which heightens the operational success of militant Islamist terrorists against aviation targets. The noted, counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen expertly puts this into focus [in his book Accidental Guerrilla] by highlighting the detrimental effects of US counter-terrorism policy. In short al-Qaeda does not represent an existential threat to the US, it has no path to victory looking at any reasonable scenario including the use of WMD-- but the US can defeat itself by unnecessary over-reaction and a fundamental misunderstanding of basic risk management and terrorist theory. Once again this is being demonstrated by the events in Detroit and the DHS reaction, which creates more disruption than the attack itself, destroys DHS and US credibility by mandating absurd responses, which focus on securing events after they have happened (for example, turning off in-flight entertainment because passengers can see a map - passengers can still look out the window or use their watches). ...

Noel, Noel (Christmas 1940)

2009-12-25T13:00:00.000-08:00

... I wanted to tell you about us, how wicked we are.
And yet also to say that the Star—you know the star I mean—
Is for some of us clearly visible still in the east at midnight rising, and all the night long burns serene—
And that on such nights on unaccustomed knees we kneel and in sweet discomfort
Pray for hours, and mean it, to be better than we are.
I am not one of these, I fear;
I loved you always for the things I read
About you in a book we had.
I did not meet you for the first time through the incense and stale smell
Of a room seldom aired, where people purred of heaven and howled of hell.
I used to read all day, when I was ten:
—You and Don Quijote were my heroes then.

Perhaps because of him I have been kind
Often with my heart, before consulting my mind.
I might have been wiser, had I learned direct from you—
Learned to make curlicues in the sand or on a scratch-pad while deciding what to say or do ...
Such as, "Sin—the waves come in—all pushing pebbles—each alone ...
I have it!—Let him among them who is without sin!—cast the first stone!"

I learned so young to know you, I could never see
Why we should not be playmates; you were wonderful,—
Oh, you were shiny!—and for some strange reason, fond of me.
But nothing will be done. I can do nothing. Nothing at all.
Only remember what you said, your voice, the way you said it,—
For it never was like something read, it was something heard, even while I read it—
And try to be wiser and kinder, in a world where Pity from place to place
Flees under cover of darkness, hiding her face;
Give Pity breathing-space.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Make Bright the Arrows

Sailor

2009-12-25T06:57:00.000-08:00

One more for the holiday, couldn't resist; it's Leonard Cohen with 'Suzanne'. Dutch subtitles at no extra charge.

O Light Divine

2009-12-24T21:15:00.000-08:00

Oh, all right. Here's something for the holiday. It's Celine Dion with an utterly breathtaking version of "O Holy Night". Enjoy.

Wieseltier on the Uses of Hatred

2009-12-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

"As all hatred will ever be wrong." Leon Wieseltier begs to differ:

To be sure, hatred is not quite an analysis; but still a word must be said on its behalf. Hatred may be a sign that something has been properly understood. If you do not hate racism, then you do not understand what it is. If you do not hate Ahmadinejad, then you do not understand who he is. ...

Via Michael Totten.

Iraq's Mithal al-Alusi: Iran Nuclear Sooner than You Think

2009-12-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

Via Planet Iran, here's JPost:

Dec. 25, 2009
HEATHER ROBINSON, Special to The Jerusalem Post , THE JERUSALEM POST

Iraqi parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi is warning that Iran is much closer to attaining nuclear capability than most sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and the US State Department, believe. In fact, he predicts the Iranians could have a nuclear capability - and may announce that they have it - as soon as next month.

"We are receiving information which says Iran is so close to producing an atom bomb," Alusi said in an interview earlier this month, the latest in a series of interviews conducted since September. "All the international community, they don't realize how close [the Iranians] are to the goal... The Iranians will surprise us one day [soon] and say, 'We have it.'"

Alusi said he cannot reveal his sources of this information, because that would place in grave and imminent danger individuals within the Iranian "establishment" who risked their lives to share it with him.

"I am talking about Iranian insider information. Very clear, from inside Iran," he said. "There are people within Iran who want to be normal... They know this is a dangerous regime. You see how they treat their own people... Iran is terrorizing the world already. What will they do once they have the bomb and they are stronger?" ...

Go to the link for the rest. Now if that's not enough, Muslims Against Sharia links John Noonan at The Weekly Standard, who says that Iran could be working on not just a fission bomb (A-bomb), but a thermonuclear fusion device (H-bomb):

Iran's nuclear program is spread throughout a variety of experimental laboratories, hardened enrichment facilities, heavy water manufacturing plants, and two plutonium reactors currently under development (Bushehr could come online within a few months). That far exceeds what's needed to turn on the lights, but it's also beyond what's needed for a basic nuclear weapons program.

