IAEA GIVES IRAN AN OPEN DEADLINE

BBC: The UN nuclear watchdog has passed a resolution that paves the way for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council over its nuclear ambitions. The IAEA did not however set a date for reporting Iran to the council, which could ultimately decide to impose sanctions on the country. ... Mr ElBaradei said the question of referring Iran to the UN Security Council should not come up before November, when the 35-member IAEA board meets again. He urged all the parties involved to "exploit this window of opportunity" for negotiation and diplomacy. ... Iran concealed its nuclear fuel programme for nearly 20 years before it was confirmed by US satellite pictures in 2002. Traces of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium were found at its Natanz plant a year later. Tehran avoided being reported immediately to the Security Council in 2003 by opening talks with Britain, France and Germany. However, those talks broke down after Iran resumed its uranium conversion process - suspended since November 2004 - in August and pronounced it had an "inalienable right" to produce nuclear fuel.

Er um... not before Novbermber, huh. WELL WELL WELL: that's RIGHT AFTER the UN is expected to issue a report on the assassination of Hariri - a report which is expected to directly implicate Assad, and probably lead to his downfall (or utter cave in - which is just as good, if not better).

SO: the EU/IAEA's "SOFT NOVEMBER" deadline should NOT be interpreted as a "gesture" to Iran, (intended to make them more likely to cooperate with the international community); it should only be interpreted as a "timing-move" which allows the USA and our allies the time we need to gets our ducks in a row: we will "deal with" Syria first - (and solidify our gains in Iraq), BEFORE we turn our attention to Iran. By dealing with Syria first, we further isolate Iran and make dealing with them on ANY front - using ANY MEANS NECESSARY - much MUCH easier. And a good outcome more likely.

DEMOCRAT SILENCE ON GAZA SYNAGOGUE DESECRATIONS IS DEAFENING

So far both President Bush and Senator Santorum have publicly expressed outrage over the blatanat acts of genopcidal desecration in Gaza this week.

TWO CONSERVATIVES - the leader of the GOP and a GOP leader of the US Senate.

THE ENTIRE DEMOCRAT PARTY - "the legacy party" for American Jewry - has been SILENT.

WHAT'S WORSE: GOOGLENEWS has NOT ONE story about either Bush's condemnation of the desecrations or about Santorum's. FOR THE MSM, THE DESECRATIONS DON'T MATTER - and neither does the fact that ONLY GOP conservatives have condemned them. The MSM has no shame.

Here's part of what Santorum said ON THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE:

"... I come to the floor today to describe and to deplore the desecration of synagogues that wasperpetrated earlier this week in Gaza. After painful deliberations in Israel's Cabinet, the government of Israel decided to leave standing nineteen synagogues in its twenty-one communitiesthroughout the Gaza Strip rather than lending a hand to their destruction. Despite official Israeli requests to protect the sanctity and security of the holy sites after it courageously withdrew from Gaza, the Palestinian Authority rejected out of hand any responsibility and refused to protect the structures from arsonists and looters. In fact, a Palestinian police officer, tasked with keeping the peace, shirked his responsibility and allowed the mobs to torch the synagogues, claiming, "The people have a right to do what they're doing.'' Those acts should offend all people of good conscience. ... All Americans of good will, of all faiths, ethnicities and nationalities feelsuch pain. I commend and join President Bush who yesterday condemned thedesecration of the synagogues in Gaza and hope that all Members of this great body do the same.

Here's what Bush had to say:

"... we mourn the passing of a great hero for freedom, Simon Wiesenthal. Simon Wiesenthal was a survivor and a witness, who served -- who seared the horror of the Holocaust in the collective memory of the world. He's one of these leaders that refused to back down. He spoke with clarity. He insisted that we remember the lessons of the crime. He insisted that we remember that hatred prepares the way for violence, and the failure to expose and confront intolerance can lead to atrocities beyond imagining. As we saw in the recent desecration of the synagogues in Gaza, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism still burns in the hearts of men. And the best way we can honor Simon Wiesenthal's memory is to expose and confront anti-Semitism wherever it is found. By condemning this hatred at home and abroad, we stand with the victims of the Shoah and declare to the world: Never again. "

I think that what American Jews ought to say about VOTING for a Democrat is "NEVER AGAIN!"

SAUDI PRINCE FEARS IRAQ MIGHT BECOME 3 NATIONS

The NYTIMES has obligingly carried a Saudi warning about Iraq; a prince of the House of Saud thinks that Iraq will devolve into civil war and fall apart into 3 nations:

Prince Saud said he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week and added that American officials generally responded to his warnings by telling him that the United States successfully carried off the Iraqi elections and "they say the same things about the constitution" and the broader situation in Iraq now. On Thursday, in fact, the senior administration official said, "The forward movement of the political process is the best answer." Prince Saud argued: "But what I am trying do is say that unless something is done to bring Iraqis together, elections alone won't do it. A constitution alone won't do it." Prince Saud is a son of the late King Faisal and has been foreign minister for 30 years.

Er um, since when do we take advice about constitutionalism and democracy from a non-constitutional KINGDOM which has a horrific human rights record - like Saudi Arabia!? Sheesh.

