THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS

Here's a photo from the front page of the NYTIMES depicting the Hizballah forces keeping the highway to the airport closed:




YUP: three muzzie radical on lawn chairs in front of a piles of dirt and trash. Probably armed with AK's and RPG's.

The stuff on the USS COLE - arriving soon - can blow this scum to kingdom come in a snap!

We'd be enforcing UNSCR's.

And NOBODY n the region could do or would do diddly-squat about it.

Or put it this way: they'll whine as much as they did when the IAF blew up the Syrian-NOKO nuke facility.

The sooner we bomb Hizballah to smithereens the better.

It would be a good show of force.

SURE: The IAF could do it - but the repercussions would be too great: unlike the Syrian operation, this would be seen as interfering with an Arab nation's politics.

And the Lebanese government could never ask for Israel's help.

But the Siniora Government could ask the USA for help.

BOMBS AWAY!

NASRALLAH: YOUR VIRGINS ARE READY!

TO ALL THE MOTHERS...

AND TO ALL THE FATHERS WHO MADE IT POSSIBLE!

GOD BLESS THEM ALL, AND THE CHILDREN!

(WOULD IT BE MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT TO JUST HAVE "PARENTS DAY"!?!?!)

M&C:

A cautious calm prevailed Sunday night in Mount Lebanon following fierce clashes between followers of the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and opposition followers. A ceasefire was underway and the Lebanese army was setting up checkpoints, an army source on the ground told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

"I have been in contact with Walid Jumblatt and we agreed that his fighters will hand over their weapons to Lebanese army," said Talal Arslan, an opposition Druze leader said.

The overall situation in Lebanon had eased after army soldiers were sent into the second-largest city, where overnight there had been heavy fighting in two areas, Bab al-Tabbneh and Jabal Mohsen.

Beirut saw a relative calm return after four days of fierce sectarian fighting between mainly Sunni supporters of the ruling majority and Shiite opposition militias.

THIS IS A GOOD STEP, BUT ULTIMATELY, WE NEED TO TURN UP THE HEAT ON HIZBALLAH, SYRIA AND IRAN... AND CHANGE THEIR REGIMES.

YNET/AFP:

A US warship, which was deployed off Lebanon in February amid concern over Beirut's political crisis, crossed Egypt's Suez Canal on Sunday on its way to the Mediterranean, an official with the canal authority told AFP.

"The USS Cole has crossed the Suez Canal and is headed to the Mediterranean," the official said, adding he did not know its exact destination.

• WE COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS THE OTHER DAY.
• I GUESS BUSH AND CENTCOM WERE LISTENING!
• (THEN AGAIN: IT HELPS IRAN FOR THE USA TO DEPLOY STUFF FURTHER FROM THEM...)

From the Independent:

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.

The survey also reveals that most Britons believe "green" taxes on 4x4s, plastic bags and other consumer goods have been imposed to raise cash rather than change our behaviour, while two-thirds of Britons think the entire green agenda has been hijacked as a ploy to increase taxes.

Brits have a lot of common sense, don't they? That used to be known as an American trait.

This most famous rebel and writer has passed away at 93:

Shmuel Katz, one of the last remaining links to the Zionist Revisionist icon, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and himself a towering figure and forceful voice of the Zionist Right, died in the early hours of Friday morning, soon after Yom Ha'atzma'ut, at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital. He was 93.

His funeral will take place at 1 p.m. today at the Hayarkon Cemetery, Geula Gate, in Tel Aviv.

Katz was born in South Africa in 1914 and first came to Israel in 1936, joining the Irgun.

Jabotinsky sent him to London in 1939 to represent the Revisionist Zionist position. Katz soon found himself virtually stranded after Jabotinsky died suddenly in upstate New York in 1940. Katz subsequently made a living as a journalist working for a number of London newspapers while also founding a Zionist Revisionist weekly.

In 1946 he managed to return to Palestine and joined the Irgun High Command. He was the movement's de facto foreign minister and its last Jerusalem-area commander prior to statehood.

Katz was elected to the First Knesset on the Herut list. Highly principled and often uncompromising, he quit politics and established a publishing house.

After the Six Day War he became a leader of the Land of Israel movement. When the Likud Party won the 1977 elections and broke Labor's stranglehold on Israeli politics, Menachem Begin asked Katz to serve as his adviser on information, tasked with explaining the new government's position to a hostile media and an unfriendly Carter administration.

But Katz soon came to feel that Begin was too accommodating in the face of US pressure and in January 1978 left the premier over his peace negotiations with Egypt.

Katz opposed the notion of land for peace, championing the formula of peace for peace.

A prolific writer, essayist and historian, Katz had a regular column in The Jerusalem Post for many years and continued to publish occasional op-eds until very recently. Among his most important books are Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky; Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine; and The Aaronsohn Saga about the Nili spy ring, whose English edition was published late last year by Gefen.