Consider North Korea, which manufactured two limited yield nuclear weapons using only a plutonium reactor, a plutonium reprocessing facility, and -- presumably -- some sort of weapons laboratory. Why is Iran pumping billions more into building and protecting triple the number of facilities required to build a basic nuclear weapon, akin to the Fat Man or Little Boy bombs detonated in 1945?

The answer could be that Tehran is skipping basic weapons construction and moving towards an advanced thermonuclear design. Consider that they've already experimented with advanced weapons designs like two-point implosion, nuclear triggers, and have built their own facility at Arak that could be used to produce both tritium, which is a suspected boosting agent in hydrogen bomb designs, as well as weapons-grade plutonium. They've spent billions building, hardening, and protecting uranium enrichment, which could be used along with plutonium in a staged nuclear device. All this at an astronomical cost and effort compared to the similar North Korean nuclear program.

And what of Ahmadinejad’s recent visit to South America, where he showed keen interest in Bolivia's massive lithium reserves? ...

Merry Christmas.

Yemen Airstrike Kills 30 Including Top Al Qaeda Figures

2009-12-24T18:12:00.000-08:00

Internet Haganah has a roundup.

Funny, there doesn't seem to be a problem with Western-style Communism.

2009-11-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

Normblog:

You can bet that if there's someone saying that some particular culture isn't receptive to the idea of human rights, they'll be hoping to foist on you a view that identifies that culture with the power-holders within it. I happen to have an example to hand. It's a man telling us that 'The Chinese have a powerful sense of their identity and worth. They have never behaved toward the West in a supplicant manner'. He goes on as follows:

The issue... is much deeper than Western-style democracy, a free media or human rights. China is simply not like the West and never will be. There has been an underlying assumption that the process of modernization would inevitably lead to Westernization; yet modernization is not just shaped by markets, competition and technology but by history and culture. And Chinese history and culture are very different from that of any Western nation-state.

So no need to worry about democracy and rights for them, they being so different and all?

Go read the rest at the link. Original source of that quote is here; Norm also quotes a different view, from two writers who are actually, like, Chinese and stuff.

Feds to Seize New York Properties Linked to IRI

2009-11-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

Via Cyrus at Facebook, here's The Daily News:

Putting the squeeze on Tehran, the feds moved Thursday to seize a mosque in Queens and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper from a nonprofit organization suspected of secretly funneling money to Iran.

"The Alavi Foundation has effectively been a front for the government of Iran," said Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, who sued to grab more than $500 million in assets.

Read it all at the link.

Morning Report: 2009-11-12

2009-11-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

Iran expects Russia to supply S-300 missiles. Arutz Sheva: 'Iran's Defense Minister, Ahmed Wahidi, said Thursday in an interview with an Iranian newspaper that his country expects Russia to stand behind a deal it signed with it for the supply of advanced anti-aircraft S-300 missiles.'

Strategy Page on bombings and loyalty in Iraq. Strategy Page provides an unsentimental look at contemporary Iraq:

Iraq has a loyalty problem. Too many Iraqis are only willing to give absolute (no bribes will work) loyalty to family or tribe. Thus at the national level, too many Iraqis can be bought, and you can never be sure who you can trust. Saddam dealt with this problem by trusting no one, except family and tribe. Even then, he constantly moved people around, and had to kill a few of his closest associates, to inspire more loyalty from the others. In a democracy, you replace the bullets with cash. The Iraqi government is so corrupt because many politicians see it as a matter of life or death to shower close associates with stolen money, to insure their loyalty. The one exception to this is the Kurds, who fear the Arab majority so much, that they have become, by local standards, incorruptible in security matters. The Kurds are still divided by families and clans, and still willing to be bought, but not when it comes to security. Many Kurds make a good living down south, as security contractors. This is actually a tradition that goes back centuries. You want a reliable bodyguard, go hire a Kurd.

Read the full article at the link.

Debka: Obama wants more time for Iran parley. Debka:

President Barack Obama and prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu talked for more than an hour and a half in the White House Tuesday, Nov. 9, all but fifteen minutes without advisers. There were no cameras and the usual post-meeting press briefings, joint communiques and interviews were cancelled. A curt White House statement said: "The president reaffirmed our strong commitment to Israel's security, and discussed security cooperation on a range of issues. The president and prime minister also discussed Iran and how to move forward on Middle East peace."