AND ANOTHER THING: who says 3 nations instead of "one Iraq" would be a bad thing!? Kurdistan would be a GREAT GREAT GREAT country and ally to the USA - UNAMBIGUOUSLY SO! And a Sunni nation that is run by Zarqawi!? WE COULD BOMB IT INTO OBLIVION WITHOUT A SECOND OF HEISTATION! And a Shia nation on Iran's border!? It might be the best way to truly DEMOCRATIZE Iran - BECAUSE SISTANI BELIEVES IN THE SEPARATION OF CLERICS AND STATE.

Let's stop worrying and stay the course; no matter which way you slice it, we're on the RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY. Human rights and demcracy always have been, and always will be. The people who oppose liberty - or fear it - are on the wrong side of history - and always have been.

BTW: I think that the USA response to this Prince was RIGHT ON (repeat): On Thursday, in fact, the senior administration official said, "The forward movement of the political process is the best answer." AS FREDERIC TURNER notes (please scroll down): WE ARE THE REVOLUTION, and the reactionaries - whether from the House of Saud or from al Qaeda, or the post-modern Left - WILL NEVER STOP THE MARCH OF FREEDOM.

"Global terrorism is not a revolution, but an attempt to suppress a revolution."

Frederick Turner - in TCS:

The velvet revolution (also named the orange revolution, the purple finger, the rose revolution, the cedar revolution) has swept the world. In different ways, nonviolent, non-ideological middle-class and skilled-worker mass movements have unseated tyrants and established democracies in an amazing range of countries: Spain, Portugal, Chile, Argentina, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, Bangladesh, South Korea, Indonesia, the Baltic states, Mexico, Serbia, Albania, Georgia, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Lebanon, even Palestine, all fell to the regimes of popular sovereignty. China nearly fell in 1989, with the Tiananmen protest, and will become a democracy some time in the next twenty years. If there is one defining event that characterizes the end of twentieth century political modernism, it is this one.

The suicide bomb, with the mass terrorism it epitomizes, is the weapon of choice against the velvet revolution. The target is not, as well-meaning critics of terrorism say, indiscriminate: it is exact and precise. The target is any population that might organize a velvet revolution, the potential sovereigns of a democratic state. It is people who are not ideological, who are willing to let others believe what they want, who want to make a living and be independent, and who want a say in their government. Even in Israel, where it was the citizens of an already-established democratic state that were being attacked, the true target, as we are now coming to understand after the death of Arafat, was the nascent democracy of Palestine. By killing Jews, Arafat could continue to oppress and defraud Palestinians.

Global terrorism is not a revolution, but an attempt to suppress a revolution. What is being defended by suicide terror is not Islam, not traditional moral culture, not the ethnic nation yearning to be free of the colonial oppressor, but the principle of totalitarian rule -- the sovereignty of the dictator or the ayatollah, promoted as national self-identity and independence, or as the will of God. It is the last gasp, historically, of the ancient system by which the huge majority of human beings were ruled since the Neolithic agricultural revolution.

ME: The Democratic Revolution - started in the USA in 1776 - is still the most revolutionary revolution of all time. What Leftists think of as revolutionary - namely socialism - (in all its forms: Marxism; Fascism; Nazism; Maoism; Stalinism; Castroism; Mugabe-ism; Ho-Chi-Minhism; Pol-Potism; Trotskyitism) - is nothing more than a tyrnanny by the state over the individual; (many even called it, "the DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat" - not even feigning that democracy was even an intention; in fact, communism merely substituted one aristocracy - one of inherited birthrights - for another: that of orthodix adherence to a false ideology).

All people and movements which stand in the way of the advance of humanity from tyranny to democracy, and from serfdom to liberty (and the prosperity that ONLY liberty produces) - are reactionary. ALL: Leftists and jihadists. They're birds of a feather.

SYRIA'S BAATHIST ASSAD REGIME WILL FALL SOON AFTER 10/25/05

UK GUARDIAN:

Detlev Mehlis, who is leading the UN inquiry, is scheduled to present his final report on October 25. Four Lebanese generals have been arrested so far on suspicion of murder. But Mr Mehlis, a former German state prosecutor, will also name several influential figures in the regime as suspects in the killing, the source said. The report will almost certainly lead to a showdown between the UN security council and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. The security council is likely to demand that Mr Assad - whose hold on government is fragile - hands over Syrians accused of involvement. Mr Assad is virtually isolated internationally, with little support even among his fellow Arab leaders, so action from the security council could be swift, unlike its approach to countries such as Iran. ... Much rests now on how high up the Syrian regime the investigation reaches. The source close to the investigation said he did not know if there was any evidence to suggest Mr Assad had knowledge of the assassination plot. Most of the important decisions in the running of the country are made by a small group around the president, including his brother Mahir, who heads the Republican Guard, and Mr Shawkat. "If it reaches up to a high level, even if they don't accuse Bashar himself, it will destabilise the Syrian regime tremendously," said Michael Young, the opinion editor at Lebanon's English-language newspaper the Daily Star. "I think the Americans and French basically feel this is a chance to get rid of the Syrian regime."

I think it will work. THEN we can go after IRAN. Stay Tuned...
(MORE HERE AND HERE AND HERE.)