Though a fierce ideologue, Katz was soft spoken, with a twinkle in his eye and a winning self-deprecating humor. As recently as several weeks ago, he was planning a new series of short op-eds for the Post in opposition to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's policies.

Katz is survived by his son Yuval and nephew Dr. Leonard Bliden, both of Tel Aviv.

He should be honored for the good he did in his time. Another book of his not mentioned in the article but recommended is Days of Fire, which was first published in 1968.

Labels: Israel

FOX:

Antarctica hasn't warmed as much over the last century as climate models had originally predicted, a new study finds. ... The new study, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, marks the first time that researchers have been able to give a progress report on Antarctic climate model projections by comparing climate records to model simulations.

• AGW = BS.
• AL GORE: STFU.

YES: KANSAS: THE RISING PRICE IS MAKING KANSAS HEAVY CRUDE PROFITABLE/EXTRACTABLE.

FREE MARKETS WORK.

Israel's 60th anniversary has produced some wonderful essays in honour of that heroic people but the most down to earth was in my view written by Prof. Barry Rubin -- a man who has converted his love of Israel into an unceasing verbal war against all those in the media who misrepresent Israel. I reproduce an excerpt below. The whole thing, of course, is a must-read for all of us who support Israel

As part of the sixtieth anniversary celebration, Israelis are choosing their national bird but they have long since picked the national sport: self-criticism. The great Israeli humorist Ephraim Kishon described his own arrival in the country shortly after independence by joking that as the ship approached the coast it became very hot and we began criticizing the government over the weather. Daily Israel, every conceivable failing (real or imagined) is relentlessly dissected. The negative is usually highlighted, though afterward people feel optimistic at having been able to vent their pessimism. One day walking down the street I ran into a friend.

"How's everything?" he asked. "Great," I answered. "How can you say that!" he exclaimed. "Don't you read the newspapers?" This characteristic has a positive effect, by inspiring a ceaseless effort to make things better. In dictatorships and places ruled by extremist ideologies, the stifling of this process has been one of the main reasons for their failings.

I know our society could have been, and could be today, far better. Don't get me started on the teacher's strike or the low calibre of politicians. The president and prime minister have rightly both faced charges of malfeasance. One cannot help but think that if so much effort didn't have to go into self-defence, the country would be within shouting distance of utopia.

Still, when annual quality of life polls are taken, the positive scores from Israelis are into the 90th percentile. Moreover, although Israel faces very real threats, its security situation is better than the great majority of those sixty years. While there is full, formal peace with only Egypt and Jordan, most Arab states-except for Syria-have in practice made the material, as opposed to verbal, pursuit of the conflict, a low priority.

It's true that the old comradeship of decades ago has declined, as have the institutions created to build the state. As in other countries, privatization has replaced statism. I can remember when a telephone installation took a month. Now it takes a day. Television stations have gone from a single choice to dozens. The national airport has been upgraded from a place barely fit for a small provincial town to a large, thoroughly modern complex. This tiny state of now seven million people is a world leader in science, medicine, and hi-tech among other things, yet still has some of the globe's best-tasting fruit and vegetables as well as internationally exported flowers.

And nothing more symbolizes Israeli daily life than the driver behind you setting off his horn to beat the speed of light from the changing traffic signal. Yet civility, too, is creeping in gradually. With all of its problems-at times because of its problems-it is a great place to live.

Oh yes we are human beings, a fact that often seems forgotten in the hate-filled propaganda that pervades too many institutions, the slanderous misrepresentation of latest fact and longer-term history which is heard far too much. A friend told me today that he was seriously informed on an international television broadcast that former prime minister Ariel Sharon drank a glass of Palestinian blood every day.

It's often explained that criticism of Israel is not antisemitism as such but increasingly the extreme, crazed attacks precisely duplicate that hateful standpoint. More important is this: historic antisemitism's claims and assumptions have simply been adapted to Israel; the word "Zionism" simply substituted for "Judaism" and "Israel" for "Jews." We are the only people in the world continually called on to apologize because we survived, even after 85 percent of European Jews were murdered and about 90 percent of Middle Eastern Jews were expelled or had to flee the countries where they were born.

In contrast to the false accusations, we will be delighted to agree, cooperate, and celebrate the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state willing to live in peace alongside Israel. Unfortunately, that prospect seems distant. Equally unfortunately, that movement's Islamist and much of its nationalist leadership prefers to continue the conflict-and intensify their own, and our, people's suffering--rather than accept anything less than Israel, in the words of Iran's president, being wiped off the map.