Netanyahu then headed out to Paris to see President Nicolas Sarkozy later Tuesday.

DEBKAfile reported Monday: US official sources admitted Monday, Nov. 9, that Tehran had finally blocked every compromise offered by the Obama administration through backdoor channels. This and the US president Barack Obama's Middle East peace initiative have both run into the sand. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Middle East envoy George Mitchell informed him last week after their failed bid to persuade the Palestinians to sit down and talk peace with Israel.

Clinton found Mahmoud Abbas in Abu Dhabi with one foot out of the Palestinian Authority leadership and exploiting Obama's misplaced reliance on a total Israeli settlement construction freeze on the West Bank and in Jerusalem to strike a rejectionist position for the sake of restoring his tattered credibility on the Palestinian street. On that score, there is nothing much for Obama to discuss with visiting Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday, Nov. 10, although both found themselves under pressure to meet during Netanyahu's brief visit to Washington to address the General Assembly of the North American Jewish Federations. ....

Republicans Win Big in Atlantic States

2009-11-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

B. Daniel Blatt at Gay Patriot: Governor-elect Christie declares victory.

I do hope the president is listening to this speech, especially where he said that he doesn’t want the government to fix every problem. His supporters cheered that line heartily. He promises to turn the state capital upside down.

He talk about cutting taxes, spending and onerous regulation.

A lot of good stuff in this speech, sounds like my kind of Republican.

Gay Patriot: McDonnell's margin biggest for GOP in Virginia history.

It looks like Bob McDonnell is running ahead of George Allen’s tally in 1993 when that good man enjoyed the largest margin of any Republican in the history of the Commonwealth.

UPDATE: McDonnnell won Fairfax County by a whisker, 51-49. This is a very big deal, very big.

Republican takes New York's Westchester County.

But fellow Gay Patriot blogger ColoradoPatriot has some concerns.

Neo-Neocon has some thoughts:

It was a good night for the Republicans, a bad night for Obama and liberal Democrats. Especially in New Jersey.

Obama will never admit it. But will he take it to heart? I doubt it. It will be full steam ahead on the agenda, and the same for Pelosi (and to a lesser extent Reid), who will attempt to twist the resistant Blue Dog arms (or is it legs?) ever more forcibly. Should be interesting.

If same sex marriage can’t win in places like California and now Maine, then its day hasn’t quite come. However, I do think that, with the next generation coming up, it’s just a matter of time. ...

Morning Report: 2009-11-03

2009-11-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

Israeli Heron drones in Afghanistan. Debka:

Germany is the fifth foreign nation to acquire the Heron TP drone or other Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle technology for support missions against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, DEBKAfile's military sources report. Today, these drones complement the US Air Force's dominant role in Afghanistan air space, thanks to two useful features and the CIA's shortage of Predators for its own and NATO use:

1. The Israeli drones are cheaper.

2. The Herons' operational features include a long-distance range, the ability to stay aloft for 52 hours non-stop and tracking and targeting capabilities. They can carry out complex functions such as in-flight refueling and slotting into strategic missile defense systems.

Equipped with 1,200-horsepower engines, they carry 250 kilos of ordnance, mainly air-ground missiles. With this load, the Israel UAVs can reach an altitude of 11,000 meters. Flying empty, it can reach a height of13,700 meters. This means that the Heron can fly above regular commercial air traffic without becoming icebound thanks to another special feature, which is important in the freezing Afghan winters.

Our military sources report that the Canadian armed forces began using Israel UAVs a year ago, hiring them on charter from Israel's Aviation Industries. ...

Afghanistan: Terrorists get butts kicked. Strategy Page:

November 3, 2009: Two weeks of fighting in South Waziristan have left nearly 400 Taliban and al Qaeda dead, along with about 40 soldiers. Nearly has many Pakistani civilians and security personnel have been killed by terror attacks. While there are high (media) profile operations, they have little impact on Pakistani military capabilities, and have increased public support for the military offensive in the tribal territories.

Pakistan has seven brigades of troops advancing into South Waziristan ...

SWJ roundup. A sample of the stories Small Wars Journal is following this morning: Afghan presidential runoff canceled; suicide bomber kills 35 near Pakistan army headquarters; US concerned about Iraq election delay; Clinton tells Iran that US position will not change; and much more. Read it at the link.