SILENCE = PROOF THE WORLD NOW THINKS ISLAM IS A GENOCIDAL CREED

Here's a post by LGF: Hamas To Convert Synagogue to Weapons Museum

Incredibly vile behavior from the terrorist gang the world is trying desperately to promote to a “political entity:” Hamas To Convert Synagogue to Weapons Museum. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

WASHINGTON - Emboldened by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Hamas yesterday announced its plan to turn a synagogue in Netzarim into a museum that would display weapons employed by the terrorist group’s members against Israeli civilians.

UPDATE at 9/22/05 6:54:08 pm: I’m reading this again, and wondering where the hell is the world’s outrage about this? Newsweek prints a false rumor that a Koran was dunked in a toilet, and the entire planet goes nuts. Hamas announces that they’re going to turn a Jewish house of worship into a memorial to mass murder ... and the silence is absolutely deafening.

LGF rightly argues that the deafening silence reveals thatmost of the world doesn't care one whit about Jews or Israel. It also says A GREAT DEAL about how the world views Islam:

The fact that the world EXPECTS Muslims to go nuts and run amok in a violent rampage based on a RUMOR about a Koran being flushed down a toilet, AND that the world says NOTHING when Muslims torch and descecrate synagogues and then publicly announces that they'ee gonna turn them into a museum glorifying genocide, PROVES that most people are CONVINCED that most Muslims are uncontrollably violent, racist gencodial maniacs. They've come to expect the worst from Muslims. And for good reasons, too.

If you are a Muslim, and you have a problem with that global perception, then you have a duty to your faith to start CONDEMNING this stuff and attacking the perpetrators of this mayhem and urging your national leaders to start ARRESTING THEM AND IF NECESSARY TO START KILLING THEM, or you are condemning your religion to the ashheaps of history - for if these MANIACS takeover your religion, then your religion will go down in flames with them. YUP: it's up to you, you so called "moderate Muslims," wherever you are. SPEAK UP NOW, OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE. Your silence means that you WANT the world to continue to tacitly EXPECT that people of your faith NATURALLY AND REFLEXIVELY resort to violence and hate and genocide. Or, you want the world to beleive that you are a genocidal maniac, too.

BBC: "A US court hears of Lynndie England's alleged role in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. "

The headline says it all about the Left: they coddle and rationalize and excuse real thugs, while saving unreserved disdain for the likes of Rumsfeld - (by calling for his resignation because of what thugs like England actually did!). In this case, England (the perverted perp virtually caught red-handed - (she's in dozens of photographs laughing in the camera as prisoners are obviously being abused) - is referred to as ONLY an "ALLEGED" criminal. Alleged. Sheesh. She's already pleaded "guilty" once. And almost all of the rest of her perverted cadre of abusers have already been convicted or pleaded gulty too! Double sheesh.

It's not unlike how the MSM has handled the Plame-leak case: (1) the MSM has already convicted Rove (and beatified Miller) - even though NO ONE knows the facts of the investigation. And (2) the MSM ignores the fact that the real bad-guy is Wilson, who not only was the first to out his wife as a covert agent (to David Corn, of The Nation) but LIED about the relation between his CIA mission and Bush's SOTU. In his infamous NYTIMES op-ed, Wilson claimed his fact-finding mission in Niger had disproved what Bush said in the SOTU, but IN FACT, what Bush said was NOT controverted by Wilson AT ALL - on two bases: (a) Wilson's actual report (according to the Senate) was actually INCONCLUSIVE; and (b) Bush's SOTU DID NOT REFER TO NIGER OR YELLOWCAKE!

What do Plame and England have in common, and what does all this prove? That the MSM's bias against the Bush Administration is as pervasive as it is subtle. In fact, it's so pervasive that the Leftists of the MSM probably aren't even aware of that it comes out in nearly everything they write and how they write it.

WB YEATS: WHY COMBATING THE LEFT AND THE MSM THEY DOMINATE IS SO DIFFICULT

From a poem by Yeats:

For how can you compete,

Being honour bred, with one

Who, were it proved he lies,

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?

He nailed'em!

EU3 CAVE IN/JOIN CHINA AND RUSSIA IN APPEASMENT OF IRAN; USA GOES ALONG, FOR NOW...

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE! Heh. BBC:

The EU's "big three" are said to have backed down from a demand that the UN nuclear watchdog should immediately report Iran to the Security Council. Diplomats from France, the UK and Germany said the shift came amid opposition from Russia and China. They are now reportedly proposing that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna should only implicitly threaten Tehran with such action. ... According to the Associated Press news agency, the new draft now says only that suspicions over Iran's nuclear programme are "within the competence of the Security Council". It accuses Iran of "excessive concealment, misleading information and delays" in giving IAEA officials access to nuclear materials. It also expresses serious concern that Iran has failed to "re-establish full suspension of all enrichment-related activities", a reference to last month's esumption by Tehran of uranium conversion. Conversion is a prelude to enrichment - a key step in the manufacture of nuclear arms. The US appears to be behind the revised resolution. "Our goal is to build the broadest possible consensus," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said. The threat of referral was not being withdrawn, he told reporters, adding it was "a question of not if, but when" the issue would go before the Security Council.

More HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE.