A thousand years ago, Chasdai Ibn Shaprut wrote from Spain: "Dishonoured and humiliated by our dispersion, we have to listen in silence to those who say: `every nation has its own land and you alone possess not even the shadow of a country on this earth.'" But if there really was a place, Shaprut said, "where harassed Israel can rule itself, where it is subject to nobody.I would not hesitate to forsake all honours, resign my high office.and travel over mountains and plains, over land and water," to reach it. Well, now it exists and will keep on doing so, very probably long after seemingly more established states or at least societies vanish in its neighborhood or elsewhere.

Nahum Lenkin, one of my few relatives who escaped with his life from wartime Poland, wrote how his parents there often "went without food" to pay for the town's Zionist school where he and others could be prepared "to one day go as pioneers to Eretz Israel." Virtually all that town's survivors, and their children, live in Israel.

More here

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your roundup of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

THIS TIME IN THE ART WORLD.

HOW THEY SEE THE "PROBLEM":

the art world’s ever rising valuations are a symptom of a growing imbalance in the American economy: the unprecedented concentration of the spoils of growth at the very top.

THEIR SOLUTION:

What’s needed, rather, is to build a social contract that will share economic rewards more equitably.

STALIN SAID THE SAME THING.

BTW: THEIR PREMISE IS FALSE:

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study released this month, the bottom fifth of families with children, whose average income in 2005 was $16,800, enjoyed a larger percentage increase in income from 1991 to 2005 than all other groups except the top fifth.

IT'S LONG PASSED TIME SOCIALISTS OPENED THEIR EYES AND STFU.

WHY?

• BECAUSE EVEN IF THERE WAS A WIDENING INCOME GAP, INCREASES IN TAXES, REGULATIONS AND GOVERNMENT SPENDING WOULD NOT BE A SOLUTION.
• THEY ONLY MAKE EVERYONE POORER - EVEN THE POOR.
• NO!?!?!?
• JUST LOOK AT CUBA AND ZIMBABWE AND NORTH KOREA.
• AND REMEMBER THE USSR AND RED CHINA!

[NOTE: THE 1991-2005 PERIOD IS THE LAST FOR WHICH DATA WAS AVAILABLE.]

Labels: NY Times, SOCIALISM

The lies emanating from Damascus and Tehran - and most other Arab capitols - are usually pretty awful, but this one is WHOPPER even by their standards:

Syrian official daily Al-Baath Sunday said Hezbollah had foiled a U.S.-planned coup to seize control of Lebanon during the deadly gunbattles which rocked the country.

"The Americans launched a pre-emptive strike against opposition nationalist forces, starting with the (Hezbollah) resistance, and attempted a Washington- planned coup but were taken aback by the opposition, which restored order in Lebanon," the paper said.

The Lebanese opposition aimed to "remove foreign interference and stop the plots to transform Lebanon... into an Israeli protectorate and new focal point of U.S. links in the region," the ruling party's paper added.

BAGHDAD BOB WOULD BE PROUD!

• IF IT WEREN'T SO OUTRAGEOUS IT WOULD BE RIDICULOUS.
• THE PATHETIC THING IS THAT MANY ARABS BELIEVE THIS CRAP. ARABS AND LEFTISTS!
• WHY DO THEY FALL FOR IT? SIMPLE: IF YOU'RE DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE IN MARX AND DAS KAPTIAL AND/OR MOHAMMED AND THE KORAN, THEN YOU'RE DUMB ENOUGH TO BELIEVE ANYTHING!
  
• (YES: THESE TWO BOOKS ARE PATENTLY FALSE, AND THE SOCIETIES BUILT ON THEM BAD!)
  

The continuing clashes in north and east Lebanon are not the manifestation of a civil war, but the outbreak of a PROXY WAR between the West and the Syro-Iranian Axis.

The fact that the battles are within a single nation and not at the boundary or border of two nations does not make it civil war - it is not intra-national it is international and transnational in its roots and without the transnational and international aspect it would disappear; without Iran's islamofascist hegemonic aims and without Syria's geopolitiical aims there would be no war.

To end the wart we must neutralize Damascus and Terran's' connections to the area and that really means regime change in Iran and Syria.


This would be in keeping with the relevant UNSC Resolutions: one which was the basis for getting Syria to retreat and end their occupation of Lebanon, and the other which was SUPPOSED to disarm Hizballah - Iran's stooges.

Bush's failure to oust Assad - for his assassination of Hariri and others and his deliberately lax control of his border with Iraq (since 2004!) and for his NOKO Nuke program - is shameful and has been harmful to the entire region. Bush has been a disgusting wimp when it comes to Syria.

And Bush has allowed Iran has been allowed to continue to develop its nuke program and to arm the militias in Iraq. Bush has been content to allow the EU and IAEA "spearhead" efforts to get Iran to retreat from its uranium enrichment program. This is idiotic and has been ENTIRELY ineffective.