Morning Report: 2009-11-02

2009-11-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

Obama appoints Hagel to intelligence post. Arutz Sheva: 'Jewish Republican party officials and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) are among several groups that have called on U.S. President Barack Obama to rescind his appointment of former senator Chuck Hagel as co-chairman of his Intelligence Advisory Board. Hagel made clear his attitude towards Israel when he spoke at the pro-Arab and self-proclaimed pro-Israel Jerusalem Street lobby last week. ...'

Jewish terrorist suspect Teitel arrested in Israel. Debka: 'DEBKAfile reports that at the end of a 12-year search, the police and Shin Bet finally caught up with the Yaacov Taitel, 37, from Shevut Rachel, whom they suspect of a long series of terrorist crimes. They arrested him in the Har Nof district of Jerusalem Oct. 9. Two of those crimes are the murders of an Arab taxi driver in June 1997 and an Arab shepherd in August of that year. His home was found stocked with an assortment of firearms, including a sniper's rifle, and a bomb-making facility. The police and Shin Beit report that Yaacov Taitel, who was born in Florida, USA, operated solo and was self-taught in the use of firearms and explosives. He was first arrested in 2000 after years aboard but released for lack of evidence. He then turned to Jewish targets. In November 2006, an explosive charge was found at the Eili police station with the slogan: "Sodomites get out?" The accused has campaigned extensively against the gay community and its annual parades.'

UK secular Muslims stand up to extremists. Azarmehr:

UK's secular Muslims today decided to stand up against the Islamic political extremists, the Al Muhajiroun, who call for the abolition of democracy and imposition of Sharia Law in Britain. And guess what? the Al-Muhajiroun decided not to show up!

The Iranians who showed up today to support the secular Muslims also explained the forthcoming 4th November protests in Iran. Hopefully many people from today will stand in solidarity with the Iranian people and the Green Movement on Wednesday, outside the Islamic Republic Embassy between 6-9 pm. Lets show the world that the Green Movement is alive and moving forward.

The Spirit of Man has more:

Brace yourself for more anti-regime protests in the days ahead across the country.

Mousavi has hinted at new rallies while the criminal mullahs and their IRGC killers warned of more crackdown on November 4th protests. But the most heart warming news of all was the recent pledge by brave Iranian students to go back to street protests. The Islamic regime is shaken and suffering from big internal struggles. We need to do our part here to help the brave men and women who risk their lives to go out against this deadly regime.

Commentary. With this morning's post, I'm returning to regular posting here at Dreams Into Lightning. Stay tuned for more.

El Día

2009-11-01T13:19:00.000-08:00

When describing my father to people, I used to like to say, "Picture a cross between Albert Einstein and Captain Kangaroo." The soft-spoken, bookish Ken McLintock was, for most of the years I knew him, on the editorial staff of Choice Magazine. But in another lifetime, he had been a machine gunner in the Second World War. In a memoir written years later (and left unfinished), he recalled his experiences up until (but not including) his unit's arrival at New Georgia.

Dad's career as an editor seems to have begun during the war years; at any rate, he assembled a collection of original writings by his fellow soldiers of the 146th Field Artillery Battalion.

It was pure curiosity which led me to investigate a Japanese who had been killed about eight hours before, during the night. Before I saw the body itself, I saw a heap of clothing - or rather, rags - and I thought to myself: Is it possible that that shapeless object is a man? As I got closer, however, I saw the fallen enemy. After the first brief shock at the sight, I went ahead, dispassionately, coldly looking at him.

He was lying on his back, resembling a piece of wax statuary, with one hand flung across his waist, holding a bloodstained handkerchief (he had been machine-gunned in the stomach), and the other arm was crooked up with the hand resting near his head. His age was certainly under eighteen, and his youthful flesh was firm though colored a strange, waxy, yellow-white hue. His head was turned to one side, revealing a clean, bloodless hole in the neck where he had been shot by one not knowing he was already dead. His eyes were slightly open, and his lips parted. His boyish, beardless face was not entirely expressionless. On it I fancied I could see an expression revealing a boy trying to solve one of the great mysteries of life, a mystery that was beyond his grasp. ...

Dad also left a body of original writing. His remembrance of his mother recounts his memories of her singing career:

Mother's training, though, was not for the opera stage. Instead she sang with New York's Oratorio Society for years, and was soloist in a number of churches in the New York area. She also was a member of at least one church choir and even one synagogue choir (that of the famed Temple Emanu-El). Among the members of one of the choirs was Harry T. Burleigh, composer and arranger of Negro spirituals (as they were then called), including "Deep River". Burleigh was already well on in years when Mother knew him, and as the years went by, he would announce solemnly each year that this would be the last year he would sing "The Palms" at the Palm Sunday service.