The fact that the EU3 caved does not surprise me. But the fact that the USA is going along with it DOES! The USA must WANT the delay - for some other STRATEGIC REASON. I guess and hope thjat we are merely delaying the inevitable until a propitious time. I hope and pray that we are not delaying until it is TOO LATE, but just until a time which is more apt for ramping up a more assertive - if not AGGRESSIVE stance against Iran. Time will tell; unfortunately, if we are wrong, then it will have been a HUGE blunder. Perhaps, we intend on using the immediate/near term period to get tough with Syria? This would make sense. If Assad is GONE, and Syria is no longer either menace to Iraq or an effective ally of Iran, then we have seriously eroded the enemies strength. STAY TUNED.

SHEEHAN COVERAGE PROVES MSM BIAS

I was news-surfing ther MSM last night and I saw several reports abput the Sheehan march in DC. Sheehan had ONLY 29-30 people. YET, the MSM coverage of the event RARELY mentioned that FACT (amazingly "Reuters" did!), and all of them had their camera's in-close on her (or "TIGHT") so that the VISUALS made it SEEM like she had a bigger crowd than she really did IN FACT. This rank distortion by most of the MSM is nothing more than them doing anti-Bush/anti-war propaganda. The closest any part of the MSM coverage I saw came to reporting the truth was when one TV reporter mentioned that Sheehan expected bigger crowds for a protest scheduled for Saturday; it seemd to me the reporter was not reporting but wishing! Sheesh. (Check out the breadth of bad-reporting / "Sheehan-boosting" for yourself, HERE.)

THE SELF-IMPOSED CENSORSHIP OF THE LEFT

POWERLINE'S John Hinderaker wrote a typically BRILLIANT post which exposes the MSM's left-wing bias. He posted an excerpt from an email he received from the managing editor of the CJR, in which the editor called THE NYPOST a "truly right-wing" paper which was nothing more than "a [right-wing] rich man's toy." Hinderaker comments:

... the Times and the Post are "truly far-right newspapers"? Only if your perspective is somewhere on the most leftward 5% of the political spectrum. Do you suppose that Lovelady would describe such liberal papers as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times as "truly far-left"? No, neither do I. And where does Lovelady get off calling those papers "rich men's toys"? Who does he think controls the New York Times? Has the Sulzburger family become poor? Has "Pinch" not treated his paper like a toy, encouraging its forays into left-wing arcana even as profits declined and veteran employees were laid off? And has the Graham family stopped running the Washington Post Company? These papers would be "toys," too, but for one fact: they're liberal. It's an interesting window into the mind of an influential liberal journalist.

I often experience the same exact thing: My parents (God Bless my Father's memory and God Bless my Mother) were leftists, and her leftist friends think the NYTIMES is RIGHT-WING (or at best "centrist")! AND TO THEM ... IT IS! I tell them that this ONLY proves that they are so far left that even when they are looking right... they're still looking left!

I believe that the key to getting leftists change is to get them to open their eyes and get them off their left-wing media addiction (which leads them to EXCLUDE reading or watching anything that is right-of-center; in other words: their self-censorship - THEIR INNER EXILE). I believe that once reasonable people start to look at events from both sides, they will begin to "see the light."

The leftists in the USA and Europe - (and in the academy and in the MSM) - live in a self-imposed totalitarian regime of their own minds; whereas tyrannies like the USSR actively censored all media and prevented their trapped citizenry from reading any real news, and from reading any real history (of Communism or anything else), or from reading Hayek - or anything that opposed their rigid ideology, contemporary post-modern leftists voluntarily censor themselves and restrict their reading and viewing of news and commentary to the left-of-center media (which is still MOST of the media, so they don't FEEL like their censoring themselves).

This self-imposed censorship is so bad, that some leftist NYTIMES readers I know WON'T EVEN READ BROOKS OR TIERNEY!

Sheesh.

My current refrain to them is this: "How can you claim to have a better informed opinion of events than I do if you don't read news and commentary from both sides of the poltical spectrum as I do!?" This seems to stop them in their tracks, and makes a little crack in their wall of denial. One that needs to be continually hammered if these otherwise bright people are ever to become freed from their attachment to an utterly discredited ideology.

ALAS: it is a form of deprogramming, and is as difficult a road as any which tires to disengage a person from the armature which they belive holds them together and is the skelton of their personal identity, so-to-speak.

But I - and my brothers - (and Hinderaker and Davod Horowitz, and Norman Podhoretz and so SO many other former leftists who have moved right) are proof that it is possible.

And that it's liberating.

RICE REPEATING POWELL'S AND CLINTON'S ERROR: coddling the PNA in spite of their refusal to fulfill their treaty obligations

YAHOO/AFP (hat tip LGF): Asked in a news conference Tuesday about earlier Israeli threats to disrupt the polls in the West Bank if Hamas stands, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged full cooperation. "We would hope that the elections can go forward and that everyone will cooperate... because elections are fundamental to the continued evolution and development of the Palestinian process," she said. Rice reiterated the US view that there was a "fundamental contradiction" between Hamas's armed activities and its plan to run in January's poll. But she added: "We understand that the Palestinian political system is in transition, that it is in transition toward a democratic system and that has to be a Palestinian process."