Time is running out - for Lebanon, and Bush. Should he hand over the region with Assad and Iran's nuke program intact and Lebanon in shambles he will rightly go down in history as a half-assed FAILURE.

HAARETZ:

Quietly, even stealthily, this unknown company has been working for five years now on one of the more interesting technological innovations to be created in these parts.

WeCU ("We see you," in case you are unaccustomed to SMS-speak) promises an automated system to detect people with mayhem on their minds. The system integrates methods and doctrines from the behavioral sciences with biometric sensors.

According to the company's founders, in under a minute it can screen an individual, without his or her knowledge or cooperation and without interfering with routine activities, and disclose intentions to carry out criminal or terror activity. It can identify subjects who are not carrying any suspicious objects, do not demonstrate any suspicious behavior, do not fit into a predefined social or other profile and do not arouse any suspicion.

RTWT.

SOUNDS LIKE A PREMISE FOR A SPIELBERG SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE.

LET'S GET A FEW FOR USE HERE IN THE USA, AND SET THEM FOR "DEMOCRAT"!

Only kidding!

Noel Sheppard, writing at Newbusters, goes all Cujo on Stephen King.

Well, last month, famed horror author Stephen King was speaking in front of a group of high school students at the Library of Congress... [and for] those that can bear it, what follows is another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military...:

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on.

If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that.


It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.

Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen.

It's nice to see King take a Stand against his own country's military. This walking Bag of Bones is a true Creepshow and his diatribe hints at Desperation. Maybe he's been suffering from Insomnia.

Nonetheless it's been Misery trying to read his recent books. And I won't be buying any more.

Oh. And one other thing. Hasn't King amassed enough money to fix his underbite?

Labels: Defeatist Democrats, MSM, Stephen King

AROUND THIS TIME - 1970, I ACTUALLY WENT TO SEE BANDS AT THE FILLMORE EAST - WHERE THIS WAS RECORDED.

CHANGES.

THIS COULD BE OBAMA'S THEME SONG...

IT WOULD BE APT: OBAMA SEEMS TO HAVE TAKEN THE PARTY BACK TO 1970.

(CAN SOMEBODY DO A PHOTOSHOP OF OBAMA AS JIMI?)

NO WONDER PEOPLE TURN TO SO-CALLED "FRINGE" PARTIES: THE MAJOR PARTIES ARE EITHER IN DENIAL, OR ACTIVELY AIDING CREEPING SHARIA.

Labels: eurabia

OBAMA HAD A SENIOR AIDE DENY THAT HE EVER SAID HE'D UNCONDITIONALLY TALK TO IRAN AS PRESIDENT.

THAT'S A LIE. AKA: The Audacity Of Bull Shit.

COMPLETE ROUND-UP HERE.

The Democrat party is a party based on ID politics, not on values. They want you to vote for them based on your membership in a group or class or segment, not based on your values. This is consistent with how they'd use the levers of power, too. Their statists and collectivists.

This primary season has ruptured an alliance between two of the groups which make up the core of their base: feminists and blacks. This rupture has lead to a big POTENTIAL problem:

Their big worry is simple:

• If Hillary wins, then they worry that blacks won't go to the polls.
• If Obama wins, then they worry that women will stay home or vote for McCain.

Here's Obama's solution:

MORE PROOF WE WON.

GOD BLESS OUR TROOPS!

IHT: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is condemning pro-Tibet protests and backing China ahead of the Olympics in Beijing.

The socialist president accuses the U.S. government of trying to "sabotage" the upcoming Olympic Games and of aiding protests focused on Tibet. Chavez says he will back China against what he sees as a "secessionist" attempt in Tibet.

The U.S. considers Tibet a part of China and says it is concerned about violence in Tibet but will refrain from meddling in China's internal affairs.

Chavez spoke Friday night after meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu. Venezuelan and Chinese officials also signed cooperative accords.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: CHAVEZ; CHINA, FARC, HIZBALLAH/HAMAS AND SCUM LIKE AHMADINEJAD. AND OBAMA - HAMAS KNOWS THIS AS WELL AS FARC.

BTW: CHAVEZ IS A BUDDY OF KENNEDY AND DELAHUNT. AND OTHER PROM,INENT DEM LIBS.

THEY'RE ALL SOCIALIST SCUM.

EXIT QUESTION: WHAT WILL ALL THE LIBS IN HOLLYWOOD DO?!? THEY LOVE CHAVEZ AND THE DALAI LAMA. THIS PUTS THEM IN A TOUGH SPOT. LIKE I CARE.

INDEPENDENT: Filipino whose wife died after blunder by NHS to be deported

A man whose wife died as a result of an NHS blunder has lost his right to remain in Britain, in what a coroner described yesterday as an "extraordinary" decision.