In the one extant piece of writing that could be called a diary - dated New Year's Day 1968 - he speaks of feeling a quiet but invincible optimism:

despite having been uprooted a week before Christmas and kept until a week after Christmas in a warm house, somehow it will survive the shock of having been replanted (in a new location) this 15-degree day. And I know that, despite the cold, I will get the tree planted today. This is what I mean by invincible optimism. In other years I should have left the tree in the garage for a day or so -- letting the tree get accustomed to the cold, I would tell the world -- before planting it. Today I don't feel the need for any such evasion: I shall go out there within the hour, not joyfully, perhaps, but but at least without hesitation.

On pondering his qualifications for a certain job, he mused:

The job that I must do some day --
Fill an excavation or fule a flame --
I hope will not be asked of me too soon.
Were it tonight, or, say, tomorrow noon,
The fire would sputter, to my shame,
Or else the hole that's dug would be
So unexpectedly full of space
They'd think they'd buried in that place
Someone already more than half a ghost. ...

I do not know whether he ever got over the feeling of having lived "a life spent on the perimeter". In his later years, he embraced Judaism and became affiliated with a couple of local synagogues. For a too-short period of time, he was able to fulfill his own love of singing (and of Jewish music) in the choir of one of those synagogues.

Alzheimer's robbed him of his faculties quickly and ruthlessly. You know that scene in '2001: A Space Odyssey' where Dave has to disconnect HAL? Kind of like that.

***

My mother survived my father by about two and a half years. Her mother was the only grandparent living when Stephanie and I were growing up; we'd travel from our home in South Windsor, Connecticut to visit her in Bath, Maine every Thanksgiving.

I remember my mother as fiercely idealistic and intellectual, mistrustful of the world but relentless in her efforts to improve the world in spite of itself. She left no written works, but played a critical role in helping several friends - children and adults - to achieve literacy.

Her relationship with her mother was deep and deeply troubled. Long after the old woman was buried, Mom's voice would quiver with hurt and rage over things her mother had said or done to her as a child.

***

Stephanie was with us for twenty-eight years. She was preoccupied with mortality; one of her earliest poems observes:

Man is a fragile being,
Within himself and by himself,
Man is a dream,
An impossible dream,
And thinking he knows everything
Knows nothing
And is lost in the dream.
Imprisoned in him is a heart
That beats and stops, and all is lost.
Man fears death, though it must come ...

And then there is this:

The rain is water
from the sea
to the sky.
These rocks will be fossils,
my heart, thistles.
Only the sun consuming itself
will die.

Stephanie never felt at home in this world, as if she were migrating

through this country and out again
towards a greater desolation
than that from which I came.
Some days I am a gypsy
lying on sweet green grass or yellow fields
under a sky wide and full of sun;
some days I am a ragged dog
barking in alleys
among trash and empty bottles;
and some days I nearly forget -
but I can feel this body planning,
gathering forces,
signing documents;
all my time is borrowed time.

Even now, I find myself reading her poems and stories over and over again, always discovering something new.

Where the Night Water Runs

Once I chased a dream, a bird song,
a peacock feather,
through midnight down to the lapping water
silver crickets like ear-stars singing
all along the fields where fieldmice hide.
There is no place to go
but down to where the night water runs,
and runs black and slow,
slow like feet running in a dream.
Kind water, sweet and black
whispering, "I take nothing back.
I only go on."
The dream was really a beast
covered by night; I did not know,
and I followed the rank smell far,
too far away,
to find it, large
and turning, white clawed and snorting
too awful for fear,
too awful for running,
the song of my living too awful for fear -
and now to go on,
walking;
dawn is near.

Even now, she still visits me from time to time in my dreams.

Stephanie again, for a short time. I think we must have been teens or young adults. We were visiting the home of another family, perhaps relatives. It was getting late at night. I don't know if our parents were there or not. She was ready to drive home. Oh good, I thought, this will give us a chance to catch up; I haven't spoken with her in a long time. Even after I woke up, it was several minutes before I realized just how long it had been, and why.

Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Slams Khadaphi Homophobe

2009-09-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

Via Gay Patriot, Steve Rothaus reports:

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, just released an official statement regarding her criticism of Ali Abdessalam Treki, the new president of the United Nations General Assembly and former foreign minister of Libya, in favor of the criminalization of homosexual behavior:

“The anti-gay bigotry spewed by this Qaddafi shill demonstrates once again that the UN has been hijacked by advocates of hate and intolerance.