I think that Rice and the Bush Administration needs to be MUCH clearer about what is an acceptable election process in Gaza and the West Bank, and that we must put MUCH MORE pressure on Abbas and the PNA to fulfill their obligations under the Roadmap. A lack a clarity only gives the enemy wiggle room, and only makes the likelihood of of failure greater. The enemy needs to know that if they fail to fulfill their obligations that there are serious consequences - to borrow a phrase from UNSC #1441. ALSO: because Israel ON ITS OWN left the Gaza, there should be a SPECIAL BURDEN on the PNA to live up to its obligations under the Roadmap. It is not only bad-policy to coddle terroristys, it is highly hypocritical for the USA to demand restraint from Israel in dealing with terrorists RIGHT ON THEIR BORDER while we wage war against jihadists thousands of miles from our own borders.

MORE EXPERTS AGREE THAT BUSH WAS RIGHT; THE CANAL BREACHES WERE UNFORESEEN AND THE CANAL WALLS SHOULD HAVE HELD

WASHINGTON POST (hat tip MEMEORANDUM):

Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry. The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls. ... But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans. ... The center's researchers said it is too early to say whether the breaches were caused by poor design, faulty construction or some combination. But van Heerden said the floodwalls at issue -- massive concrete slabs mounted on steel sheet pilings -- looked more like the sound barriers found on major highways. He also suggested that the slabs should have been interlocked, and that the canals they were supposed to protect should have had floodgates to keep out water from the lake.

Bush was castigated by the left for saying that the breached were unforeseen. He is now COMPLETELY VINDICATED. And I'm sure the MSM will report that part, too. YEAH RIGHT!

BAD NEWS FROM THE IAEA IN VIENNA: PUTIN AND CHINA SIDE WITH IRAN

BBC: Russia and China have openly opposed Western efforts to take Iran to the UN Security Council over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities. The US and EU have been pressing for Iran to be referred to the Security Council, which can impose sanctions. But Moscow and Beijing may block the plan, with Russia saying the current situation was "not irreversible ... Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he agreed that Iran should not become a nuclear power. But the country, which has the power of veto on the Security Council, has been calling for more diplomacy. The latest Russian statement is likely to disappoint the Europeans and the Americans who are pushing hard for the referral, says the BBC's Bethany Bell at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.".

We need to put the screws on these two former commie countries. They are definitely NOT allies, yet - not by any stretch of the imagination. I think - to shake up the Chicoms - we need to get Japan to announce they have nukes. And then we need to find some lever to use on Putin.

ROSA PARKS, CINDY SHEEHAN AND THE LEFT

Confederate Yankee DEMOLISHES those on the Left who'd compare Cindy Sheehan to Rosa Parks. GO THERE AND RTWT! I can only add two things: (1) The entire crowd of so-called "progressives" - and EVERYTHING they have come to stand for - is a pale shadow of what it once was:

We had Martin, and now they have Jesse and Al. We had JFK and RFK, and now they have TEDDY. We had Muhummed Ali, and now they have Tyson. We had Robert Strauss, and now they have Howard Dean. We had Shirley Chisolm, and now they have Cynthia McKinney. We had majority leader Senator LBJ, and now they have MINORITY leader Senator Harry Reid.

And (2) there's another pathetic angle: some of the celebrities of the Left are the SAME EXACT ones that were there 40 years ago! The world has changed, but they haven't. So the Left suffers three ways: (a) because it has some of the same spokesman it had then - people who are stuck in 1968 - it looks as vestigial as it is; it isn't socialism with a happy/human face, but socialism with an old angry face; (b) most of the new celebrities are uneducated idiotic wild moonbats; and (c) because the last 25 years have proven that Leftist ideology has never worked anywhere as well as Hayekian libertarianism.

CLINTON, HURRICANES KATRINA & GEORGES, AND NEW ORLEANS

One of the best posts EVER, by JUST ONE MINUTE - on the 1998 hurricane that nearly struck New Orleans (on Clinton's watch) - Hurricane Georges. It gives context and perspective to Katrina response, has authoritative MSM links backing up EVERY QUOTE, and an absolutely ON TARGET analysis - all proving Nagin and Blanco were MOST culpable for the horrors of Katrina, and that Clinton is STILL a GRADE "A" dissembler!

THE GIST OF MOONBAT HYPOCRISY, and why the post-modern Left is NUTS

It's simple, really:

ON THE ONE HAND, the Left gets all bent out of shape if you criticize Islam and non-democratic misogynistic Islamic nations, or argue that race, age and country of origin should be PART of a profile and that police SHOULD profile, or that there are such things as UNIVERSAL RIGHTS.

The Left argues that "we" ("we" being the hegemonic West in general, and specifically the "American Empire") have no right to interfere or intervene in other cultures and countries because values cannot be imposed; there is no such thing as "evil;" good and evil are values which are relative to each culture, and using force to change another culture is nothing more than cultural hegemony motivated by colonialism's naked greed.

That's also why the Left argues that "we" should appease the our foes, appease the "other", appease the Third World and send them unlimited amounts of Foreign Aid - with no strings attached: Because "we" are to blame for their poverty - AND - since it is their poverty which makes them mad at us and attack us, "we" shouldn't get mad at them- "we" have no right to; "we" should instead withdraw from what is properly their sphere of influence (Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Moro Islands, Kashmir, Kurdistan, Spain, Bosnia and Serbia - for starters), and just send them our money.