Arnel Cabrera, 39, came to Britain from the Philippines in 2003 to join his wife, Mayra, a theatre nurse, who worked at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

But a year later, Mrs Cabrera died at the same hospital after she was given an epidural during the birth of the couple's child which was mistakenly injected into her arm. The baby survived.

An inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing and found the NHS trust had been guilty of gross negligence. Now the Home Office has told Mr Cabrera he has failed in his bid to remain in the UK.

David Masters, the Wiltshire coroner who presided over the inquest, said yesterday: "This is extraordinary. In view of the verdict reached at the inquest I find it difficult to appreciate how the Home Office has reached this decision."

In its letter of refusal, the Home Office said Mr Cabrera had "not established a family life with his son in the United Kingdom". It added: "As his son remains in the Philippines there are no insurmountable obstacles to his family life being continued overseas."

GREAT BRITAIN'S NHS IS HELD PUT AS A PARADIGM OF EXCELLENCE. IT SUCKS. AND THE BUREAUCRATS OF THE NHS AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT ARE JUST AS BAD AS BUREAUCRATS EVERYWHERE: THEY SUCK.

THIS IS WHY WE WANT TO HAVE THE SMALLEST GOVERNMENT POSSIBLE: GOVERNMENT SUCKS.

JUST ASKING.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

Our old friends Chavez and the FARC continue to make the news. First we had this item on Friday, which sent markets spinning and the price of oil through the stratosphere:

A cache of controversial computer files closely tying Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez to communist rebels seeking to topple Colombia's government appear to be authentic, U.S. intelligence officials say.

The trove -- found on a dead guerrilla leader's laptops during a military raid in March -- is likely to ratchet up pressure for the U.S. to impose sanctions on one of its most important oil suppliers.

The files that have been made public so far have largely confirmed Mr. Chávez's well-known sympathy for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But a review by The Wall Street Journal of more than 100 new files from the computers suggests that Venezuela has broader and deeper ties to the FARC than previously known.

These documents indicate Venezuela appears to be making concrete offers to help arm the rebels, possibly with rocket-propelled grenades and ground-to-air missiles. The files suggest that Venezuela offered the FARC the use of one of its ports to receive arms shipments, and that Venezuela raised the prospect of drawing up a joint security plan with the FARC and sought basic training in guerrilla-warfare techniques.

"There is complete agreement in the intelligence community that these documents are what they purport to be," a senior U.S. official said. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been sharing its assessments with the White House, this official said.

Washington's stance is likely to hurt Venezuela's already deeply strained relationship with the U.S., its biggest trade partner. It could also add pressure for the U.S. to declare Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism, alongside Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria, and impose sanctions.

Now we have indications that there are ties between the increasing violence in Mexico and the Chavez-FARC-Morales-Ortega-Iran axis (emphasis mine):

The murder of Mexico's police chief signals just how serious the Mexican drug trafficking organizations are about taking on the Mexican state. And just how weak the Mexican state is.

"This could have a snowball effect, even leading to the risk of ungovernability," Luís Astorga, a Mexico City-based sociologist and drug expert, said in an interview. "It indicates terrible things, a level of weakness in our institutions -- they can't even protect themselves."

By most accounts the police chief, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, was a good cop trying to do an impossible job-fighting drug organizations that have more resources, better weapons and the ability to buy or kill those that oppose them.

President Felipe Calderon also wins high praise for sharply ratcheting up the pressure on the trafficking organizations, who have responded in the most predictable and lethal fashion-murdering high-profile symbols of the enforcement effort.

It is worth remembering that the chaos the traffickers are wreaking in Mexico is not just aimed at the Mexican state, it is also aimed at undermining the already-battered viability of our southern border. The hundreds of dead across the border states of Mexico show where the battles are being fought.

The easier it is to cross dope, weapons, illegal aliens from around the world, the higher the profits for the traffickers.

And the FARC rebels in Colombia are now in a direct business relationship with Mexican trafficking organizations, according to the recently-captured FARC documents resulting from the raid that killed rebel leader Raul Reyes.

The FARC, in turn, is allied with Nicaragua (Ortega) and Venezuela (Chavez), who in turn are allied with Iran, which in turn runs Hezbollah, which in turn is actively working to expand its beach head in Latin America.

Hugo Chavez is much more than a tin-horn Latin American dictator: he is a direct threat to the National Security of the United States (and friends, Barack Obama is not a man who will take that threat seriously...)

Given Iran's active participation in killing Americans in Iraq, its unilateral escalation of violence in Beirut, its close economic ties with Venezuela, and the above reported escalation of violence against the Colombian government, the Mexican government AND American citizens in Mexico (and the US), something has to give, and soon.

VIA GERALD.