“Likewise, the leadership of the UN Development Program is held by the Iranian regime, which denies the presence of gays in Iran even as it murders them and other innocent citizens. ..."

Read the rest at Steve's Gay South Florida blog.

On Enablers

2009-09-20T12:07:00.000-07:00

From a friend at LiveJournal, Flip Flopping Joy takes on communities that enable abusers.

Israel, Iran, Russia

2009-09-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

Debka says that CNN says that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says that the Israelis said that they're not going to attack Iran.

In a CNN interview Sunday, Sept. 20, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said "Israeli colleagues" had told him they are not planning to attack Iran. He confirmed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had visited Moscow two weeks ago and had also met with him, but asked to keep the visit secret.

When Israeli President [Shimon] Peres was visiting me in Sochi recently, he said something very important for all of us: 'Israel does not plan any strikes on Iran, we are a peaceful country and we will not do this'," according to Medvedev.

DEBKAfile adds: Unless Medvedev's assertion is denied by Jerusalem, the Israel government has abandoned its military option to pre-empt a nuclear-armed Iran, but neglected to inform the Israeli public of this radical change of policy. For nine months, Prime minister Netanyahu has insisted that halting Iran's attainment of a nuclear weapon, even by military means, was his highest mission as prime minister. ...

Remarks. Well, the Israelis may or may not have said such a thing to Medvedev; I wasn't there. My guess would be that the Russians are making the claim publicly to see if they can goad Jerusalem into issuing a denial or non-denial. But what do I know? Anyway, Debka adds:

According to the Kremlin transcript, the Russian president said: My Israeli colleagues told me they are not planning to act in this way and I trust them." he said. Although Russia has no defense agreement with Iran, "this does not mean we would be indifferent to such an occurrence…"

These words indicate that the Kremlin is not absolutely sure that Israel has indeed abandoned a possible strike against Iran and is holding an implicit threat of Russian military intervention over Israel's head - just in Regarding the contract Russia signed two years ago to sell Iran S-300 air defense missile systems Medvedev said that "any supplies of any weapons, especially defensive weapons, cannot increase tension; on the contrary, they should ease it." Israel has repeatedly protested this sale as a boost to the defense of Iran's nuclear sites. His words indicate that Moscow intends to go through with the sale to Iran and possibly Syria too. ...

So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

And now for some AthensBoysChoir

2009-08-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

EZ Heeb.

We won't stop the beat till the world be changin' ...

Have a great Shabbos.

Iran Report: 2009-08-05

2009-08-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

14 Mordad 1388. Latest Iran news: a citizen is freed, an opposition leader is arrested, a US flak double-talks, and a hero dies.

Protester rescued from regime thugs. Azarmehr has new footage of a protester rescued from the basijis.

Mousavi campaigner detained. Raye Man Kojast reports: 'In the late hours of Tuesday night, Mir-Hamid Hassanzadeh was detained at the office of Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA), where he is advisor, the local Tabnak website reported.'

Enemies. The Spirit of Man has a few choice words for the mullahs and their enablers in the United States. 'If I had any doubt about pro-Mullah nature of the Obama regime, those doubts are now turned into certainty and solid belief. Today NPR reports that the White House has called Ahmadinejad the 'elected leader' of Iran. At a time when world leaders like British PM Brown and German Chancellor Merkel have refused to recognize the Iranian government, this dangerous move is highly insulting and offensive, especially to thousands of Iranians who were killed or are now in jail.'

Gibbs says he misspoke. Arutz Sheva: 'On Wednesday, [White House Spokesman Robert] Gibbs told journalists, "Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday... I would say that's not for me to pass judgment on."

Alireza Davoudi remembered. Women's rights activist Alireza Davoudi died at the age of 26 from injuries he suffered during his imprisonment and torture. Rahai Zan TV has video (Farsi) here and here.

Iranian Queer Railroad

2009-07-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Iranian Queer Railroad:

The IRanian Queer Railroad (IRQR) is our new organization’s name since October 9, 2008. For IRQR, we are working to create a simple structure and focus upon supporting Iranian queers to be safe on their journey and to arrive in a new country to live and be free.

The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th century Black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and mainly to Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause. In Canada they had their freedom. In the past few years one of our major activities was about asylum seekers who must escape Iran due to their sexual orientation and we will continue this work under IRQR. Iranian queer refugees are resettling in Canada, and also in United States and in parts of Europe. ...

Via Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi at Facebook.