Yet, ON THE OTHER HAND, the Left has no qualms about accusing BusHitler, KKKarl Rove, and John AshKKKroft of every evil thing under the sun. From (a) planning 9/11 in order to have an "endless war" with which benefits their buddies in the defense contractor industry; to (b) fulfilling their long-held dream of tearing up the Bill of Rights; to (c) lying about WMD as a pretext to steal Iraq's oil. To the Left, Bush and John Roberts and Pat Robertson are dangerously evil people.

This is simply hypocrisy. On the one hand they deny that evil exists (except as defined by each culture for itself), and on the other hand they accuse Bush - and the GOP and conservatives, and pro-lifers, and neo-cons and Zionists of being absolutely EVIL!

And this gets us to what is now the GIST of Leftist hatred of evil right-wingers: ABORTION. Leftists do not believe that life begins at conception - as if some ELSE was conceived - NOT A LIFE; as if an expecting mother was not expecting anything special until the 25th week. This is irrational because all delineations EXCEPT for conception are by definition ARBITRARY. Yet the Left persists in calling pro-life people evil because the Left believes that anyone who wants pregnant women to go to term and give birth and then - if they don't want the baby - just give up the baby for adoption (rather than killing the baby while it is in the womb) are evil. To the Left, people who abort their pregnancies are doing nothing wrong at all.

To the Left, pro-lifers are evil. To the Left, neo-cons - (people who believe that every person everywhere is entitled to their universal human rights and that democracy is the only way to guarantee this, AND THAT SINCE WE ARE THE MOST POWERFUL DEMOCRACY ON EARTH WE HAVE A DUTY TO HELP LIBERATE OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS EVERYWHERE, just as FDR and JFK said) - are evil.

But to the Left, jihadists and islamofascists who openly call for genocidal war are not evil; to the Left, the jihadists're just misunderstood indigenous people who are well-motivated - (their tactics are a bit rough, but then they don't have tanks and jets!).

Which is why the Left openly proclaims that they are more afraid of BusHitler than they are of Binladen. Which is irrational. Which is why the wise man said: "Leftism isn't just a discredited ideology, anymore; it's a mental disorder."

For a compendium of Leftist Moonbat idiocy CLICK HERE.

POLL: WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL?

Who should be the next U.N. Secretary General?

BlairHowardAznarKing Juan CarlosSonia Gandhi Iyad AllawiHamid KarzaiThai Foreign Minister ShinawatraKwasniewskiVaclav Havel

IRAN ISSUES THREATS

FORBES/AFX:

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani warned that Tehran could quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it is subjected to the 'language of force' in a stand-off over its nuclear programme. Responding to European efforts to haul Iran before the UN Security Council over 'breaches' of international atomic safeguards, Larijani also said Tehran would link its oil business and other economic trade with individual countries based on whose side they took in the dispute. 'If you want to use the language of force, Iran will be left with no choice, in order to preserve its technical achievements, to get out of the framework of the NPT and out of the framework of the additional protocol, and resume enrichment,' Larijani said. 'If, in the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), they want to talk to us in the language of humiliation, threat or introduce the so-called trigger mechanism or take it to the United Nations Security Council, we will revise our stance on the additional protocol (to the NPT) and enrichment,' he added. He later elaborated: 'If our dossier is sent to the Security Council, we will cease the application of the additional protocol' -- a clause that gives reinforced inspection powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The more they threaten us, the better our tactics must be! We must keep the heat on them - and turn it up SLOWLY. Soon, Assad will fall, and Iran and Gazastan will stand alone as the sole outposts of unrestrained islamofascism. (NEARLY EVERY other Arab Muslim nation is fighting against the islamofascists and/or democratizing - Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Somalia, and Sudan are barely doing anything). FASTER PLEASE! (MORE HERE.)

LONDON'S 7/7 BOMBERS PRACTICED "DRY RUNS"

BBC: "The suicide bombers who attacked London on 7 July staged a practice run nine days before the bombings, police say. Detectives studied tens of thousands of hours of CCTV footage as part of their investigation into the attacks which killed 52 people and the bombers. CCTV images show three of the bombers entering Luton station, before travelling to King's Cross station where they are also pictured. Al-Qaeda has said for the first time the group carried out the attacks. In a videotaped message aired on Arab television station al-Jazeera, al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said the group had the 'honour' of carrying out the attacks. Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant had previously praised the bombings and blamed them on the UK's foreign policy. "

These CCTV recordings prove that terrorists practice in the field, and this makes me believe that the incidents which so many people COMMERICAL JET PASSENGERS complained about the last couple of years were accurate; (commercial jet passengers complained that several suspicious looking Arab men - who boarded the flight separately - subsequently looked as if they were doing reconnaissance and surreptitiously communicating with each other during the flight). BTW: I experienced one such flight - going from Cincy to NYC.

NOKOS CHEAT AND RETREAT - IN JUST 24HOURS!!!!

LIKE SADDAM AND IRAN. IT'S SICKENING. LET'S JUST NUKE'EM AND BE DONE WITH'EM! (UPDATE: MORE HERE.)

ANALYZING THE NEW ORLEANS DEATH TOLL, SO FAR

In all of Louisiana, the current death toll is 646 ; [the grand total - in all the states effected is 883 - both numbers are SURE TO INCREASE].