WALID PHARES:

The Syro-Iranian axis enflaming various battlefields in the region, from Basra to Gaza, has instructed its proxy local force on the Lebanese battlefield to surge against the pro-Western Government of Fuad Seniora. The Lebanese Government had asked Hezbollah to remove cameras installed inside the international airport and to begin the dismantling of a parallel telephone communications system. In addition, the Government removed the Airport commanding officer for collaboration with the terror group.

Within 24 hours, the "Hizb's" commander Hassan Nasrallah reacted and launched his coup. In a press conference he declared war against the Government and accused it of being an "agent of the Americans." A few hours after, Hezbollah's Special Forces and snipers tightened their grip around the Airport and moved into Sunni West Beirut. They seized the strategically located neighbourhood of Ra's al Nabaa overlooking both (Christian and Muslim) sides of the capital, fought their way into Hamra Street and practically controlled more than 90% of West Beirut. By midnight, half a million Lebanese Sunnis found themselves under an Iranian-sponsored "occupation."

RTWT.

• FROM BASRA TO GAZA, THE AXIS OF ISLAMOFASICTS IS ATTACKING THE FREE WORLD.
• WE SHOULD FIGHT BACK.
• WE HAVE ENOUGH FIREPOWER TO DESTROY THEM; LET'S USE IT.
• THE LONGER WE WAIT THE WORSE WILL BE THE COSTS.
• WE SHOULD ISSUE AN ULTIMATUM TO HIZBALLAH: WITHDRAW OR FACE BOMBARDMENT FROM THE USA AND ISRAEL - AND ANNIHILATION.
• IRAN WILL GET THE MESSAGE.
  

Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice Reaches Record Levels

Christopher Alleva

NOAA's National Climate Data Center is reporting that March 2008 Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent was much above the 1979-2000 mean. This was the largest sea ice extent in March, 28.6% above the 1979-2000 mean over the 30-year historical record, surpassing the previous record set in 1994 by 10.9%

RTWT.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? SIMPLE:

• AGW = BS.
• SOMEONE PLEASE TELL AL GORE TO STFU.
• SOMEONE TELL MCCAIN.
  

Labels: AGW.Climate Change

Mark on Hugh Hewitt's show:

"I’ve got, as you know, these outstanding human rights complaints. Ontario, which ruled that it didn’t have jurisdiction to try Macleans Magazine and myself, nevertheless said you know, we don’t have jurisdiction to toss these guys in jail, but we would if we could. That was absolutely extraordinary. They said if we had put this on a sign rather than in a magazine, they would have jurisdiction to prosecute us. So I actually, I’ve actually taped the magazine article to a sign, and I’m going to deliver it to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and invite the relevant thought police to actually go ahead with their threat. I mean, if it’s just the medium, I say bring it on, as John Kerry would say.

Source

Posted by John Ray. For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Also, don't forget your roundup of Obama news and commentary at OBAMA WATCH

Deep within our subconscious, all of us harbor biases that we consciously abhor. And the worst part is: we act on them

The heading and subheading above are from a recent article in that well-known Greenie publication, "Scientific American". I also reproduce the first part of the article concerned below. The article seems to be aimed towards making us less prejudiced towards outgroups. But the article exists in a reality vacuum. It totally ignores realities such as the incredibly high rate of violent crime among blacks and also ignores most of the research on impression-formation and stereotyping. It is largely a rehash of some well-known work by Banerji and Richeson that I have commented on some time ago.

The "amazing" thing that the researchers found was that whites (and some blacks) are more wary of blacks than they are of whites -- no matter how you measure or detect that. Such a finding would, however, surely surprise only a psychologist. If blacks REALLY ARE more dangerous to others, it is merely psychological good function to be more wary of them than of others. And I don't think even Leftists attempt to deny the high rate of black crime. So to call such perfectly proper wariness in people "bigotry" is itself bigoted. Bigotry is judging people according to a fixed and wrong set of preconceptions and it seems to me that that is exactly how psychologists are judging others when they refer to perfectly normal and adaptive behaviour as bigotry.

The one thing that the research literature on stereotyping shows most clearly is that the "stereotypes" people have in their heads are not usually (Except, perhaps in the case of psychologists) rigid or imprisoning but are highly flexible and responsive to the realities that people encounter (See for instance here and here). That fact fully explains all the behaviour that the psychologists described below view as "bigotry". If blacks change, the perceptions and expectations of them will change -- but I am not holding my breath.

Fortunately, the same literature tells us that once we get to know a particular person as an individual, the importance of the stereotype recedes rapidly -- so that the particular person will then in general be treated as we find him/her, regardless of any expectations we have about the group to which he/she belongs. A rather amusing example of that which I once came across was a white neo-Nazi whose best friend was a very dark-skinned Bengali. And there was another guy who could not stand "Chinks" (East Asians) but who was happily married to one. And Wilhelm Marr, the man who in 1879 invented the term "antisemitism" (he thought it was a good thing), was actually married to a Jewish lady! Psychologists have traditionally seen such behaviour as perverse but a good knowledge of the impression-formation research would have told them that it is normal.