That's a lot less than the 10,000 which was predicted by Nagin on Tuesday - after Katrina had spared the city, but while it was becoming uncontrollably inundated by the floodwaters due to 3 CANAL breaks.

Of the 646 deaths in Louisiana, 154 (according to today's NYTIMES) were patients on hospitals and/or nursing homes who were physically unable to evacuate on their own and who absolutley depended on hospital officials and on local and state governments to ENFORCE the evacuation orders they gave; (neither Bush - nor the federal governemnt, nor FEMA - had ANY AUTHORITY to order any evacuation; though according to Governor Blanco's statement on the Saturday before Katrina hit, Bush had IMPLORED her to declare an evacuation).

Can any RATIONAL person blame Bush or the federal government or FEMA for these 154 deaths - 25% OF THE DEATHS - one quarter of the deaths - 1-IN-4 OF THE DEATHS, the deaths of these - the MOST VULNERABLE of all residents of New Orleans?! NO. WILL THAT STOP THE LEFTIES FROM BLAMING BUSH and FEMA and Brown. Of course not; they're not rational. [And the Left will also fail to see that Nagin's and Blanco's utter failure to enforce and/or undertake the mandatory evacuation didn't just harm the patients in hospitals who couldn't physically move on their own, but EVERYONE in New Orleans: the people who had no personal means of evacuating, and the people who did evacuate and whose property was left unprotected from looters by the incompetent and corrupt N.O.P.D.!]

I have a feeling that LAWYERS representing the families of these dead will sue the hospitals and the city and the state, not the feds. And that they'll win.

THE IRAQ WAR'S CURRENT HORRIFYING ASSYMETRY

PRAIRIEPUNDIT LIKS TO A WASHPOST ARTICLE:

WAPo's Knickmeyer demonstrates how the media does not understand war:

"Using enemy body counts as a benchmark, the U.S. military claimed gains against Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led fighters last week even as they mounted their deadliest attacks on Iraq's capital. But by many standards, including increasingly high death tolls in insurgent strikes, Zarqawi's group, al Qaeda in Iraq, could claim to be the side that's gaining after 2 1/2 years of war. August was the third-deadliest month of the war for U.S. troops."

PRAIRIEPUINDIT analyzes this line of reasoning - or should I say DEMOLISHES it:

Knickmeyer's fundamental error is that she fails to comprehend the military significance of attacks by US forces and the military insignificance of attacks by the enemy. Mass killings of unemployed Iraqi noncombatants does not change the corelation of forces. When US commanders talk about death counts and captures, they are talking about attriting the enemy's fighting forces. Killing non combatants does not effect the ability of US and Iraqi forces to continue their operations against the enemy. Cleaning up the enemy infestation of Tal Afar as well as the capture of enemy leadership clearly effects the enemy's ability to operate. It has effected it to the point that the enemy rarely attacks a defended position. The enemy is incapable to taking and holding any postion in Iraq. The US and Iraqi forces are capable of taking and holding any position in Iraq.

What Prairiepundit shows is that the TRUE horrifying assymetry of the "insurgency" in Iraq is NOT the US military versus the "insurgents" (because that's a confrontation we ALWAYS win!), but the assymetrical confrontation between the racist genocidal islamofascist murderers and poor innocent Shias.

The only thing I can add to Prairiepundit's fine analysis is this: at the current rate of slaughter (200/week) it would take the islamofascists 1000 years to kill all the Iraqi Shias. Unless they won and commited mass murder on the scale that Saddam did. Then it would only take a few decades. I don't think that the Shias or the Kurds would ever allow the islamofascists to take over; the Shia-Kurd coalition would win ANY civil war, and they will defeat this "insurgency."

Read the rest of what Prairiepundit has on this - and everything else.

PORKBUSTING: A 100% GUARANTEED WAY TO GET THE CONGRESS TO CUT THE PORK

Glenn and TTLB are nobly trying to unite bloggers and unleash the power of the blogosphere to help cut federal pork-barrel spending by exposing pork projects they know about locally and making a BIG stink. They've even come up with a clever "handle" and a cute logo/button: "PORKBUSTERS."

This is all well and good - and it may expose some heretofore unknown examples of pork (though I'd betchya most people know where most of the fat is: in other peoples districts!!! Heh!)

There's a much MUCH simpler way to do it, and I guarantee it'll be 100% effective:

Let's just put all the Congressmen and Congresswomen on COMMISSION!

That would give them a personal incentive to cut spending. Here's how it would work: The Congress'd get a 2% commission - TAX FREE! - of whatever they cut/save. The Congressmen would have to share it, so, it would get divided by 535 the members of Congress. If they cut $60BILLION, then each Senator and Representative would get $225,000. The more they cut, the more they make. This gives them incentive to cut A LOT. But if they cut too much, then their constituents might vote them out of office.

BREAKING NEWS: BBC - NOKO NUKE DEAL REACHED!

The 6 party talks have worked. According to the BBC: North Korea has agreed to give up all its nuclear activities and rejoin the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Chinese and Korean news agencies say.

According to the report, the USA has given the North Koreans an underatnding that they will not attack.

Hmmmm, er ... um ... I guess this is another example of BusHitler's secret "one note" policy to promote "endless war" and his reflex to make war and his failure to use either diplomacy or multilateralism.

Yeah. Right.

This is further proof that the Bush Administration exhaustively uses all means to GET RESULTS. As it did with Assad and the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and Qaddafy's WMD programs, the AQ Khan nuke smuggling ring, and Ukraine's orange revolution.

All achieved without the use of force. But - I would guess - that Bush's proven willingness to use force, UNILATERALLY IF NECESSARY, was a major factor in getting the bad guys to play ball. IOW: "PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH."

Bravo. (More here, at the NYTIMES.)

SHATTERED MYTHS, SPLINTERED TRIBES - and why it proves we're winning

Bush's bold post-9/11 moves have spurred a worldwide democratic revolution which is shattering old myths and splintering old tribes - ALL FOR THE BEST:

Today, in Afghanistan they're holding parliamentary elections (!!); soon Iraqis will hold a constitutional referendum (!!); Syira was kicked out of Lebanon (!!); the AQ Khan nuke smuggling ring was broken up(!!); Qaddafy renounced all WMD's and quit his WMD programs (!!) ; Pakistan and India hold peace talks (!!); Pakistan's Musharraf meets publically with Israeli officials and Jewish leaders - as do leaders from several Arab Gulf nations (!!); AND THE U.N. LOOKS LIKE ITS FESTERING SORES OF INEPTNESS AND INCOMPETENCE (is the U.N. the Louisiana/New Orleans bureaucracy the world, or what!) is coming to end end and real reform - led by Ambassador John Bolton - will soon be undertaken; and so on...

As these great events occur, idiotic myths which shackled the world to vestigial thinking and stagnant inneffective polices fall by the wayside:

The Leftist myth that the Taliban had halted the herion-trade was debunked by Ahmed Rashid in 1999 - TWO YEARS BEFORE 9/11 - from The Taliban: Exporting Extremism by Ahmed Rashid November/December 1999 Foreign Affairs :

China, too, has been affected by the ascendance of the Taliban. Beijing shunned the civil war in Afghanistan until February 1999, when it first made overtures to the Taliban in an attempt to stem the tide of Afghan heroin flooding Xinjiang. The heroin was helping fund Islamist nationalist opposition to Beijing among the Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups. ... Around Kandahar, poppy fields stretch as far as the horizon. In Herat, the Taliban have set up model farms where farmers learn the best methods of heroin cultivation. The U.N. Drug Control Program reports that Afghanistan produced 4,600 metric tons of opium in 1999-twice as much as in the previous year. Afghanistan now produces three times more opium than the rest of the world put together. Ninety-six percent of it is cultivated in Taliban-controlled areas, making the Taliban the largest heroin producer in the world. ... Whereas Afghan opium was exported to the West through Pakistan in 1980, there are now multiple export routes through Iran, the Persian Gulf states, and Central Asia. As these routes expand, so do the beneficiaries. U.S. officials claim that, with most of his bank accounts frozen, bin Laden now finances his operations through opium. Chinese officials report that drug smuggling from Afghanistan is similarly funding the Uighur opposition. Uzbekistan's government has drawn a direct drug-smuggling link between Afghanistan and the Ferghana Valley, where the IMU is based. The civil war in Tajikistan was partly fueled by Afghan drugs, and Pakistan's economy has been crippled by them. Furthermore, according to governments in the region, heroin addiction is growing: there are now five million addicts in Pakistan, three million in Iran, and one million in China,
largely in Xinjiang.

But because there was a temporary surge in herion production in the ensuing chaos after the Taliban were defeated, the Loony Left argued that perhaps this why the "Bush Crime Family" (a term Cindy Sheehan likes to use!) WANTED to crank up the drug trade. WELL: the Karzai goverment is making a lot of progress on that front, and once again heroin production is declining.

Another long-time myth that has crumbled is the myth of Pan-Arabism. The burgeoning civil war in Gaza goes on (with genocidal racist/jihadist Gazans murdering corrupt racist/ nationalistic Gazans and nary an Arab nation takes sides. Sunni Arabs daily murder HUNDREDS of Shia Arabs in Iraq and nary an Arab nation takes sides. And these deadly clashes destroy another myth: the myth of Muslim unity; the myth that somehow Bush's Iraq War was "uniting the Muslim world against the USA." Well, if that was the case why is MOST of the terror and most of the killing Sunni on Shia, and NOT Muslim of non-Muslim!? And Iraq also exposes the fact that the ISLAMOFASCIST ENEMY is most willing to murder Muslims of their OWN SECT: the Arab Iraqi Sunnis are murdering Kurds - who are also SUNNIS!

What do all these shattered myths and the mayhem between these splintered tribes have common?

They were all brought on by the Bush Doctrine, which holds that a false peace and an "unstable stability" brought about by supporting tyrannies was NOT worth a thing, and that risking temporary instability - in order to increase liberty and democracy (and thereby prosperity) - would not only "drain the swamp" (by making life for those trapped in tyrannical nations more worth living), but would make us safer and the whole world more stable and more properous.

Though we are still in the obvioulsy unstable part of the struggle - obviously STILL IN THE DESTRUCTIVE PHASE OF THE "CREATIVE DESTRUCTION" of the previous global status quo, there are ample signs that it is working (see paragraph #2).

As the wise man says: FASTER PLEASE!

WELCOME POLIPUNDIT READERS!