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life," Jesse Jackson once told an audience, "than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery-then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

Jackson's remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse-for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not-can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.

Using a variety of sophisticated methods, psychologists have established that people unwittingly hold an astounding assortment of stereotypical beliefs and attitudes about social groups: black and white, female and male, elderly and young, gay and straight, fat and thin. Although these implicit biases inhabit us all, we vary in the particulars, depending on our own group membership, our conscious desire to avoid bias and the contours of our everyday environments. For instance, about two thirds of whites have an implicit preference for whites over blacks, whereas blacks show no average preference for one race over the other.

Such bias is far more prevalent than the more overt, or explicit, prejudice that we associate with, say, the Ku Klux Klan or the Nazis. That is emphatically not to say that explicit prejudice and discrimination have evaporated nor that they are of lesser importance than implicit bias. According to a 2005 federal report, almost 200,000 hate crimes-84 percent of them violent-occur in the U.S. every year.

The persistence of explicit bias in contemporary culture has led some critics to maintain that implicit bias is of secondary concern. But hundreds of studies of implicit bias show that its effects can be equally insidious. Most social psychologists believe that certain scenarios can automatically activate implicit stereotypes and attitudes, which then can affect our perceptions, judgments and behavior. "The data on that are incontrovertible," concludes psychologist Russell H. Fazio of Ohio State University.

Now researchers are probing deeper. They want to know: Where exactly do such biases come from? How much do they influence our outward behavior? And if stereotypes and prejudiced attitudes are burned into our psyches, can learning more about them help to tell each of us how to override them?

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, DISSECTING LEFTISM, GREENIE WATCH, OBAMA WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, EYE ON BRITAIN, OPTUS and TELSTRA/BIGPOND. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

This Obama fella... for most of his adult life he's been a lawyer, and a "community organizer", and a state senator.

He probably had a staff of a few people - maybe it was a dozen all tolled - in ALL those jobs.

And in NOT ONE of his jobs did he ever really have to make a payroll.

To campaign for the state senate job, all he had to do was WHATEVER THE CHICAGO MACHINE TOLD HIM.

Since he's been a US Senator, he's probably had a staff of a dozen or so people.

Now - running for president - he's got hundreds working for him - and really, it's the first time he's ever had a lot of managerial responsibility.

HECK: he never even led a platoon in exercises, let alone battle.


Remember: he ain't running for Senator in Chief; he's running to be COMMANDER IN CHIEF. The CEO of the USA - and the Free World.

Sheesh.

On top of that he's an appeaser and a tax-raising leftie who attended a RACIST church and has intimately cavorted for YEARS with murderous anti-American terrorists.

SHEESH.

Can he really be the best the Dems can do!?

I wouldn't want him to be UN Ambassador or Mayor of NY or Fore Commissioner.

Can people REALLY think he'd make a good president!?

That's almost as scary as the prospect of an Obama Administration!

DT:

Hezbollah takes Beirut Airport; moves towards Occupation of Entire City It is getting ugly in Lebanon. Again:

I’m greatly wishing I could get back to Beirut right now. But the airport is closed, and we’re hearing that Hezbollah is attempting to close Beirut’s port, too. In fact, from the sounds of it, Hezbollah is taking the city — at least the western part of it. This was the threat, and it seems like they’re making good on it.

RTWT.

NOW... RECALL THESE ITEMS FROM 2/28/08 - TWO MONTHS AGO:

REUTERS:

US warship threatens regional stability: Hezbollah

The pro-Iranian Hezbollah group accused the United States on Friday of endangering regional stability by deploying a warship off Lebanon and vowed to defy what it called an act of military intimidation.

The United States said on Thursday it sent the destroyer USS Cole to the eastern Mediterranean because the Bush administration was concerned about Lebanon's political deadlock.

AND HERE - ALJAZEERA:

US positions warship near Lebanon

A US defence official said the USS Cole left Malta on Tuesday

The US has sent the warship USS Cole and two support ships to take up position off the coast of Lebanon in a show of force over the ongoing political deadlock in the country.

A senior US official said Washington was "very concerned" about the situation in Lebanon and called the move "support for regional stability".

The US declined to say whether the decision was a show of force aimed at Syria, which it has accused of interfering in Lebanon.

Lebanon's Western-backed governing coalition and the opposition, who are led by Shia group Hezbollah and backed by Syria, have failed to reach a deal to end the country's political deadlock.

"The United States believes a show of support is important for regional stability," said the senior official.

"We are very concerned about the situation in Lebanon. It has dragged on very long."

WELL... IT TURNS OUT THAT SHOW OF FORCE WAS ALL SHOW - AND THAT DUBYA IS ALL HAT AND NO CATTLE.

• IF DUBYA WAS A REAL POTUS AND A REAL COMMANDER IN CHIEF AND A REAL LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, THEN HE WOULDN'T STAND IDLY BY AND LET ASSAD AND IRAN AND HIZBALLAH DESTROY LEBANON.

• HE WOULDN'T HAVE LET IRAN SCREW WITH US IN IRAQ THE LAST 4 YEARS.

• HE WOULDN'T HAVE MADE OLMERT STOP THE LAST WAR WITH HIZBALLAH BEFORE HIZABALLAH WAS FINISHED (THE WAY HIS OLD MAN LET SADDAM OFF THE HOOK IN 1991).

• BUT DUBYA IS A WIMP WHO HAS HAD US FIGHTING THE GWOT WITH ONE HAND BEHIND OUR BACK SINCE 2004.

• WE SHOULD BE SENDING THOSE SHIPS BACK AND ISSUING SYRIA AND HIZBALLAH AN ULTIMATUM: WITHDRAW OR BE ERASED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

IRAN WILL GET THE MESSAGE...

From this source in Canada:

Police in Halifax are investigating a complaint about a political cartoon that some members of a local Islamic group claim is a hate crime.

The cartoon, published April 18 in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, depicts a woman in a burka holding a sign that reads, "I want millions," and she says, "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."

The cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon is a reference to Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman from Nova Scotia whose husband was arrested in 2006 in an anti-terrorism raid. Qayyum Abdul Jamal was released from jail after charges against him were stayed on April 15.

Zia Khan, director of the Centre for Islamic Development in Halifax, said the cartoon goes beyond what can be considered free speech.

[...]

Dan Leger, the Herald's director of news content, said the cartoon does not take aim at all Muslims.

"The whole purpose of that cartoon was to comment on the outrageous demands of this individual for compensation long before any hearing into her case had ever been held," he said.

In an interview with the Herald before the cartoon ran, Jamal said she wanted to sue the federal government for what her family has gone through and told the reporter, "I want millions," Leger noted.

"[MacKinnon] depicted her exactly the way she looks and used her own words, and that's the genius of cartooning that you're able to do that," he said.

Leger said he first heard of the Islamic group's concerns when the newspaper was contacted by police.

What would Muslims have thought of Thomas Nast?

His engravings chronicled the American scene from the Civil War period to the turn of the century. They highlighted every major national event and issue, the political process, elections, and scandal in the government. The American scene was ripe in subject matter for Nast. The country was fast becoming an industrial nation; railroads were spreading, factories were being built, and cities were fast becoming crowded with immigrants that supplied cheap labor. Scandal was everywhere. Elections were being rigged. One of his most famous political cartoon attacks was aimed at Boss Tweed.

If Nast had turned his attention to caricaturizing and satirizing Muslims, they'd have started another cartoonifada.

Labels: Always On Watch, cartoons, Muslims complain, Muslims in the West

• The dollar is up this year.
• Unemployment is down.
• Exports are up.
• Gasoline inventory is up - by historical average.
• Oil inventory is up.
• Oil reserves are up - Venezuela announced today they have another 30 BILLION barrels of oil. (And remember Bakken, too.)
  
• And, there are signs that OPEC and Saudi Arabia will raise output.

DESPITE ALL THAT, THE PRICE OF A BARREL OF OIL WENT UP, TOO.

There is no logical reason for oil to go up given ALL this news.

It is a BUBBLE. Driven by speculation.

And it will burst.

Sooner than you think.

Unless... the REAL reason oil is so dear is fear of a USA preemptive attack on Iran. Not so much the preemptive attack -- or the phony PUBLIC recriminations which will follow it (coinciding with PRIVATE thanks!).

But the conventional retaliatory strikes which Iran will inevitably attempt to inflict on the oil assets of the Gulf States. If they can wipe out a lot of the oil assets, then the price might go to $500/barrel.

IMHO: This is now the ONLY plausible explanation for the continued oil price SPIKE.

At one time I felt sure Bush would do the right thing and neutralize Iran with a preemptive strike. Now, I am not so sure. not at all. He has more or less let Iran eff-up Iraq and Lebanon. And let Assad get away with murder - over and over again.

Bush is a wimp - that's what Dubya stands for, it seems.

I hope the oil speculators know something I don't. About us attacking Iran, that is...

Stay tuned...

WHAT A MORON!



VIA HOT AIR.

WHAT'S AT INSTAPUNDIT TODAY, WAS HERE LAST TUESDAY!
GLENN:

May 09, 2008

PROFITING FROM CLIMATE CHANGE: "Al Gore blames the Burma tragedy on global warming despite growing evidence to the contrary. Could the hype be related to his financial interests?" It's no crazier than the Cheney-Halliburton connections!

posted at 02:08 PM by Glenn Reynolds